I normally donât agree to do phone interviews, but Iâm extremely happy that I signed up for this one. You see, normally a phone interview sucks. Itâs completely impersonal and Iâve found them to lack any spice. You get these safe, standard answers, and itâs over by the time you blink. But as I said in the first sentence, Iâm so happy that I agreed to do this one.
While the interview started a bit slow, after the first two questions it picked up and never stopped. Of course Doug and I discussed the making of âJumperâ and all the challenges of filming around the world. But we also talked about digital filmmaking, 3D filmmaking, sequels, what he has coming up and a lot more. Itâs actually one of the best interviews Iâve ever done with a director, and itâs definitely one worth reading. Here are a few highlights to tempt the taste buds:
When I asked about sequels, he said, âI actually have a ton of ideas for the sequel because this is whole new arena for me and so my mind was in overdrive the whole time and most of the ideas I came up with we either could tease or just save it for a sequel and so itâsâ¦this power can be used to leave this planet, this power can be used ultimately to go back in time, this power can be used if you go and work for the government youâd be the ultimate Jason Bourne.
About his upcoming projects:
Doug: I have 2 projects Iâm currently developing. One of them is with Jake Gyllenhaal about a private expedition to go to the moon present day. And I think when the
Some of the other highlights include him saying heâll probably be moving to digital cameras for his future movies and explaining why theyâre easier and faster to shoot with.
But since a few of you might not know Dougâs name, hereâs some info. Doug Liman started his career by directing âSwingers,â which starred Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. From there he made the great indie film âGo,â and after that he moved into the big
The premise is that Hayden plays someone with the ability to teleport. It ends up that certain people have been born with this gift for many years. However, there is a group â called the Paladins â that is determined to hunt down and kill anyone with this power. So while Hayden just wants to live a life of leisure and pursue his own selfish dreams, once the Paladins notice him, everything changes and heâs forced to fight.
Iâm trying to be kind of vague and not give it all away, but all you need to know is that itâs a solid popcorn movie and one that has great effects, amazing locations, and a ton of action. But I think my favorite part of the movie is that Haydenâs character isnât a hero. He doesnât want to use his gifts to save mankind or better humanity. He just wants to get laid, not work, and surf where the waves are high. Itâs a nice change from every comic book movie where the main character is a superman.
Anyway, hereâs the great interview with Doug. As always, if youâd like to listen to the audio click here. Itâs an MP3 and easily put on a portable device for listening later. And if you want to watch some movie clips from âJumper,â click here.
Of course a big thank you to Fox for setting us this interview, and a big thank you to Doug for giving me way more than my allotted time.
Collider: How are you doing today?
Doug Liman: Good, how are you doing?
Collider: Pretty good. Enough press for you?
Doug Liman: You know, I actually like it. I donât know why.
Collider: Okay, Iâm glad you do. So, I guess let me jump right in and say that I really actually enjoyed the movie and I wanted to know how important was it for you to keep the film as real as possible?
Doug: It was really important to me because I was very interested from a character perspective and what would someone really do if they had this power, and like you could never do an honest character exploration in the world of Spiderman or Superman or Batman, because those worlds are not at all like our world. Like Jason Bourne, whoâs set very much very in my world, meeting people like that I know, and like every character in Bourne Identity outside of Matt Damon is based on a real person that I know. And even the crazy people like Julia Styles character is based on a woman that I met when I lived in
Collider: See thatâs a question I had for you. There was a scene in the movie where you see him watching the news with the people on the river and the announcer is saying something to the effect of âwho can save these people. Itâs going to take a miracleâ. Did you ever shoot anything that had him doing a reaction to that or was that just a throwaway?
Doug: I had an extra moment where he turned the TV off, but it was never even a possibility that he was going to go do it. And I love that it wasnât even a possibility. Thereâs somethingâ¦I donât know what it says about me that I love him for the fact that like it doesnât even occur to him that he should go save those people. I donât think Iâm all that twisted in my life. Iâm not like some tattooed filmmaker who you know hangs out on the lower east side and is part of some satanic cult or something. Iâm like a nice Jewish boy from the
Collider: And you mentioned the Roman Coliseum. I actually wanted to talk to you about the fact that the film does take place all around the globe and I think thatâs something thatâs so important to add to why the film to me was so good is that you see these people all around the globe. How much of a challenge was that to actually film in
Doug: I canât believe we actually accomplished shooting this film where we did, given that every locationâif I told you you could just pick anyone of those locations and I can tell you what the restrictions were on us. And like anyone of them youâd be like okay that sounds impossible, but hopefully that was the hardest of them all. Just pick one of those and Iâll tell you what the restrictions are.
Collider: Letâs talk about the Roman Coliseum because that blew me away.
Doug: Okay, Roman Coliseum, we were only allowed to shoot 45 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes at the end of the dayâtotal.
Collider: So what did you do in between the morning and the end of the day?
Doug: I would shootâ¦first of all we would start prepping at 3 in the morning so that when our 45-minute window started we were ready. And then we would go shoot other things during the middle of the day, you know not much and then we would start prepping an hour or two before our 45-minute window opened again, because you donât have a second to waste, like you need all the cameras loaded, you need everybody knowing exactly what theyâre doing, you need the actors to have rehearsed their performances. Then we shot the Pantheon; we would go shoot the hotel. Weâd grab other pieces.
Collider: This is interesting because I know that youâre famous for shooting and then re-shooting.
Doug: That option is not open to me on the Coliseum.
Collider: I was going to say to you, how did that affect you as a filmmaker? Did you �
Doug: Iâm basically like Iâll shoot and re-shoot if I that option is available to me, but on âSwingersâ I couldnât re-shoot anything, so I just got it right the first time. So Iâll kind ofâ¦in my gut I know what the restrictions are so in the case of the Coliseum I knew it was a one-shot deal, so we did more rehearsals to get it right the first time, whereas maybe if I had the ability to go back Iâd rather not over-rehearse it to take a chance at getting something truly fresh and original, but knowing that also I may have to go back and re-shoot because weâre not rehearsing.
Collider: So I actually wanted to ask you, the film has a running time of around 90 something minutes I believe. I wanted to know are there any key scenesâdid you have a lot of deleted scenes on this or was it all on the screen?
Doug: Itâs basically all on theâ¦thereâs like 2 deleted scenes. Basically itâs that we paced the movie upâ¦it went from being 2 hours to 90 minutes and thatâs without taking anything out of itâ¦.I wanted to applyâ¦hopefully this will make sense to youâ¦when you first edit a movie, the charactersâ¦the first thing you do is you cut out what is called the shoe leather, so anything where someone walks into a room or walks out of a room, anything that gets a character from point A to point B thatâs not necessaryâyou just try to cut to all the good stuff and get rid of anything thatâs not important in between. Thatâs called cutting out the shoe leather and thatâs how you usually get a movie from 2-1/2 hours to 2 hoursâyour standard movie. In this movie, the characters themselves are cutting out the shoe leather because theyâre teleporters. Why wouldnât they cut just to the good part of the scene? So, youâre already starting with a movie where the characters themselves are going to be living at a pace equivalent to sort of a tightly edited movie. Then whatâs the role of the editor in the case where the actorâs are sort of doing the editing in the first place where the characters are already their own lives before you even get a chance to start as a film editor? So, I toyed with both sort of keeping it in the actors pace and I really felt we should pace it up and try to communicate the speed with which somebody who could teleport would live their life. And when the film starts and David Rice tells us how many places he visited that morning alone, you know, the rest of the film was an attempt to try to communicate the feeling of what that really would be like. So for an older audience, the ending may move so fast that they may not even know all the places that the finale action sequence takes place in, but you know it was really important for me to try to communicate the emotion of what that would feel like.
Collider: I think actually you did a really good job with that. I wanted to knowâyou seem to really like this character and this universe. Assuming that the film does pretty well at the box office, would you just right back in and do a sequel and do you have any ideas for a sequel?
I actually have a ton of ideas for the sequel because this is whole new arena for me and so my mind was in overdrive the whole time and most of the ideas I came up with we either could tease or just save it for a sequel and so itâsâ¦this power can be used to leave this planet, this power can be used ultimately to go back in time, this power can be used if you go and work for the government youâd be the ultimate Jason Bourne.
Collider: See nowâ¦in the movie you mentioned time travel, did you drop any hints of that in the film? Did I miss this?
Doug: No, but thereâs one massive hint in the film for the ultimate twist that would take place in the sequel, which isâ¦I guess people will read the 2nd book so theyâll know, but Rachel Bilsonâs character learns how to teleport in the 2nd book.
Collider: So youâre saying that these powers can be taught to other people?
Doug: In this case they are taught and itâs, you know, one of the things that may sort ofâ¦things we toyed with on this movie is do we actually need to do the obligatory rule scene, where you lay out everything the power can and canât do. We ultimately decided to say weâre changing so many other sort of aspects of this genre like letâs not do the rule scene because the rules donât ultimatelyâ¦the limitations of this power arenât ultimatelyâ¦donât factor into the finale, so we skipped the obligatory rules thing and also because this film is set in the real world and David Rice is not a physicist. He is not going to understand why he can teleport. He will never understand that, you know, different movie if youâve got an MIT quantum physicist who discovers they can teleport. That guy will spend the movie conducting experiments on himself to understand it and understand how itâs happening and what his limitations are. David Riceânot going to understand his ability to teleport the way Jason Bourne will never understand his amnesia.
Collider: If Iâm doing one more question, I might as well ask you so what is your next project? I read online that you might be doing somethingâ¦a moon project?
Doug: I have 2 projects Iâm currently developing. One of them is with Jake Gyllenhaal about a private expedition to go to the moon present day. And I think when the
Collider: Okay.
Doug: And so itâs kind of an action-adventure on the surface of the moon, and the 2nd film is the story of Valerie Plame, you may know as the CIA officer whom the Bush administration exposed her identity.
Collider: I totally know.
Doug: And thatâs with Nicole Kidman. And that project sounds straightforward except that I have a take on the material that if I go do it would be the most radical and revolutionary move of my career.
Collider: Well then youâ¦Iâm sorry to ask, but you need to tell me a little bit more than that, please?
Doug: Yeah, itâs so outrageous that the way I look at it, Iâm taking material that could be, you know, just a docu-drama and Iâm making it into art. Iâd be doing you know ultimately what a filmmaker should do which is not just tell a story but push the boundaries of story-telling.
Collider: Absolutely. Do you feel like one of those might win out over the other? Or itâs just which script comes together first?
Doug: Itâs which script comes together first. You know itâsâ¦Iâm feeling a lot of kind of family pressure to sort of tackle more serious subject matter like basically itâs kind of aâ¦my mom feeling like I should grow up. So, but I canât help it. The idea of transporting an audience to the surface of the moon and trying to give them the experience that Neil Armstrong had.
Collider: Well, youâre also in the very rare position that you can make these big movies; that the studios believe in you as a filmmaker and you have that againâ¦itâs like youâve won the lottery, so of course you should do whatever you want to do.
Doug: It doesnât feel like having won the lottery like I know sort of this you step back because like it doesnât get any easier. Somehow I feel like if youâd win the lottery it would be easier, like in either of these cases like I still have to toil on these scripts the way I had to toil way back when like it didnâtâ¦.like that aspect like the movies donât get easier to make.
Well, Iâm sure you feel even more pressure with the inflated budget which leads me back to would you ever make a film that would premier again at Sundance, you know? Orâ¦
Doug: Yes.
You know because that might make your mom happy.
Doug: My favorite parts of the shooting of Jumper were the ones where we were back to a Swingers style production and because Hayden Christianson like Matt Damon was on Bourne, these actors were willing to run around with me with just a camera and basically the look and feel of Bourne Identity stem mostly from the fact that I was running off and shooting with Matt with no permissions and therefore the camera was like hidden under my arm and you know we were worried about getting busted and weâd have to move really quickly and that ended up becoming a style for the whole franchise and you know on Jumper I wantedâ¦you know we shot in 17 different cities and only in about 7 of them I could actually afford a real crew. And in 10 of them I was going, you know, guerilla.
Collider: So do you think the Bourne movie helped you with Jumper? With that ability to guerilla-style it?
Doug: Yeah, I donât think if I had doneâ¦without Swingers I never could have done Bourne, and without Bourne I never could have possibly conceived of going guerilla in as many countries as we did in this movie. And ultimately sort of you know having kind of having a sort of a real desire to experience life and so I was not afraid of getting arrested during the production of this film. In fact, if anything, I left
Collider: Do you think the government though was happy that you were having these stars and making a big movie there though?
Doug: No. I mean, they wereâ¦I might yet have that jail experience when I go back to Tokyo for the Tokyo premiere, for the Japan premiere, because when they see the footage and theyâre like okay, you didnât have permissionâ¦.like I knowâ¦.the police chased us while we were shooting that film on a number of occasions when we were shooting in Tokyo, and we just always got away which is why none of us ended up in jail. So somewhere, someoneâs like theyâre still looking for that Mercedes convertible. Like somewhere someone must have a record that the Mercedes convertible got away and theyâre you know, they have the license plate and theyâre looking.
Collider: When youâre shooting that sequence did you have just one camera, did you have a crew, was it guerilla?
Doug: It was guerilla but it was like big-budget guerilla. We had a camera bikeâa motorcycle with a remote control gyro-stabilized 35mm camera attached to it and a microwave link to a follow van where the camera operator was and where we were and then thereâs the Mercedes being driven by a stunt driver and weâre going through the streets of Tokyo at 80 mph.
Collider: And you didnât have permits?
Doug: No, they wouldnât let usâ¦we got to
Collider: Well, on top of that Lost in Translation shot there on the streets.
Doug: We stole everything they did but thatâs people talking on the street. Iâve got a car coming flying out of a dealership thatâs got to land in the middle of an intersection. Theyâre like yeah, no. Yeah, for sure you canât do that. So we just did it.
Collider: Thatâs absolutely crazy. I actually have one other question as a filmmaker, you mentioned you were shooting on 35, do you ever think that youâll go digital or are you always going to be a film person?
Doug: Well, we did shoot most of the movie on 35 but towards the very end I started using the red cameraâare you familiar with that?
Collider: Iâm not familiar with the red. Iâm familiar with the Genesis.
Doug: We tested the Genesis but it was too difficult. The red camera was developed by the guy who started Oakley Sunglasses and so we were the first movie at Fox to shoot with this camera. It was a proto-type but youâll see it on the website for the film some behind the scenes like the surfing scene where Iâm shooting with the red and youâll see I have like a hood over my head because there wasnât even a view-finder for the camera yet. I had to use a monitor, but itsâ¦I fell in love with it and the same way that I love the Aaton which is a very small 35mm camera, the red gives me that same level of flexibility and so it seems unlikely that my next film would be shot on 35mm.
Collider: And with that red camera, can you shoot with super low light and�
Doug: No, and you know nothing shoot low light better than film. People are always like oh, digital you can go lower light, itâs not really true. 35mm film is actually remarkable and itâs you knowâ¦I shot Swingers all on available light in 35mm and film stock has gotten significantly better in the last 10 years so you donât get any advantage there, but 35mm film stock is basically so good that you donât really need movie lights.
Collider: So then whatâs the advantage of the red camera? What is the added value that you as a filmmaker find you know, why youâd move to the digital realm?
Doug: You can re-load in about 10 seconds, so itâs really hard to compete with that. You have momentum on the set and suddenly you have to stop to re-load and everybody suddenly the actors are in the bathroom and you have to get everybody back so just the speed with which you can shoot when you can re-load in 10 seconds. The cameraâs smaller, which just gives you more flexibility. You can get it into more interesting places without having to cut holes in cars and sets. And for me, personally, since I operate myself, the notion that somebody else can be reviewing what Iâm doing and telling me whether itâs all in focus as opposed to having to wait until the next day when itâs too late to fix it. I mean thatâs obviously very specific to me because most directors donât operate or if they can operate theyâre better at keeping focused that I am. So for all those reasons itâs just, you know, Iâm an easy convert to digital.
Collider: I know you probably have to go and I so appreciate you giving me your time but I also wanted to ask you about 3D filmmaking and if thatâs something that you would ever consider for any of your future projects?
Doug: Yeah, no the guys that did the U2 film had me come look at their technology and itâs a little cumbersome and Iâm still not sure from an emotional point of view like how I would use it but itâs something that definitely intrigues me because itâs I also like a good challenge and itâs like it would be a whole new arena for me. So, itâs very likely that at some point, possibly even the moon project, Iâll not only try to tackle a new arena; Iâll throw in 3D just for the hell of it. The same way that doing Bourne Identity it wasnât enough for me to jump from Swingers to a big studio action film, I also had to shoot it in France with an entirely French crew and teach myself French to be able to communicate to direct that movie. Like 3D sort of feels like that similar kind of like gotta learn a new language.
Collider: My last question for youâI donât know if I actually got an answer from you about you explaining the time travel aspect of Jumper. I think you were talking to me about how in the next movie Rachel might learn how to jump, but I donât know if you actually told me about the time travel thing. I kind of wanted to follow up on that.
Doug: Well, you know the kind of jumping that weâre showing in the movie which is a kind of worm hole jump which is why those scars are left behind, if you can travel through space through a worm hole from a scientific Einstein point of view, you could also travel through time. So you know thatâs not quantum teleportation which is featured in the film, so Iâm very specific to show those scars and to show that youâre leaving a worm hole and in fact thatâs what Rachel Bilson gets pulled through in the end, so itâsâ¦.Iâve left myself openâ¦Iâve left the door open to time travel because of the specific kind of teleportation that I chose to portray in this film.
Collider: Doug, I so appreciate your giving me your time and have a great day and I hope the movie does very well.
Doug: Itâs been really nice talking to you.