Wong Kar-wai Quotes

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Wong Kar-wai

Profession : Director

Birth : July 17, 1956

In our case, we have no script. So the only people we can work with are people who have been working with us in the past, and they know we are going to do something; it's kind of a trust.

Wong Kar-wai

To make films, it always begins with two words: what and how. First of all, you have to find a story, or what are you going to tell? And you have to find a way to tell it visually.

Wong Kar-wai

I don't want to be a grumpy old man or too pessimistic, because if I have a chance, I would prefer to watch a film in the cinema with an audience on a big screen instead of watching it on a cell phone. It's a very different experience, but somehow I think this form will have its own future and life.

Wong Kar-wai

The Chinese government promised Hong Kong '50 years, and change.' And 50 years later, after 1997, will be 2046; I think, 'Well, that's a very interesting promise.' So I want to make a film about promise.

Wong Kar-wai

I think, to be a director, sometimes you need to have certain hunches - you have to believe in some gut feeling.

Wong Kar-wai

The original title for 'In the Mood for Love' was called 'A Story About Food.' The idea was to tell a love story through different courses.

Wong Kar-wai

The laboratory where we stored all our negatives went bankrupt overnight following the Asian economic crisis in 1997. So, on short notice, we had to retrieve all the materials in the middle of the night before the debtor-receiver took over the laboratory the next morning.

Wong Kar-wai

I think of action as a dance. It's a riddle; it should have emotion in it.

Wong Kar-wai

The reason it takes me so long to make a film, the reason it gets so difficult, is that I'm trying to think of every film as the last one I will ever make so it can be the best it can possibly be. I don't want to have regrets or excuses or think, 'I can do better next time.'

Wong Kar-wai

I started out my career as a screenwriter and quickly discovered that adhering to a script isn't always the best way to make a film. You have to take into consideration the nuances of the characters and what the actors bring to their roles.

Wong Kar-wai

I was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong the year I was five.

Wong Kar-wai

I never studied film formally at school, but as a kid, I spent most of my time in cinemas.

Wong Kar-wai

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.

Wong Kar-wai

Some actors like encouragement. Some actors prefer to have pressure. And sometimes, for some actors, its better to give your comment by silence, because they are so skillful, so gifted, that they understand without talking too much.

Wong Kar-wai

I didn't know anything about martial arts. I'm a big fan, but I never practiced martial arts.

Wong Kar-wai

I think one day I can make a book about coffee shops in Hong Kong. I spent almost most of my time in coffee shops, in different coffee shops.

Wong Kar-wai

Each production has certain circumstances that will bring you to a certain way of making it. It is not intentional, it is not an artistic decision, the way we make films, it is the way we address to our problems.

Wong Kar-wai

Heritage is something martial-arts films don't often talk about.

Wong Kar-wai

I'm a big fan of martial arts films, novels and radio programs.

Wong Kar-wai

1936 is a very important year: a golden time for martial arts, right before the Japanese invasion.

Wong Kar-wai