The one thing about reality is sometimes it gives you material that is wilder than some of your wildest imagination could come up with.
Doug Liman
Almost anything can be justified as a style of filmmaking if it works.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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.
The reality is, the movies that were most impactful to me growing up, when I decided I wanted to make movies, I was going to see Woody Allen double features with my brother, back when they had double features.
It's kind of hard to work with Tom Cruise and not be aware that you're working with one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
I feel like, Barry Seal, he's pure of heart.
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 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.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson and John Cena, in 'The Wall,' are superheroes. They're very grounded, but the amount of training and stuff that soldiers bring to the field, they're like Iron Man.
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 don't necessarily think that having more money helps make you make a better film. Sometimes having less money is better. You're forced into being more original; you're forced into hearing something versus seeing it.
I subscribe to the school that there are no dumb questions.
There's a weird intellectual approach to filmmaking, where I pose a question to myself and use the film to try and answer it.
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'm not really in a rush to grow up.
I'm very interested in politics, and I feel TV is a more political medium than film.
I go into a movie sort of saying what it's not going to be.
The 'Bourne' franchise means the world to me. I love that Universal wants to put one out every two years. Because it is a safe investment, I benefit from that on many levels.
'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.
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.
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.
All of my fellow directors, I think, would agree that in whatever medium you are working, the challenges and obstacles push them to be more creative. That's the case with VR.
'The Wall' is a reaction to 'Edge of Tomorrow,' where I was like, 'I don't need time travel and aliens to take a hero and pin them down in an impossible situation. I can do it in a much simpler way.' And that was 'The Wall.'
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 drawn to adventure, and characters being plucked from normal life and sent on extraordinary adventures.
I got in trouble in film school at USC because one of my Super-8 movies there, in the first semester, involved a snowmobile chase scene. I made an action scene, and they were like, 'That wasn't what you were supposed to be doing.'
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.'
VR is so immersive, and when it works, it draws you into the story in a way that is truly unique and powerful.
I think that I learned a studio system prefers a sort of professionalism from the director.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Finding original source material is not easy, but when something special like 'Edge of Tomorrow' comes along, everybody recognized it. I wasn't swimming against the stream. Warner Brothers immediately supported it, Tom Cruise signed on instantly; Emily Blunt, who was our first choice, signed on immediately.
So many of Spielberg's films inspired my imagination growing up. And then there are British films like 'The Full Monty' and 'Waking Ned Devine' that took me to places I really loved, with characters I just thought were amazing. But the films of Luc Besson showed me France - a really cool side of France.
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.
To be a lone filmmaker thousands of miles from home with nobody believing in me, that seems romantic.
Being on a commercial airplane is actually one of the safest places you can be on the planet.
My films have been successful, and therefore, the process has accommodated me. When the studio said 'no,' I did it anyhow. Now they don't say no to me.
At the end of the day, the less money you have, the easier it is to make a movie.
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 always liked photography in film - I studied photography growing up. I like the medium of film; I like physically holding 35-mm film. I like the way it looks, the quality when it's projected. I like the way it frames real life.
I chose 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' specifically 'cause I had just made 'The Bourne Identity' and made a film that glamorized being an action hero, and I wanted to make the exact opposite. I wanted to make a movie that glamorized maintaining a marriage, and that made the action hero part seem easy and made the marriage part seem hard.
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.
