Doug Liman is in the director’s chair of The Bourne Identity, which was released in 2002 with the name Man Without a Past, which we can accept as a very successful naming in our country. I’m following Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, The Man Without a Past, and other important roles such as Franka Potent, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen and Brian Cox.
The Man Without a Past begins with the discovery of a man who has lost his memory by sailors, and then quickly turns into an action story. With the revelation that our character is an agent, this time the men who try to destroy him enter our story. Let’s take a closer look at the interesting information, some of which you will hear for the first time, about the movie The Man Without a Past, which started as a simple spy story and turned into the legendary Jason Bourne series in the following years.
Extraordinary information about the movie The Man Without a Past, where the Jason Bourne saga begins:
- Man Without a Past is an adaptation of a novel, and it’s not the first.
- Shooting the movie was the director’s high school dream.
- The director shot the film with a pure amateur spirit.
- The screenwriter hasn’t even read The Man Without a Past.
- Matt Damon was one of the last names to come to mind for the lead role.
- The Professor was almost not in the movie.
- Although the movie was released later than planned, it did very well.
- And the movie eventually turned into a series.
Man Without a Past is an adaptation of a novel, and not the first:
The first known The Bourne Identity movie is actually a 1988 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Robert Ludlum, which was made for the ABC television channel in 1980. The Man Without a Past movie, which we all know today, is a remake of the first movie in 2002. In fact, the first movie was much more suitable for the book, but whether it was because of the dark mood of the 80s or because it was a television movie, it was not as popular as its remake.
Shooting the movie was the director’s high school dream:
The director of The Man Without a Past, Doug Liman, first read the original novel written by Robert Ludlum in high school, and when he became a director one day, he set his mind to adapt it into a movie. He bought the film rights of the novel, albeit with difficulty, with the income he gained from the movie Swingers, which he proved his age in the cinema. He then signed with screenwriter Tony Gilroy and turned the novel into a movie script as he wished. Meanwhile, he shot the movie Go and finally fulfilled his high school dream by rolling up his sleeves for The Man With No Past.
The director shot the film with a pure amateur spirit:
If you’ve ever come across behind-the-scenes footage of a movie, you’ve probably seen the director sitting in a chair and giving directions around. The filming of Man Without a Past was not like this. Doug Liman started the shooting of the youth dream film with a real amateur spirit. So much so that instead of sitting for most of the shots, he himself went behind the camera and captured the frame of his dreams with his own hands. This is one of the biggest reasons why the movie has such a spirit.
The screenwriter hasn’t even read The Man Without a Past:
There’s a never-ending debate, which movie or better book? Even though it’s a novel adaptation, we can’t have that kind of discussion for Man Without a Past because Doug Liman wanted the script and the book to be two different stories based on a common theme. More interestingly, when Liman asked screenwriter Tony Gilroy to write the script for the film, he specifically asked him not to read the book. She gave him a sketch of the overall story, and Gilroy wrote a screenplay from that sketch.
Matt Damon was one of the last names that came to mind for the lead:
Brad Pitt was the first name director Doug Liman thought of to portray the main character in the movie, but Pitt turned down this role and starred in another spy movie, 2001’s Spy Game. Other names that Liman considered for the lead were Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, and Russell Crowe, but eventually decided that none of them could portray the character as well as Matt Damon.
Interestingly, Matt Damon has never played such an action-packed role before. That’s why he trained for three months in stunts, martial arts, boxing and the use of weapons before the filming began. When filming began, Damon’s transformation stunned everyone.
The Professor was almost not in the movie:
The character of Professor, played by successful actor Clive Owen, is one of the most crucial figures of the story, although he only appears in the movie for a total of three minutes and does not speak until the 85th minute. Interestingly, the farmhouse scene with the Professor was almost cut from the movie. The filmmakers found this scene too quiet and asked for it to be rewritten. However, both Doug Liman and Matt Damon knew how important this scene was, so they insisted and prevented it from being removed.
Although the movie was released later than planned, it did very well:
While the film was being shot, screenwriter Tony Gilroy continued to work on the script and occasionally sent new scenes and dialogues to the set. This process caused shots to be sometimes delayed or even repeated. Precisely for this reason, the film exceeded its budget by $ 8 million and was released in June 2002, instead of being released in September 2001. This delay will have brought luck as the film, which was shot for $ 60 million, grossed $ 214 million at the box office.
And the movie eventually turned into a series:
After the success of The Man Without a Past at the box office, Robert Ludlum’s other books about the character of Jason Bourne were also adapted into films. The Bourne Supremacy in 2004, The Bourne Ultimatum in 2007, and Jason Bourne in 2016 met with the audience. Are new movies coming? Why not.
We talked about the extraordinary information, many of which you have heard for the first time, about the making and behind the scenes of The Man Without a Past, the first movie of the legendary Jason Bourne series. Do you like The Man With No Past and the other movies in the series? You can share your thoughts in the comments.
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