I look at American movies, the big muscles, and try to apply that to Chinese film-making.

I have a lot of repression. So repression is what I make movies about.

I think each movie-making process is a very exhausting and satisfying and fulfilling experience for me.

In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.

It's not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it.

I think doing period piece is easier, because after a certain distance, everybody is equal, I think. The relative contemporary is harder. I think that's the way it is.

So anything that's not absolutely needed, we would cut it [footage] out, which would make me very insecure; everything has to work, and it's a water movie in 3D with a kid, animals. So the more I do that, the more I'm scared of "What if it doesn't go the way we want it?" But we had to do that to meet the budget, otherwise we wouldn't even have a start-date.