In an interview with IndieWire , the director of Mission: Impossible – Fallout , Christopher McQuarrie, revealed that he wants to start making independent films now that he has a successful and established career as a filmmaker.
McQuarrie, whose first big break was winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Usual Suspects , claims that he now wants to start making the type of films he always dreamed of making, but never did.
According McQuarrie, his career didn’t really take off until he gave up on his own film dreams and started making movies that other people actually wanted to see.
“I was really struggling and was forced to confront what I was doing wrong: ‘Why couldn’t I get something going? What did the business want from me that I wasn’t giving them?’” McQuarrie reflected.
McQuarrie noted that creating films for actor Tom Cruise really helped him make a name for himself, who has now worked with the actor for a full 12 years as both a screenwriter and a director.
“I’ve been through a farm system that most directors haven’t,” McQuarrie said, referring specifically to his work on the film Edge of Tomorrow , in which he wrote in an uncredited role.
McQuarrie also noted that helping other filmmakers with their movies was particularly significant to his growth and career as a filmmaker.
“Those are things I learned, not from the films that I was making, but the films I was making with other filmmakers where I was coming in to help to fix their broken or struggling movies, because I had a level of objectivity I don’t have on my own work,” he said.
Approaching the age of 50, McQuarrie claims he is finally capable and successful enough to make the more complex independent films he dreamed of making when he first started out in the film industry.
“I never actually made any of the movies I set out to make at the beginning of my career,” he said, adding that his old film pitches were often quickly and vehemently dismissed.
Referring to other Hollywood filmmakers and their target audiences, McQuarrie commented on how he perceives them all.
“The things that I believe are great stories are — they terrify them, so there’s a moment of decision here for me, as I finish with this movie and potentially with this franchise, to think about where am I going to apply that and I’m finally be in a position to go back to the beginning.
“I’m in a position now where I have enough saved up that I can go back to being an independent filmmaker and build my career, from a smaller movie, build it out,” McQuarrie said.
