Doug Liman Quotes
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When I was making 'Bourne Identity,' I wasn't making a dumb action movie like they were expecting it to be.
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There's a weird intellectual approach to filmmaking, where I pose a question to myself and use the film to try and answer it.
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Flying small airplanes is not like being on airlines.
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VR should be more emotionally involving, but that doesn't happen automatically by just taking a VR camera and sticking it onto what would be a traditionally blocked scene for 2D.
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I had just come off doing a lot of commercials when I did 'Go,' so a part of the fast pace and efficiency comes from the discipline I had to learn from telling stories in 25-second increments, and that type of discipline is insane.
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I never want to repeat myself. I can't imagine anything else as upsetting as realizing I'm redoing something I did before. For some reason, when it comes to film, I'm very good at not repeating myself. Even though in the rest of my life, I'm constantly repeating my mistakes.
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I've often found, as I did with 'Bourne,' where I was inspired by the events of Iran-Contra when I designed the CIA for the 'Bourne' franchise, that the reality of how things work is usually more compelling than the superficial, made-up version that Hollywood sometimes does.
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People don't talk about how hard it is to make a movie. Nobody does. Ever.
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The audience has a level of control, when you watch 'Invisible,' that nothing in 2D can give you. The overall climax of the series will work no matter how you get there, and the climax of each episode will work no matter how you get there, but no two viewings of an episode will ever be the same.
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I do take things away from reading reviews. I think they keep you honest.
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I realize I am contradictory: I have an independent filmmaker's sensibility and a Hollywood director's short-attention span.
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I got in trouble in film school at USC because one of my Super-8 movies there, in the first semester, involved a snowmobile chase scene. I made an action scene, and they were like, 'That wasn't what you were supposed to be doing.'
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When you make a war movie, the other side has to be the enemy. You're making a war movie from the point of view of a soldier fighting it.
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My family went to the Hamptons, so I understand what happens when a slice of perfect utopia gets overdeveloped, when one way of living is replaced by another.
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When you have films like 'Bourne' that succeed, not only does it beget sequels, but it begets people taking chances.
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I started my career wanting to make a 'James Bond' movie, and I couldn't get hired! I made 'The Bourne Identity,' and ultimately the impact of that film was that it changed the 'James Bond' franchise.
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I didn't grow up like Quentin Tarantino, watching esoteric art films at the video store. I'd go to the multiplex and see big, mainstream movies, and I'd go, 'I want to make one of those one day.'
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Casting is everything. I put a huge amount of work into casting, and consistently across my career, I am most proud of my bold choices I made in casting.
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'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' - every scene is from those characters' point of view. They're in literally every scene, very unusual in a big studio film.
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I really love the movies of Katherine Hepburn, movies like 'The African Queen.' I love 'Midnight Run' and I suppose, to pick something out of a different genre, I love 'Aliens.'
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It turns out that it's easier to do politics in a movie. People really don't want it in their TV.
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I went to USC film school, briefly, which is a very traditional film school.
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'The Wall' doesn't recount a specific soldier's experience in Iraq, but it captures the spirit of many experiences that were shared with me and with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and with John Cena.
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All of my fellow directors, I think, would agree that in whatever medium you are working, the challenges and obstacles push them to be more creative. That's the case with VR.