Doug Liman Quotes

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.

Bob Gates is really emblematic of the modern CIA. He joins it in 1968, just a day before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. And, of course, he rises very quickly. In less than six years, he's on the National Security Council staff, at the closing weeks of Richard Nixon's presidency and then on into Gerald Ford.

I would say that during my lifetime, one of the worst political scandals in Sweden was absolutely what happened surrounding the affair of the submarines in Swedish waters in 1982, where there were supposed to be Russian submarines close to Stockholm. And the military of Sweden never got one up.

I am a Soviet officer. I wish to meet with an American officer with the object of offering certain services.

I've tried, in 'Bloodmoney,' to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have.

I finished 'Hell or High Water' and started writing 'Wind River' literally the next day.

Before I was elected to represent southwestern Texas in the U.S. Congress, I spent almost a decade as an undercover officer in the CIA. I served in places where Russia has geopolitical interests, and learned that Russia has one simple goal: to erode trust in democratic institutions.

An Egyptian newspaper once publicly identified me as the C.I.A. station chief in Cairo. It seemed so stupid at the time. I was only 24, a little young to be a station chief, and, of course, I was never with the C.I.A.

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust.

I learned later, just as a footnote, that the World Assembly of Youth was a CIA front.

What you get in the Cold War is 'the wilderness of mirrors' where you have to figure out what's good and what's evil. That's good for John le Carre, but not me.

More of 'The Bourne Identity's script was taken from the events of the Iran Contra, which my father investigated for the Senate, than what was taken from Robert Ludlum's novel.

I handed over names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union.

How stupid do you have to be to imagine that you can turn 'The Lord Of The Rings' into a film script?

I have no spy stories to tell, because I saw no spies. Nor did I understand, at that time, any opposition between American and Russian national interest.

I said in court a long time ago that I didn't see that the Soviet Union was significantly helped by the information I gave them, nor that the United States was significantly harmed.

I grew up reading the classic novels of Cold War espionage, and I studied Russian history and Soviet foreign policy.

For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.

Usually, I think, every film I've made has been a book, and I've always read it.

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.

We're no longer in the Cold War. Eavesdropping on friends is unacceptable.

The merit of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,' then - or its offence, depending where you stood - was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible.

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the CIA's overall charter.

Writing has always been an interest of mine, and 'The Language of Flowers' combined my experience with foster care with something I've always wanted to do.

I vividly recall the president turning to Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, in the full hearing of all those in attendance, and saying something to the effect that Lumumba should be eliminated.