The Big Picture - Making ‘Mission: Impossible’ the Best Movie Franchise, With Christopher McQuarrie | The Big Picture (Ep. 78)

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with ‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’ director Christopher McQuarrie to talk about his creative collaboration with Tom Cruise, the challenges and rewards of coming back for a second ‘Mission: Impossible’ film, and his personal reckoning with his role as a filmmaker post-‘The Usual Suspects.’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sometimes there are sequences where imagine you're building a puzzle, but the puzzle pieces are face down. You actually can't even see the picture. You're just having to look at how do these shapes fit together? That's really what making Mission Impossible is. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most interesting filmmakers in the world. Is Mission Impossible the best movie franchise we have? I think so, especially since today's guest became involved. Starting with an uncredited rewrite on 2011's Ghost Protocol, Christopher McQuarrie has become a constant in the MI universe.

The new installment, Fallout, is his ninth collaboration with Tom Cruise, and it's a delightful and genuinely thrilling Hollywood blockbuster. Chris sat down with me to talk about his journey from young Academy Award winner for his screenplay for The Usual Suspects to his new role as a franchise protector. We also discussed what he thinks of the insane stunts that Cruise objects himself to and how he came to peace with his role in Hollywood now. Here's Chris McQuarrie. I'm so delighted today to be joined by Christopher McQuarrie. Chris, thank you for coming in. Thank you for having me. Chris, you made what I would say is a kick-ass Mission Impossible movie.

Thank you. And the first thing I want to know is, what is the first thing you do when you sit down to write a Mission Impossible movie? Because this is your second. Do not try to top the last mission impossible um when i came to work on uh rogue nation uh we were all living in the shadow of ghost protocol which was a towering achievement and it was one of those movies that that redefined the franchise or i think in in the case of Ghost Protocol, it really defined the franchise. And so we decided very early on to embrace that template, not to try to top it,

not to try to outdo it, but just try to make a movie that was worthy of the franchise. We've been talking about that template a little bit in the office here recently. I'm curious, are there prerequisites for a movie like this that you know you have to hit when you start writing? There are very few rules. Ethan has to get a mission. There has to be a team. You have to use the theme song. And Ethan does not want to do any of the things that he does. He hasn't.

He's not a daredevil. If Ethan's going to do some crazy stunt, you have to force him into that so that there's no other alternative. Tom is somebody who's not afraid to look afraid and he's, he's not afraid for Ethan to look vulnerable. And I think that's what separates him from other spy heroes. This is your sixth project with Tom. Is that right? It's technically my ninth.

Oh my gosh. Are there some we haven't seen and don't know about? Yeah, there's just some that I've worked on in some uncredited capacity, whether I've come in at the, in the post-production stage or in, or, or midway through production, uh, or I was a producer on a movie, but we, we, we tallied it up and anything where we actually did, did real work on the movie. There's nine. Okay.

So nine is a lot. That's a significant's nine. Okay. So nine is a lot. That's a significant creative collaboration. Yeah. Much like Ethan having some prerequisites, are there Tom prerequisites where you know, I'm going to work on a project with Tom, so my work style is different in this way? Well, my work style is different in that I'm just going to be working a lot more. And Tom understands that I'm somebody who needs an enormous amount of pressure to ever do anything. He takes delight in creating that pressure. You sound like a writer.

Yeah, that's pretty much the curse right there. Deadlines are real. Yeah, and if I didn't have to write, I never would. So Tom likes to create the circumstances whereby I am forced to write, and that's where I do my best work. Okay, and why is there a lot of work? Because he is more meticulous than some other stars? Yeah.

I mean, he's extremely demanding. He's a real, he's a real perfectionist. You can always be doing better. That's not to say he's demanding in a difficult way. It's not like, no, I wanted it this way. No, now I wanted it this way. It's, it's, he's very clear about the things that he wants. He communicates in emotional terms rather than technical terms.

I want to feel this. I want the audience to experience that. And then I'm tasked with creating circumstances that deliver that emotion. And I'm very comfortable in that way. For me, the more boundaries you give me, the more creative I become. Interesting. the more boundaries you give me, the more creative I become. So it's much easier for me to start with a series of tasks than it is to start with a blank page. The blank page is very, very difficult.

What's the actual process like? Are you doing 10 pages and sending them to him and saying, are we on the right track here? Is it much more I deliver a full product? On Rogue, it was, we would talk every week. We would talk for a couple hours on saturday and then i would go off and then come back the next saturday we'd have a big breakthrough and then by the next saturday i'd come back and say you know remember that breakthrough we had yeah

that doesn't work and here's why it doesn't work but here's the idea it gave me and that would be the new saturday breakthrough and that this process would repeat itself week over week over week until tom started to get a little bit anxious uh but each one of those things where we built it up and burned it down again left some there was some residual benefit to that that was on rogue by by the time i started working on fallout i understood don't try to come up with the story for Mission Impossible. You come up with a basic concept of more or less a motive for Ethan or a thrust for Ethan. And on this one, I approached it from the emotion of his character rather than big action sequences and then trying to come up with a story that strung them together, which was what happened on Rogue. I didn't really think about the action. I knew I

had action and the action dictated certain things, but I focused more on the story and on Ethan's character. And that's a thing that's been lost in a lot of the lead up to this movie. The stunts and the action are so overwhelming that I'm looking at the marketing objectively and saying this all appears like it's a big cavalcade of stunts spectacular, but that there's actually a real story running through it. There's a real emotional through line running through the movie that I hope people come and discover. Yeah, we have two tracks we can go down right now in this conversation. The one is you're returning to this franchise.

You're the first filmmaker to come back, and you've created a higher level of continuity in the story for Ethan, for all the characters that are involved. And then the other one is we should talk about the stunts and the action set pieces and how amazing they are, which where would you like to go first? Um, let's talk, we'll talk about the stunts.

Okay. Cause that's what everybody's talking about. Everybody's asking you about them. I know, but I don't want to make you bored by it. No, no, no,

no. You're not making me bored at all. No, I just like to get in there. See, here's what I think is really great. The people watch the trailers and they think the whole movie's being spoiled for them it's not it's not the thing i'm so excited

about is that everybody's so focused on the action i've never made a movie before where a test audience told me there was just too much action in the movie i'm used to hearing there's too much talking it's you know all that character stuff is really boring and and i'm usually tasked with finding ways to cut all that out and just leave the bare amount of information in scenes like the scene when rebecca ferguson is following tom in paris uh and i'm not giving anything away when i say that that is quintessential shoe leather that's the stuff that gets cut right out of the movie every time nobody touched it nobody was bothered by right out of the movie every time. Nobody touched it. Nobody was bothered by that section of the movie where the movie just stops for a bunch of characters to talk.

And that's the stuff of the movie that's really got me excited. And that's what I think people are discovering. They're coming, expecting this to be this relentless action movie. And in reality, they show up and go, whoa, wait a minute. There's actually a story going on and there's some emotion in this movie. And it's not what you normally see in A Mission Impossible. I tried that in Rogue and I had to cut it all out. It just didn't work. And I realized what it was, is it was emotions you were watching other characters feel. It was not emotions you were feeling.

You know, it was intellectual angst as opposed to emotional, you know, really moving people. Was it easier then to be returning to characters that you had written before and that you had a relationship with and that we have a relationship with on this film? Well, it's always easy returning to the characters that are coming back because they're great actors. You know, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Rebecca Ferguson, Tom, they're all really good actors and great collaborators and you hear their voices in your head. So it's, they're very easy to write for. And they have a lot of ideas. Alec Baldwin is incredible. He's having a lot of fun in this movie. He's having a lot of fun. And a lot of what Alec goes through in the movie without giving too much away was alec's idea he said i'll come back but this is what i want to do and i said okay we can do that and

interesting that was a real blessing so two of his big moments in the movie are really his idea and his suggestion i love working with alec for that reason he comes in he's a collaborator and it's not one of those actors who comes in and says, I have an idea and a chill goes down your spine because, you know, it's like you're going to suggest something I don't like and I'm going to have to say no

and I don't want to be in the position of breaking your heart. I've long since gotten over that feeling. Yeah, his character is lightly redefined in a way that I feel like

every character is in the movie even though they're in this pattern that they have been in through a lot of these movies. You know, he's kind of in the fold now in a new way. What's it like

introducing these new people? There's been a lot of these movies you know he's kind of in the fold now in a new way what's it like introducing these new people there's been a lot of talk about henry cavill's introduction of the franchise and angela bassett of course they well the movie gets very very crowded very quickly yeah because you have to bring in all the new blood you've got to you've got to serve the old blood and on the last movie i really struggled with vang and jeremy and eventually at a certain point, I just said, the movie's got to be what it's got to be. And I can't be giving people stuff to do just to give them stuff to do. And I made friends with it.

And Mission is all about letting go. You come into Mission, you think there's a billion rules, or you're comparing yourself to another Mission movie, or you have an objective that you think is like the most important scene in the movie to what you're doing. invariably when you let that go the movie just all falls together so on rogue i resisted it and on fallout i only resisted it as far as one scene as opposed to the whole movie and teaching new people to do that is its own skill set certain people really roll with it and other people really struggle with it.

And Henry was one of the people who just rolled with it, that every day he came to work and his character was something different, sometimes smaller, sometimes two-dimensional. And to have an actor of his stature come to work every day and not balk and trust the process never question it uh it made you it made me want to serve him made me want to make him a stronger character and uh and it worked i had there was another actor on the movie who was very freaked out by the process and felt right up until the movie came out that they were not in the movie, that they were just, in fact, there's more than one character. I can think of three who all felt like their roles were being diminished and they were being swept out or punted until later in the movie. And to one of these actors, I said, it's Ving's turn. I said, I don't know, you know, after many other

ways of trying to placate them, I just said, look, it's Ving's turn. I said, I don't know. After many other ways of trying to placate them, I just said, look, it's Ving's turn. Guy's been in six of these movies and he's been in the van for all of them. And we're bringing him out of the van and we're going to make it his story with Ethan. Rogue was about Benji's story with Ethan. I couldn't repeat that. And then somebody like Michelle Monaghan coming back, having made three and having had that little cameo in Ghost Protocol. She understood the beast and understood it so well that when she walked on set, it was transformative. She's so unaffected and she's just really delightful. She's got great energy.

We were tired. We were cold. We were miserable. And it was a really, really hard time. And she just walked in and was like, hey, what are we doing? And it opened us up creatively and it really saved the end of the movie. It's funny, it's very balanced.

I do feel like everybody gets their moment in a way. Yeah, yeah. The action sequences, I wanted to ask specifically about designing them because you said you're writing character and you're writing story and you're making sure that there's some emotional thrust. But you don't necessarily have to top yourself, but you have to be inventive.

So how inventive are you on the page and how much are you redefining that once you're on set? Everything is story. So, you know, for the example, the helicopter chase. Tom said, I want to do a helicopter chase. And that was pretty much it. Is that where a lot of these things start? Tom says, what if we did this? It always starts with one or the other of saying,

you know what we could do or something I've always wanted to do. And that leads to a conversation. And we start to feel, you know, you start to feel the balloon go up and is the, and the higher the balloon goes, the bigger the balloon gets. In this case,

he said he wanted to do a helicopter sequence and he was going to learn. And so I knew I had to have something ready for him by the time he did it um the torus in rogue nation the underwater sequence the whole reason that happened is jim bissell just took a torus and did some concept art where he filled it with water because we'd been talking about doing an underwater heist of some kind and he stuck that on a mood board and tom came into the shop one day and saw that hanging on the wall and he said cool we're doing an underwater sequence and i was like oh my god because it was really not a thing i had committed to yet and i'd worked underwater on edge of tomorrow and it's really hard time-consuming miserable work so he said i want to do a helicopter sequence i knew i had to do it um well the first

question becomes where are we shooting it and very few countries would let tom cruise come to their country and fly aerobatics uh and he had not flown a helicopter before he'd flown but he'd flown a helicopter the way you know you drove a car when you were 15 years old right it was not he was not licensed he was not experienced certainly not It was not, he was not licensed. He was not experienced. Certainly not chasing another helicopter. No, he was not flying aerobatics. He was not a licensed helicopter pilot.

And it takes about three months to qualify. And Tom said, well, why does it take three months? And they said, well, that's working every day, eight hours a day for three months, seven days a week. And he said, well, what am I doing for the other 16 hours? So get me another crew. And he said, well, what am I doing for the other 16 hours? So get me another crew. And he worked with two crews every day and cut that time in half. Nobody wanted Tom to come to their country and do it, except New Zealand.

New Zealand was very accepting of it. So New Zealand, of course, is not a hotbed of political intrigue, at least in anyone's imagination. It may very well be for all I know. So how do we give this political tension so i changed it to cashmere so now i know i've got a helicopter chase set in cashmere why are they going to cashmere where does this sequence go in the movie is it in the first act second act or third act and i was determined to have the biggest third act of a mission when you lay all the movies on top of each other you look for the things the

other movies haven't done and in rogue i i knew i wanted to bring in a woman who was an equal to ethan and not a member of his team in fallout i wanted a villain who i believed was actually a physical threat to ethan so in this sequence i was like well if i put it in the third act that means this is the team sequence and experience it taught me. I can cut away to two other pieces of action. If I cut away to more than that, it starts to get a little bit confusing, a little bit tense. And then I had all the other threads of the story that I knew I was going for. They all somehow had to come together and pay off in Kashmir. And then of course, where does the helicopter chase start and where does it end?

How does Ethan get in the helicopter and how does he end up getting out of the helicopter and having any sort of climactic face-to-face with the villain, which is obligatory. So you can see how boundaries are popping up

and all those boundaries are forcing creative decisions. Do you like this puzzle making, though? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, It's great. And which is why I love editing. Editing, all editing is, editing is like, imagine if I came in and I dumped a puzzle on the table and took the box away. You had no reference of what the picture actually was. It sounds stressful to me, but it's nice that you like it. Yeah. Oh, I do. I do. And

sometimes there are sequences where imagine you're building a puzzle, but the puzzle pieces are face down. You actually can't even see the picture picture you're just having to look at how do these shapes fit together that's really what making mission impossible is i know what the pieces are there is no picture until i build the thing and turn it over and see oh so that's what i got and you learned that's what editing is you think you're a movie, but you don't really know what movie you're making until you've cut it all together. And I was learning as I went, because Tom broke his ankle,

I was able to edit a lot of the movie together. I suddenly realized, wow, I thought the emphasis was on this line in the scene, but it's actually on this line in the scene. And that's more about Ethan's character than it is about the plot. How much did you shot before Tom got hurt? About 60% of the movie. Okay. So we, but you know, all of Paris, all of New Zealand,

a little bit of London. In some ways, maybe some good luck. Oh, the best. I will tell you, and I've said it many times, disaster is the opportunity to excel. You, you welcome chaos into the process because it forces you to be creative it's not that i like chaos i hate it i want to go to work with the script i want to know what the plan is but i also know that if you get too comfortable you will not question the material and my job as a director is not to protect the screenplay that's a a writer's job. And writers who become directors tend to protect the screenplay, at least early on. And what I've done with each film is pushed myself to attack the screenplay rather than shoot it. And I think you can see an evolution in my directing.

I don't want to say style because I don't think I have one. My directing form that in something like The Way of the Gun, the first film I directed, it's very much about the screenplay. It is not a visually arresting movie. It's all basically about telling the story. Well, that's all information. It's not emotion. There are emotions in it, but it's not designed to deliver things to you on an emotional level. It actually is making you step into the narrative and suss things out. It's a puzzle, which is one of the reasons why people rejected it. They get very bothered by that when their expectations are subverted. And if I set something up in the

beginning and don't pay it off in the end the way they want, they react angrily. They feel ripped off. I did want to ask you about the way of the gun but before that there's two emerging conversation points i think about this franchise especially since you've been involved one is i think a lot of people now are like oh this is actually the best franchise it's the most fun one to partake in because it doesn't come as larded with all of this mythology in a way and then the other one is tom's breakneck commitment literal breakneck commitment to doing the the physical yeah and it's it seems like there's something connected there but it also seems kind of perilous especially long term i mean do you see a connection between those two

things well it's funny tom tom does not come without his share of controversy. And that's an element of these movies. And what I've watched happen over the course of three of these movies is there's a segment of the audience that prefers to look at the controversy rather than the movie. And I have felt that segment of the audience just eventually look at it and go, all right, fine. Just all right. I'll come to the damn movie, you know, and they've, they've,

they've reconciled. I think that that's right. I, I feel that I feel that in this movie, this is the first time of the nine movies in 12 years where I really feel the wind at our back. We were, Tom and I are always a little bit,

um, we're a little bit the underdog. There's a segment of the audience that's rooting to see the movie take a hit bit, we're a little bit the underdog. There's a segment of the audience that's rooting to see the movie take a hit when, you know, the guy's been that successful for that long. It doesn't feel that way anymore to me, honestly. No, I feel like,

look, I feel like if The Mummy had happened two years earlier, they'd have crucified him. They'd have been like, this is the one we wanted. This is the one we've been waiting for. And I think at this point, you look at him and go,

yep, there's some that work, some that don't. But overall, the guy's really delivering quality. I also believe there was a perception for a long time that Tom doing what he was doing was for his ego. It was hard to separate the motive for why he is as dedicated as he is. And I saw a segment of the audience looking at that as, this is all just a guy stroking his own ego and showing off.

No, he's really killing himself for your entertainment. He really loves making movies. He loves nothing more than the process of sitting in the audience and watching the movie with them. He goes to every test screening and he reads all the cards, everything you're saying about Tom Cruise, he's read it and it's water off his back. How does he process that information? That must be bizarre. Look, he's very confident in terms of his, for lack of a better word, his character and his, and his intentions. And he's, he's really got it in perspective that, you know, you can think what you want about me. I know what I'm here to do. I

know the person I am. I know the way I treat the people around me and I've seen him do it. So, uh, you know, and I have people ask me all the time, they have, they have their preconceived notions about Tom and they come up and they, you i've been confronted about stuff and i'm just like i don't know the man you're judging and i don't judge the man i know i i i am very comfortable in terms of my understanding of this man's character and if i had doubts about this man's character i wouldn't have made nine movies with him i would have made two um and so that what's interesting now is watching as that seems to have reached an equilibrium it's evolving yeah there's a certain point at which you you see two people arguing on the internet and one of them is going whatever man the movie's going to be good i just know the movie's going to

be good if you've been doing it for 30 years i don don't care how big your ego is. I just don't care. You don't dedicate your mental and physical energies to something with that much discipline. If it's really all just about your ego, it's his art. It's really the thing he loves doing. And I don't apply that term. I don't consider myself an artist. I consider what he does really to be an art his inherent understanding of how an audience is responding to the material when a test audience says uh the end of rogue nation

feels like it ends five times the studio solution is cut out one of the five scenes at the end of the movie and tom's solution is no no no he turns to the composer and he says score the whole thing like it's one sequence. Just change the music. Movie goes up 20 parts. Yeah. And it's, it's because what he wants to do is wants to deliver for you. He's really working his ass off.

But you're saying you're, you don't consider yourself an artist. I'm very interested. And you've talked about this a little bit, I think on Twitter, but this idea of being a filmmaker in the time of immediate communication between the fans and the viewers of your work. And also, you know, you've worked on some other franchise stuff

and the unique relationship that fans have to that stuff. You know, how do you, one, why do you not consider yourself an artist? Is it more of a technician? And two, how do you feel about the state of that conversation? If I'm going to be honest with you, I think it's a hoity-toity term to describe one's self as. I think it's going to be honest with you, I think it's a hoity toity term to describe as oneself as I think it's dangerous to be,

uh, it, first of all, it's not my ambition to be an artist or to be considered an artist. I'm a storyteller. She's like touring. I like telling stories. I'm an entertainer in a culture in which that word in a certain segment of a

culture, that word is like a dirty word. It's, you know, uh've we're i see something happening now where we we are expected to have a platform we are expected to communicate a certain message we are we are expected to be in some way or another uh an example and a brand. And yeah. And well, exactly.

You get a choice. You can be a brand or you can be an example. I don't think I'm either one. I think, I think a lot of filmmakers, a lot of artists, a lot of art is 10% talent and 90% myth. And the greater the art,

the greater the myth. And, uh, we, the greater the myth. And a lot of art is great because we are told it's great. It is accepted as great. Or we want to believe that it is great. We choose to accept it as great. And I think that that's really just, that's a dangerous thing to play in

because you just end up taking yourself too goddamn seriously you say the notion of being a brand is terrifying because then you've got to protect that brand and i my interaction on social media is about constantly deconstructing a brand before it can ever take root and deconstructing a myth before a myth could ever take root where other filmmakers i think are building up stories. It's like, I didn't come up with that idea. I got credit for it.

And that's the process. That's the reality. Some filmmakers don't appreciate that, that I communicate on those terms. Is that a byproduct of having some confidence given the amount of success that you've had? I specifically wanted to ask you if maybe even winning an Oscar at such a young age sort of relieved some of that burden for you. No. The Oscar is the ultimate double-edged sword.

But to answer your first question, all I am doing, communicating on social media, talking in this interview, in every interview that I give to everybody, I'm having the conversation with someone out there that no one had with me 20 years ago. That I'm trying to impart as much of what I have learned in the most concise and usable way. Because people ask me all the time, they ask me questions on social media, specifics about getting an agent and this, that, and the other thing.

And yeah, I could give you my journey. That's mine. And it's not going to help you. It's not, it's information. It's not experience. All learning is experience. Everything else is information. So I'm trying to communicate things to you in a, in the shortest possible way that causes you to think about it as opposed to follow it as an instruction. I'm just, all I want to do is democratize this medium because when people say how do I get into the film business do you have an iPhone in your pocket you're in the business that's there is no business there's there's a business there's a studio business there's a Netflix business there's

a there's a Hulu and an Amazon and there's a YouTube business. But the question that they're asking me is how do I make money doing this? How do I do it for a living? Well, that's a different question. It's a different question entirely. And that's a much more cynical answer. You want to make money now? And you want to make a lot of money now? It means making something you probably don't want to make in a way that you probably don't want to make it. And your experience as a storyteller, creator, artist, whatever it is, is the journey to that place. Filmmaking is a process of acceptance. You shoot a movie and then you get into the editing room and you realize you didn't get anything you wanted and you hate everything. It's all depressing. And as you start to cut it

together, you fall in love with it. And before's over you realize oh look i made this you forget that you hated it when it first started you've just accepted it you've you've and and and so that's all i'm trying to do with my communication with people is to say you know it's it's a journey and it's not a destination. Quality is not really up to you. It's not something you determine. It's determined for you by other people. All you can really do is look at your work and say, I did my best or I didn't do my best. And you're only in control of your intention. And what I try to impart to other people when they say, you know, how do I get an agent? How do I get this? And how do I get that?

You're asking the wrong question. You're focused on result and not on execution. That's what it's all about. It was around the time of Rogue Nation that I think I first started hearing you say, just go do it. Just go take a weekend and go shoot something. Rent the equipment, 150 bucks, go out and do it. By the way, totally hypocritical advice because I didn't do it. Well, that's what I was going to ask you a bit about that too. I mean, I know that you didn't necessarily start out pursuing this kind of work, but you did have a lot of success fairly early on once you started doing it. And you said it was a double-edged sword. I'm curious about that. So I got into this business because i went to high

school with brian singer brian singer however he did what i tell people to do now i can't say noah director go to high school with a guy who's has an enormous talent for breaking into the film business so i'm trying to short circuit that by saying the whole reason that I'm here is because Brian Singer went to USC did not get into production he got into critical studies he abandoned two years of credits at SVA to go to USC and he went to USC knowing that the most important part about going to USC was he was going to school with other filmmakers he was forming relationships with the people with whom he'd be working for the next 30 years of his life. And because he didn't get into production,

he didn't get to make a short film. When he graduated USC, he took all of his credit cards. He scraped up a bunch. He scraped up all the money he could. He maxed out his, he extended his credit. And for $20,000, he made a short film. On 35 millimeter film, he got our other high school buddy, Ethan Hawk to be in it. Timing was good. Ethan was, it was right around the time of Dead Poets school with Ethan Hawke and go to high school with Brian Singer.

You can discount everything that I'm saying. If you look at everybody who's making a living doing this, because we're all in the movie business, but everybody who's making a living doing this, they are there because they made or they are closely associated with people who made their own luck. They created. They didn't come to this because they were looking for a job. They came to this because they couldn't stop creating. That's what they were there to do. Now we live in a world in which you don't need $20,000. You don't need to max out your credit card rating. You can take your iPhone, which you have to have in this society. It's no longer an optional thing.

Your camera phone, your Samsung, I don't care if you're walking around a little Motorola Flip and homeless people have cell phones. They have in their pocket the capability to make and distribute creative content. The pushback I get on that, there's for everybody that says, yes, thank you. You've encouraged me. There's always somebody who dismisses it in this very cynical way. Brad Bird and I were both talking about this back and forth on social media, and there were guys attacking us that that was bullshit. And that's because, oh, you're asking me how do you direct the Incredibles, not how do you make a living doing this? You want to know how we got here.

Well, the answer is hard work, really hard work. And in my case, I won an Academy Award with my second film. I didn't work again for seven years. I didn't make another movie for seven years. I didn't make another movie for seven years. Some of that was self-imposed though, as I understand, because there were things that you didn't want to do that would have been more sort of business driven that you were less interested in. There were things I didn't know to do. I did not understand that that's the blessing and the curse of the Academy Award. What the Oscar did was kept me alive for all the years where I would have quit. I would have quit.

If you had made me work for seven years without that leg up, I would have quit. I would have quit. If you had made me work for seven years without that leg up, I would have been like, this is futile and I don't have the talent and nobody wants what I'm selling. But I was never freer than when I was writing The Usual Suspects because I didn't understand the rules. I didn't know that I was breaking them. Well, as soon as you know them and you try to it they're a lot harder to break when you're suddenly aware of them you're suddenly consciously trying to do it you're not in the same creative headspace i've i've striven to get back to the same almost almost enlightened unawareness that i had when i wrote that script because all I really cared about was

the impact of the story, not the getting it made. And all I was trying to do was deliver a script for my friend. And Brian was putting that creative pressure on me that someone like Tom puts on me now. We have to wrap up in a little bit, but I do want to know what it's like then, specifically because of what you just said, to a studio filmmaker, putting out theatrical releases now today. And if there's any part of you that sees the other options and is interested in that, or if you find it more difficult or less difficult. Well,

I said, I have all the projects, my dream projects that are, you know, smaller movies that, or scalable movies that no one wants to make. Uh, and they don't,

they don't want to make them because I'm not a commercially successful director on a piece of original material. Are you comfortable with that? Are you frustrated by that? I've made friends with it. I no longer rail against what that reality is. I also no longer ask permission to make movies i simply the change came from me when i finished valkyrie and and understand that when brian singer called

me wanting to make valkyrie that was for me i had written that as a thing i wanted to direct i didn't want to give it to brian to direct but I also understood no one wanted to make it with me. And when they heard Brian was attached, suddenly they didn't even need to read it and they wanted to make it. That was a very powerful moment for me. It was a realization that I will never direct X-Men, so I will never direct Valkyrie. I will never direct Superman Returns, so I will never get to direct Booth or The Last Mission or all the other, my little dream projects. So I'm never going to be the filmmaker I want to be. Why am I in this business? Because all I'm doing now is rewriting movies that don't get made to finance the writing of scripts that no one will make. This is not for me. I'm going to quit the business. So I

gave into it and I let Valkyrie go with the understanding that I was going to take the paycheck Pay off my debts And find another career whether I went to write books or whatever it was And I learned in that moment that I was going through the door that opened And I found myself very to make a long story very short a couple months later I was on a set in berlin standing next to tom cruise making a world war ii movie I was making the movie I had wanted to make Just not in the capacity that I had convinced myself. I needed to be making it in which is

It's my movie. I've got to be the director. I had as much influence on that movie as any movie that i've directed It was a partnership between me and Brian and Tom. And I got hung up on a label and I got hung up on a vision of what it had to be. I suddenly realized my destiny in this business is to simply contribute the best way I can. So I came back after having finished that movie and I took a general and it was the last general meeting at a studio I've ever taken. And I went in to sit with some executive can't remember his name don't think I ever saw him again and he said we had did the 10 minutes of small talk and then he said so what do you got and and now I was in the room and someone

was asking what have you got and I had been two years before trying to get into those rooms to tell them what I had and to beg them to. And he said, what do you got? And I said, nothing. He's like, nothing? I said, nope. What do you got? I'm here to help you. And if you could have seen his expression, no one had ever asked him that question.

And he started pitching me his slate. And he pitched me a movie and I listened to it. I said, yeah, no, that's not for me. What else? And he started pitching me another thing. And I watched him as he started sweating. And I realized this is the side of the room I should have been on. It's not, will you make my movie?

It's how can I help you make yours? I have skills that I can contribute, whether it is writing, producing, editing, directing. And I'm not one of those guys who's made the transition. I just finished Mission Impossible. Movie is doing pretty well. Any other director would look at this and go, now, how do I parlay this into my next directing gig? I'm already on a writing job for another director. And I don't care. I'm actually quite delighted to just be in the meeting and going, how do we help you make your movie, man? Do you think I should conduct my podcast interviews in that same fashion? Just let

you sit there until you figure out what you need to ask me so that we can start the conversation? Yeah, absolutely. You could try it. Sure. Yeah. I'm the worst. I mean, you ask me a question, I'll talk for half an hour. No, I've loved it. This is the last question I end every episode by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? So I'm curious, Chris, what's the last great thing you've seen? Does it have to be something I've never seen before? It can be anything you want it to be. The last great thing I've seen.

I re-watched and I re-watched quite often. Well, I'll tell you a really great movie, a movie that really impacted me that I saw in a theater. It's been a while since I was able to sit down and watch movies. One that really grabbed me was Hell or High Water. Yeah. What did you like about that? David McKenzie's movie. Well, I went to see it with a buddy of mine, talbot he's a screenwriter and we walked out of that movie and tim said you know what that was a great movie in the 80s that would have been a good movie and he what he meant was it's a movie they used to make a lot more of and it's the thing i love about going to movies is not the purpose-built money engine, but it's actually just an expression and it's telling a story.

And I really loved it. More recently, the movie that I go back to a lot, and I've referenced it before, and it's a big inspiration to me, is The Big Country. William Wyler's The Big Country. Yes, I know it. Why that film? What I love about that film is it's one Big Country. Yes, I know it. Why that film? What I love about that film is it's one of those movies that when you watch it,

you find yourself saying, why isn't this a classic film? Why isn't this a film that I know more about? Has the right stars, has the right filmmaker. Oh my God, it's got everything in it. And it should be up there. And it's so great. It's to me, the storytelling in that movie is as good as The Princess Bride. It's a terrible comparison

because they're completely different movies. But the way that it takes Western conventions turns them on their heads. Gregory Peck is a sea captain. You never see the ocean. He never wears a cowboy hat. He never wears a gun. He gets in a showdown, but in the most unusual way.

It's a showdown with dueling pistols. And the whole movie is about character and honor and personal responsibility. And this notion of a man who has defined himself and will let no one else define him. And you watch as his adherence to his code, it embarrasses and humiliates, but never him. People are embarrassed for him. They're ashamed of him and they're ashamed for him. And he walks into this culture where everybody is devoted to proving themselves, that that's the way of the West. You have to prove yourself to everybody by fighting and standing up to.

And he refuses to play the game on anybody's terms but his own. And by the end of the story, he owns everyone. And that adherence to character, that sense of discipline in a personal code is delivered in a way that is completely believable. And it has one of the great fights of all time. There's the fight between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston, that confrontation that they had. And there's a little moment in Fallout, there's a shot in Fallout between Henry

and Tom that is very much not intentional. But when I saw it played back, I went, oh my god, there it is. Like, there's the ghost of that movie coming through. I love that God, there it is. Like there's the ghost of that, of that movie coming through. And I love, I love that film. And it's one I recommend to everybody. Everybody listening to this should just go out and watch the movie, take two hours of your day and watch it.

And just, it's a great lazy Sunday afternoon movie. And it's especially great if you're a parent and you have children, young children who are dealing with bullies and dealing with, and I showed it to my daughter when she was seven years old and she was dealing with sort of nasty pack mentality in school. And that great moment where Gregory Peck refuses to, he refuses to be pushed around and it shames his fiance. And she says, don't you care what other people think? And he said, I'm not responsible for what other people think only for what i am and the impression that this made on my seven-year-old daughter because it's not just words you see it demonstrated you see it dramatized in a very believable way he goes through enormous hardship by adhering to his code but in the end he comes

out all right and that's it's just i think it's just a beautiful film i wish there were more movies like that. I'd love to do a Western that isn't what Westerns have become. Anything post-Unforgiven is bleak and deconstructionist. And I like the Westerns that were more their parables as opposed to anything else. I'd love to see it. Chris, I could talk to you about movies all day. I appreciate the time.

Appreciate you sharing some of your code. Thanks for doing this. Please. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture. If you are interested in more content about Mission Impossible, I promise you The Ringer has you covered. Please check out The Rewatchables, where me and Jason Concepcion and Chris Ryan sat down to break down the very first film directed by the great Brian De Palma. And then check out the site.

Adam Naiman reviewed the film for the site. Shea Serrano wrote about that first film. I'm writing about the series. So there's plenty if you're interested in the world of Mission Impossible. Go to theringer.com and see you next week.