Almost anything can be justified as a style of filmmaking if it works.
'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' - every scene is from those characters' point of view. They're in literally every scene, very unusual in a big studio film.
I'll just say that there are certain people who continue to be hired in Hollywood, and that leaves me truly shocked.
If you look at my movies, they're pretty densely packed, such that they not only hold up to a second viewing, they're oftentimes better the second time you watch them. So I've always thought about crafting stories that could hold up to multiple viewings, and so VR obviously fits right into that.
I had one scene in 'Invisible' with 12 actors delivering dialog at the same time.
Casting is everything. I put a huge amount of work into casting, and consistently across my career, I am most proud of my bold choices I made in casting.
I started my career wanting to make a 'James Bond' movie, and I couldn't get hired! I made 'The Bourne Identity,' and ultimately the impact of that film was that it changed the 'James Bond' franchise.
'The Wall' doesn't recount a specific soldier's experience in Iraq, but it captures the spirit of many experiences that were shared with me and with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and with John Cena.
When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise.
I'm very interested in politics, and I feel TV is a more political medium than film.
I always liked photography in film - I studied photography growing up. I like the medium of film; I like physically holding 35-mm film. I like the way it looks, the quality when it's projected. I like the way it frames real life.
Antiheroes who are sort of honest to themselves are the ones you root for. Like, Barry Seal isn't trying to be anything other than he is. He isn't fooling anybody per se.
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.
Trust me: you make a movie about time travel, and you know for a fact humans will never travel through time. The paradoxes that come up just from trying to tell a story with time travel really illuminates the fact that it's impossible. It will never happen. We can barely get through a movie that involves time travel.
What happened on 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith,' I was given a big budget and given too many choices, and I made a lot of mistakes and missteps early on until I squandered all that extra money. But then, once my back was up against the wall, I made what I consider a really good movie.
In hindsight, everything in my life looks a little rosy. But the reality is that with, say, 'Swingers,' when we finished, it was considered a total failure.
I think making a great action movie is one of the hardest cinematic endeavors. By definition, smart characters avoid action. Smart people don't go down dark alleys, but if you're making an action movie and you want to have an action sequence, somehow you have to get that character into that dangerous situation.
I do take things away from reading reviews. I think they keep you honest.
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.'
One thing about pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is that you're going to make mistakes, and you're going to fall flat on your face sometimes.
