William C. Martell - The Bourne Movies

• • Nice Guy Assassin

  • The Screenplay

  • The Star

  • The Reshoots

  • The Bourne Movies

• • Introduction

  • Revolutionary?

  • Opening Hook

  • Paranoia

  • Intelligent Thrillers

  • Embassy Chase

  • The Red Bag

  • Drive He Said

  • Conflicted Quest

  • Shocking Action

  • Stay Or Go?

  • European Car Chase

  • A New Identity

  • The Big Plan

  • I'm The Bad Guy?

  • Love On The Rocks

  • Buying The Farm

  • End Of Love?

  • Act Three

  • I Spy

  • Confrontation

  • Twist

  • Conclusion

• • Introduction

  • Nobody Loves A Sequel

  • Opening Hook

  • MacGuffin

  • Our First Chase

  • Dis-Harmonic Convergence

  • Character Purpose

  • Connections

  • The Unusual Way

  • Mano-a-Mano

  • Meet Me In Berlin

  • Someplace Public

  • Will he Kill Her?

  • Crimes Of The Past

  • Police Foot Chase

  • The Guilty Party

  • The Ladder Of Villains

  • To Russia With Guilt

  • Kirill Foot Chase

  • Moscow Car Chase

  • Into The Darkness

  • Interlude #1

  • Contrition

  • Interlude #2

  • Conclusions

• • Introduction

  • Opening Hook

  • Story Flow

  • Tradecraft

  • Camera Paranoia

  • Clever Locations

  • Get Jason Bourne!

  • Just MacGyver That!

  • Cross-Cutting

  • What's At Stake?

  • Call Backs & Echo Scenes

  • Planned Suspense

  • Poking The Tiger

  • Eight Minute Chase Scene

  • Savage Fight Scenes

  • Which Side Are We On?

  • The New Clues

  • Dc Al Coda

  • Coming Together

  • Two way Clues

  • Final Car Chase

  • Coming Home

  • Crippled By The Past

  • Confrontations

  • Denouement

  • Conclusions

• • Introduction

  • Opening Hook

  • The Arrogance Of Sequels

  • Mass Elimination (part 1)

  • Drone Chase

  • Still No Act 2

  • Mass Elimination (part 2)

  • Long Term Parking

  • When Aaron Met Marta

  • Midpoint?

  • Number 5 Is Alive!

  • Can This Be More Boring?

  • Nothing Driving

  • All Too Easy

  • Stall, Stall, Stall

  • Talk Your Way Out Of This!

  • Hide & No Seek

  • Nonsense Plotting

  • Are We In Act 3 Yet?

  • Act 2 Chase

  • Vehicle Chase

  • Will We Ever Get To Act 3?

  • Every Movie Should End With A Bang!

  • Conclusions

• • Introduction

  • Re-Bourne

  • Stern Fathers

  • Public Meeting #1

  • Fast Walking Chases

  • Countdown

  • This Time It's Personal!

  • Cyber Paranoia

  • Public Meeting #2

  • What Happens In Vegas

  • American Style Car Chase

  • Mano-A-Mano

  • Loose Ends

  • Conclusions

• AFTERWORDS

  • Secrets Of Action Screenwriting

  • Hitchcock: Experiments In Terror

  • Hitchcock: Mastering Suspense

Who has a safety deposit box full of money and six passports and a gun? Who has a bank account number in their hip? I come in here, and the first thing I'm doing is I'm catching the sight-lines and looking for an exit. I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am?

The Bourne Series almost never happened.

The word on Bourne was that it was supposed to be a turkey, Damon said in an interview with GQ Magazine. Its very rare that a movie comes out a year late, has four rounds of reshoots, and its good.

Screenwriter Tony Gilroy told The Playlist, Oh yeah, oh man, nobody was more surprised (at its success) then me.

The film was supposed to be released on September 7, 2001... then got pushed back to February 2002 and then pushed back again to May 31st 2002.

The film was plagued with so many problems that everyone expected it to bomb... they were hoping that it might recoup its (fairly inexpensive) production cost before it died.

Just as the Bourne movies are similar to Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde with Bourne as both a nice guy and a trained assassin struggling to cohabit the same body, both the hero and villain of The Bourne Identitys production problems were the same person - director Doug Liman. Without him there wouldnt be a Bourne franchise... but with him the franchise almost died in its very first film.