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Could you talk about how you first became interested in filmmaking? My dad was a big Hollywood film buff. When I was growing up, he would take us to movies all the time. The ritual of sitting in the movie theater, the lights going out, and the light coming from the projector has been magical for me for as long as I can remember. In fact, I am named after John Wayne. When my father was born, a Chinese fortuneteller said that he was lacking in wood (one of the essential elements ). So he was named “king of the forest.” My older brother became “prince of the forest.” When I came along, my father had just seen John Wayne in Red River [1948] and Stagecoach [1939]. He really wanted to name me “Wayne,” so he found a Chinese character that means “a young bud of a tree,” which sounds like “Wayne.” Our family is from Shandong, and we settled in Hong Kong after 1949. My parents were basically quite conservative and anti-Communist, having escaped from Mainland China during the Revolution. They were upper-middle class, and they were part of a generation that liked everything American or everything foreign. That is why the movies were a huge influence. I grew up with Rock Hudson, Doris Day, John Wayne, and Audie Murphy—all the big heroes. Hong Kong, as a British colony, also was very Westernized, and I did not think much about cultures clashing until I went to school in California. When I first went to school, I was in premed, but I took one art history class and one painting class, and I really fell in love with painting. Still, I have always been interested in film, so I watched a lot of films in film history classes. When I went to graduate school, I switched my major to film. The department emphasized underground filmmaking, like the films of Stan Brakhage. (New York City, July 28, 2001) Interview with Wayne Wang Interview with Wayne Wang 169 I got out of school, and I could not really find any work; I was really out in left field. I did some documentaries for the local television stations and things like that. When I went to school in the United States, I was living with some really radical families. They were Quaker families and very political, so I became more political. I was very influenced by Jean-Luc Godard’s films, and I did not want to make so-called “mainstream” movies. When I went back to Hong Kong, I did get a job in television, in the same environment that gave rise to the Hong Kong New Wave—for example, Allen Fong, Ann Hui, among others. Because I have an American degree in film, I got a job directing an established soap opera that was very popular there at the time called Below the Lion Rock. I was fired after about three months because I was trying to do things differently. I could not stand living in Hong Kong. I was frustrated both in terms of filmmaking and in terms of my personal life. Partially, this was a result of living with my parents again after what I had gone through in the States, and that became a conflict. Hong Kong was very hot—crowded and hot. I remember being on the tram and being so hot and having so many people so close to me. Also, politically, I felt it was so claustrophobic there. The British were very colonial, and the Chinese were very passive. Political tensions between the Nationalist and the Communists living outside of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic surface in Chan Is Missing [1982]. What was the reaction of the Chinese community to the film at that time? When the film was first finished, I showed it to the Chinese community, and people on both sides were not happy with it. However, they thought it was a film nobody would see, so they did not care. Then, when the film was released and was very well supported by so-called mainstream society, some people went along with it. Others came out and said, “Well, you shouldn’t be airing our dirty laundry in front of other people.” This is typically a Chinese reaction. A lot of the younger generation, my age or younger, were very supportive and interested in it. Left-wing people were intrigued by it, but they were not sure what...

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