Life & Wisdom Quote by Larry McMurtry

“Double exile” is McMurtry’s way of praising Ang Lee without sentimentalizing him. Exile here isn’t just geography; it’s orientation. A normal outsider stands at the edge of a room. A double outsider stands at the edge of the edge, fluent in the codes of belonging but never fully claimed by them. That’s not a wound McMurtry is diagnosing so much as a creative method he’s admiring: the disciplined habit of watching, translating, and refusing easy tribal comfort.

McMurtry, a writer obsessed with borderlands and the myths that Americans tell themselves, recognizes the utility of that stance. Lee’s projects often move through worlds that are heavy with identity scripts - family duty, masculinity, national pride, respectability - and the camera seems both intimate and slightly skeptical, like it’s always measuring the cost of the role. The “deep sense” McMurtry points to isn’t a pose you put on for awards season; it’s an inner weather that shapes decisions: what to linger on, what to undercut, what to show as performance.

The phrase “outsider’s outsider” also carries a quiet corrective. It pushes back against the lazy idea that crossing into Hollywood automatically erases difference. Even after you’ve “made it,” you can remain unread, misread, or selectively celebrated. McMurtry’s compliment is edged: Lee’s power comes from never mistaking access for acceptance, and from turning that persistent displacement into a kind of moral x-ray for whatever culture he’s filming.