Doug Liman Quotes

#1. 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.

Doug Liman

#2. 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.

Doug Liman

#3. 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.

Doug Liman

#4. 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.

Doug Liman

#5. 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.

Doug Liman

#6. Obviously, anyone who has seen Mr. and Mrs. Smith knows that husband and wife married spies is something that I find particularly interesting.

Doug Liman

#7. 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.

Doug Liman

#8. 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.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#10. 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.

Doug Liman

#11. 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.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#13. 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.

Doug Liman

#14. TV is a safe place to develop real characters.

Doug Liman

#15. 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.

Doug Liman

#16. 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.

Doug Liman

#17. 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.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#19. 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.

Doug Liman

#20. 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.

Doug Liman

#21. 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.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#23. More of 'The Bourne Identity's script was taken from the events of the Iran Contra, which my father investigated for the Senate, than what was taken from Robert Ludlum's novel.

Doug Liman

#24. I populated 'The Bourne Identity' with real characters from American history, specifically characters from the Iran-Contra affair, which my father ran the investigation of. But at the heart of it was a fictional character.

Doug Liman

#25. 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.'

Doug Liman

#26. 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.

Doug Liman

#27. 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.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#29. 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.

Doug Liman

#30. I don't really analyze my process. I do know that if it's not right, I won't move on. I'm tenacious to a fault about that.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#32. '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.

Doug Liman

#33. Sometimes rules are there to save your life.

Doug Liman

#34. 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.

Doug Liman

#35. 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!

Doug Liman

#36. 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.

Doug Liman

#37. 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.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#41. 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.

Doug Liman

#42. My older brother took me to Woody Allen double features when I was still teething.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#44. 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.

Doug Liman

#45. 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.

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

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

Doug Liman

#48. My films are very rooted in specific people's point of view. Some film-makers give a more global point of view, like God looking down at the characters.

Doug Liman

#49. 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.

Doug Liman

#50. 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.

Doug Liman

#51. 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?"

Doug Liman

#52. 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.

Doug Liman

#53. 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.

Doug Liman

#54. A part of me is a liberal New Yorker involved in politics and certain attitudes about movies. I kind of lost my indie credibility over 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith.' I know I haven't lost it. I just have to go make an independent movie. I just have to do it. Just for me.

Doug Liman

#55. 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.

Doug Liman

#56. I always wanted to make big action movies as a kid, and that was my dream. In a way, 'Swingers' was the thing I suffered through the most doing because of all that dialog, so I could eventually be allowed to do a big dumb action movie, honestly.

Doug Liman

#57. 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.

Doug Liman