<![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, doug liman]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, doug liman]]> http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/dougliman http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/dougliman <![CDATA[A Director's 'Process' Is Just an Excuse to Bang PA's, Director Reveals]]> In the elite all-guy fraternity of big time directors it's a rare thing for one of their own to speak out against the excesses of the brotherhood. But notoriously difficult auteur Doug Liman seems to have forgotten his loyalties.

In an entry in a blog devoted to chronicling the development of his new film that apparently involves the moon, the Bourne Identity helmer let slip that that old "process" thing that has been used by generations of Hollywood enablers to excuse all sorts of psychotic behavior might just be, you know, creativity aside, a bunch of excuses used by megalomaniac directors and actors excuses to get away with shoving their hands down the crew's pants.

Liman himself is no stranger to taking full advantage of a directors perogatives. During the shooting of Bourne he was by his own admission, "flippant," difficult and suspicious of anything the studio did or said," moving the shoot from Montreal to Paris at least partially on the justification that it would give him a chance to practice his college french. Despite the massive success of the first Bourne film, Liman was not summoned back to direct its sequel.

Blogging now about the problem of getting adequate sleep during production, Liman tells the story of an unnamed director who made up for his missing hours at night by napping on the set, including sleeping through the climactic action scene of his film. He goes on from that point:

A hilarious thing about the movie business is that you can get away with anything as long as you call it "process." Literally, anything. I mean, he's sound asleep! The director is literally sound asleep on set - what the hell's going on here? Well, he's slept through his last three movies, and they were huge hits. It's how he works; that's his "process." He'll wake up at some point and give notes, but for now, let him catch a few Zs. I haven't been in the business that long, but at this point I can't think of a single outrageous behavior that I haven't seen occur on set and then heard excused as someone's process.

I have a friend who was directing his first feature film, and the actor who's starring in it came up to the director, my friend, and said: "Just to let you know from the beginning, I'm going to be stoned in my trailer every morning and all day long. But before anyone panics, I've been stoned in every movie I've been in, and I was stoned when I auditioned for you. You've basically never seen me when I'm not stoned. The guy that you've cast is basically stoned, so don't be alarmed that I'm in my trailer getting stoned."

Then there's the director who was known for fondling P.A.'s in the video village. Explicitly fondling them - putting his hands down the pants of P.A.s in the video village in front of everybody. And what did the studio do? They built a tent so no one could see. They created a private little video village for him so they wouldn't get sued for sexual harassment by the rest of the crew.

Of course, now that Liman has publicly revealed this, there won't be a director in Hollywood who wont demand a PA-fondling-ready Video Village be included in his contract. Doug Liman has just cost Hollywood millions in tenting fees.

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<![CDATA[Hayden Christensen's Funny Valentine's Day]]> The gays can be particularly tedious when they question the sexuality of every boyish actor. Which is why one has some sympathy for Hayden Christensen, who's been fending off rumors of a relationship with Trevor Blumas, a fellow Canadian actor, for years. (Here was one effort: "To me, masculinity is the ability to flirt with the effeminate.") Whatever. But the fevered yearning of gay Hayden fans is sweet and innocent beside the promotion by the marketers of Jumper of an official rumor: that the delicate boy-actor is again, just in time for the movie's release, heterosexually dating Rachel Bilson. His cute co-star wears a bracelet engraved with an H; coyly avoids confirmation or denial of a relationship; and the two of them wandered romantically around Downtown Manhattan locations, like paparazzi bait, for Valentine's Day. “To all the ladies who I’m sure would like to know,” Rachel told one of the morning shows. “He was a good kisser!” Blech! Anyway, aside from such cynical efforts to draw female fans, and what critics say is a thin plot, Doug Liman's camerawork looks typically stylish, and Christensen's ability to teleport is a special power every teenager has yearned for. Jumper opens today. The trailer, after the jump.

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<![CDATA[Nicole Kidman Finally Outed, But Not The Way You Think]]> Hearing the news that Nicole Kidman will play Valerie Plame in the upcoming big-screen version of PlameGate is like hearing your biggest crush is going to be at some party: yeah they're really cute and that's great news, but who else is gonna be there? As in, who's director Doug Liman gonna get to play Dubya (our vote: Will Ferrell, of course!)? Scooter Libby? Bob Novak? Cheney, for chrissakes? As the Jumper director told MTV News, his take on tackling what could go down as one of George Bush's biggest missteps might require more far-fetched casting choices than Cinematical's suggestion of Richard Gere for Novak. As Liman says, "I have a really, really insane take on how to tell it. It's so outrageous." You know what would be really outrageous? Casting the entire movie using members of the SNL family!

Obviously Daryl Hammond should play Cheney and, if he can double fist it, maybe he could play Scooter as well? If not, we think some saggy eye makeup could turn cad-about-town Seth Meyers into the snarly should-be inmate. Amy Poehler could step in to play Plame in flashbacks, and Bill Heder is hot enough to play Plame's hubby Joseph Wilson and generate actual sparks (side note — it couldn't have just been us who felt some serious chemistry between Seth Rogen and Heder in Superbad, right?). As for Novak, we've got our hopes set on the Dr. Evil-inspiring Lorne Michaels, who has plenty of real world experience at masterminding rises and demises. Now all we need is a part written in for some sort of crime-fighting duo played by Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey, and this decade's Watergate will be one laugh away from The Naked Gun.

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<![CDATA['NYMag' Profile of Director Liman Leaves Out One Thing: Doug Is A Douche]]> Dougliman Sunday's New York piece on Bourne director Doug Liman was basically your typical boilerplate profile of the weird genius. Annoying-but-brilliant, healthily despised, and—for the purposes of this here piece—highly redeemable. That is, if you don't count the debasing way the director, son of a hero of civic litigation, treats his assistant. Less relevant to his character, but still a major put-off, we hear Liman doesn't brush his teeth!Author Steve Fishman recounts in detail Liman's destructive tendencies on set, quotes friends who once hated him (some sound like they still do) and dishes on the director's Daddy issues. But, this being a Hollywood magazine profile, in the end Fishman ties it up in a neat package: Liman may be a fuck-up, but he's a rebel fuck-up with a vision. A source who's worked with the director (and came away displeased, admittedly) tells us the profile misses in a big way. "Instead of the truth (he is a shitty Director) they cast him as a creative david fighting the Goliath that is the studios." A few insider details New York left out? Liman's not big on cleanliness (dandruff and deodorant mishaps), makes his assistant pick up the dog poo while he walks his pooch, and likes to brag about starting a new fraternity at alma mater Brown—the others just weren't cool enough for him. As for his power at the box office, his four major films (one of which he sort of swiped) reportedly cost a combined $238.7 million, with domestic revenues of $329.1 million. For a director who's spent over a decade in the business, "he has literally dozens of failures," says our insider.]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5002275&view=rss&microfeed=true