‘Wedding Banquet’ Star Lily Gladstone Was ‘So Excited to Do Something Loving and Lighthearted’ After ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
variety.comRebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter Director Andrew Ahn was just 8 years old when he first watched Ang Lee’s 1993 “The Wedding Banquet,” and the queer romantic comedy about a gay Taiwanese American man who marries a Chinese woman to placate his parents and get her a green card had a profound effect on the budding young filmmaker. “My mother saw the VHS at a video rental store and was like, ‘This is the Asian film that white people are watching.
We should see what it’s about,'” Ahn recalled at the Variety Studio presented by Audible. “We rented it not knowing it was a gay film.
As a nascent gay boy, it was mind-blowing. That was the first time I saw a gay character on screen. And it was a gay Asian character.
It really set up my life in many ways.” For all those reasons, Ahn didn’t feel the film necessarily merited a remake. “It’s so meaningful to me and so many people.” Yet he fell in love with the idea after realizing he could update the story to reflect societal progress (and shortcomings) in the quarter-century since Lee’s original film.
Read more on variety.com
