Refresh for more…This afternoon at Cannes, Tom Cruise made a surprise appearance at a masterclass event celebrating his longtime collaborator, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie.
Why does it click well with Tom Cruise. “A love of cinema,” said McQuarrie about their shorthand.
“When I met him, I was going to quit the business,” said the Mission: Impossible filmmaker.
“What I know about working with him for so long, Tom is always a student. He’s eager to learn from the people around him,” he added. The other plus is that Cruise likes to empower the visions of those around him.
“He doesn’t come in to write for me, he comes in to write for the voice of the actor,” said Cruise who has worked with McQuarrie across 11 pictures, “that’s movies.”
Cruise praised McQuarrie for “understanding every single piece” in a Mission movie from characters to investment in the story. “It’s a Swiss watch,” the actor added.
“What’s etched in stone, it’s the heart of the story, which is character,” said McQuarrie.
When it comes to the action sequences in Mission, no matter how much one preps, “the physics hit you right in the face,” said McQuarrie. Cruise is always of the mindset of “we can do better” per McQuarrie, but the way these elaborate death-defying stunts go down stems from learning lessons from the previous Mission movie.
Talking extensively about the motion picture industry, McQuarrie was wise and pragmatic. Though a filmmaker of several sequels in a multi-billion dollar box office franchise, the Princeton, NJ native knows full well that cinema is in peril. He sees the film industry, particularly when it’s at a crossroads with streaming as one of “deposits and withdrawals.” Read, Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick brings people into cinemas, so smaller auteur movies like Anora will find a following.
“I worry for the fate and survival of cinema,” said The Usual Suspects scribe turned filmmaker.
McQuarrie said, “Streaming is in danger of driving the industry into extinction,” he said. “The advantage a filmmaker has entering the world is that he doesn’t have the pressure of an opening weekend.”
“They don’t have the same kind of competition and they’re allowed to experiment and fail, and failure is essential part of success. It’s part of the filmmaking journey,” the director continued.
“That’s the only time I really learned — so long as you don’t become comfortable and complacent in that.”
McQuarrie is a five-time director of five films in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which stars Cruise as undercover agent Ethan Hunt, and he directed Cruise-starrer Jack Reacher. The frequent collaborators also know each other from McQuarrie’s writing career on projects such as Edge of Tomorrow.
He also recalled The Usual Suspects, when asked how he feels about its status as a classic movie.
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