Doug Liman Quotes

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.

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.

I make movies for me and posterity. I'm more scared of history than I am of the studio.

I'm a character-driven director, and I tend to fall in love with the characters in my movies and TV shows.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Once I'm in the editing room, forget about what I intended to shoot. I take a cold, hard look at what I really did shoot, and then I edit that because, if you try to edit what you intended and you missed somewhere, that will show up.

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.

At the end of the day, it's still a show about guys who ride extremely fast motorcycles for a living.

It turns out that it's easier to do politics in a movie. People really don't want it in their TV.

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.

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.

I'm very interested in politics, and I feel TV is a more political medium than film.

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.

When you can come across a piece of material that's totally original and fun and completely satisfying, you jump on it.

I go into a movie sort of saying what it's not going to be.

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.

The movie I end up with is the movie I aspired to make.

I realize I am contradictory: I have an independent filmmaker's sensibility and a Hollywood director's short-attention span.

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.