[IMG:L]Jumper was in no way your average superhero flick. On the surface, it resembled such a blockbuster, with its main character’s ability to trot the globe in microseconds, but the film’s good vs. evil premise, the lynchpin of most successful classics of the genre, was blurrier than ever before–and intentionally so.
With this plot complexity, the buck does not get passed by Doug Liman, who, similarly, is not your average director. His potent mainstream hits to date–Swingers, The Bourne Identity, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith–have all infused mass-audience gags and booms with his trademark twisted, indie sensibility.
Mainstream conventions take a backseat to spontaneity on a set belonging to Doug Liman, who, for every project he does, appears to have a unique, evolving version of the script tucked somewhere in his mind–always ready for last-minute scene additions or deletions.
The unknowing matchmaker for, perhaps, the most media famous super-couple today, Liman was in a reflective mood when we caught up with him, touching on topics like Jumper, The O.C., and tabloids–as well as Bourne, Brangelina, and the box office.
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Hollywood.com: What interested you in the story of this anti/superhero?
Doug Liman: I’m interested in human nature and what drives people to do good or bad things. I think it’s why I was captivated by Steven Gould‘s novel. If you think about it, most people who win the lottery, you don’t hear about them giving the money to charity too often. And that’s the real world corollary to someone getting a superpower. He [Hayden Christensen‘s, David Rice] was more heroic in the book, but I was interested in that he was robbing banks, so why not chase that to the end? But I did have to pull some of it back. I had a scene where he abandons Millie [Rachel Bilson‘s character] in the third act. He just leaves. He goes to the beach. My friends thought it was the coolest thing, but it was too much for your average audience member.
Hollywood.com: Do you think his motivations will change in sequels if they occur?
Doug Liman: I would hate to make him a hero. Who said the person you are following has to be the hero?
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Hollywood.com: What were some of the lessons you learned early on that prepared you for such a career?
Doug Liman: I have a little bit of a reputation of being an irresponsible filmmaker. But back from the days of Swingers, when somebody invested $200,000 in me to go make the film, my father, who was a very prominent lawyer, said to me, “You have a responsibility to this person. They gave you this money, so you need to be responsible towards that investment.” And he would call me up every day and ask me how the filming was going. It wasn’t his money, but he was just trying to make sure I understood that if somebody gives you money to go make a movie, that they’ve invested in you and you have an obligation to try to make sure that they get their money back and/or profit. He’s [Liman‘s father] no longer with me, but that lesson has stuck with me.
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Hollywood.com: Is it a struggle to continue doing these big studio movies, when you are so clearly drawn to unconventional storytelling?
Doug Liman: It’s not the studios that are limiting me, it’s my father’s words. I don’t know any filmmakers that are given more free reign than I am, because my films have consistently gone against the norms and made a lot of money. It’s now expected of me to go against the norms.
I’m interested in politics and getting politics into movies. But if you just go make a political movie, nobody will see it. So I am interested in finding a balance where it goes to the multiplexes and sells millions and millions of tickets, but is infused with something else. Bourne Identity was a retelling of Iran-Contra. Had I just done an Iran-Contra movie, noone would have gone to see it. In the end though, it didn’t entirely work because it was a little bit too subtle.
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Hollywood.com: What else were you trying to accomplish with The Bourne Identity?
Doug Liman: I told myself right off the bat that I was not going to take the girl hostage in the third act. But I got to a point where I couldn’t solve this movie so I said, “I’m just gonna have the CIA grab Marie.” And the one creative contribution that Matt Damon had, besides doing a great job playing Jason Bourne, was saying to me, “That’s the one thing you promised me when you convinced me to do this movie; we weren’t going to take the girl hostage.” So I went back to the drawing board and figured out how to do it without taking her hostage.
The biggest dividend coming out of Bourne was that I took on the system and I won in that the film was successful. When you take on the system and win, it encourages you to take chances in the future.
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Hollywood.com: How did the clash start?
Doug Liman: They violated my contract on the sequels. I was the director and the producer. The producer. [Pauses] And eventually in the middle of production, other producers came on, and people that were working on the film got promoted through back room deals. The revenge they got on me was hiring another director on the sequel behind my back. Stacey Snider (former Universal chairman) told my agents that she was going to make sure that I never worked again, because I criticized her in the press.
Hollywood.com: Did that scare you?
Doug Liman: I believed her. I went into TV. That’s how I ended up doing The O.C. I didn’t even want to figure out if she [Snider] was telling the truth or not.
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Hollywood.com: As executive producer of The O.C., what were some of your goals for the series?
Doug Liman: It’s a stupid teen soap opera. [Smiles] It’s smart, but stupid in that its aspirations are not all that lofty. I was really interested in hooking a mass audience with it, and then having the maid get arrested on immigration charges. I wanted to deal with really serious issues once I had all of America’s teens watching. And I got shut down by FOX: ‘this is a massive $100+ million investment for us, you don’t get to do that.’ And it was in the context where George Bush had just shut down the Dixie Chicks, and there was a real fear of what the right wing could do to liberal media. If you take on the Bush administration with The O.C., your show could get shut down.
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Hollywood.com: Going back to when you directed Mr. and Mrs. Smith, did the tabloid hoopla surrounding the ‘are they together or aren’t they?’ of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie get in the way of production? Does that sort of thing permeate the inner creative circle?
Doug Liman: Making a film is such an intense process that it’s the one time in your life that you aren’t able to notice that. The only way in which it ever cropped in is once they were followed to the set by a helicopter. I literally could not film because of the sound.
Once, I was waiting for Angie to come out of makeup, and I’m reading a story in the tabloids about MY relationship with her. And it was total BS. It was my first time in the tabloids. I saw how they work. They literally just make this stuff up.
Hollywood.com: That seems to still be going on, with the recent ‘did she have twins, did she not have twins?’ story.
Doug Liman: They don’t actually have anything. They take one little tidbit they can find and just write stories out of it. You can almost make a party game out of it. Here’s three words overheard somewhere; now build a whole world and scenario based on those three words.
