Doug Liman started his career with films such as Swingers and Go, but once he got his fingers into The Bourne Identity it appears action films have become his lot in life as he followed that film up with Mr. and Mrs. Smith and now has Jumper hitting theaters today telling the story of David Rice, a man that learns at an early age that he can teleport anywhere in the world. Quite literally, as the slogan goes, anywhere is possible.
Of course you can’t just go teleporting around the world without someone hating on you and in the case of Jumper that someone is Sam Jackson and he is out to ruin David’s day. Starring Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson, Jamie Bell and Sam Jackson Jumper hits theaters today (February 14th) and I had the chance for a quick phoner with director Doug Liman.
While I was cut off and didn’t have enough time to talk much about sequels (there is a lot to discuss there) or Liman’s involvement in the upcoming “Knight Rider” reboot we did get to a few things you may find interesting. Here’s the chat and for more on Jumper the links are at the end of the interview.
Jumper is based on a Stephen Gould novel and from what I have read about The Bourne Identity you gave Tony [Gilroy] an outline and told him not to read the book. Jumper came to you as a script from David Goyer, but when Jim Uhls did a rewrite did you toss the Goyer script out or did you use it as an outline?
Doug Liman (DL): Well obviously I had good success reinventing Bourne as a movie without relying on the scenes from the book and taking what I loved about the book and re-envisioning it as a movie. So in the case of Jumper I kind of knew what I was going to do already, which was take what I loved from the book and reinvent it as a movie. In this case, like Bourne, it required a complete reinvention.
With Bourne I had no choice but to reinvent it because I wanted to tell a contemporary story and the book was all about the Cold War and that kind of liberated me to just throw the book away and come up with a whole new idea for Bourne Identity and take Matt Damon’s amnesia and that’s about it and it worked. So in the case of Jumper, the story was contemporary, it was a contemporary novel, but the thing about the book was that I fell in love with the character of David Rice who chooses to rob banks with his power. He chooses to do selfish things with it and in a way I ended up throwing away the book because I wanted to chase that idea more. There was something very personal about it, it spoke to me on a character level. I didn’t [throw the book away] because I had to like with Bourne, I wanted to throw the book away because I wanted to chase the idea of the selfish superhero.
I went pretty far with an anti-hero in Bourne Identity and then I went even further with an anti-hero in Mr. and Mrs. Smith where they ask each other, “Does it ever keep you up at night, killing all those people?” and they’re like, “Nope, yeah me neither.”
For some reason those kinds of characters really speak to me. I don’t think it’s because I am a cynic, I think to me there is something very honest about that. Those are people that are willing to say what the rest of us might be thinking. In the case of Jumper there was something kind of heroic about David Rice using this power to rob banks.
When Jumper was first announced it was announced that it was going to be a trilogy. Inside this film you leave out a lot of details such as why Sam Jackson is chasing jumpers and the whole storyline with David’s family. Are these pieces left out so they can be told in sequels?
DL: There are two elements to that. First, I was curious as a filmmaker working in 2008 and I asked, do we need to play by the rules made in 2000 and 1990? where everybody’s actions would be explained. In the ten-year-old version of this movie Sam Jackson’s character, at some point, would have told us the story of a jumper that helped Hitler and it all would have been neatly explained for the audience. I feel like I am not making this movie in the year 2000, I am making this movie in the year 2008, and it’s a different audience. As a filmmaker I am curious to see how far you can push it, and can you have a villain who never explains why they are doing what they are doing it doesn’t matter if you are David Rice. All that matters is that Sam Jackson is trying to kill you.
I had a lot of conversations about this with Mr. and Mrs. Smith because there is a villain plot in Mr. and Mrs. Smith that’s never explained. The people that chase Brad and Angie in the third act, we never explain who they are. We had a lot of conversations about this, and one of the producers, Akiva Goldsman, put it to me this way, “When you preview the movie and you ask people if they are confused about something of course they are going to be confused about the villain plot in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They won’t be able to answer because you didn’t give them the information.” He said, “That’s not the relevant information if you are going to poll a test audience. The relevant question is, did that disturb their ability to enjoy the movie?” That’s a more modern approach to filmmaking.
It isn’t about whether you could understand what Sam Jackson was doing or not. It’s could you still enjoy the movie despite the fact that we didn’t tell you that?
I will say I was glad you didn’t explain how jumping works, which is something a lot of techy movies love to do now by throwing out words people don’t understand or dumbing it down to a level that it actually becomes dumb.
DL: Well I didn’t explain Matt Damon’s amnesia in Bourne either, he just got it. And with Jumper, David Rice isn’t a physicist, it would be a different movie… I can see explaining it if you have a quantum physicist at M.I.T. suddenly discovering he can teleport. That guy is going to begin conducting experiments on himself and trying to figure out what happened. If it happened to the rest of us? We would just be like okay it happened, we don’t fucking know why.
As far as the future is concerned are you still looking at the Moon Project you have with Jake Gyllenhaal as your next film?
DL: That’s what I am working on, but I so fall in love with the characters of the current film I am working on, and at this point in my career I’ve had the good fortune of falling in love with every character I have worked with and the actors that have played them it is hard to imagine leaving the world of Jumper behind to go do the Moon Project. I am having separation anxiety, but maybe a two week break I’ll be ready to date something new.
So the thought of Jumper 2 is still bouncing around?
DL: How could it not be? The world was so incredible. The characters are so incredible. The technical challenges… just every day on the set of this movie it was like how the hell are we going to accomplish what it says in the script we are going to accomplish today? Literally every single day had some kind of challenge like that. It’s the most exciting time in filmmaking.
Jumper is in theaters now for more on the film including cast, complete synopsis, pictures, trailers, clips and the official site click here.
