 |
 Director J.J. Abrams gives the always focused Tom Cruise some tips on set. |
Hollywood wunderkind J.J. Abrams, who is riding the crest of co-creating the TV hits Lost and Alias, thinks Tom Cruise is crazy.
But it is not what you might think. And it has nothing to do with the "jumping the couch" phenomenon or Scientology rants or hoopla over the birth of the TomKat baby, Suri.
The 39-year-old Abrams is the director of Cruise's new movie, Mission: Impossible III, which opens Friday. It was an extraordinarily rewarding experience, especially because of Cruise, Abrams said on a Toronto visit this week.
"I'm not just grateful to him for the opportunity," Abrams told the Sun about making his feature film directorial debut on M:i:III, "but I'm grateful for the experience of actually making the movie.
"So, when you say to me that people think he's crazy, I say, I thought he was crazy to offer me this movie -- but I'm the beneficiary of that vision that he has."
The New York-born, Los Angeles-raised Abrams had written movies early in his career, such as Taking Care Of Business (sold while he was still in school at Sarah Lawrence College), Regarding Henry (starring Harrison Ford) and Forever Young (starring Mel Gibson). But then he was sidetracked into television on Felicity, bridging that success to Alias and then Lost.
|
The credits are prime time but hardly the pedigree that Cruise, as co-producer with his partner Paula Wagner, would consider worthy of the director of a $140-million project that is a potential summer blockbuster.
So, when Cruise first broached the subject of directing M:i:III, Abrams said he was flattered, even shocked. But the prospective director also then researched the Cruise control factor with other directors who had worked with him.
"I talked to a lot of directors before I started shooting just to get a sense of what to expect, because it was pretty uncharted territory for me," Abrams said. "So I talked with Ron Howard and Michael Mann and Oliver Stone and Ed Zwick and Cameron Crowe. And every single person I spoke with said: 'Hardest-working man you'll ever see; focused, dedicated, kind, deferential, respectful!' And Cameron Crowe said: 'He's going to spoil you for the rest of your life.'
"But this is a movie that he produced. This is a movie that we were making post-meeting Katie Holmes and declaring his love on television and all that stuff. But the truth is, that, in working with Tom, I was the recipient of the passion that he has exhibited through his career. When he believes in someone or something, it is with all his being. I am someone he believed could direct this movie. It was a lifelong dream of mine. I can't think of anyone who would give me a chance on anything like this. But he believed in me."
Abrams seems poised to revive the Mission: Impossible franchise after the last one, John Woo's M:i:II, sucked the life out of it artistically. Abrams, though, was skeptical that he would have the chance to follow through.
"I took it seriously," he said of the initial offer to direct, "but I had been through so many near misses. I had worked on Superman for two years (post-Nicolas Cage, during the Brett Ratner phase) and that didn't happen. Before that, I had written a movie version of The Man With X-Ray Eyes, which I loved, for Tim Burton and that never happened. I had written a version of Speed Racer that I worked on forever and that never happened.
"I was not involved (in those) as a director but, still, I had had my big epic movie near-misses again and again. So I was thrilled to do this but it was always a case of: 'I'll believe it when I see it!' " On day one on location in Rome last year, he believed it, following through on a vow "to give Tom a bearhug -- and never let go."
Abrams laughs about it now, adding with a sheepish grin that the only reason he let go of the bearhug was the shooting schedule. "We wouldn't have got our film day done."
J.J.'s mission in life
Mission: Impossible III is exactly the movie J.J. Abrams had wanted to make since his grandfather took him on the Universal Studios Tour 31 years ago, at the age of 8.
"My favourite kind of movie -- and this may be an un-artistic approach but I say it unabashedly -- is the big movie," Abrams said in Toronto this week.
"I love big movies when they're well done. I love movies that are epic in scope but intimate in character and emotion."
That is what he wanted M:i:III to be, Abrams said. His template for the ideal big movie is Aliens.
Others include Die Hard, Back To The Future, Star Wars, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Jaws and E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial.
"For me, Aliens was a miracle because it was a sequel," Abrams said. "It is an inspiration and I think it may be better than the original. It is certainly very different. I suspect James Cameron felt, when the idea of a sequel to Alien came up, that there was a dream version of that world that had not been done yet. So he jumped at the chance."
As for jumping into Mission: Impossible, Abrams said, "My ambition was to make a movie that, while there is a number three in the title, was a valid movie."
The mantra for Abrams and his screenwriters was simple, he explained. "I said to them: 'Let's start from scratch. We would say, 'Literally, the story is about a man who ...' "
So they tried to balance the action with personal drama, such as giving Cruise's character, secret agent Ethan Hunt, a wife (Michelle Monaghan) who would be at risk when the villain (Philip Seymour Hoffman) uses her as bait to entrap Hunt.
"No one is going to pay to see Mission: Impossible for some laborious, artsy family drama," Abrams said with a laugh, "but I knew that if we didn't care about those people, nothing would matter ... and the action would be irrelevant."
As an example of family drama working in an action movie, Abrams cites the Roy Scheider dinner scene in Jaws, in which his son mimics him while his wife watches. "It is the kind of stuff that gives you chills," Abrams said. "It literally is the lifeblood of the movie.
"The irony is, that when people copy successful films like that, often they don't look to those scenes." Abrams said he did not want to make that mistake.