Ang Lee is here at EbertFest, presenting Hulk.
I hadn't realized that he was here for his undergrad work, years ago.
He's become a more and more relaxed interview (as we found on his Lust, Caution LWD), the highlight so far being his discussion of The Ice Storm, which he says he should have called "The *** You Movie," as the choice to do it was a direct response to having made "nice, heartwarming" films. He said, "A lady would come up to me and say, 'I just loved Sense & Sensibility,' and I'd just want to punch her in the face."
On Hulk, he copped to how much the film was about his problems with his own dad. He also talked a lot about how tough the critical response to the film was in America. Like Lust, Caution, other countries saw the politics of it.
What really struck me sitting here is that Lee makes films that, for Americans, are really for women and for men over 35. The perceived failures of Hulk seems to have come from comicbook fans who wanted the very male testosterone rush. That just wasn't the movie Ang Lee made.
Of course, there was a Heath Ledger question. Ang talked about the work and simply said, "I love him... He carries the movie." (He also said that it was Jake G's role to steal the movie... and he did.)
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/04/ang_in_urbana.html