CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE

Directing has completely changed the way I write and watch films.

While I was a voracious movie-goer as a boy, I never put writing and films together in my mind.

The truth of the matter is movies are a reflection of life and violence is a real part of life. I don't think you could make movies exclusively where there was no violence.

I think it's a lot easier to tell a war story about two sides of a conflict with one another as opposed to one side in conflict with itself.

For everything you give an audience, you always have to take one thing away. They always have to pay for the story.

I'm a big fan of the movies of the '60s, more than a fan of the movies of the '70s.

My films do very well on home video.

There is no 'Top Gun 2' in which Maverick is not the starring role.

I love traveling around promoting different movies because I'm always looking at different places, and I always walk around to see the city.

I always feel like an outsider. I'll always feel like the nerd at the party.

When you've written a film and directed it and it comes out exactly as you imagined it, it's pretty boring.

'The Way of the Gun' I wrote in five days.

Scripts don't get movies made.

Success is never bad in Hollywood. It is what you do with success that will dog you.

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.

When you're making a film, you don't really have time to consider what the whole of your film is. And then, when you're releasing your film and promoting your film, you're looking at it in a different way. Then, as you move away from it, you start to look at it objectively and think, 'What could I have done better?'

The challenge in most car chases is you're trying to hide the fact that it's not the actor driving.

Oh my God, you look at all the uniforms in Star Wars, and it's all Nazi iconography.

What makes a movie now is a package, a brand, a remake or some preexisting material.

History tends to take the simplest possible view. As soon as you start to scratch the surface of any historical event, it starts to become more and more complicated, which is not the stuff of Hollywood films. Complications tend to break down the budget.

The way I like to describe Hollywood today is this: everyone wants to make 'Deliverance,' but no one wants to be Ned Beatty.

With 'Rubicon,' Mark Long and Dan Capel have created the perfect environment for an intense action franchise.

I love films like 'Deliverance' where you can watch it over and over again and decode all of its many different meanings.

A lot of books, if you take them at face value, they're just not gonna work as films.

Action to me is something very fun to shoot.