Doug Liman Quotes - Page 2

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!

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.

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.

It's almost a work-shopping process to create the characters with the actors.

To be a lone filmmaker thousands of miles from home with nobody believing in me, that seems romantic.

The beating heart of your story that's not what shows up in a trailer. The other stuff is what shows up in a trailer, because that's what gets people in to the seats, and that's how studios make their money.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes rules are there to save your life.

It's very hard for a studio to take a chance on a piece of original material. They used to have the fall-back of DVD sales. They had ways in which they could safely make an investment in a piece of original material, and those opportunities aren't necessarily there anymore.

It's hard to get a movie made about characters these days. We're in a climate where, unless it's based on a toy or it's a superhero where somewhere it ends in man - like Spider-Man, Superman or Iron Man - it's hard to get it made.

TV is a safe place to develop real characters.

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.

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 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.

Nothing I've done is like anything else I've done before.