Kim Jee-woon Quotes

#1. In Korea, the director is on top, and the power flows down vertically. On the set, I love to come up with ideas on the spot. But in Hollywood, if I were to come up with a certain idea on set, the idea had to be taken to all these different people who had to agree.

Kim Jee-woon

#2. I think my tendency when working is to try and find what's lacking in my current project and then tackle that in whatever I do next.

Kim Jee-woon

#3. Lionsgate and Lorenzo di Bonaventura saw my Korean Western-style film, 'The Good, the Bad, the Weird,' and probably felt that I would be right for 'The Last Stand,' which could be classified as a modern Western.

Kim Jee-woon

#4. In Korea, the director has the final word. If the director makes a decision, that decision is final. In Hollywood, every decision needs to go through the producer, the studio, and sometimes even the main actor. There is a certain procedure that needs to be followed.

Kim Jee-woon

#5. I'm not an outgoing person. Compared to an average person, I am quite skeptical and pessimistic. This is different from being nervous.

Kim Jee-woon

#6. Of course, 'The Last Stand' has a villain who is traveling to the border to fulfill his own desires, but it's more about the main character. The Sheriff putting a stop to this villain and defending his town. 'The Last Stand' is more about protecting something. About protecting a value.

Kim Jee-woon

#7. One quality that a director needs to acquire in Hollywood is to understand the system and figure out how to work within the system to express one's own ideas.

Kim Jee-woon

#8. I never make films thinking 'This is my film. This right here is undoubtedly Kim Jee-Woon style.' I am not even sure what 'Kim Jee-Woon style' is. When I make films, I never allow myself to make hard-set decisions ahead of time.

Kim Jee-woon

#9. 'The Good, the Bad, the Weird' is about individuals fulfilling their desires and just going the distance to fulfill that desire.

Kim Jee-woon

#10. I prefer to work the old-fashioned way. I trie to do everything or most of his action sequences practically, because I feel that while added effects or the VFX process allows for flashier sequences, I feel that it lacks the energy we see in practical effects.

Kim Jee-woon

#11. Actors are the flowers of the film, of the set, and of the director. The term 'Flowers of the Screen' holds a deep meaning.

Kim Jee-woon

#12. America is a country that, even with all its flaws, has been able to flourish because there is a certain ideology about fighting for what you believe in. What you choose to believe in - no matter how small or big it is - is what you believe in, and that ideology has made America.

Kim Jee-woon

#13. The Western is as American as a film can get - there's the discovery of a frontier, the element of a showdown, revenge, and determining the best gunman. There's a certain masculinity to the Western that really appealed to me, and I've always wanted to do a Western in Hollywood.

Kim Jee-woon

#14. Interestingly, my first director's cut was an hour and forty-one minutes. Then, the studio actually wanted to add more to the story, so we went all the way up to an hour and forty-seven minutes. After that, I made some additional cuts and now we are where we are.

Kim Jee-woon

#15. Overseas directors who want to work in Hollywood, the language barrier is not a problem. With the right talent, any director can be successful.

Kim Jee-woon

#16. Initially, before I came to Hollywood, I thought that the language barrier would be the biggest challenge, but I realized that actors all around the world, regardless of language, are all the same.

Kim Jee-woon

#17. I'd like to give the audience what they've always wanted to see and also I want to give the audience what they've never seen. It's these two things I'm striving for.

Kim Jee-woon

#18. I work from opposites to opposites, in a way. It's finding one thing and then doing the other from film to film. So maybe after 'I Saw the Devil,' I might do something like 'I Saw the Angel' or perhaps something warm and happy.

Kim Jee-woon

#19. I've made the film 'The Good, the Bad, the Weird,' which was an Eastern Western film. Obviously, the Western film is American and American only; there's really no Western genre over in Asia.

Kim Jee-woon