Doug Liman Quotes
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The thing about TV is it's a meritocracy. I love that aspect of it - and I've had shows that have gone on the air and been canceled. I've seen the good and the bad of it.
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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 I was making 'Bourne Identity,' I wasn't making a dumb action movie like they were expecting it to be.
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I do take things away from reading reviews. I think they keep you honest.
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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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People don't talk about how hard it is to make a movie. Nobody does. Ever.
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Flying small airplanes is not like being on airlines.
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I went to USC film school, briefly, which is a very traditional film school.
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Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena, in 'The Wall,' are superheroes. They're very grounded, but the amount of training and stuff that soldiers bring to the field, they're like Iron Man.
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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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I'm really attracted to anti-heroes, and I'm a little bit of a troublemaker myself, and a little bit of a rule-breaker, and I like spies.
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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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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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Normally in spy movies, the person that the hero deals with is at the centre of power, surrounded by video screens, and they're old and grizzled. I'm no stranger to that dynamic.
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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 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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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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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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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'm interested in the kind of anti-establishment ethos that goes with making an independent movie. I like to bring that to studio films - usually to the consternation of the studios.
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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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'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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My dad couldn't connect to my wanting to be a filmmaker. He was very connected in entertainment, and through him I met Steven Spielberg and got rides on his private plane to California. I'd see Spielberg's people reading scripts. I was like, 'That's what I want to be when I grow up.'
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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.