[John Tyler Connoley,
Monday March 13, 2006 at 2:58pm]
My State of the Union
I've posted my first Tyler's Turn essay since October. It's my annual State of the Union, based on the Oscar ceremonies.
Here are a couple paragraphs I had to cut from the final essay, but couldn't bear to lose from memory:
To my mind, Ang Lee had the iconic moment of the night with his acceptance speech. Ang Lee is the first Asian to win a major Academy Award, but he didn't give a weepy speech about how he's opening the door for Asians everywhere. Instead, he began by thanking the gay characters in his film: "They taught all of us so much, not just about the gay men and women whose love is denied by society but, just as importantly, about the greatness of love itself." He went on to thank his wife and children, and "everybody in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China," finishing his speech in Chinese.
Ang Lee, a straight man born and raised in Taiwan, chose to make his first big film about a gay couple living in America (The Wedding Banquet). Since then, he's crossed every genre from western (Ride with the Devil), to period drama (Sense and Sensibility), to blockbuster (Hulk), while continuing to make independent films like The Ice Storm, Eat Drink Man Woman, and Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee represents a vision of filmmaking in which stories and characters matter more than genres or stereotypes. He also has an amazing talent for making socially conscious cinema that is thoroughly watchable -- good stories that tell the truth, instead of pedantic speeches dressed up with plots.
Here are a couple paragraphs I had to cut from the final essay, but couldn't bear to lose from memory:
To my mind, Ang Lee had the iconic moment of the night with his acceptance speech. Ang Lee is the first Asian to win a major Academy Award, but he didn't give a weepy speech about how he's opening the door for Asians everywhere. Instead, he began by thanking the gay characters in his film: "They taught all of us so much, not just about the gay men and women whose love is denied by society but, just as importantly, about the greatness of love itself." He went on to thank his wife and children, and "everybody in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China," finishing his speech in Chinese.
Ang Lee, a straight man born and raised in Taiwan, chose to make his first big film about a gay couple living in America (The Wedding Banquet). Since then, he's crossed every genre from western (Ride with the Devil), to period drama (Sense and Sensibility), to blockbuster (Hulk), while continuing to make independent films like The Ice Storm, Eat Drink Man Woman, and Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee represents a vision of filmmaking in which stories and characters matter more than genres or stereotypes. He also has an amazing talent for making socially conscious cinema that is thoroughly watchable -- good stories that tell the truth, instead of pedantic speeches dressed up with plots.