You're playing and you think everything is going fine. Then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another. You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can't move... you can't breathe... because you're in over your head. Like quicksand.

Eventually, it came to this place like, "I'd like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell." Man of Tai Chi became the story to tell.

I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we've been trying to generate material.

I don't know if that's philosophy or if that's something else, but to me it [digital filming] has an emotional feeling , that this materiality, the loss of the materiality.

Nothing ever truly dies. The universe wastes nothing, everything is simply transformed.

You know what is a nice thought? Retirement.

Mortality is very different when you're 20 to when you're 50.