I’ve been interested in Doug Liman for a while but my curiosity with him grew when I discovered that he is a blogger – Doug blogs about his job, his interests and frustrations, the people he meets, his unusual experiences. But Doug Liman is a moviemaker and when he describes the challenges facing him at work he can be talking about attracting a studio to a project with special effects, the misbehaviour of fellow directors, the politics behind reshoots, the endless rewrites of a script. And because Doug Liman is to some extent a Hollywood outsider – he lives on Martha’s Vineyard and in New York City depending on the season – he has his own perspective on the ‘LA experience’. But even away from the movie business, life is not quiet for Doug Liman – a keen sailor, he was praised as a hero for pulling people to safety out of the Hudson.
Doug Liman has recently completed Fair Game, a film about CIA agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) and, as a fan of Jake Gyllenhaal, I have been interested to see how Doug’s next project will develop because this, known as the Unnamed Moon Project, is set to feature Gyllenhaal in the lead. According to Liman’s blog, Gyllenhaal is also a producer and is taking a pivotal role in how the project and his character develops. Scripts for this project abound, to exaggerate only slightly, and Doug’s 30 Ninjas blog has been a vital source for piecing together the clues of how this project is being transformed and possibly coming to fruition. Jake’s character originally sounded like a timid geek, the science guy who never left the lab until kidnapped and forced into his homecrafted rocket by some dastardly female enemy agent with an eastern European accent. Things have come on in leaps and bounds since then – thank heavens – until now Jake’s character is the mastermind behind the move to colonise the moon. The difference came about because Jake came on board: ‘And we’re writing Moon for Jake’s voice. That part of the process has been sitting in rooms with him, riffing out dialogue, and figuring out not only what would be the best character for the movie but who the best character is for Jake for this movie. So from a character standpoint the script took a tremendous leap forward.’
Throughout, Doug has compared the process of getting his Moon Project off the ground with that of producing the script for the Bourne Identity and winning over Matt Damon. However, it’s one thing getting the script right, it’s another creating a moon that will be believable in this post-Avatar world, and Doug’s efforts to take technology to its limit to create both a realistic moon and state-of-the-art special effects, has been repeatedly a subject of Liman’s blog.
.
However, Jake Gyllenhaal is next lined up to star in Duncan Brown’s Source Code, with filming due to begin in early March. So, despite the charity auctions with their lots offering visits to the set of the Liman/Gyllenhaal film (here named Trip of a Lifetime) in the early part of 2010, there is now silence about where things stand. It is possible that the script rewrites and the special effects demands, not to mention the cost, have delayed production until after Source Code. But with Doug Liman you feel we will get an update. He generously confides in us the difficulties that face a director, even one as successful as he is.
In the meantime, Doug Liman continues to let us in to his world and it is one where he can be as entertained by a movie as us. In his latest post, Doug talks about attending the NYC premiere of Sherlock Holmes and his excitement at being able to chat with its star, Robert Downey Jr. ‘ I was also very excited to meet and hang out with Robert Downey Jr. and his wife. I’ve always been a huge fan of his work on-screen, but after meeting him in person I’m now even more of a fan of his. He’s not only unbelievably charming, but in the brief conversation we had I got the strong sense that he shares the same passion for quality, in a studio system that doesn’t always agree with us. We exchanged stories of fighting for more time and/or money to make films of quality.’
Pictures courtesy of the Cinema Source, Boston.com and 30Ninjas.
