Doug Liman

It turns out that it's easier to do politics in a movie. People really don't want it in their TV.

I make movies for me and posterity. I'm more scared of history than I am of the studio.

I never want to repeat myself. I can't imagine anything else as upsetting as realizing I'm redoing something I did before. For some reason, when it comes to film, I'm very good at not repeating myself. Even though in the rest of my life, I'm constantly repeating my mistakes.

The beating heart of your story... that's not what shows up in a trailer. The other stuff is what shows up in a trailer, because that's what gets people in to the seats, and that's how studios make their money.

I probably shouldn't treat interviews as therapy sessions, but I don't keep a diary, so these end up being my way of keeping track of where I'm at and letting it all out.

A part of me is a liberal New Yorker involved in politics and certain attitudes about movies. I kind of lost my indie credibility over 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith.' I know I haven't lost it. I just have to go make an independent movie. I just have to do it. Just for me.

To be a lone filmmaker thousands of miles from home with nobody believing in me, that seems romantic.

I go into a movie sort of saying what it's not going to be.

When I'm working on a film, I think about how it will play with a tiny audience of friends whose opinions I respect - basically, a 40-bloc radius from my apartment in Manhattan.

I don't really analyze my process. I do know that if it's not right, I won't move on. I'm tenacious to a fault about that.

I always wanted to make big action movies as a kid, and that was my dream. In a way, 'Swingers' was the thing I suffered through the most doing because of all that dialog, so I could eventually be allowed to do a big dumb action movie, honestly.

I'm really attracted to anti-heroes, and I'm a little bit of a troublemaker myself, and a little bit of a rule-breaker, and I like spies.

I got in trouble in film school at USC because one of my Super-8 movies there, in the first semester, involved a snowmobile chase scene. I made an action scene, and they were like, 'That wasn't what you were supposed to be doing.'

My dad couldn't connect to my wanting to be a filmmaker. He was very connected in entertainment, and through him I met Steven Spielberg and got rides on his private plane to California. I'd see Spielberg's people reading scripts. I was like, 'That's what I want to be when I grow up.'

The reality is, the movies that were most impactful to me growing up, when I decided I wanted to make movies, I was going to see Woody Allen double features with my brother, back when they had double features.

All of my fellow directors, I think, would agree that in whatever medium you are working, the challenges and obstacles push them to be more creative. That's the case with VR.

I love that Barry Seal is working for the CIA, and he's an awful liar. It just goes to how honest this character is at the end of the day, even as he rips off the country and the world to the tune of becoming one of the wealthiest men in America. There's an innate honesty, a purity to him.

My films are very rooted in specific people's point of view. Some film-makers give a more global point of view, like God looking down at the characters.

I think when the United States of America put a man on the moon in 1969, that was one of the greatest accomplishments mankind has ever done.

I love 'Bringing Up Baby.' Anything that Katharine Hepburn's in. I'm committed to the Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn era of filmmaking.