Doug Liman Quotes
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I like making movies that have some of the qualities of first-person shooter games. That was very important to me for the 'Bourne' franchise.
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It's no secret that my process is a little bit loose and can be a little bit infuriating to a studio if they don't know what they're signing up for.
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The 'Bourne' franchise means the world to me. I love that Universal wants to put one out every two years. Because it is a safe investment, I benefit from that on many levels.
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I think that I learned a studio system prefers a sort of professionalism from the director.
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In particular, I'm drawn to the stories that have big, high concepts and real characters at their heart. And I love where those two worlds meet, and 'Edge of Tomorrow' is the perfect canvas to explore that.
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I always wanted to make a 'James Bond' film, and they only seemed to hire British directors, and I'd made 'Swingers' - they were never going to hire me for a 'James Bond' film off 'Swingers.'
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I can't impress people with the pedigree of obscure French filmmakers that got me into film. It was Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. I really thought I wanted to make dumb action movies.
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The more real I got on 'The Bourne Identity,' the more interesting it got. So 'Fair Game' was the chance to go a few more steps in that direction. In fact, I discovered this whole other world that I had ignored in the 'Bourne' franchise, which is the domestic life of a spy, and how you make the two halves of your life coexist.
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I don't necessarily think that having more money helps make you make a better film. Sometimes having less money is better. You're forced into being more original; you're forced into hearing something versus seeing it.
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Finding original source material is not easy, but when something special like 'Edge of Tomorrow' comes along, everybody recognized it. I wasn't swimming against the stream. Warner Brothers immediately supported it, Tom Cruise signed on instantly; Emily Blunt, who was our first choice, signed on immediately.
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In hindsight, everything in my life looks a little rosy. But the reality is that with, say, 'Swingers,' when we finished, it was considered a total failure.
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To be honest, when I started watching VR content, I was mostly disappointed and thought people could do better - not that different from when I set out to make 'Swingers' and thought, 'There's a better way to make an independent film.' Which is why 'Swingers' ended up being so much less expensive than anything like it.
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I think when the United States of America put a man on the moon in 1969, that was one of the greatest accomplishments mankind has ever done.
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I populated 'The Bourne Identity' with real characters from American history, specifically characters from the Iran-Contra affair, which my father ran the investigation of. But at the heart of it was a fictional character.
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I'll just say that there are certain people who continue to be hired in Hollywood, and that leaves me truly shocked.
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I think making a great action movie is one of the hardest cinematic endeavors. By definition, smart characters avoid action. Smart people don't go down dark alleys, but if you're making an action movie and you want to have an action sequence, somehow you have to get that character into that dangerous situation.
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When I'm working on a film, I think about how it will play with a tiny audience of friends whose opinions I respect - basically, a 40-bloc radius from my apartment in Manhattan.
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'North by Northwest' was a big influence for 'The Bourne Identity.'
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You gotta understand, 'Swingers' was a resume film for me. I never thought anybody would see the movie who I wasn't in the room with showing it to them.
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When my father would come home from his work at the Senate and talk about the things he could talk about - because a lot of his work was top secret - he would always tell me these stories and laugh. As deadly serious as his work was, he would laugh at the absurdity of it all.
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Making 'American Made' really was an adventure.
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I live in New York City, and I'm making huge action movies. The people that make huge action movies live in L.A., and they're surrounded by other people who make huge action movies. I'm surrounded by people making documentaries!
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I have to have a passionate connection to my films, which I do with 'Justice League Dark.' I have a way into the story that's personal, the way I have a connection to 'The Wall.'
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From a production point of view, I still have one foot firmly planted in the independent film world, and much of the shooting on 'Jumper' was done 'Swingers'-style because that was the only way we could afford to do it.