Doug Liman Quotes

You make a movie for 9k for the freedom it allows you.

Certain movies like 'Wag The Dog,' we used improv on every scene that we did. Pretty much, we would shoot from the script and then some stuff that we came up with in rehearsal, and then we'd have at least one or two takes where we completely went off the script and just flew by the seat of our pants.

When I was making 'Bourne Identity,' I wasn't making a dumb action movie like they were expecting it to be.

I couldn't imagine screaming 'Action!' on an outdoor set over a wind machine or whatever.

I think that the 'Bourne Trilogy,' it's definitely redefined the genre and took it to a new level. It was really great to be part of that experience. It is a very smart movie and a very smart script, great director, and great, you know, fellow actors.

It's such a thrill walking onto a film set.

When I was 16, I was in a film called 'The Patriot.' I spent every second I could on the set watching the director and his team bring America circa 1775 to life. From that moment on, I was hooked.

Yennai Arindhaal' is perhaps the quickest film in my career.

It's very difficult to find the time or the money for people to organize rehearsals for some movies. It staggers me how little preparation often goes into these scenes which are difficult and complicated. You think, "God, it's crazy. I've never met this person before and here I am having to work at how to do a whole performance on the set." It was great to have a few days of just talking to Michael [Caine] and Daniel [Barber] and thinking about the characters and the relationship between them before we started shooting.

I feel like casting is the most important aspect of making movies.

Once you are shooting a movie, even if it's your own script, you have to let it go at a certain point. That's true for every film. It breaks up into phases where the thing that you have in front of you is the thing you have to address, and you can't worry about what you imagined a scene was going to like and that it came out differently, because that's what you have to make work.

And then to see the whole movie, you're pretty much waiting until the end of production. And the major lifting in terms of editing and all that stuff is done before you shoot the movie. That's an unusual way to work.

I'm reading Joe Eszterhas biography; it's fabulous. Every time he made a movie, he fought with the director or the producer over the ending.

Producing is making films without having to work sometimes. It's still making films, but it's a different job. When you're the director, you kinda do all the work. I'm actually going tonight to check the prints of my movie even though the premiere's tomorrow night.

I know the pleasure you get from making your films. The intense involvement in every aspect: the acting, the camera, the colors, the costumes, even the hair and makeup. Editing is thrilling. Everything to do with films is absorbing - everything but the money part, the business. But I'm deeply glad I've had that experience.

I just directed The Jungle Book with Cate Blanchet and Christian Bale.

I always believe you can't kill good movies, because somebody's in some room and will die unless it gets made.

I only produce movies that have something stylistically different, so that I can learn from the experience of producing.

Rather than thinking in terms of a specific genre or specific kind of thing, I hope I can just stay relatively small and keep making my movies. If I can keep writing them and making them, I'll be happy.

Some of my favorite movies are Hollywood movies. Hollywood is part of the cinematic spectrum. I nurture a healthy love-hate relationship with Hollywood.

It's not like you get up in the morning on the first day of shooting and say, 'I'm so smart today I'm going to determine every choice I make from now until a year and a half from now.' So it changes. You gain insights. The movie bucks you.

I've lived through the shooting of movie, the editing and every other process along the way, so it's not for me to really judge it. I'll probably look at it again five years from now to get a fresh feel for it.

You have to be a great storyteller. And you have to master the tools that you have to tell the story which are, inorder of importance, the script, the actors and then thetechnical means.

My philosophy is making a movie is difficult enough and I just feel as if you should have a really good time when you do make films whether it's a drama or a comedy.

It's like live action if you reshot every scene a million times after finishing the movie. Because even apparently by the very end, a few weeks before they were screening it for the world premiere, they were making changes. That's just simply something you can't do on live action.