strangewood-deactivated20190307:“The original spark [for The Terrorizers] came from the Eura

strangewood-deactivated20190307: “The original spark [for The Terrorizers] came from the Eurasian girl in the story, who at the time was just a drifter in Taipei. She didn’t have a job, came from a single-parent family. Her father was a Vietnam serviceman and her mother a bar hostess, so she comes from a very unique cultural background. In the film, I snuck in clues about her identity, like in the scenes when her mother is smoking, if you look closely you realize that she is using an army-issued cigarette lighter with a First Calvary insignia. What happened was that the Eurasian girl had a friend who told me about her interest in acting in films, so I met with her. She told me all kinds of stories about her life, like how her mother used to lock her up at home and, unable to go anywhere, she’d just stay in her room making prank phone calls. She told me that she had once called some woman and told her that she was her husband’s mistress. That story was the spark that lit the fire. It was such an explosive story. I started to think about how such a random, unrelated act could potentially create a terrible tragedy. Suddenly the whole structure of the story began to emerge.” — Edward Yang "If the story was only about a terrorist and a couple, it’d be just about modern marriages. But Edward wanted more than that. He wanted to talk about the fear in the modern society. The fear and surreal feelings people have in the modern time. When Edward was making this film, he was a very angry man. He was angry with society and with what he had been through. He was extremely angry with the time. So the killings began in his films. We joked that he was killing more and more people with every movie. No one dies in the first film. In That Day on the Beach, only one person dies. Then in Taipei Story, a character is stabbed to death. Now, so many people die in The Terrorizers. More people die in his next film. There is a slaughter in A Brighter Summer Day. As a director Edward was very emotional when he was making the film.” — Hsiao Yeh, Screenwriter (The Terrorizers) "Edward was a very honest director. I mean honest with his age and his time. He always expressed his views on society in his films. For example, in That Day on the Beach, we can see his doubt about marriage and love. He began to doubt things like that… When I saw The Terrorizers, it took my breath away. It was the first time I came to realize how talented Edward was. I knew from my talk with Edward that he was confused about love and everything around him. He had doubt about everything in Taiwanese society. He didn’t trust anything, anyone. Were they friends or enemies? What should a couple be like? He was in a confused state of mind. This film fully demonstrated his state of mind at that time.” — Wu Nien-jen, Screenwriter/Actor (That Day on the Beach, Yi Yi) "I was very shocked. I felt when [Yang] came back from the U.S., he’d developed a unique eye for things. He viewed things differently from us. He studied in Taiwan until college, and left for the U.S. for ten years. When he returned, he became someone who came from a different world. Looking at where he grew up, he clearly saw the social structure of Taiwan… [The Terrorizers] seems direct, but it’s not. The underlying story tells the distorted relationships people had in the totalitarian era in Taiwan. Edward was very good at it. We understood his views on Taipei from Taipei Story. He had his viewpoint.” — Hou Hsiao-hsien -- source link

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