That dude who wrote ‘The Usual Suspects’ makes the rounds

Alright, I’m only joshing Christopher McQuarrie with the “that dude” quip.  Count me in the “Usual Suspects” boat, a film I’ve been in the tank for ever since it sparked something in me 13 years ago (along with Michael Mann’s “Heat”).  Both movies played a serious part in forging the film lover before you.

McQuarrie’s latest project is another Bryan Singer effort, the Tom Cruise starrer “Valkyrie.”  AP writer Jake Coyle cornered the scribe recently to discuss McQuarrie’s Oscar-winning work over a decade later as he and Singer make the press rounds on their somewhat under-reported reunion.

In an interesting anecdote toward the end of the piece, McQuarrie notes that only after finishing production on “Suspects” did he and Singer realize they had completely different conceptions of the film’s narrative:

“I pulled Bryan aside the night before press began and I said, ‘We need to get our stories straight because people are starting to ask what happened and what didn’t,’” recalls McQuarrie. “And we got into the biggest argument we’ve ever had in our lives.”

He continues: “One of us believed that the story was all lies, peppered with little bits of the truth. And the other one believed it was all true, peppered with tiny, little lies. … We each thought we were making a movie that was completely different from what the other one thought.”

So who believed what?

With a broad grin, McQuarrie responds: “I’ll never tell.”

Meanwhile, over at Cinematical, James Rocchi speaks with McQuarrie from New York concerning the project at hand, “working alongside the German government, how producing a mega-million [dollar] war film was like ‘drinking from a firehose,’ forgoing German accents, his possible future take on superheroic franchise ‘The Champions’ and much more.”  Listen to Rocchi’s podcast here.