Posted by: Sheila Roberts
MoviesOnline recently sat down with director Paul Greengrass at the Los Angeles press day for "The Bourne Ultimatum” starring Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, and David Strathairn. Over the past five years, audiences have eagerly followed Bourne’s perilous journey. When "The Bourne Identity” was released in 2002, moviegoers were enthralled by the film’s independent vision that put a distinct postmillennial spin on the action-spy genre.
To direct the second in the series, "The Bourne Supremacy,” the producers turned to Paul Greengrass, a British filmmaker who had garnered critical and audience raves for his documentary and feature films – such as the internationally acclaimed "Bloody Sunday” and "Omagh.” Though he was transitioning into big-budget filmmaking, Greengrass would retain his signature handheld cameras and style of lightning-quick edits while continuing the series’ storyline of one man against a clandestine government program.
Greengrass’ career exploded with the thriller and his follow-up work as writer/director of 2006’s "United 93.” The unflinching drama told the story of the passengers and crew, their families on the ground, and the flight controllers who watched in dawning horror as United Airlines Flight 93 became the fourth hijacked plane on the day of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil: September 11, 2001. Greengrass’ efforts and the film would both be put on countless top-10 lists, and earn the director his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
Now, Greengrass brings the rogue hero back to find answers about who and what Bourne is – and who made him that way – in "The Bourne Ultimatum.” This need for closure is what made Greengrass want to return to the series. "Bourne is a real man in a real world in pursuit of a mythic quest,” he reflects. "What’s wonderful is that it’s an oppositional story. Is he a killer, or was he made to be a killer? There is an underlying feeling that Bourne is one of us, and he’s running away from ‘them.’ He’s trying to get the answers, and he doesn’t trust them. They’re all bad, and the system’s corrupted. To convey that with a sense of excitement in a very contemporary landscape is great fun.”
In the world of action choreography, chase sequences and intricate plot switchbacks, the Bourne series has set a new standard for an entire genre. With an innovative story structure that rewards fans who have followed the series and thrills those new to it, "The Bourne Ultimatum” explodes with twists and surprises. Capitalizing on the increasing stature of Damon and a cast of award-winning supporting talent in "The Bourne Ultimatum,” internationally lauded filmmaker Greengrass understands that audiences demand intelligent espionage stories complete with heart-wrenching emotion and mind-boggling action. Here’s what he had to tell us about directing the third installment of the Bourne franchise:
Q: How important was it for you stepping into Ultimatum to ensure that this was as politically relevant as you could make it given the fact that you had done United 93 just prior to this and we are living in this post 9-11 world of eavesdropping, lack of privacy, etc. Was it important for you to ensure that this movie reflected all of those concerns?
Paul Greengrass: You know the thing is when you come to a Bourne movie, you’re coming to have some fun. That’s honestly the truth of it, I mean me personally. It’s a Saturday night movie. It’s the movie that I would go to if I was going out for a Saturday night and I would want to have a great time and have the best ride of the summer. I’m answering your question. I’m not being facetious here, I’m being honest. That, front and center, is what a Bourne movie has gotta be. It’s gotta be true to the character and true to the world that the character lives in. Now, the Bourne world is the world that’s outside our door. If you opened your door in New York or Paris or London or whatever, you’ve got to believe that whatever story it is that Bourne’s engaged in could be happening there. But I don’t come to a Bourne movie to make any kind of statement. What attracts me to Bourne’s world is that it is a real world and I think I’m most comfortable there.
But I come to a Bourne movie to have fun as a filmmaker, to strut my stuff and that’s part of the fun of franchise filmmaking. You get to build a ride and bring it out in the summer and compete with all the other great movies out in the marketplace. So yeah, there is an awful lot ‘cause we’ve all made…a lot of the people come back… they were there for Supremacy and you’re kind of feeling around the set is that we’re going to be the best. You’ve got to believe that. It’s quite sporting in a way. For me, it kind of feels like we’re going to win. When you’re directing a franchise movie, you want to foster that because you know they’re very, very arduous, long, tiring, complex, frustrating sometimes activities. But you must never lose the sense of adventure, you know, the sense of excitement. Now what makes Bourne special I think is that it marries that with intelligence, with cool story telling, it doesn’t underestimate its audience, and it’s got this kind of gritty, real, contemporary landscape. That to me to answer your question is that’s the dash of Worcester sauce. That’s the little bit of chili. but it’s not the meal. That’s what I think about it. When I go off and do my movies, then I’ll make the chili the whole meal.
Q: You take the audience on a very exciting and visual journey, what were some of the challenges you faced shooting in such diverse locations?
PAUL GREENGRASS: Every one of them was a hideous nightmare. That’s the truth of it. [Laughs] But one of the things that I like to say when I’m making a film—it’s a bit of a mantra for me -- is whatever our problem is, it’s our opportunity. It’s certainly true in a Bourne movie. One of the things that makes the Bourne movies so exciting I think is you do get to go on a journey. Generally through the franchise that journey is in Europe. This time obviously towards the end it comes back to New York. Unlike a lot of films, if we’re in Tangiers, we’re in Tangiers. We’re not on the back lot somewhere. That makes for tremendous logistical difficulties and tremendous difficulties in shooting. If you’re going to say let’s mount really a very large sequence on Waterloo Station. That’s the busiest terminal in London, you know.
Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people are going through that place every hour. You can’t lock it down. They wouldn’t let you and you can’t do it, so what you have to do is see that as an opportunity not a problem. What you get is the texture of life within it and one of the things I believe very, very much as a filmmaker is that if you create a film set, which incidentally is the classic way it’s done which is highly sanitized, you know, there’s a perimeter around it and you know, you effectively erect a wall around yourself and then you’ve got a sanitized space where you can make your movie inside that. That’s fine, but I think the problem is you become cut off from the real world, so I like to have a set that’s cheek by jowl with what’s going on, you know. It makes for problems, but what you get in return for that is the vibrancy, the energy of a huge mainline station or Tangiers or New York and it shows. It’s part of what makes the Bourne films special, I think.
Q: How did you shoot that sequence in Waterloo?
PAUL GREENGRASS: With enormous difficulty! [Laughs] You have to think carefully about how you are going to do it. What you do is you design the sequence that is in many, many pieces so in fact you’re planning to shoot in many different parts of the station. What you have to do is never be in the same place twice because what happens is people get to know you’re there and the crowds start to build up. What you have to do is be like a…it’s impossible to be a true guerilla unit because it’s a huge…it’s a Bourne movie…it’s a huge movie, but you’ve got to move from place to place and be unpredictable so people don’t know where you are and then move on fast. You’ve got to schedule it so that you’re not there for too long a period of time in any one time. So you might go for 2-3 days and then disappear and go off and do something else and then come back for 2-3 days a week or two later.
If people get to know you’re going to be there, then the crowds are going to build up and what it means, of course, it puts prodigious demands on the actors because they never know from one hour to the next which bit of the sequence… well even I didn’t know… you’ve just got to seize your moment. It makes for opportunity. I think that my films—I’m not doing across the board here-- but it’s certainly true of Bourne Ultimatum—you’re trying to bring together two forces that essentially are going in opposite directions. And those two forces are structure, order, planning, story, all the things that you can lay down in advance logistically, narratively, whatever it is. Then you’ve got the force of freedom, improvisation, the moment, the happy accident, the unstructured bit of filmmaking.
I think what I try to do all the time is bring those two into the closest possible proximity and where the two meet, that’s where a Bourne movie should be. It means that they’re fresh, you know. A Bourne movie is not an airline meal. It’s made on the run, you know. It doesn’t always work believe me. [laughs] But, you know, with this tremendous self belief in the team, we’ve got in my view the greatest movie star in the world who’s perfect for the part, fantastic producers in the studio who allow us to make this huge franchise movie in this incredibly edgy, bold way actually, and together as a team we get there, I hope. [laughs]
Q: You used a large number of stunt performers in this film. When you craft your scene, do you do the stunt aspect first or do you do the script and then kind of work the stunt in?
PAUL GREENGRASS: Well, the answer is that you…how do you design a big action sequence? First of all, you’ve got to attack it initially in its broadest sense. It’s just my view. Other people may beg to differ. I think it’s tremendously important when you’re looking at action in a movie and I think it’s one of the reasons why people love Bourne films, you’ve got to pay very close attention to how it’s set up. You’ve got to have a real reason for your character to move into action as opposed to oh, let’s just have an action sequence. Do you know what I mean? So how you set up the narrative and the issues that are in play that demand the central character to go into action are very, very important and you’ve got to choreograph that carefully, and if you do it carefully and satisfactorily, by the time you hit the action your audience is loving it because they’ve been primed to go. Then you’ve got to conceive of action in an original way that is consistent with Bourne and his world.
That means that when Bourne is in a corner, you can’t just have him, you know, pull out some bit of technology and get himself out of trouble or suddenly have some kind of magic powers that get him out of the hole or he’s a superhero so he can just swat them aside. You’ve got to think through the thought process of a real man absorbing information at high speed, making a choice and then executing it with pace and precision. When you’re making the film, that’s what you’ve got to show all the time, every time. You see that throughout all those action sequences and then the last fact that you’ve got to pay very close attention to I think and I’ve tried to do it in the two that I’ve done is that whenever you go into action, the action has got to lead to character development. The character has got to be changed during the course of the action. It’s got to be selling you something profound about the character as opposed to it just happening. So, you know, if you think of that whole Tangiers sequence, it resolves itself with a core character moment of shame about Bourne. He’s right there and he’s had to kill again and all of that. So when you marry those three things together, then I think you get satisfying action. To answer the question about the fight, the fight is essentially a violent ballet. That’s what it is in reality.
What you’re looking to do is to fight in this film. First of all, you have to commit to the actors doing it, not the stunt men. That’s number one. Stunt men may help enormously and always do in the preparation of the fight. When you prepare a fight, you’ll go into a rehearsal room and they’ll be stunt performers and you’ll start to work out with stunt performers to begin with and the actors how the fight might unfold because you can’t be exploring dangerous elements with your lead [actor]. Then as you get the shape, the actors will come in and we’ll start to build it up and change it and evolve it and they’ll have their own ideas. Then you start to work on the precision and the pace of it. It’s a tremendous amount of work that goes into these things before they ever hit the floor. Then once you’re on the floor, the moves, the dance is set. It’s a dance, that’s what it is, and they know. Then what you’re working on is if the tolerance is that between safe and somebody getting knocked out for 6 years, then you’re looking to get that tolerance to there.
Q: And you nailed it brilliantly.
PAUL GREENGRASS: Well I didn’t, they did. And that takes, believe me, unbelievable stamina for those two actors, day after day after day, incredible exertions of power, courage, because you’re getting hurt in those things. You can’t smash around like that for a week or whatever it is in confined spaces really. When you’re in front of it, it’s absolutely ferocious. It’s like they’re fighting. They are fighting. And then the last thing you need is an incredible trust that’s earned from rehearsal. Trust that when that guy throws that punch, it’s going to be real and he’s got to trust that the other guy is just going to be that far away and you’ve got to decide who’s in charge of the move because you both can’t be in charge. It’s incredible. Very exciting to watch if you’re a director.
Q: Was there any debate whether or not to keep the ending a bit more ambiguous rather than to show Bourne swimming away? Was there ever a moment where you felt maybe you should just leave it hanging a little bit?
PAUL GREENGRASS: Not really to be honest, not at all, in fact, to be absolutely honest. I’m always a very, very strong proponent myself of Bourne standing clear and unbroken at the end, but that’s because Bourne is a very moral character I think at heart. He never expresses any moralizing but he’s essentially a character—that’s why we love him--because he’s got a dark past and he’s renounced it and he’s trying to make a bright new chapter for himself. He’s seeking the light, always. Also he’s an outlaw. He’s us against them and they’re never going to catch him, so I never want Bourne to be caught. At some level I always want to believe that he’s out there, because he’s the person who says I won’t get fooled again. Where’s the answers? You’re lying to me. I just love that about the character.
Q: How has Matt Damon changed as you’ve worked with him over the course of this trilogy? He’s said it’s been seven years -- five years worth of movies doing this kind of incredible adventure. Secondly, as I watched David Strathairn throughout the movie, I couldn’t keep from chanting ‘Cheney, Cheney, Cheney.’ He seems to epitomize the government guy who is convinced that he’s right and does everything wrong and only has a belief in himself. How conscious were you of making that kind of a political statement in this movie?
PAUL GREENGRASS: [Laughs] The last one first. Honestly and truly I’m not ducking it, not at all. I mean it’s like…I don’t actually think he looks like Dick Cheney, does he? No, it never occurred [to me]…better hair, right? No, I mean it’s a Bourne movie. It’s not a private political soap box for me or anybody else. I’m not ducking it. That’s honestly what I feel. But as a franchise, it’s aggressively contemporary and that’s part of its appeal. It’s not topical though, and there is a difference between contemporary which is good in a Bourne movie and topical which would be Dick Cheney which would not be good because I wouldn’t want to go out on a Saturday night and see Dick Cheney in a movie. [laughs] That’s the truth of it you know.
Q: Last night’s audience was cheering when the CIA gets its ass kicked repeatedly. Were they cheering because they knew they were the bad guys or because it was the CIA?
PAUL GREENGRASS: [Laughs] We’re all engaged in the world. That’s why the Bourne franchise works because you go on a Saturday night, or whenever you go, but it’s an action adventure but the character has real heart and soul and a real moral component existing in the real world. He makes choices about the world. When he says I’m no longer Jason Bourne and renounces all the black ops that have scarred his life effectively for seven years, of course that has power, but I think it feels earned by the film. I think it feels earned in particular by the franchise, by the three films which really goes to your first question which is how Matt’s changed. I think one of the things that’s most interesting to me and I really look forward to -- and this is a funny thing to say -- but the last time I’ll watch this film is when it comes out on DVD.
I’m going to sit and watch Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum back to back and that will be it—done for it. I know what I’ll see. I’ll see he’s my friend, Matt, and I love him but I’ll see a wonderful, wonderful actor going through seven years of his life. Bourne aging and being tempered by his journey through the dark, paranoid, conspiratorial Bourne world, and that I think is part of why Ultimatum seems to work. It’s very hard when you make a film and you hope it works and you dream it works and you work your butt off to try to make it work, but you never know. You’d have a much better sense of the film than I would at this point, but I think one of the things that always did feel very powerful to me making it was this sense of Matt tempered. He’s six or seven years older now than he was when he was in Bourne [Identity] and the character of Bourne knows so much more now than Jason Bourne did when he was fished out of the water at the start of Identity who knew nothing. He didn’t even know what his name was.
He didn’t even know that he’d been in the CIA. Now he’s gone through two movies and the character you find in Ultimatum still has the full range of his skills. He’s implacably down the road towards finding the answers to his quest but he knows that he faces formidable adversaries who will probably never be beaten. Somewhere Matt manages to convey that and I think it crackles with contemporariness there. I think we all…and that really goes to the Cheney thing, I don’t think it’s about Cheney or any one government or anything like that. I think there’s something about a character facing the huge problems and challenges of the contemporary world and meeting them head on with courage, allowing for darkness and mistake, but ultimately always moral. That’s incredibly, incredibly inspiring and that’s honestly what I think. That to me is what it’s about and I think that’s why you enjoy the ride and that’s why I think people love the character because it speaks to them but not in any partisan way. It just speaks to the way the world is. It’s full of difficulty and challenge and violence and ultimately if you can keep struggling toward the light, you find the road.
Q: How much authorship do you feel for these films since you didn’t do the first one? Your style is very much identified with the whole series.
PAUL GREENGRASS: How much sense of authorship? Well, I’m not ducking it, but the truth is I’ll duck it. [Laughs] No, franchise filmmaking is a group activity. It really is. The scale of the activity is huge -- both logistically, financially, budgetarily, resource wise. You’re operating 360 degrees in a cruel time frame to make these things happen. No one person is the author of a Bourne film. The truth is it’s a coalition of people who share I think the same vision for Bourne and his world and it’s remarkably collaborative and collective. Oh listen, we disagree and we have tremendous old cat fights about we can’t go this way, we should go this way, and from time to time, somebody will have to judicate, whether it’s me or whatever. But that’s why they’re so great because I’ve never had an argument in a Bourne film ever -- like a bad argument, you know, never once. It’s fantastic. That’s one of the reasons why they work. It’s a brilliant team ethic.
Q: Paul, what did your Oscar nomination mean to you?
PAUL GREENGRASS: It was very nice. I was actually on the set of Bourne Ultimatum at that time and everybody was very nice. It meant a lot to me most of all because of the journey that we took with all those families. They were so incredibly supportive of us and it meant the world to them and of course, on a personal level, it was a great honor, but it meant most because they felt acknowledged in this city, by Hollywood. And I think that was fantastic.
"Bourne Ultimatum” opens in theaters on August 3rd.
