Entertainment
“We did things you’ll never see in other films. It was a challenge but really cool.
This image released by Apple TV+ shows Casey Affleck, left, director Doug Liman, center, and Matt Damon on the set of “The Instigators.” (Apple TV+ via AP)
Filmmaker Doug Liman quickly realized he was no longer home.
Matt Damon, whom he directed in “The Bourne Identity” more than 20 years ago, recruited Liman for his new film “The Instigators,” an action comedy about a heist gone wrong. Although two decades of friendship are nothing to sneeze at, Liman was coming here to Boston to work with Damon and the Affleck brothers, Casey and Ben, whose roots ran twice as deep.
“I was suddenly parachuted into someone else’s family,” Liman said. “All families are crazy. And I loved it. I loved everything about it. In a way, I had gone back to the days of making independent films where we couldn’t get anyone’s attention in the industry, so you just did it alone with your friends. It’s my favorite kind of cinema.
“The Instigators,” an Apple TV+ release scheduled for August, is a “throwback” movie of sorts, in the vein of “Midnight Run,” producer Kevin Walsh said. Written by Casey and Chuck McLean, Damon plays Rory, a desperate father, and Casey plays Cobby, a petty criminal who teams up to rob a corrupt politician. This goes badly and they find themselves on the run, accompanied by Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau).
Liman was excited to direct Damon again for the first time since “Bourne,” and in a role so different from Jason Bourne, who was essentially a hyper-competent superhero.
“You’ve never seen a character like this in a heist movie,” he said. “He’s a guy who doesn’t go fast. He has done everything in his life within the rules and this is the first time he has broken the rules.
And although it was Liman’s first time working with Casey, playing a guy who “could never get his act together,” he said he quickly became his favorite actor.
“The Instigators” was a largely free-form, creative environment, where everyone participated in the storyline, including Damon and Ben, and worked to make things better. He hadn’t had this kind of experience huddling with his stars and thinking about the script as it went along since “Swingers.”
And it was a stark contrast to their days on “Bourne,” Liman said, where there were all these “adults in the room telling us how the movie is supposed to be made.”
“We obviously didn’t listen to them and that’s why ‘Bourne’ is as good as it is,” Liman said. “But here we were like, ‘Holy—, we’re the adults in the room. How did it happen?”
He praised the model of Artists Equity, Damon and Ben’s production company, for getting rid of many costly excesses in film. But, he says with a laugh, “it really feels like the inmates are running the asylum.” »
The filmmakers also used Boston, closing off streets and tunnels for chase sequences.
“We did a waterfall along the Esplanade that runs along the Charles River, which they never closed,” Walsh said. “We did things you’ll never see in other films. It was a challenge but really cool.
“The Instigators” was made in partnership with Apple TV+, which will give the film a limited theatrical run starting August 2 before it goes live on August 9.
Liman recently criticized Amazon/MGM for not giving its “Road House” reboot a theatrical release. But he’s not anti-streaming. This is someone who attributes his entire career to home video, which is where most people have seen “Swingers.” He laughed that it would even be absurd to project “Swingers” on a giant screen “given the poor quality of the technical work in the film.”
His main concern, he says, is that society is “in sync with the filmmaker’s agenda.”
“It’s not so much about whether you stream or release theatrically. It’s a question of what is the company’s agenda? Apple is a premium brand. They want to make ambitious films because it is in line with their brand,” he said. “For a filmmaker like me who wants to make smart, fun, brilliant commercial films and, in the case of ‘The Instigators,’ who doesn’t take itself too seriously, this was a really good company to work with.”
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