(AP) Ang Lee said promoting his Oscar-winning gay romance "Brokeback Mountain" was an arduous process and it was a disappointment not to win Oscar best picture.

"We've won every award since September, but missed out on the last one, the biggest one," Lee said in a post-Oscar news conference in Los Angeles that aired in Hong Kong Wednesday.

But he added that feeling disappointed "is human nature. And it wasn't for myself. I led a whole team of people."

"Brokeback Mountain" won Lee the best director Oscar, making him the first Asian winner of the prize. The film also won best musical score and best adapted screenplay, but lost the best picture award to "Crash" _ a result considered a big upset.

Among the accolades "Brokeback" has racked up are the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, four Golden Globes, including best drama motion picture, and four British Academy Film Awards, also including best picture.

The Oscar best picture win by "Crash," which addresses racism, has stirred speculation that the U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the voting body for the Oscars, has an American bias or that it wasn't prepared to give its top honor to a movie about gays.

Lee said the process of marketing "Brokeback" was tough.

"My work was really hard. I had to fight many battles. Personally, I don't like doing press, but once a film is on the Oscar track, for half a year you're fighting the same battle," he said.

Lee said he wasn't trying to make a social statement with "Brokeback," the love story between two ranch hands set in conservative Wyoming.

"For me, 'Brokeback' isn't rebellious at all. It's a very ordinary movie. People call it groundbreaking or what not. It puts a lot of pressure on me. But I didn't feel this way when I was making the movie. This is the way gays are. It's just that they have been distorted. When two people are in love and are scared, that's the way they are," Lee told reporters.

However, Lee said he is somewhat of a rebel at heart.

"I had to fight with my background ... but I also had to live in the general environment. People have to be categorized. That's very annoying. Don't you find that annoying? Life shouldn't be like that. The world isn't like that. There's a lot of complexity. There are exceptions," Lee said.

Lee faced resistance for pursuing a career in film when growing up in his native Taiwan, a traditional, academically oriented society that looks down on the entertainment business.

He said movies are a form of dissent.

"That's why we make movies. Otherwise, we just have a leader issue an order and we all follow. Why else would there be filmmakers like us? Why else would people lock themselves in a dark room and watch a movie together?" Lee said.

__________

On the Net:

"Brokeback Mountain" Web site:

http://www.brokebackmountainmovie.com/home.html

(ml/bf)