Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
For big Hollywood movies, I'm on the more character-driven side of the equation. So, TV is a natural place for me to be because you've got no choice, but to be character-driven.
You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"
I don't think I'm all that twisted in my life. I'm not like some tattooed filmmaker who, you know, hangs out on the Lower East Side and is part of some satanic cult or something.
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.
Normally in spy movies, the person that the hero deals with is at the centre of power, surrounded by video screens, and they're old and grizzled. I'm no stranger to that dynamic.
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.'
Sometimes there are films like 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' which turned out better than it deserved to be, but in the case of 'Edge of Tomorrow,' there was just such enthusiasm from fans.
My own personal process with movies is to develop the characters with the actors and, when I've done that properly, you can't imagine anyone else, but that actor, playing that part.
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.
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.
In movies, you can basically buy the audience into the theater. If you spend enough money on visual effects, even if you are lacking in story and character, you might still pull it off.
'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.
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 always wanted to make a 'James Bond' film, and they only seemed to hire British directors, and I'd made 'Swingers' - they were never going to hire me for a 'James Bond' film off 'Swingers.'
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.'
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
'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.'
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 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!
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 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.
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 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.'
It's hard to get a movie made about characters these days. We're in a climate where, unless it's based on a toy or it's a superhero where somewhere it ends in man - like Spider-Man, Superman or Iron Man - it's hard to get it made.
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.
Once I'm in the editing room, forget about what I intended to shoot. I take a cold, hard look at what I really did shoot, and then I edit that because, if you try to edit what you intended and you missed somewhere, that will show up.
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.
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.
What happened on 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith,' I was given a big budget and given too many choices, and I made a lot of mistakes and missteps early on until I squandered all that extra money. But then, once my back was up against the wall, I made what I consider a really good movie.
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.
It's very hard for a studio to take a chance on a piece of original material. They used to have the fall-back of DVD sales. They had ways in which they could safely make an investment in a piece of original material, and those opportunities aren't necessarily there anymore.
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'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.
When my father would come home from his work at the Senate and talk about the things he could talk about - because a lot of his work was top secret - he would always tell me these stories and laugh. As deadly serious as his work was, he would laugh at the absurdity of it all.
For me, the scale of the budget is part of the creative process. 'Swingers' is the movie it is because we made it for exactly the right budget. Had it been made for a higher number, it would not have been as imaginative as we had to make it, given the budget constraints we had.
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.
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 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.
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.
If you look at my movies, they're pretty densely packed, such that they not only hold up to a second viewing, they're oftentimes better the second time you watch them. So I've always thought about crafting stories that could hold up to multiple viewings, and so VR obviously fits right into that.
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.
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.
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.