Dwight Yoakam: Another Favourite Singer of Mine - Still Blurring the Lines - Updated

                                                                                                                        

I have mentioned Dwight Yoakam on this blog before. As far as country music is concerned he is my favourite performer.

He always was quite the maverick in country music and he still stands out with this highly original new effort.

This article concerns Dwight’s latest album “3 Pears”, and also talks about how it came into being.

He also mentions the performers who influenced his musical career: Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, as well as my other favourite – Gram Parsons, and others.

By Kelli Skye Fadroski

Seven years had passed since Dwight Yoakam put out any original material, and the Grammy-winning country maverick was beginning to get restless.

At 56 he had still managed to keep plenty busy, continuing to write and tour and in 2007 put together Dwight Sings Buck, a tribute to his late friend and legend Buck Owens, icon of the Bakersfield sound Yoakam evoked from the earliest days of his unorthodox career in the mid-’80s.

A bit-part player in movies since the early ’90s, the Sling Blade supporting star also took on more and bigger film roles, including his 2001 directorial debut South of Heaven, West of Hell, other Westerns like The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (directed by Tommy Lee Jones) and The Last Rites of Ransom Pride (opposite Kris Kristofferson, with whom he re-teamed in last year’s Bloodworth), and the coming-of-age comedy Dirty Girl.

But Yoakam wanted to focus on new songs. So he started pulling together resources. As a start, he hooked up with buddy Kid Rock, who fleshed out a song Yoakam had been sitting on for two decades.

“Bobby (his real name is Robert Ritchie) and I had threatened to do a song together for a while,” he said during a recent phone chat while, as he put it, he was “upside down” in Australia on tour. Yoakam just returned to the States, though, and comes to City National Grove of Anaheim on Thursday.

“Right when I went into the studio to start recording he called me up. We threw around some song ideas and we took a look at this one that had been languishing in an unfinished state for years. I say it took 20 years and five hours to finish writing that song. I had the opening and then he just took it, and we drove it forward and finished ‘Take Hold of My Hand.’”

That would become the opener for the finished product, September’s 3 Pears, one of the most stylistically diverse and best-reviewed collections in his catalog. 

Along with characteristic fare, like a country-rock cover of Joe Maphis’ “Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music),” the album features collaborations with Pistol Annies’ player Ashley Monroe and indie-rock icon Beck.

Yoakam admits he wasn’t all that familiar with the latter’s body of work beyond radio hits that he enjoyed: “Loser,” “Devil’s Haircut.” But he became more intrigued around the time of Beck’s beautiful downer Sea Change (2002) because of his “melodic inclinations. I just had an instinct to call him and see if he’d be interested in collaborating as a producer.”

They spent about three hours in Yoakam’s office, he says, “talking about everything from life in L.A. and the culture to playing out some of these ideas and where I thought I’d go with the album.”

Months later they met again, this time in Beck’s home studio in Malibu, to collaborate on two songs, “Missing Heart” and “A Heart Like Mine.” Yoakam went in with a ton of ideas, mainly the sound of the intro to the latter cut, something like “a two beat-bounce to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Bad Moon Rising.’ I got in there and his assistant engineer, who is a drummer, started playing it a bit, and I got the guitar – and before I knew it Beck was turning knobs and saying, ‘Do you want another guitar?’

“We built that song that day. I teased him and said, ‘It’s like we’ve got the Stones colliding with Johnny Cash.’”

Beck, a connoisseur with catholic taste who knows his traditional country, was convinced that “what I was doing would appeal to an audience I wasn’t aware I had. … There’s a certain raw emotion to the album, which is something very reminiscent to me of the moment I broke into the business on the West Coast, in the L.A. scene with what they referred to as ‘cowpunk.’ It’s very full circle.”

L.A. Clubs and Crossover Crowds

Yoakam was never really bound for Nashville. His authentic honky-tonk approach just didn’t fit in amid Music Row’s increasingly pop-driven mainstays. So in the ’80s he moved to L.A., where he was welcomed into nightclubs on the Sunset Strip and played gigs with popular rockabilly acts like the Blasters and X’s Americana side project the Knitters.

“There always was this sort of wonderful collage of musical styles that’s been a part of Southern California’s music scene,” he says, recalling many happy run-ins with artists like Dave Alvin and Billy Zoom. “From Bakersfield down into Orange County, it was just a mix of styles and people.”

Out of those formative years in Nudie suits sprang his widely acclaimed 1986 debut, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., a cult favorite among college rockers just discovering country but also a career-launching Warner Bros. release that snagged him the top spot on Billboard’s country chart and spawned his first signature single, a ripping remake of Johnny Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man.”

His next two efforts, Hillbilly Deluxe (1987) and Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room (1988), also went to No. 1, while arguably his strongest effort, 1993’s This Time, placed him in a league alongside Lyle Lovett, Iris DeMent, k.d. lang and Lucinda Williams of rare roots performers creating music that reveled in blurring the lines between folk and rock and country.

All along he had been attracted to greats who were most comfortable in the gray areas between genres, no matter how much they were pigeonholed into one over another.

At 8, Yoakam would listen to Roy Orbison in his bedroom, learning how to play along. He got heavily into Merle Haggard and, of course, Buck Owens and the Buckaroos. 

Way before it was hip to be one he was a devotee of the Flying Burrito Brothers, the short-lived but influential cosmic country-rock outfit that included Bernie Leadon (later of the Eagles), alt-country god Gram Parsons and the ever-unsung Chris Hillman of the Byrds.

Chris Hillman and Gram Parsons

                                                                     
                                                                      

In 2008, Hillman asked Yoakam to write the forward to a his book Hot Burritos: The True Story of the Flying Burrito Brothers. “I was so flattered,” he says, “because I was such a huge fan, and Chris really did serve as the profound piece of connective tissue for an entire generation to reconnect with country music back in the late ’60s.

                                                              

There wouldn’t have been a Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, which for me is the first country-rock album, if there were no Chris Hillman. He doesn’t get the credit he deserves for that.

“And the Burritos, more than any other band in country-rock, they laid the road map for this cross-pollinated next generation of California country voices to emerge.”

Naturally, Yoakam’s career followed a similarly unpredictable yet always genuine path toward melding sounds and audiences. That pattern still persists – recall how in 2008 he played both the everything-but-country Coachella festival and the all-country Stagecoach bash the very next weekend.

“I don’t think we changed the show we were doing one bit,” he says. “I just performed as me in both cases … and there’s a sense of exploration and ownership in both cases. The more ‘cowpunk’ side of my music, in a sense – the Coachella crowd got that and owned that, and they discovered everything else about me. The reverse, I think, was the case for the Stagecoach audience, who knew more of my traditional country music. Either way, it’s still just me doing my music.”

As for today’s heavily pop-influenced country music, Yoakam has no problem with it as long as the artists involved stay true to who they really are.

“Look, there were people that accused George Jones of selling out when he and Tammy Wynette were doing the Nashville countrypolitan sound in 1971. People were saying that they had sold out from the traditional country of the ’50s and ’60s – George Jones and Tammy Wynette!

“I think it’s just key to maintain personal integrity. Continue to seek personal inspiration through your music and be honest with every bit of musical expression you put out.”

Article and top picture with thanks to The Orange County Register and many thanks to Annie for sending me this.

The You Tube clip is a live version of "Waterfall" - from "3 Pears".

My other posts which mention Dwight Yoakam and Gram Parsons can be found with the search function on this blog.

Dwight and Gram

  

Update: Read “A Conversation With Dwight Yoakam” from “Cowboys and Indians” Magazine here.

Again, many thanks to Annie for this!

                                     
Another track from "Three Pears": A Heart Like Mine.

Dwight tweeted this great picture recently:

                                                                   
Another update:

Dwight Yoakam in the Live Room .

                                                                         

                                                                                                                                     

                                   

Another update: 

Dwight still has it! Here’s a review of his concert with many thanks to Annie.
                                       

                                                                

Another update: 

Dwight’s latest album out now.21st Century Hits: Best of 2000-2012

                                                               

One of my favourite songs by Dwight Yoakam is "Things Change" .

However, I still love "Long White Cadillac" and "Fast As You". What a hard choice! 

Related:

The Rolling Stones at Villa Nellcôte and "Exile On Main Street"

Keith Richards - His Life with the Rolling Stones and His Book

Singer Jordie Lane finds the soul of the Grievous Angel: Gram Parsons

Keith Richards Writes A Story Book For Children

Film Review: Twenty Feet From Stardom


Emmylou Harris Pays Tribute to Gram Parsons on Her New Album - Hard Bargain

"Return of the Grievous Angel" - Another Favourite Song 

Dwight Yoakam: Another Favourite Singer of Mine - Still Blurring the Lines

Gram Parsons: Web Metrics & The Meaning of Lifetime

The 20 Best Gram Parsons Songs To Banish The Blues


Saturation 70: The Gram Parsons UFO Film That Never Flew

Lyric Of The Week: Gram Parsons, “$1,000 Wedding”


Dwight Yoakam Plots 'Revival' - New Album Out This Year



Dwight Yoakam: Meandering Through The Americana Camp


Dwight Yoakam’s Rock Roots


Linda Ronstadt: A Lifetime Grammy Award And How The Eagles Became A Legendary Ban

Dwight Yoakam Names His Top Five David Bowie Songs

Glyn Johns: Defining That Classic-Rock Sound

Gram Parsons And Rick Nelson: Early Pioneers of 'California Dreaming'

Dwight Yoakam to Release Special Edition Vinyl

Dwight Yoakam's Latest Album Will Be Bluegrass

The Americana Music Association Announces Lifetime Achievement Honorees

Gram Parsons Would Have Been 70 Years Old Today
 

Lang Lang: The Piano Man

                                                                                                                                 
A while ago I posted two pieces about Jarrod Radnich. 
  

I really admire his ability to arrange his own music as he does in “The Pirates of the Caribbean” theme, by Klaus Badelt and/or Hans Zimmer, and also “The Harry Potter Theme”, composed by John Williams.

Jarrod also composes.

I recently updated the “Pirates” theme as I found out some new information about it – see link above. 

I was most intrigued by the technology Jarrod uses, namely Zenph Sound Innovation's Internet MIDI software. It looks amazing!

However this post is about Chinese pianist, Lang Lang, and his new album which features Chopin who is most definitely one of my favourite composers.

Whilst he has critics and admirers all over the world it seems to me that he has achieved a lot more than fame and fortune in the music industry with his talent.

I think perhaps it is the fact that he has inspired so many youngsters, (and older people), to learn the piano and to listen to classical music.

There is another world out there rather than only contemporary music, and Lang Lang has brought it to many younger audiences who crave better quality and more diversity in their music libraries/iPods.

by: Tim Teeman 

Lang Lang's detractors accuse him of indulging in theatrics during performances.Source: Supplied

IN his Manhattan apartment, Central Park a delicious green and brown autumnal carpet 36 storeys below, superstar pianist Lang Lang shows me the hand exercises he employs after pounding the keys in concert hall after concert hall.
 

The 30-year-old Chinese musician, boyish-pretty with jetted quiff, stretches his digits, rolls his shoulders and bends his elbows. "I have a massage once every two days on tour. Since I was a teenager I worried about injuring my hands. But you just buy insurance." He guffaws. "It's a good psychological way of escaping the darkness of the threat of injury."

The laughter is deceiving. In Journey of a Thousand Miles, his 2008 autobiography, Lang says injuring his arms and hands became "his biggest fear", realised in 2003 when he hurt himself hitting the ivory keys of one piano too hard. How much are his hands insured for - $1 million? "More than that," Lang says in almost fluent, only slightly broken English. "I've put more money in over the years ... I think $15m." Does he ever think, "My hands are worth $15m"? 

"Oh, they're worth more than that. You don't want to exchange your health for it. I wouldn't exchange $100m for unhealthy hands. I just wouldn't do it." Another guffaw. "No amount of insurance matches the value of my hands."

Lang doesn't say this arrogantly; he simply, passionately loves the piano and making music. 

Hailed as "the hottest artist on the classical music planet" by The New York Times, this modest musician signed to Sony Music for a reported $3m two years ago. His CDs - the latest, The Chopin Album, includes a piece he first performed aged 5 - sell in the hundreds of thousands.

He played at the opening of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and at the Queen's diamond jubilee concert in London in June.

There have been Lang Lang-branded pianos (created by Steinway), scarfs and trainers. His appearances at concert halls across the world attract adulatory fans - "I can feel their passion," he says - and although critics have carped, Lang often plays the showman, standing at the piano. He's quieter in person, courtly even: before every concert he eats fruit, a roast beef sandwich and drinks earl grey or chamomile tea. "I have never gotten drunk in my life," he says. "I would much rather play sports or go on a date than get drunk. I don't have a problem with it; I just don't touch it."

Lang's apartment is glossy: floor-to-ceiling windows, TV spanning one wall, a letter from Tchaikovsky given as an 18th birthday gift on another.

He is "moving away from commercial branding to education, I want to give back to society", running the Lang Lang International Music Foundation to encourage young musicians and the Lang Lang Music World arts school in China, where he is said to have inspired 40 million children to take up the piano. ("I ask children why they are playing and it seems more for love than because their parents have told them to.") 

His school has 85 students and is in the city of Shenzhen, "known as Piano City, there are so many children learning it".

If on stage Lang plays the rock star, in person this is muted to a puppyish enthusiasm, a lightness contrasting starkly with his upbringing in Shenyang, northern China, where his parents bought his first piano when he was one. 

The young Lang was inspired by Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, which he heard on a Tom and Jerry cartoon. While his mother, Xiulan Zhou, was a calm, loving presence to whom Lang felt very close, Lang Guoren, his father, was so fixated on him being the best he moved himself and Lang to Beijing, where one sneering teacher whom Lang nicknamed Professor Angry almost crushed his spirit. ("I teach kids differently; I'm very clear but not harsh - I wouldn't want them to go through what I did.")

Neighbours complained about the din of Lang's endless practising. 

His fierce father was once so furious at what he perceived as his son's lack of commitment that he encouraged Lang, then nine, to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills, then - when his son refused - told him to jump out of their apartment window. 

In Lang's autobiography, he recalls begging his father: "Stop! You're crazy! Leave me alone! I don't want to die! I'm not going to die!" "You must play perfect," his dad would say. "You must not make a mistake. Not one mistake." (When, later, Lang injured his hand it was a strange relief: he caught up with friends and relaxed.)

In China, Lang's father recently published his autobiography, My Thirty Years with Lang Lang. "I cried many times reading it, I really did," confesses his son. "It was very emotional. He explains why he was so iron-faced: it's very oriental - the father is strict because otherwise the boy will not listen. He felt he had to be strict in order for me to achieve exceptional success. He will never forgive himself for some things. He doesn't want to talk about the moment he tried to make me commit suicide. He says that's probably his biggest mistake. He feels incredible pain when people ask about it. He made a wrong decision. I made a right decision not to listen to him."

What if he had listened to him? "My father would have jumped from the building too, I think," Lang says quickly. "He's not going to let just me die. That's what I believe. Thank god it didn't happen." Afterwards Lang hit his hands repeatedly against a wall, "because I didn't want to play any more. I hated it. I always wanted to be a pianist, but it wasn't like after piano there was nothing else. I was pretty good at my other studies."

Was his father too hard on him? "I'd say there were some moments [when] it was unnecessary because I was not the type of person who hated the piano. I loved it. I didn't need the pressure. I think he was scared I would not achieve in my career like he hadn't in his - that was the shadow."

His father played the erhu, a traditional Chinese two-string fiddle, "and he was very good in his region, but it was a Chinese instrument so not many people would have listened to him".
The Cultural Revolution, which forced so many artists and musicians away from their crafts, also helped scupper his father's dream. "He flashed back to that when bringing me up. He didn't want what happened to him to happen to me."

Also, Lang adds: "Artistically you need to be pushed so you can achieve. My father is an educator, he has a heart and he encourages and challenges me to do better all the time."

Lang gained entrance to the Beijing Central Music Conservatory, won competitions, then studied at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

His break came at 17 when he was asked to stand in for another pianist for the Chicago Symphony. Orchestras from New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Cleveland asked him to play with them. Conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim became his mentor. He told Lang: "We should not just learn music from our life experience but also learn life experience through music. In this way, no matter how old you are, you can play something incredible."

Lang remembers his first time in a five-star hotel. "I was so excited about the mini-bar, swimming pool, room service - 'Wow, touring is cool,' I thought." But he once wrote he had "to wonder what's out there beyond the luxury hotels and restaurants. I can never forget where I came from - the poverty, the loneliness."

"It was challenging," Lang says of youthful fame. "People have high expectations. They say, 'He'll grow up and won't play as well. Is he still going to be this good in two years?' Today, everyone is questioning whether Justin Bieber will go far after he's 20. For me it was annoying: I just focused on the art. Advice is great sometimes, but it can be harmful: you must not forget what you're doing. You mustn't think about stardom."

Still, he was "heavily influenced" by popular culture, amazed by large numbers of people knowing who Michael Jordan was. "You could go to any pharmacy or store and see their connection to the public. With classical music you have to go to a special section of the store to find our music. I learned from Yo-Yo Ma [the American cellist], whose CDs are sometimes in Starbucks, how to promote myself.

"But it's also very challenging because you have to behave properly at all times. When I'm followed by paparazzi, or when people take my photograph outside a hotel or restaurant, it feels unnatural."

But Lang hopes his youth and style help free classical music from its perceived ghetto. "I believe great art should be shared with everyone. Maybe Beethoven was paid by the king, but he wanted his pieces to be heard by everyone. 'Let's stay in our little club' is not the right kind of promotion for classical music."

As for the flamboyance: "I do it when the piece demands it, but it is only one part of my playing. You don't need to be approved of by people, just play and be sincere."

 From the "I must win" of his youth, his attitude now is: "No 1: that's stupid, just do your art. I am still developing." 

He once wrote that depression had stalked him, "looming over me since my professional career took off. I'd felt constantly unmoored, always completely alone in spite of the crowds that clamoured for my attention." He feels more secure now. "You can be one of the best only when you are doing your best. A big ego will lead you to play wrong notes." He laughs. "I think the best thing is to play every concert as if it's your first."

Has Lang ever been starstruck? Yes, he nods: Lionel Messi, the Argentinian footballer, at Wimbledon one year, "and world leaders. I enjoyed my conversation with Mr George Bush Sr. It was very meaningful: he believed, as I do, music education needs to be improved. I thought that was very sweet."

After the diamond jubilee concert, the Queen said, " 'Your fingers are moving so fast.' I was like, 'Yes, that's practice.' She said, 'Keep it going.' " At another concert, Sasha and Malia Obama "asked the Jonas Brothers how to sing and me how to prepare [for] a recital. I told them, 'Take a nap, eat some strawberries and, if you like to eat sweeter stuff, chocolate.' For me, the most incredible experiences are not state dinners - it was when I was 21, playing for a village in Africa where they got me a keyboard, not a piano, singing local songs with the kids."

In the testiest moment between us, Lang will not state whether he supports Ai Weiwei, the artist and activist who has been detained by the Chinese authorities.

"I try to avoid political things," he says. "I'm not afraid of saying something wrong. I think my goal as a musician is to create art. I don't know him as a person." Lang claims, "Artists always have the freedom to express themselves," which might come as surprising news to Ai. "You create art, you can explain this in millions of ways. I don't think political things can stop artistic creation."

Lang hopes "the world better understands China" through its art.

 Is China friendly to artists? "Very. For the people I know. I can't speak for every artist, of course. I've got a good space [for his school]." If the government gives other artists space, "They just create art. It's not pro-China or anti-China. People are creating amazing things in China, political or not." Is Lang worried about Ai, his treatment, what it means? "Making music is my world. I have no interest in politics."

Next, Lang will do a recording of Bartok concertos with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. He is inspired by pianists such as Glenn Gould, Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz and contemporary musicians Joshua Bell, Gustavo Dudamel and Valery Gergiev. "I like Adele very much," he adds. "When she sings she has this real quality. I went to a Lady Gaga concert: it was fun, a lot of revolutionary ideas. 

From man-world, everything Jay-Z touches is unique." Paul McCartney, whom Lang has met three times, said to him, "You're a classical pianist, I'm a classic rocker." Lang wants to work with McCartney and Adele. Elton John is a friend; the pair are discussing a collaboration, "a totally new song".

Does Lang want children? "This type of schedule means it's not possible, I'm focused more on music. I would like children in 10 years' time. That's the plan, but you never know." Is he in a relationship? "I'm going on a date tonight. Every time I come home I try to have as much time for myself to have a relationship. I don't have a steady girlfriend. It would be nice to find someone, but it's nice to make friends first." Has he been in love? "Yes, during school when I was 17. You have more time then, you see that person all the time. But then the touring started. I think love is very important, it's one of the most important things in life."

His mother lives nearby and is his travelling companion, while he and his father video-chat every day. His father is coaching young musicians in Beijing. Lang thinks age has softened him. (He says, laughing: "I would like him to be more energetic.") 

Has his father said sorry for what happened when Lang was a child? "No, it's very oriental. You know you're wrong, but it's hard to say sorry. He will not say it in front of me. Maybe to the public he will because he feels bad. He feels he loves me so much he doesn't need to say sorry." Would Lang like him to? "No. My father showed he cared about me. He was being very protective, though he made mistakes. We are all human beings. It wasn't as if he was drunk every day and hitting me. He wanted his kid to have a wonderful future. I don't need him to say he's sorry for that. We all know he felt bad: that's good enough."

Lang retains the "spiritual discipline" of his childhood, "but I'm an adult now", so on non-concert days he shops, eats out and plays football with friends in Central Park with a Manchester United football. "My English team, from when Beckham played. I think [Wayne] Rooney is amazing."

He has become addicted to the gym. "I go every day. If you're a pianist you spend your time sitting down. You need to exercise your legs." 

Lang practises for two hours a day on the piano that stands in the windowed apex of his apartment. "I am a pianist and will remain a pianist and to remain as one is a lot of hard work," he says. Unlike in your youth, there's no neighbour telling you to shut up, I say. 
Lang replies: "There have been complaints. I am not allowed to play after 11pm."
Superstar or not, disturb your New York neighbours at your peril.

The Times Magazine
The Chopin Album is out on Sony Music. 

Picture credit and article with thanks to The Australian

Although Lang Lang was not born during the height of China’s communist era his story reminds me a bit of Li Cunxin “Mao’s Last Dancer”.

Both have reached the pinnacle of their choice in the world of art.


 Lindsey Stirling & Lang Lang – Spider-Man Theme

 

Ang Li's - "Life of Pi"

                                                              

                                                                                                                                         

I don’t go to the movies very often. I hardly recall the last time I went as it was years ago. 

However, in this case I am going to make an exception.

Reviews say it is an inspiring movie, and definitely a ‘must see’! 

There is much use of many new technologies (see article below), for example 3-D, and CGI which isn’t that new, but is still impressive.

And who doesn’t love tigers?

HIGH up in the Ritz-Carlton New York, director Ang Lee slumps sideways on a sofa, like an inflatable yard decoration with a sudden puncture. He gently laughs while miming the relief of finishing Life of Pi, the most challenging film of his career to date. "I feel a little deflated." 

It's the day after the premiere of his storm-und-fang movie at the New York Film Festival, on opening night of the festival's 50th anniversary. Lee saw the final cut only a few days before. "I started sobbing," he admits. Although the critics' raves buoyed him, he awaits the public's reaction anxiously. Will he pull off a blockbuster with philosophical, art-house themes?

The source material was daunting enough as it demanded that Lee break the cardinal Things to Avoid rule of filmmaking: steer clear of water, animals and children. Life of Pi, Yann Martel's best-selling Man Booker Prize-winning 2001 novel, sets a teenage hero adrift on the Pacific Ocean, trapped in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.

When 20th Century Fox approached Lee to direct the film in 2008, he didn't baulk at those three challenges. Instead, he upped the stakes by insisting the film be shot digitally in 3-D. He had never shot in either of those formats before and 3-D's capabilities were only just catching up to his vision. (James Cameron's Avatar was released in December 2009, several months after Lee signed on to Pi.)

"We had never conceived of Pi as a 3-D movie," recalls Tom Rothman, Fox's outgoing studio co-chairman. "But Ang's reason for it was emotional, it wasn't visual ... Ang's genius was using the 3-D to enhance how Pi felt and how the audience feels being with him on that journey."

Now Rothman has an even loftier goal: "If we're lucky enough and the film succeeds, it may open a new willingness, a new understanding about 3-D," so that moviegoers will see the format as a conduit for emotional intimacy, not just swaggering spectacle.

The 3-D technology was also crucial for the ocean setting. "It's very hard to sit through a voyage movie without Tom Hanks," says Lee, so he wanted viewers to feel immersed, awed by lifelike waves and a vast expanse of water.

Enter the world's largest self-generating wave tank, built at an abandoned airport at Taichung in Taiwan, the director's home country. With 7.7 million litres to splash in, Lee's team created more than 50 kinds of realistic wave patterns, and the lifeboat moved as though it were on the open ocean. The tank was so big, at 70m long and 30m wide, they had to shoot with a Spydercam system, rigging cameras over the tank with cables.

Then Lee had to teach his leading man how to swim. Suraj Sharma, a 17-year-old student from Delhi, auditioned for the title role of Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel as a fluke, to keep his younger brother company during a casting call. He had never acted before, but Lee believed he had the emotional openness to carry the film.

For the shoot, Sharma travelled outside India for the first time and learned how to swim, meditate, eat raw fish and handle a boat. He picked up survival skills from consultant Steven Callahan, who endured a castaway ordeal in 1982, and even performed his own stunts.

As filming began, Sharma performed a namaskar, a ritual asking Lee to accept him as his student; during the shoot, they'd start each day by doing yoga together.

Sharma is the latest of Lee's long string of newcomer stars. Throughout his career, Lee has chosen first-timers for prominent roles in his films, including Winston Chao in The Wedding Banquet, Tang Wei in Lust, Caution and Demetri Martin in Taking Woodstock. While Lee must build their technical skills, he finds their inexperience results in a more realistic, emotionally true portrayal.

"I capture their youth, their innocence, their effort," he explains. "The effort is compelling. You watch it and you're moved. It's like watching a reality TV show. Spiritually, they should be very close to the part ... but most of all they have to be a talent, their body has to tune into what they think and believe."

Lee's preference for fresh faces prompted him to jettison the film's one bankable, internationally famous actor during shooting. Tobey Maguire was originally cast as a writer who interviews the adult Pi, but Lee felt that the residual celebrity glow from the Spider-Man franchise would distract viewers. Lee scrapped the footage and replaced Maguire with lesser-known Rafe Spall.

For the lead role, the director was determined to gradually develop the character with a new or unknown actor. "Ang used to talk to me so that unconsciously I would build Pi in my head," says Sharma. "You talk to him, look him in the eye and you end up feeling what he wants you to feel."

In the spirit of authenticity, Lee took Sharma out to sea with Callahan, the real-life castaway who Lee calls the guru of the production. Callahan outlined the patterns of his time lost at sea, from the long lulls of boredom to the moments of ecstasy, to help Sharma imagine the experience.

Sharma faced the extra difficulty of acting opposite an imaginary co-star. The tiger, named Richard Parker, was created largely through computer-generated imagery, as were other key animal characters. Sharma watched videos of tigers, and the four real tigers on set, to become familiar with them. "By the end of it, the tiger was there without being there," he claims.

Lee, meanwhile, discovered that shooting in 3-D influenced acting styles. Just as film actors played down their technique when silent movies made way for talkies, actors filming in 3-D are learning to soft-pedal their performances.

While coaching Sharma, Lee would often check his 2-D monitor during a scene, only to go back and adjust his acting notes once he'd reviewed the take in 3-D. The illusion of depth magnified every nuance of expression. Together, they forged a more restrained, subtle acting style as Lee realised "you have to do a lot less because the 3-D picks up more". A curling lip or widened eyes quickly tip into exaggeration when seen with a Z-axis.

Lee and Sharma weren't alone in their steep learning curve. The rest of the crew also grappled with new techniques and equipment, from lighting to lenses. The cinematographer, Claudio Miranda, had 3-D experience from his work on TRON: Legacy, but Pi involved constant uncertainty. "You don't even know if you can trust your eyes," Lee says.

The director credits Taiwan's co-operation and his "international cocktail" team for their perseverance, open-mindedness and creative problem-solving. He believes it would have been impossible to shoot the film in Los Angeles - not only because of the prohibitive cost, but also because of the prevailing Hollywood attitude. "Too many people would tell you what has to be done," he says firmly. "But they don't know what they're talking about because it's never been done before."

Working in Taiwan gave Lee and his crew the latitude to experiment. "It really did have a utopia feeling," Lee adds. "We were inventing new ways of doing things ... and that's what movie-making should be."

For instance, Lee finally indulged a wish he'd had for decades: to shift aspect ratios to heighten a scene. During Pi's flying fish sequence, when silvery fish seem to leap straight towards the audience, he glides from a standard aspect ratio to widescreen. It's an inconspicuous yet powerful effect.

Even Pi's makeshift raft, which is towed behind the lifeboat, was something of a happy accident. For a lark, Lee's son Haan came up with the triangular design and knocked together a working prototype.

With a whopping studio investment behind him, though, Lee had to manage the shoot as carefully as possible. (The budget reportedly topped $US100 million, including the production cost of building the tank.) Breaking with his usual practice, he created a previsualisation, or animated storyboard, for the shipwreck and ocean sequences. This acted as a virtual set, so he could plan shots before embarking in the tank. 

Even with this precise preparation, though, only about an eighth of the tank shots worked out as planned. The previsualisation also helped save the project when Fox studio heads got cold feet during preproduction. After seeing the animated sketch, they stuck with their gamble.

Lee drew on his experience directing The Hulk (2003), his last big-budget effort, to steer Life of Pi. Hulk gave him a foundation in elaborate CG visual effects as well as high-stakes studio politics. Between the financing and the executives, "you almost have to be a hack," Lee says. "Free will becomes diminished." But make no mistake, he retained creative control. Lee may speak gently and dress like a suburban dad, but he will grab a tiger by the tail.

Like the superhero drama, Life of Pi doesn't fit easily into a familiar film genre. With Hulk, this genre-bending became a stumbling block and critics and audiences baulked at the dark, psychologically driven adaptation. "[Universal Pictures] freaked out; they don't know how to sell it," Lee says. "I don't think the movie gets a fair shot." He remains proud of the film and considers it a crucial forerunner to Pi.

With Pi, Lee fought to capture the novel's blend of adventure, magical realism, faith and philosophy. While it can't be easily categorised, the film is rooted in the power of storytelling. He and his scriptwriter, David Magee (Finding Neverland), largely kept the book's structure intact, including Pi's alternative version of his ordeal.

While audiences may hesitate over that abstract second tale and the movie's ambiguous ending, Lee felt it carried an essential theme. "The two stories, the elusive one and the proven one, reality, which one you value more - I did that since The Wedding Banquet," he says.

Lee often describes his films in terms of pairs or siblings. For example, he sees his effervescent 2009 comedy Taking Woodstock as the flipside of the bitter-pill 1970s tale of The Ice Storm, released 12 years previously. He calls Lust, Caution (2007) and the Academy Award-winning Brokeback Mountain (2005) "sister works" for their tandem explorations of identity and forbidden passion.

In his previous films, Lee dug into the rich mulch of family or romantic relationships. While he hopscotches through varying genres - period drama, comic-book adventure, cowboy romance, espionage thriller - certain elements surface again and again. Characters struggle with their fathers, with rootlessness or with a loss of innocence, through their dynamics with families, friends or lovers. But Life of Pi requires a different kind of character development.

Pi is alone for much for the film, with only Richard Parker for company. Once they're adrift, there's no dialogue, no talking-tiger slips into anthropomorphism. Nor does Pi indulge in soliloquies to his lost family.

Instead, Lee and Sharma must reveal Pi's solitary spiritual growth alongside a fight for survival. The smaller moments are often the most moving, such as Pi's grief when he kills a fish for the first time. Nature becomes a character, a force for Pi to learn from, most dramatically in the "storm of god" sequence when Pi shrieks, "what more do you want?".

Lee identifies with Pi's spiritual journey, explaining that he is fascinated by questions of faith and human existence, whether approached from a position of religion or philosophy. 

"Reason only goes so far," he exclaims.

While he doesn't follow an organised religion, Lee does perform a "big luck" ceremony on the first day of every film shoot. He assembles cast and crew to burn incense, make a ritual offering of fruit and flowers, and send up a general prayer or wish. Everyone bows to the four points of the compass and Lee bangs a gong, to symbolically chase away evil spirits.

He appreciates moments of spirituality in daily life. "Like the tiger trainer - when he's in a cage, he's with god," Lee explains. "He's in that zone [where] nothing matters; he exists in what I call 'god zone'. That's the same thing as when I make movies ... in that zone, I feel I'm faithful."

In this, he echoes a belief voiced by Pi in the novel: "That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing."

Now, the 58-year-old director admits, he's at a crossroads. He hasn't yet come across a book that inspires him for his next movie.

Since his 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, all Lee's feature films have been sparked by something he has read, ranging from the Hulk comics to the wuxia (martial arts) novel by Wang Du Lu that became Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), for which he won his first Oscar and Australian Film Institute awards.

He doesn't actively seek out such an eclectic reading list, though. "I'm more like those hippies, just go with the flow," he says. Case in point: In 2007, Lee met Elliot Tiber in the green room of a San Francisco talk show and Tiber gave him a copy of his memoir, Taking Woodstock. It was a stroke of good timing, since Lee was looking for a sunnier idea after filming a long series of tragedies. Two years later, Lee's cheerful, mud-spattered version hit screens.

While he waits for fate to bring him the next riveting book, Lee has turned to another creative project of sorts. In mid-November, he unveiled the new Rhythm & Hues VFX Centre in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, an offshoot of the renowned Hollywood visual effects and animation company Rhythm & Hues Studios.

Rhythm & Hues was the lead effects house for Life of Pi, creating the incredibly realistic CGI animals, bioluminescent ocean water and shimmering reflections of Maxfield Parrish skies. The company already had a few overseas branches, and Lee saw an opportunity to boost the movie industry in his home country. Before Pi came along, no major studio film had been made in Taiwan since 1966.

Lee connected the Los Angeles-based R&H executives with local government officials in Taiwan, hoping such a celebrated company would help establish Taiwan on the global filmmaking stage. His matchmaking paid off and the new production facility plans to hire up to 200 digital film artists.

Lee is particularly excited by R&H's investment in training the next generation of filmmakers and technicians. He says it represents "goodwill for both sides, for the movie industry and for young filmmakers". He has a personal affection for Kaohsiung, too, since he did his mandatory two-year military service in that coastal city just before moving to the US for college.

After 20 years of directing, Lee continues to select projects that make him uneasy, even downright uncomfortable, as with the love affair in Lust, Caution. "I feel a bit jaded," he concedes.

"There are things that might be easy for other people but difficult for me, so whatever's difficult for me ... I'll take the challenge."

In the meantime, he'll circle the globe on his promotion tour and possibly, slowly, the accomplishment will sink in. "It's like Pi," he reflects. "You don't know where the shore is, [but] I feel I begin to see it."

Is there anything Lee would not do? "I can't think of anything," he replies, looking genuinely stumped. So if you run into the director in an elevator or in a green room, tell him a story you're passionate about - he's open and waiting for inspiration to strike.

Life of Pi opens nationally on January 1 in Australia. 

From You Tube:

Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) creates a groundbreaking movie event about a young man who survives a tragic disaster at sea and is hurtled into an epic journey of adventure and discovery.

While marooned on a lifeboat, he forms an amazing and unexpected connection with the ship's only other survivor -- a fearsome Bengal tiger.

Official Site: http://lifeofpimovie.com
Director:Ang Lee

Cast: Suraj Sharma, Gérard Depardieu, Irrfan Khan, Tabu

Writers: David Magee, Yann Martel

Pictures and story with thanks to the Australian

                       

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