‘A celebration of America’
American Made director dishes on his new movie and hanging with Tom Cruise
Director Doug Liman thought he was familiar with the story behind his latest film, American Made. It’s a retelling of the little-known tale of TWA pilot Barry Seal, who became a friend to the Medellin Cartel, a drug smuggler and a Drug Enforcement Agency informant. Seal was a central figure in the 1980s’ Iran-Contra scandal that rocked then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s administration.
Liman’s late father, Arthur was chief counsel to the Senate committee investigating the affair.
“It was a story I already knew,” said Liman. “I just didn’t know it from the (point of view) of the people on the ground doing the mission.”
Liman recently spoke about the film and his partnership with American Made star Tom Cruise.
Q In the film, Barry Seal keeps saying how much he loves America while blatantly gaming the system — drug smuggling, laundering money. Do you think this is a cynical movie?
A I don’t think it’s cynical. I think it’s a celebration of America. We are this land of opportunity and opportunists. And the same drive that Barry had when he’s flying these missions for the CIA, which is like, “I know how to get around law enforcement because the CIA is helping me, but I’ve got an empty airplane on the way back …” How is that any different than Henry Ford or Mark Zuckerberg?
Q And you’ve teamed up with a larger-than-life movie star for this in Tom Cruise, who you’ve worked with before and will again on the Edge of Tomorrow sequel.
A It’s kind of hard to work with Tom Cruise and not be aware that you’re working with one of the biggest movie stars in the world. We shot part of this movie in this really remote airstrip in Colombia … an hour and a half flight from the closest road. Along the river by the airstrip, there were these Indigenous people living not too far from the airstrip. I said to Tom, “You know, those people don’t know who you are.” And Tom’s like, “They’ll know who I am.” I was like, “They have no electricity. They are 300 miles from the closest road through the densest forest. How could they possibly know who you are?” We stayed a day there. We camped there for a night. And on the second day the Indigenous peoples came up with all these gifts for Tom.
Q Why do you think you two work so well together?
A We created a really safe space where we can be totally honest with each other and can push ourselves and do things outside of our comfort zone.
We have the kind of relationship where if he’s doing something and it’s not working — and I’m trying to figure out how to tell him gently that it’s not working — I’ll say, “You know, Tom that was …” and I’m trying to figure out what word to use and Tom will go “Terrible?” And I’ll be like, “Yeah, that was terrible.” And he can say the same thing back to me.
Q Between this and Edge of Tomorrow, you’ve got a lot of credit for putting him in more unconventional roles.
A As much as I want to say American Made shows you a Tom Cruise you haven’t seen before, the reality is it has most in common with Risky Business, where he was a high school student who started a brothel.
Q And you also lived together while making the movie?
A This will sum up my relationship with Tom: We shared a house making the film. I was taking piano lessons while we were making the film, and I learned Old Time Rock and Roll and I kept playing it to see if he would slide into the room in his underwear … but he never did. I thought it would be a Pavlovian reaction.