I'm Just A Pretty Regular Dad.

You Have To Know The Rules, Otherwise You Have No Tools To Communicate To The Audience, But To Keep It Fresh You Have To Break Some. I Don't Choose Genres As The Element, But The Material Itself Is The Element, Then I'll Decide What Genre I Need. That's Just How I Work.

Meanwhile, The Ice Storm Was Still In Development, And That Was Something I Really Wanted To Do, And Frankly I Don't Think I Was Ready To Do A Big Production Like This.

Making This Movie As A Period Piece About A Period That Was Very Recent In People's Minds. I Was In Taiwan [during The 1970s], So I Hope I Did All Right. Otherwise, It Could Be The Biggest Embarrassment Of My Life. Also, The Story Is Not Linear, It's Patchy, Like A Cubist Painting, And There Is Always The Possibility It Will Not Hold Together, It Will Fall Apart. The Tone Is Part Satire, Part Serious Drama, Part Tragedy, All Mixed Together, And It Has To Hit An Emotional Core. That's Also Very Scary.

When I Grew Up, In Taiwan, The Korean War Was Seen As A Good War, Where America Protected Asia. It Was Sort Of An Extension Of World War Ii. And It Was, Of Course, The Peak Of The Cold War. People In Taiwan Were Generally Proamerican. The Korean War Made Japan. And Then The Vietnam War Made Taiwan. There Is Some Truth To That.

So There Was One Point I Thought I Was Gonna Lose It, But Once I Get On Something I Have To Finish It; I Just Kept Persuading Them And They Turned Around. One Good Thing Was The International Guys Really Stood Behind This Movie, They Thought They Could Support This Film. So These Guys Step Up And That's Really Good, And Then They Turned Around.