Word: liman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like many great couplings, this one nearly didn't happen. Damon first played Bourne, loosely based on the Robert Ludlum character, for director Doug Liman in 2002's The Bourne Identity. That movie minted a gritty new kind of action film, but its nail-biting production left Universal Studios looking for a new director who could somehow combine edge and efficiency. At a 2003 meeting at the studio, writer Tony Gilroy suggested Greengrass. "There was a grunt of approval," remembers Damon, sitting across from Greengrass in a poolside cabana at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. "I was the one idiot...
...band of con artists.) The robbers (led by Dougray Scott and The Practice's Steve Harris) gab about strippers and Mother Teresa while on a job; the cops who chase them self-consciously reference Lethal Weapon. Created by brothers Mark and Robb Cullen and co-executive-produced by Doug Liman, who directed Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Heist takes a lighthearted tone familiar from the movies--assuring viewers that they're in safe territory...
...started in 2002 when Pitt walked away from director Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain at the last minute. "Cost the studio a huge amount of money," Liman says. "When you're a movie star and you do something like that, you make it up to the studio by picking another one of their projects." Pitt picked Mr. & Mrs. Smith. He recruited Liman to direct. Nicole Kidman hopped aboard. And ... action...
Except not. Filming ran long on The Stepford Wives, causing Kidman to bow out and leaving Liman to scramble for a new Mrs. Smith. "Which is crazy," says Liman, "because now I'm trying to convince Brad to stay in the movie, when he's the one who sent me the script! I could just see the whole film coming undone." Liman wound up casting Jolie, who was in England doing publicity for Tomb Raider II, over the phone...
...Liman has a knack for making bad luck work for him. That first shot is a good example: the Smiths are trying couples counseling, and their unfamiliarity with each other as actors and as people plays perfectly onscreen as the awkward distance of a husband and wife who have become strangers. But Liman's MacGyver-like improvisational style can come at a price. "It was a very hard shoot," he admits. "I don't necessarily go into a movie with the characters figured out." He built an entire snow-covered mountain on a Fox sound stage, then scrapped it when...