Doug Liman Quotes

I'm drawn toward filmmakers who have a very distinctive voice. I really appreciate people who push themselves and, therefore, push the medium forward.

I'm very attracted to directors who want to experiment. The thing that attracts me the most are people who are trying find a language that is correct for their film, for that specific film.

Show me a Scorsese film, and I'll show you a movie where he's taken risks. It's just his nature. He's an artist, and artists take risks. He always does what he believes in.

I don't make films to reproduce reality.

Independent filmmaking burns off a lot of storytelling fat.

Cinema is a creative medium. The director has the right to express.

I have 30 years of experience working with Leos Carax, so all the films of Leos Carax are unusual or unique. I look at them as a journey: a journey which is very personal to Leos.

Usually in France we prefer to say bad things about the Nouvelle Vague, but I'm always impressed with its freedom and the fact of not making a film to give your opinion but just as a piece of art, which to me means the Nouvelle Vague.

I consider all my films experiments.

There's always a certain amount of camera improvisation.

Agnes Varda changed my view of cinema; she directs from an artistic point of view, and a film is most of all the expression of an artistic director. I learnt to enter the world and the imagination of a director.

I have a slight controversy with the Dogme brethren because I've been saying that rules are to be interpreted; not that I haven't followed the rules, because I don't see the point of submitting yourself to a set of rules if you don't follow them. But having said that, it is always a lot of interpretation.

I don't approach films purely in context of genre.

I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not.

Fellini and Bunuel changed my life for me, they are my favourites. If it is true that movies are dreams, both of them, Fellini and Bunuel were shooting in a dream way.

No two directors make the same film the same way.

All directors make films in individual ways. But the classical kind of view of filmmaking is that you have a script, and it's very linear. There's a script, then you're going to shoot the script, and then you cut that, and then that's the end of the film. And that's never really been how I've seen it.

I just want to go on making movies, and some of them will be completely meaningless, except, of course, to me.

Spike Lee is a master of tone, so basically, if he wants to do something, he should do it, and Imma listen.

No one's telling Tarantino what to do. You might like it or you might not like it, but the reality is he's getting his own vision out there.

I was criticised for making 'Devdas' so ostentatious. But stark and realistic cinema isn't the only real cinema in this country.

An epic is the canvas Brian DePalma paints on.

You can't make a film for your personal satisfaction. That is why I detest the cinema of people like Mani Kaul.

In all my films, I have tried a different look.

I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.