Christopher McQuarrie (born 1968) is an American screenwriter, director and producer. A regular collaborator of director Bryan Singer, he co-wrote the screenplay of Singer's Public Access, wrote the screenplay for The Usual Suspects, co-wrote and produced Valkyrie and co-wrote Jack the Giant Slayer and Edge of Tomorrow.
McQuarrie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Usual Suspects. His greatest commercial success was The Tourist, co-written by him which grossed US$ 278 million worldwide. As a director, McQuarrie wrote and directed The Way of the Gun and Jack Reacher. He is slated to direct Mission: Impossible 5, his fourth collaboration with actor and producer Tom Cruise after Valkyrie, Jack Reacher and Edge of Tomorrow. He also created the short-lived TV series Persons Unknown.
Early life
McQuarrie was raised in Princeton Junction, New Jersey. He worked as an assistant at Christ Church Grammar School in Perth, Western Australia, and at a detective agency. In 1992, fellow schoolmate Bryan Singer offered him the opportunity to co-write Public Access.
Career
Public Access
In 1992, McQuarrie co-wrote, with director Bryan Singer, the thriller Public Access. Despite mainly negative reviews, it won the Critics Award at the Deauville American Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize. The film did not secure a theatrical distributor.
The Usual Suspects
Three years later, Singer and McQuarrie collaborated again on the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, for which McQuarrie received best screenplay awards from Premiere Magazine, the Texas Board of Review, and the Chicago Critics as well as the Edgar Award, The Independent Spirit Award, and the British and American Academy Awards. The film was later included on the New York Times list of the 1000 greatest films ever made, and the character Verbal Kint was included on AFI's list of the 100 greatest Heroes and Villains of all time. In 2006, the Writers Guild of America voted The Usual Suspects No. 35 on their list of 101 Greatest Screenplays. â†'
The Way of the Gun
Five years later, in 2000, Artisan Entertainment released The Way of the Gun, a modern-day Western written and directed by McQuarrie. It starred Benicio del Toro, Ryan Phillippe, and James Caan. The film received mainly negative reviews and performed poorly at the box office, grossing US$ 13 million worldwide off a reported US$ 21 million budget.
Valkyrie
Eight years later, McQuarrie co-wrote and co-produced Valkyrie, which opened on December 25, 2008. The story is based on the real-life July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The script was co-written with Nathan Alexander. The pair had access to members of the Stauffenberg family as well as a book written by Fabian von Schlabrendorff â€" a conspirator who survived. While doing research for the screenplay, they also spoke with Hitler's bodyguard. In an interview,
McQuarrie discussed how the plot succeeded in one key respect; despite the conspirators' obvious failure to kill Hitler, one of their objectives was also for history to reflect that they tried so the world would know that not all of Germany or its military was sympathetic to Hitler. The film stars Tom Cruise and is directed by Bryan Singer. It received two awards, the BMI Film Music Award and the Bambi Award for Courage.
The Tourist
In 2010, McQuarrie co-wrote Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Tourist, starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. The film grossed US$ 278 million worldwide. It received three Golden Globe Award nominations and several other awards, among them the Redbox Movie Award for the most rented drama of 2011.
Jack Reacher
In 2012, McQuarrie directed Jack Reacher, an adaptation of One Shot, the 9th in the series of 19 Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. Paramount Pictures released the film.
Tom Cruise played Jack Reacher amid criticism that he was too short to play the part of a 6'5" character. In an interview with the BBC, Lee Child stated that although Cruise was not the Jack Reacher from the novels, he still felt Cruise had the talent and presence to make an effective Reacher. Filming began in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area on October 3, 2011, and continued through the end of January 2012. The film was released in December 2012. It won the BMI Film Music Award, and was nominated for three Golden Trailer Awards.
Jack the Giant Slayer
2013 saw the release of McQuarrie's fourth collaboration with Singer: Jack the Giant Slayer, co-written by McQuarrie. The film was a failure at the box office, grossing only US$ 198 million with an estimated US$ 240 million budget (excluding promotional fees). The critical reviews were generally negative.
Filmography
Director
- The Way of the Gun (2000) â€" Also writer (original screenplay)
- Jack Reacher (2012) â€" Also writer (adapted from novel)
- Mission: Impossible 5 (2015) â€" (adapted from TV series)
Writer only
- Public Access (1993) â€" Co-writer with Bryan Singer and Michael Feit Doug
- The Usual Suspects (1995) â€" Writer (original screenplay)
- Valkyrie (2008) â€" Producer and co-writer (original screenplay) with Nathan Alexander
- The Tourist (2010) â€" Co-writer with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Julian Fellowes
- Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) â€" Co-writer with Mark Bomback, Darren Lemke and Dan Studney (based on an original idea by Lemke)
- Edge of Tomorrow (2014) â€" Co-writer with Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth (adapted from novel)
- The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015) Co-writer
Television
- NYPD Blue (1994) â€" Writer (1 episode)
- The Underworld (1997) â€" Writer
- Persons Unknown (2010) â€" Creator/Executive producer
Bibliography
- McQuarrie, Christopher. The Usual Suspects. Faber and Faber Publishers (1996); ISBN 0571191533/ISBN 9780571191536
References
External links
- Christopher McQuarrie on Twitter
- Christopher McQuarrie at the Internet Movie Database
- Christopher McQuarrie at AllMovie
- Christopher McQuarrie at Rotten Tomatoes
