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Director Ang Lee loves challenges, and 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' delivered one

Ang Lee Found several challenges in directing 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.' That's why he was fired up to do it.

The centerpiece of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, both the novel by Dallas' Ben Fountain and the new movie directed by Ang Lee, is a Dallas Cowboys halftime extravaganza. The eight-man Bravo Squad has fought with valor in the Iraq war. Their reward is a Victory Tour of the states, a sort of sales pitch for the war, which climaxes with a Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game at the dearly departed Texas Stadium.

As the men of Bravo take the stage at halftime, amid strobe lights' red glare and fireworks bursting in air, Lee puts his stamp on the film. The men aren't just taken aback by the showbiz excess; they're also traumatized. Lee deftly cuts back and forth from the stage to the battlefield, the loud, bombastic simulation and the deathly real thing. He creates the sensation of being in two places at once, in a manner only movies can achieve.

"The halftime show and the battle, they're related," the Oscar-winning director says by phone. "The yin and yang really got to me. You have these soldiers at this show, which is so cinematic, so enormous. And you have the battle. As a director, the differences can drive you crazy, but they're also very exciting."

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Lee loves challenges. He shot the movie in an extremely fast 120-frames-per second 3-D format, which makes the images on screen look more like real life than what we're used to at the movies. (You have to go to New York or Los Angeles to see that version; Dallas-area theaters aren't equipped to show it.)

"I think it's more immersive," Lee says. "The sensations are more intense, and you see more detail. It's a different experience. The dosage is a lot higher, so to speak."

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Ang Lee, whose new movie, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk will be viewable at some theaters...
Ang Lee, whose new movie, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk will be viewable at some theaters in 3-D with a frame rate of 120 per second, is shown in his screening room in New York (Emily Andrews/The New York Times)

Some of the challenges were more narrative that technological. Lee admits the movie isn't as "acerbic and satirical" as Fountain's book. Lee loved Fountain's conception of the reluctant hero, Pfc. Billy Lynn. But he also felt 19-year-old Billy's observational wit and perspective would be hard to portray on screen. Lee's Billy Lynn is a little softer than Fountain's.

"Ben Fountain is a middle-aged intellect," Lee says. "He put his brilliant writing observations into the mouth of a young Texas boy. With a movie, what you see is what it is. It's very hard to make it work on screen, particularly in a first-person kind of a way."

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It's a case study in what makes movies a different species than books. It all starts on the page, where the writer uses voice to create a universe. It's up to the director to externalize that voice, to make it visual. And that's the kind of task that gets the soft-spoken Lee excited.

"I like challenges," Lee says. "That's why they get me worked up."