Top 166 Quotes & Sayings by Doug Liman

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.

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.

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.

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

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.'

I like to keep my options open. I'm known for changing my mind.

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 have to have a passionate connection to my films, which I do with 'Justice League Dark.' I have a way into the story that's personal, the way I have a connection to 'The Wall.'

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 things that are directly around us: our love lives, our careers, and our banking accounts.

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.

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.

I was a troublemaker. For a long time, I didn't fit in.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Even more than 'Swingers,' 'Go', for me, defines my career.

I didn't grow up like Quentin Tarantino, watching esoteric art films at the video store. I'd go to the multiplex and see big, mainstream movies, and I'd go, 'I want to make one of those one day.'

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 domestic life of a spy, and how you make the two halves of your life coexist.

I'll just say that there are certain people who continue to be hired in Hollywood, and that leaves me truly shocked.

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'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.

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.'

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

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.

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.

We love movies like 'Edge of Tomorrow.' It's why we go to the movies, and it's why we make movies.

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.

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 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.

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 beings aren't all heroic. I tend to be drawn to antiheros.

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.

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

The system did not want me to make 'Go.' And I sort of stood up to the system and made the movie I wanted to make, and the fact that I did that and I'm proud of the movie means I'm really proud of myself when I look back on that.

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

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.

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.

'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.

With VR, you are directing in a 360-degree environment. The biggest challenge is that the viewer can look anywhere. They might look at the the weakest moments, the very things you edit for TV. You don't control where they look.

I started making Super 8-mm films when I was about six years old and just never stopped. It was always just a hobby, but it's one of the few hobbies that can actually become a career. You know what? I think it was my plan from when I was six that this is what I was going to do.

I had one scene in 'Invisible' with 12 actors delivering dialog at the same time.

Almost anything can be justified as a style of filmmaking if it works.

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.

In hindsight, everything in my life looks a little rosy. But the reality is that with, say, 'Swingers,' when we finished, it was considered a total failure.

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

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.

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

VR is so immersive, and when it works, it draws you into the story in a way that is truly unique and powerful.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

'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.'

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.

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.

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

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.