I am waiting for the right story to tell. Just like 'Man of Tai Chi' just seemed to be the right story to tell. So I'm looking for that. Because I really love directing. I love developing the story. I love actors. I love the cinema of it, the way that you tell a story visually.
Eventually, it came to this place like, 'I'd like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.' 'Man of Tai Chi' became the story to tell.
Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don't have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.
Basically it starts with four months of training, just basic stretching, kicking and punching. Then you come to the choreography and getting ready to put the dance together.
Oftentimes, when we think of 3D, we think of things coming out of the screen, but actually, you've got this zero, this negative space, what they call the negative space, which is the scene, what's being filmed in the positive space of the audience. As you can have things come out, you can have all of this depth.
How do people relate to movies now, when they're on portable devices or streaming them? It's not as much about going to the movies. That experience has changed.
And of course to work with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, and work with a wonderful, beautiful script directed by Nancy Meyers, it was really for me a dream come true.
I've been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.
Letters are something from you. It's a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.
Falling in love and having a relationship are two different things.
You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it's been something I've been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it's something I hope to continue because it's interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.
But, you know, it's still a drag to get your picture taken when you're eating a sandwich. It's a downer.
I'm a meathead. I can't help it, man. You've got smart people and you've got dumb people.
I'm a meathead, man. You've got smart people, and you've got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.
Energy can't be created or destroyed, and energy flows. It must be in a direction, with some kind of internal, emotive, spiritual direction. It must have some effect somewhere.
When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.
I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we've been trying to generate material.
Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it - the grain, how it feels, the texture.
I don't know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It's also changing how we're telling stories.
'Speed' and 'Point Break' were a lot of running and jumping, and then 'The Matrix Trilogy' had a lot of fights and wire work and green screen elements.
