The Press Box - Making ‘Mission: Impossible’ the Best Movie Franchise, With Christopher McQuarrie | The Big Picture (Ep. 505)

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 Fentasy, 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 Macquarie 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 Cruz objects himself to and how he came to peace with his role in Hollywood now. Here's Chris McCuery. I'm so delighted today to be joined by Christopher Macquarie. 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. When I came to work on Rogue Nation,

we were all living in the shadow of Ghost Protocol, which was a towering achievement, and it was one of those movies that redefined the franchise. Or I think 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'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 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 the post-production stage or midway through production or I was a producer on a movie. But we tallied it up. And anything where we actually did real work on the movie, there'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 and then 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. 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 like a lot of work? Because he is more meticulous than some other stars? Yeah. I mean, he's extremely demanding.

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. 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. 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 he 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 this process would repeat itself week over week, over week, until Tom started to get a little bit anxious. 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 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. where would you like to go first?

Let's talk. We'll talk about the stunts. Okay. Because 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 I'm usually tasked with finding ways to cut all that out and just leave the bare amount of information in. Seans like the scene when Rebecca Ferguson is following Tom in Paris. 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 that section of the movie where the movie just stops for a bunch of,

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, it 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 Rames, Alec Baldwin, Rebecca Ferguson, Tom. They're all really good actors and great collaborators and you hear their voices in your head. So 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 Alex's idea. He said, I'll come back, but this is what I want to do. And I said, okay, we can do that. 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. I just... 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 talk about Henry Cabell's introduction of the franchise and Angel 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 Ving 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, like.

and 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. And 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. It made me want to serve him, made me want to make him a stronger character. and it worked. 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 was more than one character. I could 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. 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, we're going to make it his story with Ethan. You know, 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 and goes 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 got great energy. We were tired, we're cold, or 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 know, 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 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 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. The Taurus in Rogue Nation, the underwater sequence. The whole reason that happened is Jim Bissell just took a Taurus 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 is it was really not a thing i had committed to yet and i had 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. 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.

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 chasing another helicopter. No, he was not flying aerobatics. There's not a licensed helicopter pilot.

And it takes about three months to qualify. 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 worked with two crews every day and cut that time and 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 any anyone's imagination. It may very well be for all I know. Um, so how do we give this political tension? So I changed it to Kashmir. So now I know I've got a helicopter chase set in Kashmir. Why are they going to Kashmir? 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 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 had 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 how 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. Which is why I love 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. That 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. 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 learn, that's what editing is.

You think you're making 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 had you shot before Tom got hurt? About 60% of the movie. Okay. So we, 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 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 a 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 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 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 not, you know, 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, and 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 lardous. with all of this mythology in a way. And then the other one is Tom's breakneck commitment, literal breakneck commitment to doing the physical. Yeah.

And it seems like there's something connected there, but that also seems kind of perilous, especially long term. I mean, do you see a connection between those two things? Well, it's funny. 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 and go, all right, fine, just, all right, I'll come to the damn movie. You know, and they've reconciled. I think that that's right. 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. Tom and I are always a little 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 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 and his, intentions. And 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, you know, and I have people ask me all the time. They have their preconceived notions about Tom and they come up and they, you know, 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 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 wouldn't have made two. And so 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 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. you've been doing it for 30 years, I don't care how big your ego is. I just don't care. You don't dedicate your mental and physical energies to something that 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, oh, 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, no. He turns to the composer and he says, score the whole thing like it's one sequence. Just change the music. The movie goes up 20 parts. Yeah.

And it's because what he wants to do? He wants to deliver for you. He's really working his ass off. But you're saying 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 to you, I think it's a hoity-to-dy term to describe oneself as. I think it's dangerous to be...

First of all, it's not my ambition to be an artist or to be considered an artist. I'm a storyteller. 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, I see something happening now where we are expected to have a platform. We are expected to communicate a certain message. We are expected to be in some way or another an example. A brand.

Yeah, 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 a lot of filmmakers, a lot of artists, a lot of art is 10% talent and 90% myth. The greater the art, 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 a dangerous thing to play in because you just end up taking yourself too goddamn seriously. The notion of being a brand is terrifying because then you've got to protect that brand. and 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 story 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 was specifically wanted to ask you if maybe even winning an Oscar at such a young age, like 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 and 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 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. There is no business. There's a business. There's a studio business. There's a Netflix business.

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 it's over, you realize, oh, look, I made this. You forget that you hated it when it first started. You've just accepted it. And so that's all I'm trying to do with my communication with people is to say, you know, it's a journey and it's not a destination. Quality is not really up to you.

it's 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, go on and do it. By the way, totally hypocritical advice because I didn't do it. Well, that's what I was, 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. No. 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, you know, 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 know a director. Go to high school with a guy who 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 of, 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 right around the time of dead poets got a little bit of attention and it led to Brian being offered his first feature film now that's that is an unusually short route

that is not I'm not saying hey go to high school with Ethan Hawk 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 on.

Homeless people have cell phones. They have in their pocket the capability to make and distribute creative content. The pushback I get on that, 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 and, you know, like, that that was bullshit. And that's because, oh, you're asking me, how do you direct to 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. 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 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, you, 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 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 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 be 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 have all the projects, my dream projects that are, you know, smaller

movies that, or scalable movies that no one wants to make. And they don't, they don't want to make them because I'm not a, I'm not a commercially successful director on a piece of original material. How do, 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 asked permission to make movies. The change came from me when I finished Valkyrie. And understand that when Brian Singer called me wanting to make Valky, 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 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

we'll 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 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 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.

It'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 net? 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. Did that work? 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 wanted to be. The last great thing I've seen.

I watched, 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 Tim 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 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 is not the

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 Weiler's the 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.

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 and 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, the fight between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston, that confrontation that they have. 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. And I love that film, and it's one I recommend to everybody, everybody listening to this, should just go out and watch the movie, You take two hours of your day and watch it. 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 Pact mentality in school. And that great moment where Gregory Peck refuses to – he refuses to be pushed around and it shames his fiancé. And she says, don't you keep 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, 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, which is very, 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 Neiman 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 the ringer.com and see you next week.