Doug Liman Quotes
That's why 'The Bourne Identity' has that sort of shaky style, because for the most part, Matt Damon and I were sneaking around Paris and shooting where we didn't have permits.
In movies, you can basically buy the audience into the theater. If you spend enough money on visual effects, even if you are lacking in story and character, you might still pull it off.
At the end of the day, it's still a show about guys who ride extremely fast motorcycles for a living.
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.
To be a lone filmmaker thousands of miles from home with nobody believing in me, that seems romantic.
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.
Obviously, anyone who has seen Mr. and Mrs. Smith knows that husband and wife married spies is something that I find particularly interesting.
There are actors who just bring an enormous amount of empathy. They just have that"it" that makes you want to follow them and root for them.
In the real world, if you're in a car chase, you're going to hit a million things and your car is going to end up a total wreck by the end.
At the end of the day, I like the spy genre, as opposed to the action movie genre, because spies are smart. The successful spies are the smarter spies.
It's better to find a stunt person who can act. It's easier to do that than to find an actor who can do a stunt.
It's much easier to do a fight sequence between two people, if one of the two people in the fight is a stunt person, or you're going to risk somebody getting hurt.
For big Hollywood movies, I'm on the more character-driven side of the equation. So, TV is a natural place for me to be because you've got no choice, but to be character-driven.
I pride myself on doing character-driven movies and, when my movies have worked, it's been because of the right casting and the right character, and it just clicks.
If I'm not in love with the script, there's nothing. It doesn't matter what you give me. It has to start with the script.
When you can come across a piece of material that's totally original and fun and completely satisfying, you jump on it.
I'm a character-driven director, and I tend to fall in love with the characters in my movies and TV shows.
TV has no choice, but to rely on character, and everybody knows that. I love working in it. It's such a big canvas where, if you're successful, you go on for years.
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.
If you do something that's really original, you discover why everybody else does it the other way, usually. There's a reason cliches exist, 'cause they work.
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.
When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise.
I probably shouldn't treat interviews as therapy sessions, but I don't keep a diary, so these end up being my way of keeping track of where I'm at and letting it all out.
You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"
It turns out that it's easier to do politics in a movie. People really don't want it in their TV.
My own personal process with movies is to develop the characters with the actors and, when I've done that properly, you can't imagine anyone else, but that actor, playing that part.
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.
I realize I am contradictory: I have an independent filmmaker's sensibility and a Hollywood director's short-attention span.
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.
What I really found was that the one similarity between Covert Affairs and Fair Game is a deep love and admiration and fascination with the home life of a spy.