Doug Liman Quotes

That's one thing I never had to do on a Mike Bay set is sit around and pontificate about the next scene; there's no time for it. You're already in the next scene.

We worked under a lot of pressure... three days to do an episode, sometimes two in a week, 39 episodes a year.

I always admire people who do commercials because they have to put together a beginning, a middle, and an end in 30 seconds.

Commercials are art, too; they're 30-second movies starring people like me. If you look down on the medium, you're never going to book. If you don't love it, do not bother. Find another job you like.

I've never been one to book a ton of commercials.

I have done a Hamburger Helper commercial, a Hardees commercial, a McDonalds commercial. American Express commercial.

Same thing, like my commercials are often times really funny because I tend to find 30 seconds is a really good amount of time to tell a joke.

There are some stories that can be told in two hours and some in 20 minutes.

I like the energy of doing things fast. We shot 'Starred Up' in just four weeks, and we edited it in four weeks.

I discovered, to my surprise, that writing for live television made me a faster writer.

Things happen fast. That's this league. You can't slow down, because it's going.

I won't say I'm not fascinated by the way advertising works. I like the sleekness. But a picture in advertising doesn't last too long. They have to work for 30 seconds. And I'd like to reach at least two minutes. This is my goal: to break that two-minute record.

When I'm working in television, I've learned you've got to work fast. You don't have time to rehearse; you don't have time to just mess around. You've got to move quickly. So I pick that up from that world, and I also pick up the idea of development of character and development of situations.

Swift was the race, but short the time to run.

If you get into the habit of being quick it is just as easy as being slow.

Obviously, television is a writer's medium, so you get a lot more power and authority. With a film, the discipline is having a beginning, middle and end, and having it work in a specific space of time.

And then afterwards I worked in advertising for a year which taught me about writing even when you don't want to (laughter) because there's never a moment that you want to write about an Erickson cell phone but you have to. And that's really important you know obviously for the...like if you really want to write, you have to write every day no matter how you feel or you know. And then, yeah, and then I ended up working in TV and then from TV into movies and then directing, so.

Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

When you shoot a movie so quickly you can't really afford to shoot a bunch of extra footage because you don't have that luxury.

The wonderful thing about film is that you have something that has a beginning, middle, and end, and you have a concrete amount of time to shoot it.

World-building is my favorite pastime, so with me, I'm always about reining myself in.

I like to shoot a lot of choices. I like a lot of stuff - and so I push to go faster, to shrink the time between the takes so that the takes are what you're spending all your time on.

The only advice anybody can give is, if you wanna be a writer, keep writing. And read all you can, read everything.

So many movies are so formulaic because you've got to get it done in an hour and a half. On a TV series, that's where the really interesting stuff can happen.

There is an advantage in having a routine and working with the same people when you can and in writing as a regular thing and filming as a regular thing. That routine pays off for you. You get a lot of productivity that way, rather than sitting around waiting for inspiration and waiting for the perfect thing to happen. I would be much less productive that way.