In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.
— Wong Kar-wai
I was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong the year I was five.
What's so great about inspiration is sometimes it finds you when you're not looking.
I never studied film formally at school, but as a kid, I spent most of my time in cinemas.
I don't want to be a grumpy old man or too pessimistic, because if I have a chance, I would prefer to watch a film in the cinema with an audience on a big screen instead of watching it on a cell phone. It's a very different experience, but somehow I think this form will have its own future and life.
My films are never about what Hong Kong is like, or anything approaching a realistic portrait, but what I think about Hong Kong and what I want it to be.
Sometimes, we have to turn our camera to a mirror to shoot something, and people think, 'Oh, that's very stylish.' Yes it is, but at the same time, we did it because we are shooting in a very small space, and that was our only option.
