I like making movies that have some of the qualities of first-person shooter games. That was very important to me for the 'Bourne' franchise.
— Doug Liman
Antiheroes who are sort of honest to themselves are the ones you root for. Like, Barry Seal isn't trying to be anything other than he is. He isn't fooling anybody per se.
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.
If you go to a restaurant with Tom Cruise, it's like walking in with Santa Claus. Everybody is in a better mood because he's there.
I don't think I'm all that twisted in my life. I'm not like some tattooed filmmaker who, you know, hangs out on the Lower East Side and is part of some satanic cult or something.
'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.
Sometimes there are films like 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' which turned out better than it deserved to be, but in the case of 'Edge of Tomorrow,' there was just such enthusiasm from fans.
I was a troublemaker. For a long time, I didn't fit in.
I'm not really in a rush to grow up.
'Swingers' was always set in another world.
Given the kind of filmmaker I am, the kind of experiences I've been trying to give audiences, I was drawn to the potential of VR before I even tried watching anything in VR.
There's no reason my films can't work as hard as VR does to hook an audience and never let them go, so I think that that it turns the volume up a little bit on storytelling. The same way when I was doing commercials and then I went and shot 'Go,' and 'Go' has a level of pace that is unlike any of my other movies.
VR should be more emotionally involving, but that doesn't happen automatically by just taking a VR camera and sticking it onto what would be a traditionally blocked scene for 2D.
I'm really interested in real people in extraordinary situations. The detail and reality to that.
When I was making 'Bourne Identity,' I wasn't making a dumb action movie like they were expecting it to be.
VR should offer an experience that's more exciting than watching in 2D, and we're pretty good at 2D storytelling, so the bar's already pretty high.
I think that I learned a studio system prefers a sort of professionalism from the director.
I feel like, Barry Seal, he's pure of heart.
I've always had antiheroes in my film.
I've made a career of being a contrarian. If I'm going to work with Tom Cruise, it's my instinct to be like, 'Well, I'm going to do the anti-Tom Cruise movie.'
On 'Edge of Tomorrow,' we discovered that movie while we were making it.
Artistic mediums go through phases where progress happens really rapidly, and then other moments where it slows down.
When I read the script of 'The Wall,' I saw how much different the war looks from the point of view of a soldier fighting it.
I don't really make movies with an intention other than asking myself, 'Do I love the character, and do I love the story?'
I like to keep my options open. I'm known for changing my mind.
When my father would come home from his work at the Senate and talk about the things he could talk about - because a lot of his work was top secret - he would always tell me these stories and laugh. As deadly serious as his work was, he would laugh at the absurdity of it all.
You gotta understand, 'Swingers' was a resume film for me. I never thought anybody would see the movie who I wasn't in the room with showing it to them.
I really have thought about immersive storytelling my whole career, so when I first heard about VR, I was like, 'Oh, this sounds like it's for me.'
The audience has a level of control, when you watch 'Invisible,' that nothing in 2D can give you. The overall climax of the series will work no matter how you get there, and the climax of each episode will work no matter how you get there, but no two viewings of an episode will ever be the same.
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.
In 'The Bourne Identity,' I wanted to give the audience the feeling of being in the car with Jason Bourne, not just watching him drive but be in the car with him, and 'The Wall' is the continuation of that immersive filmmaking style. Where you're trapped behind the wall with Aaron Taylor-Johnson - for better or worse, you're trapped there with him.
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.
Trust me: you make a movie about time travel, and you know for a fact humans will never travel through time. The paradoxes that come up just from trying to tell a story with time travel really illuminates the fact that it's impossible. It will never happen. We can barely get through a movie that involves time travel.
People don't talk about how hard it is to make a movie. Nobody does. Ever.
I love that Barry Seal is working for the CIA, and he's an awful liar. It just goes to how honest this character is at the end of the day, even as he rips off the country and the world to the tune of becoming one of the wealthiest men in America. There's an innate honesty, a purity to him.
I thought I was done making CIA movies after 'The Bourne Identity.' I really had used my father's work in Iran-Contra on 'The Bourne Identity.' You get one experience like that in your life where you have personal exposure to something, and you put it in a movie. That's it.
Being on a commercial airplane is actually one of the safest places you can be on the planet.
Making 'American Made' really was an adventure.
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.
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.'
One thing about pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is that you're going to make mistakes, and you're going to fall flat on your face sometimes.
Almost anything can be justified as a style of filmmaking if it works.
There would be no Marvel without 'Swingers'; there would be no Jon Favreau directing 'Iron Man,' no Robert Downey Jr. playing Iron Man; no 'Avengers.'
To be honest, when I started watching VR content, I was mostly disappointed and thought people could do better - not that different from when I set out to make 'Swingers' and thought, 'There's a better way to make an independent film.' Which is why 'Swingers' ended up being so much less expensive than anything like it.
When I set out to make 'Bourne Identity,' my main goal for the franchise was to create something where it feels like you're in the action. You're not just passively watching it from far away. That's something that I have constantly aspired to do - even in 'Swingers,' to feel like you're Jon Favreau; you're not just watching him.
If you look at my movies, they're pretty densely packed, such that they not only hold up to a second viewing, they're oftentimes better the second time you watch them. So I've always thought about crafting stories that could hold up to multiple viewings, and so VR obviously fits right into that.
I've been really lucky in terms of the people I've gotten to work with.
I've always been interested in giving the audience a first-person experience in my movies.
With 'Invisible,' I didn't want to create something that requires you to watch it more than once; I don't even expect people to watch it more than once per se. I just wanted you to have the experience and knowing that if you watch it a second time, it would be different because you would see different things.
I'm really anxious not to repeat what I've done before, to keep pushing and learning.
