Edward Yang DMT

“After a couple of years as an engineer, of course, the routine bored me. One night, I was driving after work in downtown Seattle, and I saw a billboard outside a movie theater with the words, German New Wave, and the title, Aguirre: The Wrath of God [a 1972 West German film directed by Werner Herzog--R.S.]. It made me curious, so I went in. I was fortunate. I came out a different person. That two hours just blew me away. It restored my sense of competence that I could be a filmmaker. This is what I thought a film should be. Film school would never teach you to make those kinds of shots. That was one of the crucial moments of my life. I had turned thirty, I thought I was getting old, and three more years passed before I got the chance to work on a film project with a friend who asked me to write a script for him. I went back to Taipei, and also visited Hong Kong for the first time, and the film was shot in Japan. I got an offer to write and direct a made-for-TV movie in Taiwan, so I didn't go back to Seattle. After ten years my mom was still calling and asking, 'When are you coming back to your regular job?'”