When Tom Cruise asked him to take command of the new, and troubled, Mission: Impossible movie — with a budget somewhere in the $250 million range — Abrams immediately said yes. Then he laid down conditions.
Mission Accomplished with J.J. Abrams
J.J. Abrams created two of television’s most exciting shows, but until recently he had never directed for the big screen.
Eight years ago, a relatively inexperienced 30-year-old New York writer created Felicity, a TV show about a young woman making it through college in the big city. This year he’s helming Mission: Impossible III, once again starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt and featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain (and Felicity star Keri Russell as a new IMF recruit). If you’re wondering whether someone at Paramount has lost his mind — putting one of the studio’s most expensive and successful franchises in the hands of a director who’s never made a movie before — consider this: Abrams created the Jennifer Garner spy-thriller Alias and the brilliantly complex Lost, and he was the writer of director Michael Bay’s Armageddon. So while Abrams is at the pinnacle of his TV career, he’s content returning to his action roots with M:I III.
You’re going from the top of the television heap to a movie for Paramount, which can say, “We’re sinking a quarter billion dollars into this film, so we can choose who you work with.” How do you decide which fights to fight?
Abrams: That’s a great question. The answer is, in my gut I knew that Scott Chambliss, who was the production designer on Alias and Felicity, had not just the skill set and the aesthetic, but also the shorthand with me. Having worked, at that point, on three seasons of a spy show with me, [we shared] a common language [and he knew] how to make it happen, as long as he had the support team he needed. He blew everyone away by delivering incredible set design and beautiful work.
You must have felt like you were a kid in a candy store, since you could do anything you could think of.
Abrams: It’s insane. It’s like working on Alias, which is always fun. The truth is, in the beginning we’d write these really elaborate set pieces, and when it would come time to shoot them, we’d realize we needed to pare them down to the absolute bare essentials. Even there we’d be limited in so many different ways.
One of my favorite things about the spy genre is the pieces. Famously, from the Mission: Impossible series. It’s so funny, going back and reading what the experiences were like actually making the [TV] show, because it was literally verbatim my problem on Alias. That kind of storytelling demands pieces. You need dozens and dozens if not hundreds or thousands of pieces to connect, to tell the steps and the stages of these kinds of operations being executed.
On a television show, every time you have a piece — whether it’s an insert or a moment with an actor — that’s hours of shooting. You literally can’t do what you want, with the exception of maybe the pilot, when you have more days and some more money. So, realizing we can now do all these shots, you have to say, “Okay, just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Where are the moments we don’t need?” Because we don’t want [the movie] to become a laborious sequence of moments where [the audience is] like, “Can you please just fuckin’ get to the point?”
What’s it like to be able to bring your writing to life on a scale you’ve never been allowed to before?
Abrams: It’s funny, because for better or worse, writing on Alias or Lost, I would often write things that were just at the edges of my imagination and what I thought was possible. It was never about what TV would allow me to do. There’s one thing in Alias, the episode we did that aired after the Super Bowl, where [Sydney Bristow] is fighting a guy on an airplane. [She] shoots at the window, the door pops off, and the guy goes flying out and gets sucked into the engine.
The fun of this was being in that same mode of “What’s the most compelling, fun sequence? What’s the story that works the best, and how do we make this thing beat for beat the most exciting it can be?” The process was truly identical to what we would do on Alias. It’s just at the point of execution that you realize you’re not shooting on Olive Avenue in Burbank for the Vatican. You’re actually at the Vatican [laughs].
By the way, you get no cooperation with the Vatican. There was this one scene that I needed with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers going into the Vatican, so I brought these three beautiful women in bikinis and these three older women dressed as nuns and set up a fake production with cameras, tents, lights, and everything about half a block away. Within half an hour, a massive crowd was surrounding this totally bogus and ridiculous shoot. Meanwhile, when we were ready to shoot, Rhys-Meyers ran out of the van. We had one guy with a Steadicam, and we got the shot we needed; it’s in the movie. It was a scramble. Total guerrilla filmmaking in the midst of this mega-budget Tom Cruise movie. It was so funny.
“You don’t need to remember a thing about the first two movies to watch this one.”
What did you think of the original Mission: Impossible series?
Abrams: The TV show? I fuckin’ loved it. I loved the sense of this team of really cool, true pros working together, plotting and executing these intricate missions. I felt that was something the film series never really embraced. The IMF [Impossible Missions Force] — I just never quite understood what they were in the two films. You got a taste of it at the beginning, but once the movie began and [Ethan’s] team was killed, you were kind of left high and dry. Then it was just about him.
What’d you think of the films?
Abrams: I enjoyed the first one a lot, especially its first half, which had the vibe I loved. One of the high points is in the middle, when Ethan Hunt crosses paths with Jim Phelps [played by Jon Voight] at the train station. It’s that classic creepy, De Palma-at-his-best moment of shock to see Voight back in the movie. That was really fun. But from that point on it got a little confusing and slightly hard to follow. Then the finale with the train and helicopter in the tunnel, it was just so over-the-top that it was hard to … you know, it was fun, but not credible.
And the sequel?
Abrams: The second movie, in many ways for me, wasn’t really a Mission: Impossible movie. It didn’t really have that sense of the team, which I loved from the show and much of the first film. And even though I’m a fan of John Woo, it felt like the movie was so Woo-icized that it was more about that in some ways.
So, coming onto a series that’s had some stuttering steps, what do you do? Even before you came on, this movie was having problems keeping people. David Fincher [Seven] was named as director, then Joe Carnahan [Narc].
Abrams: First of all, I’m dying to see Fincher’s version of this movie. I would love that. Having said that, I’m a real fan of Narc and would love to see what Carnahan would do. Every time they announced a director for this movie, I was psyched. I was a little more psyched when they announced me, but I was thrilled for those guys, too.
The truth is, Tom asked if I was interested in directing and I said yes before he could finish asking me. I hadn’t seen a script. I didn’t know what the story was in any detail.
Whose script was it at that point?
Abrams: The last writer was [Frank] Darabont [The Green Mile]. The writing was brilliant. He’s one of my favorites, and by the way, [it’s] a movie I still would love to see, whether it’s called Mission: Impossible or not. But to be asked to direct something that is just not in the tone of what you would want to do is a tricky prospect. On the one hand, y’know, Yes, I’m in. On the other hand, Can I really do that justice? Do I want my first movie, regardless of who’s involved or what the title is, to be a movie that is just not what I would naturally be attracted to?
The storyline, as beautiful and complex as it was, was just not the kind of movie that if you said to me, “What would you want to do?” I would say, “That.” So despite the obvious allure of this opportunity, I told Tom it really wasn’t my Mission: Impossible. I had to say, “Yes, I want to direct this movie, but that’s just not the movie I think I can do justice to.”
“They kill motherfuckers. These guys are dark. They do whatever they have to do.”
Do you think delaying Mission: Impossible III by a year contributed to the entire Paramount regime changing?
Abrams: You never know exactly what leads to what, but I would say there was a moment — and this is all behind-the-scenes stuff that I sort of saw happening—when Steven Spielberg was going to do Munich, Tom was going to do Mission: Impossible, and a year later they were going to do War of the Worlds. Tom, like Michael Jordan in his prime, saw this as a move to make, and he rearranged [the schedule] of four different studios, hundreds of people, and untold millions, if not billions, of dollars. He made this maneuver happen so that at the end of it, in the blink of an eye — in slam-dunking this basket — he and Spielberg moved up War of the Worlds, they pushed back Munich, and they changed the start date for Mission: Impossible III. It was like shh-shhick-shh — and all of a sudden everything was in its place.
So where did you start when you began creating your version of Mission: Impossible?
Abrams: Tom Cruise is closer to 40 now than to 20, you know what I mean? He’s not a kid. It was fascinating getting to know him little by little and seeing that he is incredibly good-hearted, smart, well-meaning, and well-intentioned. He’s just passionate and loves movies like crazy. He understands structure and story in a way that any writer would envy.
I started asking myself, Who is Ethan Hunt? How do you exist as a man and do the kind of shit he apparently does in his world? These guys kill motherfuckers. These guys are dark. They will do whatever they have to do. If it’s illegal, that’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t get in their way. This is a team of — when they need to be — lethal savages.
What happens when, at around that age, you start to think, Am I going to have a family? What’s my legacy going to be? Is it just my work?
And it’s all work you don’t get credit for.
Abrams: That’s right. It’s invisible! So the question is, How does that man survive? And without getting into the kind of a drama where you go, “Ahh, I came to see Mission: Impossible, not Ordinary People.” In my favorite movies, whether it’s Die Hard or Jaws or Tootsie or Back to the Future, you see that 20, 30, or 40 minutes were invested in getting to know who these people were. You care about them and understand their condition before a gunshot is fired, or before a DeLorean races back in time, or whatever.
To me, the fun was saying, “My version of Mission: Impossible is one that is diving right into the emotional question of who this guy is in this moment in his life and how that conflicts with the things he has been doing and the kind of jobs he has had in the past.” It doesn’t deny the first two films, by the way, but it also doesn’t rely on them. You don’t need to remember a thing about the first two movies to watch this one.
So what did you decide to do in terms of putting his team together? Who offsets Ethan Hunt’s skills?
Abrams: The truth is, Ethan just happens to be an all-around talent. As genius as you can be, one man does not an army make. We needed to use other people. Not just in terms of “you can only occupy one place at one time,” but the fun of seeing how these guys work together. It was about giving the whole team a sense of professionalism and confidence. There’s one guy who is the wheelman, and there’s someone else who is a little more stealth. This was more about watching a group that, ostensibly, has equal skill sets, plotting and executing a really intricate operation.
So you’ve got Ving Rhames, who is back and really strong in this movie. Rather than just being the exposition man or comic relief, he’s a guy who, while very funny in the movie and having a great tone, you get to hear his point of view, especially on relationships and marriage. It applies very specifically to where Ethan Hunt is in his life.
You have Maggie Q, who, besides being impossibly gorgeous, is about as lethal and tough as they come. Rhys-Meyers is such a superstar that seeing him with Tom was really fun. You had a guy who is in his mid-twenties who has this charisma that’s painfully strong, and with Tom — the two of them together were combustible and just great.
So you’ve got these four working together, and then you’ve got Laurence Fishburne and Billy Crudup working back at IMF headquarters.
One of the people I’m very curious to see how you use in the film is Simon Pegg [Shaun of the Dead].
Abrams: God, I cannot fuckin’ say enough about that guy. First of all, if I’ve ever been in love with a man, it is Simon. The guy is a god. Part of this, I’m sure, is just my sycophantic appreciation of his work, but I loved him for the same reason I was excited about everyone else in the movie — it was an opportunity to work with actors and either use them in ways you’ve never seen them before, like Phil Hoffman, or someone like Simon, who you know is a slam dunk if you need a character with some quirks to be kind of funny.
I am convinced there is no possible way Tom Cruise can win if Philip Seymour Hoffman is the bad guy. Cruise is totally fucked!
Abrams: [Laughs] Well, he is so fucking good in this movie. I met Phil just after college, like 18 years ago, and have sort of known him on and off since then. But watching him, his career, and his unbelievable skill as an actor, I’ve wanted to work with him forever.
So when this came up and we started writing this character — not trying to think about personality, just sort of what’s the guy like as a character — it immediately came to me that it should be Phil Hoffman. I called him up and he was interested. One of the things that got me excited was, this guy is so damn good, you could probably give him scripts from the third season of the Batman TV show and he’d probably win an Oscar.
The genius of [Hoffman] is that you can give him the kind of moments that would be silly in lesser hands and just let him do his thing. I’m not saying throw bad writing at him so he can elevate it, but I was talking to Tom Cruise about this one scene on the airplane—the one that’s in the trailer — and Tom was like, “Let’s talk about other bad guys.” We talked about [Anthony] Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, [Alan] Rickman and his work in Die Hard as [Hans] Gruber, and John Malkovich in In the Line of Fire. I was like, “Fuck!” I just felt this wall of erudite-sophisticate bad guys, and I was so sick of that.
If you go back to Hopkins prior to Silence of the Lambs, or Rickman prior to Die Hard, they were just really great actors and then they played villains better than anyone.
Abrams: That’s the thing. My feeling was, I’ve seen so much of that that I don’t want to do another guy who’s like, “Let me explain to you, Mr. Hunt …” My friend Matt Reeves, who worked on Felicity, [and I], we’ve had this thing since we were 13 or 14 years old where he does this, [well-bred accent] “Mr. Bond! So good of you to come to our little party. Please, come inside!” I would hear in my head the silly, over-the-top James Bond-ian bad guy.
What was so cool with Phil was, this is the guy who can play the fuckin’ savage, bruiser motherfucker who will say to you — even while captured and in the fuckin’ hot seat — “You know what I’m going to do next? I’m going to find her, your wife or your girlfriend. I’m going to hurt her. I’m going to make her bleed.” He could say shit to you while he is in a totally vulnerable, powerless position and sell it, and make you scared because you know he means it.
It was just the opportunity of a lifetime to use a good actor who happens to have that natural ability to make you believe what he’s telling you, and put words in his mouth that are at the core of what you want to see someone like Ethan Hunt have to deal with. He just brought it, and was intense and tough and funny.
What have you done with Michelle Monaghan?
Abrams: The thing that makes me insane is when any character, whether male or female, is just objectifi ed as the “prize” or the “good-looking person.” She plays Ethan Hunt’s love interest. She’s an incredibly competent, capable woman — like a real person. She’s a nurse at a Virginia hospital, very athletic, and one of the things that she and Ethan have bonded over is their love of extreme-sports stuff. They’re a good pair.
Where did you find her?
Abrams: I called [director] Shane Black [Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang], who I knew, and said, “Look, I’m doing this movie …” And he was like, “[Michelle] is the greatest ever. Game for anything, works her ass off.” Literally, he would not shut up. I was like, “Can I see your movie?” He said yes, so I went over and watched it with him. This was well before it came out, and I thought, Yeah, that’s her.
What are you going to work on after Mission: Impossible?
Abrams: The fact is, doing this movie literally was the manifestation of — as I’m sure you can imagine — a lifelong dream. Whatever I’m able to do next, whatever they have me do, I want to make sure it’s something I care about, it feels like it’s worth anyone’s time to go see, and it’s meaningful.
I love doing Lost. My feeling is that going back to Lost would be very satisfying, and I cannot wait to go back and direct another episode. I gotta get out there again, and I want to make sure it’s the right time for my family and it’s the right project. Hopefully after this movie they’ll still let me direct.
In case you were curious, given the benefit of retrospect we can tell you J.J. Abrams went on to direct two “Star Trek” and two “Star Wars” movies, along with a couple of other stand-alone features, where he recieved dircting and producing credit in all and writing credit in all but the Trek ones. (Clearly Trekkies can be persnickity about their stories.) Honestly, his IMDB page makes us tired just reading it.
