About Doug Liman: Douglas Eric is an American film director and producer best known for Swingers (1996), The Bourne Identity (2002), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Jumper (2008), Fair Game (2010), and Edge of Tomorrow (2014).
Somehow super power and hero are so synonymous that they get combined into one word, 'superhero,' whereas I'm kind of more interested in separating those two ideas out. You have characters with super powers who may or may not be heroic, because human...
The more real I got on 'The Bourne Identity,' the more interesting it got. So 'Fair Game' was the chance to go a few more steps in that direction. In fact, I discovered this whole other world that I had ignored in the 'Bourne' franchise, which is the...
To be a lone filmmaker thousands of miles from home with nobody believing in me, that seems romantic.
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.
I make movies for me and posterity. I'm more scared of history than I am of the studio.
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.
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 ...
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...
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 constant...
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.
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.
I understand that it's a huge luxury for people to dwell on the problems in Washington. Things have to be pretty tidy in your own life that you have the time to worry about what's going on in Washington. Most of us spend our time worrying about the t...
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.
The movie I end up with is the movie I aspired to make.
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.
I go into a movie sort of saying what it's not going to be.
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 realize I am contradictory: I have an independent filmmaker's sensibility and a Hollywood director's short-attention span.
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.
'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.
