The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Rebel Without a Cause and Mean Streets
213
Was it just a stage adaptation, or was it an original?
Woo: It was an adaptation from another play, and I added some of my story
into the play.
Did your parents see it? What did they think about it?
Woo: No, they didn’t see it. By the time I did the play, my father had passed
away. I respected my parents, but in that era, a lot of families were pretty
poor. They were so worried about me; that’s why they got tough with me.
On the other hand, my father was a traditional scholar. He never liked
movies. He thought that movies were fake. But I loved movies; I was crazy
about movies. When I told him that I loved movies and art, he would say,
“You could never survive. In the arts, you could never make a living.”
They wanted me to be a teacher—something stable, you know. But I
didn’t listen to them. I had so much anger. I wanted to fight with the whole
system, the whole society—there were problems. There were not many people
who cared about the poor, not many people who cared about young
people. There were no good guidelines or education for young people, to
tell them what to do or where to go. But the movies let us know. It gave me
a lot of inspiration.
Before I saw the movie, I had so much anger with the whole situation,
with my neighborhood, with the parents, with everything. But after I saw
the movie, I changed.
What exact change did you make?
Woo: No matter what had happened, we had to find a way to understand
each other. The parents and the kids needed to understand each other more
and try to find a way to forgive and to love. The end of the movie, it really
touched me. The father finally understands the son, and the son finally gets
real love from his parents. That’s a good way to do it, and the only way to
do it. It really changed my life, made me feel that I shouldn’t be angry about
everything, to find a way to love my family.
When they originally adapted the book in 1947, Marlon Brando was
attached to star—
Woo: Oh yeah, I remember that.