Mission Impossible III (2006)

What did you do here? What I tried to do with the sky and the clouds. I thought it would be really smart if we said Paramount. And there you go. There it is. On the mountain. Hi, I'm J.J. Abrams. No, you're not. Yes, I am. No, you're Line of the People. I am J.J. Abrams. And I am Tom Cruise. Okay. You produced this film with Paul Wagner. You directed it. First film directed. Thank you for doing it. Thank you. This scene, you're so emotional in this scene. People have asked me, you know, what did you do? What kind of stuff did he do to get into this? I'm like, look, I don't know how he does it. I have no idea. So you can talk about that. But I wanted to say that we started the movie this way. We came up with the idea weeks into it. Originally, this scene was here, but it wasn't written that way. And it wasn't that character. It was not Philip at the beginning, which... It was... It was Eddie Marsden who was actually behind him. He was going to be... And when you said Philip should be there, I kind of went, oh, my God, you're absolutely right. How could... You know, you have those moments when you're working on something saying, how could I not have thought of that? All of us, you know, you, me, Bob, and Alex working, and you're just, you know, you have that working so closely with a piece of material, and then suddenly it's so obvious. Well, you know, actually, Eddie is a terrific actor. No question. A wonderful English actor, and I actually had to call him and say, look, I know that You know, you have a deal to be in this movie. You've done, you know, this scene. You're planning on coming back to do this other scene. I'm giving all of your lines to Phil Hoffman. And he was like, he was such a gentleman. I know he was. He was just the greatest. He understood it. Oh, he totally understood. He said, make the best movie you can make. He was just fantastic. And I loved working with Eddie. But I was going to say that we started this scene, the movie with this scene, because instead of starting with a... big stunt or action set piece, which is what you might expect. The idea of starting in the most intense, unexpected, intimate, scary way and see Ethan in a way you've never seen him before. And your vulnerability in this scene, especially in this moment when you see just how scared you are at this whole situation. What I love about it is that all bets are off and the audience, kind of knowing it's going to be a story about this conflict, it starts on this scene. I just love the idea of beginning a movie in a way that you just don't expect and just scaring the hell out of people. When we talked about it and then when I read this scene and I couldn't wait to play this scene. And across from Philip, this guy's second film that I made with Philip, great actor. You don't... You don't expect this kind of scene in this genre that I think would you bring to this genre and to filmmaking that here we have this heightened experience but this emotional journey, character journey that we're going to take people on. and to have a scene where I'm basically using all my skills as a spy to try to turn the tables, and it just doesn't work. It doesn't work, and it's just not ever going to work. At every turn, you keep trying different things, and you keep adjusting yourself in the chair, and trying different tactics, and it just never gets through. And that when he pulls the trigger, it's so shocking. I think the idea that it serves two functions. One is it unnerves the audience, but the other thing it does is it's a setup to... draw you back to that moment at the end of the movie so that every scene, even the most mundane scenes, the two of you in bed or at this party, underneath it all is this undercurrent where we're saying to the audience, look, we know you're smart. We know you know how the conventions of this genre will work. But I think the fun is that people think, well, wait a minute. It's suddenly a puzzle. You know what I mean? You're trying to figure out, OK, what exactly is this? How, when, who is she? How does it get there?

So now we come to Michelle. Michelle. She's lovely. Lovely actress, lovely person. She really is. And the idea that we're suddenly seeing her again. I know, in this fresh way. Yeah, and you get the idea that this obviously was something that happened in the past, or for a moment you might think, well, wait a minute, did they get through that? You don't quite know what's going on in the way, but to me, what I love about it is it makes you pay attention. Yes. Julia, your sister's here. I Wanted a house that just looks just incredibly warm where you just felt like the golden light You know outside where you felt like it's a house where you'd want to live That daddy wasn't here to walk her down the aisle The funny thing about the set, by the way, is that I kept talking to Scott Chambliss, our production designer, about what the set should look like, the home. And I kept talking about my house, where Katie, my family, and I live. And so finally he just went to my house, started taking pictures, and the set he built was essentially... I remember walking to the set, and I looked at you. Here's Greg. And I thought, this is... It was so weird being on the set with Greg, because... It's like being at the house. It's like being at your house. I know. Greg is my oldest friend since kindergarten. And he enforces himself into everything I do. He's my good luck charm. He's the greatest. He's a terrific guy. Look at this. Now this. This is your idea. Can I just throw this out? Because Tom had this thought that if we are at a party and we're seeing Ethan Hunt in this very relatable, normal world, what is it like for him as a spy? What does he bring to that? And I love this idea that you would not be able to necessarily separate the way you perceive things as a trained spy. everyday party. I just love this idea of the lip reading. She goes and gets on a chopper that takes off from the lake. What was the name of that lake? Lake Wanaka. It's what is he like at home? Yeah, how can he... It's not losing sight and allowing the audience into who he is. Right. That's who he is. That's right. And also I love the, you know, when we were... Is there action in your backyard at this very house? Yeah. Where we... started riffing about the whole traffic thing. Do you remember that? That's right. It was one of our first kind of... And you literally went on this... Yeah, you went on this riff, and you just, like, went off and basically did, like, a version of that speech. Not as good as the speech. Oh, no, no, but it was even a longer... It was so funny, just because it was, like... I love this dog. I'm sorry. I love stuff like that. There's the dog. I love that dog. I love the dog. You know what? It's also... I have to tell you that Kubrick, when we did Eyes Wide Shut, the apartment in that movie... was his old apartment in New York City. That's so funny. Hello. Is this Mr. Ethan Hunt? This is. This is Ready Travel Resort. This is JJ's voice. Oh, yeah, this is me. I wanted to talk to you on film. Yeah, and I kept trying to figure out, I kept trying to get him to play different roles in the movie. No, it was... He's a very good actor. Oh, yeah, please. You really are. That's so funny. Oh, Tom. Look at this one. I like the ice thing. When you told me about the ice thing, I don't know what it is. That shot, it's so funny. There's things in movies sometimes that people just don't realize, but that you just, you love it. That ice thing for me. Me too, though. What is it about that? It's so funny you say that. There's the shot going in, and how much conversation you have, ridiculous conversation. People go, these people are nuts about putting ice in there. Yes, Sherry. Sherry's there that day. She was so lovely. She came to the set. We were hanging out, and we were shooting that one shot. I remember saying, this is one of my favorite shots, the ice shot. And the dog. The dog. By the way, when the dog did that, because the trainer said, yeah, the dog will do that. When the dog actually did that, I could not believe it. I thought we were going to be here all night. And the dog just did it. It was the last shot of the night. Moving on. I know. It was the last shot of the night. That's right. Moving on. Go home. Yes. Thanks for coming. Can't decide what size Slurpee to get. I usually go for the 900 answer. I love the idea of having these two spies meeting in such a sort of ubiquitous, you know, everyday place. I know, when you told me about that idea, and I was really happy when Billy said that he would make the picture. Oh, yeah. That's not what you do anymore, and so I respect that. He's a great actor. He's terrific. I also love where the two worlds collide, where the interesting, hyper-real, life-and-death, high-stakes spy world collides with the absolutely... ...mundane, everyday existence. I just love... Yeah, I love any moment that has those two things. It's interesting to me. Yeah, you guys are terrific. I love this moment. You've got good people for that. Obviously, any scene, playing a scene where the character has ulterior motives... ...it's always interesting to watch. knowing what he knows and thinking about, you know, how he's trying to manipulate the situation. But he also needs to appear like he's there as your friend. Look at little things that we can do here in a movie like Mission Impossible. He just taps a camera case and then suddenly you cut to the camera. I love that stuff. Here's another shot coming up after this that I really like. This was a little ILM addition to the eye there. They actually built a very large camera eyepiece and put a little television... LCD monitor in there, and that's how we shot these close-ups. This, for whatever it's worth, this was all an ADR. Billy re-recorded the audio. But he did such a great job doing this. He gave it a very kind of, that kind of very cool, you know, that great kind of spy clandestine sort of vibe. But he did a great job. But this was the classic, obviously, the classic Mission Impossible device where we needed to see, you know, the mission presented in a way. And although you could argue... There's so much conversation about what should this device be. Yeah. Oh, actually, this idea that it be a disposable camera was Steven Spielberg's idea, that originally it was a camera. And Steven said, you know, you should make it a disposable camera. And I just love that idea that it was a disposable camera. Here's one of these things you just buy. Yeah. Okay, now here's the shot coming up that I really liked. I don't know. I like the shot, too. It just goes right up. There's something about it. Now, this is a cut that... Am I ready? We used to have... This was the last... That's right, the last change. Change of the movie that you made right before, which I thought was... Yeah, it used to be the actual flashbacks to Lindsay and training her, and it seemed to slow the film, the movement down, and confuse the issue a little bit in terms of the focus of the movie. And also, the biggest selling point for me was by not seeing her and just hearing something so you know it's a clue, but you don't quite know what it is, it actually... it makes it more compelling to try to figure out what it is, what does this mean to him? Who is she? And it actually makes you more curious. It pulls you forward. Less spoon feeding and more kind of, you know, asking the question, wanting the answer. Yes. It's always a fine line of asking that question and giving too much and too little information. This is a top gun shot, I have to say. I needed to put in at least one. I had to do it. You're right. I loved riding that motorcycle that day. That was fun. No, you're right. You have to be careful that you're not... Well, that you're not confusing the audience with that... Ving. I just think that he comes in just when you want to see, you know... Maggie and Jonathan. ...those who can't do teach back in the field. What's up, baby? This is tricky because, you know, your characters... You're playing a lot of things right now. You want to get to the action of it as soon as you can. Welcome back, brother. But I like taking that moment with the characters and the team and seeing them. I totally agree. They just look cool, too. Bing looks cool, Maggie looks cool, Jonathan looks cool. And also, by the way, that was Marianne's idea to actually put them into Billy Crudup's... to see their pictures and you really go, oh, when I see them, it's actually a payoff as opposed to... Is that truck in place? We actually added that, is my truck in place line. A lot of conversation about the truck. Yeah, because there are some people who actually thought that the truck that Ving gets into was actually there. I have to say, I never understood that. I just never understood that. Those conversations, I was like, what? But two or three people said that. They added the factories in the back there, but this was all shot actually in Fontana. And this, actually, this sequence is a great example of sort of my favorite thing about movies, which is just the magic of various locations. You know, this van stuff was shot, you know, at the Paramount lot. The exterior of, you know, the factory, for the most part, was shot in Fontana. This was an insert unit. This was in the back of the Paramount lot. You know, these shots here. That was at, that shot you just saw was in downtown L.A. Here we are back at, you know, the insert unit. Here we are back in Fontana. The use of multiple locations, you know, and often weeks and months apart, just I love the way it combines to sort of make one... Separate locations, yeah, and then... It's incredible. It takes a tremendous amount of... Just like, you know, planning and... Tremendous amount of planning, continuity. Look at this. So that you feel as if you're in the same environment. But I got to say, though, that kind of stuff, for whatever reason for me, it's like it truly is like my favorite thing about movies and, you know, storytelling on film. It's like you can make people believe they're somewhere they're not, but any time we do something where... We've done a kind of trick like that, and there's a lot of stuff coming up like that in Italy, in the Italian sequence. Oh, this, by the way, now that shot was there with a different dialogue, and I just took the dialogue from the other shot. It's just incredible how those kind of things go together. There used to be a fight scene between you and Robert. Robert, and also Maggie. Maggie's the one coming up, that's right. Yeah, same thing. Copy that. I'll need two minutes. ...mean one, right? And I actually thought that that fight, as much as I loved it... ...it actually slowed down the energy of the sequence. We rearranged some of these things... ...so that we would get Ethan to Lindsay sooner. Because as soon as you get to her here, I feel like we're back on track... ...and there's that moment of transition... ...that the fight took away from some of that tension, I thought. I thought you were right, too, when I saw it. I didn't want to lose it. This is so creepy. It is creepy. I know. I know. Do you know, you're going... Yeah, Eddie, he'd shot this stuff first. Yeah. And he was going to come back and shoot that opening scene. Roger that, I copy. I just have to say, by the way, that was a green screen shot. I put the windows in later. I just thought it looked so... When I saw it, I thought, oh, my God, you're going to believe it. What were you going to say? I'm sorry. Stand by to go live. On my mark. I don't know. This is the first thing that we shot in America, isn't it? That's right. As we got back from Midland, that's right. I did that. It was one of my three visual effects shots. You did three visual effects shots of this movie. I had those. I got an amazing tutorial from the people at ILM. They were so wonderful. So here's... So these are different locations. That's a second unit shot in Fontana. That was stuff downtown. This is... All this stuff here is downtown LA. This we shot... Yeah, this was downtown. Boom. And I love that, you know... Those eyes you added. This is true. Boom, boom. I love that. That guy just goes straight down. One of my favorite moments for Carrie in the movie is now. I love when she looks at you. She's so like... I know. She's so adamant. She's so ashamed. And there's a moment coming up where she's just like... I just love how she feels she let you down somehow, you know? I know. Look at that right there. I just love that. She's just like... She was so good. People don't realize how difficult... That's right. ...and measured these things have to be. Every take, she was present and there. It made it easy for me. She is someone, when I worked on Felicity with her, she was so incredible at accessing that emotional place. And it was just, I was so excited to have you guys work together. Because you both have a very similar ability. Well, every take. She's amazing. She didn't work up to it. She was on. I remember seeing her the first day. She was right there. I was so glad. This is where Maggie had the other fight scene. There used to be a guy in that window that ILM removed, one of the people that she confronts. Who's that guy on the ground? She was trained by Jackie Chan. Maggie Q was, yeah. Amazing story how she moved from Hawaii to China. Isn't that amazing? And look at her now. She's so talented. Yeah, she's fantastic. She does something that's incredible. I just love the cast. Can you believe this cast? But the thing that's so amazing is watching... She makes it look so easy, especially in the Vatican sequence. That kind of strength and quiet, confident. She makes it look very easy. I love doing this. This is a very intense sequence to shoot. This whole... This stuff, you just... Do you remember we were downstairs and we walked up the day before and just walked around this whole area and also the other one, just choreographing it and talking about it and writing it as we were going along. You remember this? This came up. That was a CG gun that you threw. But one of my favorite things about, you know. I love this coming. Moving. Moving. That was terrific. I love that stuff. The fun about this for me was, like you said, being present. Look at her. Walking through. Look at her. Do you remember we... By the way, that shot... She looked so... I know. Well, she fired the gun. I was really proud of her. And Colin Anderson, the steady camera operator, first camera operator, took her side after that shot and said, basically, you shot the gun right at me, can you please? And she was so freaked out that, you know, but it was the best take, you know. And we kept it. We kept it. Because we made the... We had the still blown up of her. Oh, that's right. Action chick. That's right. Action chick, we said it. Gave it to her. I got to tell you, when we did Felicity, she was such a sweet, romantic, you know... The character, the idea that I got to work with Carrie and have her kick ass and have a gun. Look at how tough she is. She worked for three months. She really did an amazing job. Now, there's Buster. There's Buster. Buster trained me into fighting. Yeah, he trained you and he made a number of appearances in the movie later on, you know, in different costumes. I love this moment. I watch him. Boom. That's him going through. There was a little wire removal there, but that was it. I love that moment. Boom. And that's Buster landing on a very, very thin padding. He did it like a dozen times, and every time he did it, I thought, you know, he's the cage-fighting champion of Britain, that guy. He's unbelievable. He is unbelievable. That I love, too, when you throw that... Rope, because you're throwing nothing. And then this, they added that CG, and that was there all along. I love these kind of moments where we sort of throw away this kind of stuff. That's right. Now, Carrie had never done anything like this before. You were so great with her, by the way, in helping her. I trust her, because she was such a wonderful athlete. She was a dancer. Now, this is really us. That explosion, that's real. This is real, and that's really you guys there. We have, now that's... That's real. This is all real. No, that's all real. No, that's all real. It's not CGI. No, that's CGI. Now, this is a stunt we came up with that night. Well, we got that place, and Tom was saying, you know, the way we come down, it should be cooler. And you figured out this thing that if the car stops... It threw us forward. The thing is that Ving, of course, couldn't be driving doing that. That was a stunt driver driving. And as soon as the camera went away from the car, Ving ran in. He was off camera. God, what is that? You can't hear that? What's wrong with her? Now, Carrie really set the pace for me later when I have that in my head... ...because I basically just did her version. By the way, that was the Fontana. This is on a green screen shot. Again, this is one of those great places where every shot, we actually shot these things weeks apart, different locations, ILM. This is actually Germany right there. That's Berlin right there. That's Fontana. Those are two different shots we put together. Boom. The glass they put in later. This is a real practical thing, and this is ILM. That's beautiful. I love that shot, by the way. That's really beautiful. Come on. Son of a bitch. Guys, we got company. There's a miniature helicopter going through the fireball. Now, this was a tricky scene. Do you remember we... This whole scene we were going through, to just make it very clear to the audience what's going on. You have to have emotional geography and physical geography in a scene. You negate either one, and subconsciously, I think, the audience start removing themselves from the scene. They don't know where they are. Emotionally or physically. And it can be disorienting. This is a very tricky sequence to do because you have so much going on. You've got a helicopter chase. They're firing missiles. They're flying through the windmills. She's having this thing in her head. He needs a defibrillator. He's getting the flare gun. There's so much happening. And what was... It reminded me of the kind of scenes that we worked on in Top Gun. or even in sequences in Days of Thunder, where you have this kind of physical movement, action, that's very exciting. I'm just talking about the challenges of doing it. But yet you have this, you know, with Carrie, this, he's trying to save her and everyone... Right. You did an animatic of this. Yeah, we had an animatic, and what was interesting was the animatic, which was really well done, it was... It wasn't necessarily physically accurate in terms of the size of the blades and the helicopters, and there were certain things that we had to account for when we actually were shooting it. Practical and with ILM physics. And also just the fact that we were shooting, you know, nighttime, these windmills that are not normally lit. If you noticed, we had to light all those windmills, and that was Vic Armstrong, to the T, giving us what the animatic required, you know, on all of these exterior shots. Everything inside the helicopter we shot on stage. That's Ming hanging. That's Ming, who has a strength of 100 people. She's incredible, Ming. She's terrific. Look at that. She's fantastic. Lindsay, I'm gonna short out the explosion with your head. You're gonna be okay. And we did a lot of tweaking on this to make it clear that there was 30 seconds. All the way to the end, it was how long and... Right. Even, by the way, when, you know, Maggie falls out of the chopper and, you know, you're saying, you know, hold on, hold on. I mean, just that dialogue, that looping that we put in helped explain that moment in a huge way. This was a great ILM piece. That shot is ILM. This shot's ILM. That, that, that's back on stage. This is ILM again. That's a model. Bam. Boom. And they put the fire in later, and it just kind of gave it a scale, because you saw that liquid come out, which is really cool. Well, I have to say, I love how I feel the whole team in this movie. That's right. You know, you have Johnny. Come on. Just for what it's worth, that carried, you know... She did the motion, you know, Isla put the eye in later. We actually had a version that was far more graphic, where when the eye popped, there's a little bit of blood that came out and actually splattered on your forehead. My face, we shot that practical. Which I actually thought made it that much more, you know, it just didn't look that much more grotesque. Well, yeah, it was, I felt it more when I saw that little small dots of blood on your forehead. This shot, by the way, was the shot that Beth D'Amato removed the blood from your... Because it was such a great performance, I thought. We used the blood take. Yeah, we had the blood. But in a sequence like this, I think it's incredibly... I know it's incredibly challenging, because you do have everything going on with action. You've got to keep that story going.

It's tricky to balance all that stuff. I know. You did a phenomenal job. I love this scene. Look at Michelle. Yeah, she's great here. This is one of my favorite moments in the movie because we know we've just been through what he's been through. It was so shocking. And he can't share it with her. And that feeling, I just love that sense that we're experiencing his inability to connect with her in a way that... is just fundamental and critical, and this is the crux of the movie. How do you do what he just did and then come home and not feel like this relationship is bankrupt? And there's her ring. I just love that. I know. I love it, too. You see the conversations that we had about relationships. From the very beginning. How can you have a relationship with secrets? That's right. You really can't have that... level of love and intimacy with that, and this is something that he's having to confront. And the audience is experiencing it, you know, emotionally, you know, as opposed to the side information. You've just been through it. These are my hands, by the way. Now watch. This piece, this tool, only went up to my thumb. They added the entire length of it to make it look like it was in her head, which I thought was... How did you get that out of her head? She was open to having a craniotomy. I was like, look. Carrie is so perfect. She will do anything for... Okay, now, here we go. We got Fish. You can't say enough about Fish, bro. Fish, I've known since I was a teenager. Isn't that amazing? I know. And I can't believe this is the first time that we've worked together. That's incredible. I know. He's one of those guys, and when we were talking about casting the movie, it was so important. Did we miss my... I missed the chocolate. Okay. He just said the chocolate line. Did I miss the chocolate line? I love the chocolate line. But it was so important that we cast the movie, for me, that we cast the movie with actors who, if I see them on screen with you, will hold their own. Because I did feel like it was a risk, given that it was you in this movie, that you wouldn't really be paying attention to other people. And so when you have actors like Billy and like Fish, who... They're so compelling in their own ways that suddenly having his voice, Fisher's voice in the movie, to me, it gives it a whole other energy. Yeah, exactly. There's a gravitas. You really want to hear what he's got to say. He's such a terrific actor. You think this op was worth the risk, Mr. Hunt? Every day I couldn't wait to work with these guys and have scenes like this. He was the one who brought gas centrifuge technology to Korea from Pakistan. It should be noted that this is the first time that you really see IMF. Never in any... Well, you see a little teeny bit in the first one when they realize that Hunt's... Yeah, in Langley. But you never really see IMF proper. And this was the fourth headquarters set that I'd worked on with Scott Chambliss, having worked on Alias for a few years with him. And... I love the mood and the feeling, and there's a logic to what this sort of bunker-like, you know, location, why it's built the way it is, and his design, which is not, it's not overly designed, but it feels practical. And also, I'm looking at this scene, you look at how Billy's playing it, it's very subtle. But you see the choices that he's made. Look at that. Look at him. Okay. And you see him from there. You've got to watch his performance because it's so subtle. And then you see him at the end with me. We'll get to that. And that's the guy. And it's just, you look at, you know, and you see how Fish is playing it. I mean, you're just seeing. Now, this is the scene that you, this is the last fix of the film. That's right. Now, we should say that, you know, originally, Billy Crudup was in the funeral scene. Yeah. We cut Billy from the scene because it was a giveaway. Many people believed, after they saw that scene, that he was up to what he was up to, and it was premature. I'm proud to say that you are the first that I've recommended for active field. You were going to talk about the glasses. Oh, yeah. Now, there was a lot of conversation where I think you see the camera in my lens here. JJ says, no, I... No, it's the burial. It's the frame around the grave. I know, but I think it's... There's a dolly right there. No. No, there was no dolly near you. Remember, this was a long lens. Look, there's a... I know. There's no way that you would have seen the camera. I sent you a piece of mail from Berlin and asked us to call you when it arrived. It came this morning.

And that's Tony Guma, a buddy of mine who's a fine actor who handed me the postcard. And for whatever it's worth, this name, H. Kelvin, that was my grandfather, Harry Kelvin. That was his name. So my relatives were very happy when they saw that. I love... I also want to say... I was going to say that Michael Giacchino's music there, I just love... If I start talking about Michael, I'll never shut up. But Michael, he did amazing. He did an amazing job. He did that really kind of creepy music. And then when you peel the stamp back and you see the thing, it's like, that's what it's all about. Look at me. I just love it. He's the greatest. You and Lindsey. Lindsey was like my little sister. And you never. Look at this. I slept with your little sister. I'm sorry. No, I know. He's reading on that. He's so good. Every time I see it... Hey, brothers, I don't ask you who will. And we shortened that response. We kept shortening it in editorial so that it kind of kept going. Because every time there was another millisecond, it felt like, oh, was there something going on? It was a weird thing. I know that. I love that. I love that, too. It's like, don't tell me my job. And he's... The ease... I know. Now, by the way, this is a shot where one of our crew members, and she will remain nameless, is actually in the background right there, right between you two. Right there. She's running. She realizes you can hardly see it. We actually went back and we did this shot, which is a very tricky shot to get. We redid this shot another six or seven times. We just used the one that she's in. We have to talk about Simon Pegg. A shot of the dead. Space. The guy is... He was rather sick when we shot this. He'd just flown in. It took quite a bit to get him through customs. During the immigration. Would you let him through customs? I don't know. No, come on. No, but the guy, he was, he's so funny. He's such a sweet, wonderful guy. But he was really, he wasn't feeling himself. He just didn't, you know, and yet, I think he did amazing. And he had to, you remember, you rewrote the whole thing that morning and gave him about four pages of dialogue. Yeah, we changed quite a bit of stuff and gave it to him and he was like, what? And he's like, oh, all right. Now here's the stuff that I love, love, love, which is, okay, now, okay, now, Here's where the ad-libbing and writing, and you're giving different notes to try different things. It's like this massive fat guy, you know, a huge big guy. We used to call him, you know, but I won't tell who we used to call him. Come on. He's fantastic. I'm sorry. I used the name Wickham. It's the last name of my assistant, soon-to-be boss, Athena. And, you know, she was like, oh, thanks for using the name of the guy who's this huge guy. I'm like, oh, my God. It wasn't about that, but whatever. There's a very subtle music cue that you almost don't even hear underneath this. The idea was to give the MacGuffin of the film a purpose and a definition, but then to throw it away and not make it the over the top, not make this legit, make this... and make it a joke, but it still serves the purpose of explaining to the audience the stakes of what this thing could be. And how do you get it so that the movie doesn't become about that, but it's still about the people? Because you look at the actors that we have. That's the thing, but you hire an actor like... And you hire an actor, and Simon makes it... Like, palatable. Yes. Like, enjoyable, you know?

I think we might have talked about this scene for about eight months before. I mean, how many times did we talk about this particular moment? There was always conversation on the story as to should she know or shouldn't she know? How much does she know about him being... It was always measuring how much, what to say and what not to say. You know, we always felt we knew how important this scene was. What I love also here is that This is as much about Ethan feeling like... -"I'm lying." -"Yeah, I'm betraying her, and I might actually lose her in this moment." And then he makes this decision. Ask her for this leap of faith, you know? -"And should I tell her?" -"Right." It's a whole thing of what... having to finally face... Yeah, it's the crux of the story. -"What are you not telling me?" -"I love this piano." I know. Giacchino's amazing. And look at her. I also like that they're friends. Do you know what I mean? In this relationship, you see they're... It's a real relationship. There's real friendship. And not going right into... She's not demanding. No, not going in and blaming him. It's being a friend and seeing that this person is... Look at her. She's not playing the scene about her. She's playing the scene looking at Ethan and concern as to what... Because she's also playing the... Something's changed. That's right. But you recognize in this scene the amount of trust and friendship that they had built up before this. I totally agree. Look at her. She's looking. I love how what she's also... What she's feeling and what I think the hallway sort of precipitates this, which is that she's afraid that what they have, what she believes in, what her friends have embraced, what she... The whole... Is... too good to be true it's that thing like anytime you're so happy in life I think there's that moment of could it be it feels too good to be true and I think she's afraid it's slipping away and she's she would rather risk look at that reaction this moment it's not even it's not even analytical do you know what I mean that decision that she makes it's just instinctual that's right of course you trust me he's just said that I can't tell you but do you trust me you know yeah she's just I just love this moment where she's like what she's afraid of is you know, please tell me I haven't seen my life, you know, the rest of my life, and it's all going away, you know? And then this, which I love. I didn't know how well this scene would work. I have to tell you, when the, you know, that you wanted these, the rings, you were so great at directing these moments. It was... Look at this. And I love that we're there in the hospital. Do you know what I mean? It's also like, by the way, the reason there's a little panda bear ring is when I was a little kid, I was in first grade. I gave this girl a panda bear ring. And I got one out of the little gumball machine. And then it fell down the disposal at her house. And I went to go get another one. And I remember sitting there. And I think I put in $20 worth of quarters. And I kept trying to get the panda bear. And it never came out. That's really sweet. But I always remember the panda bear ring. That's why I made a panda. But I just love how, you know, these... You know, it's like, it's such a sweet moment in the midst of... Everything is going on. Getting on dating. In this movie, to have this. Yeah, it was really... Do you know? Yeah, I love just the romance of it, the sweetness. I like that. I like that just... That little... I love this. He's looking over there and then... And then we're back on point. And I just love now that we have this... For some reason, by the way, here... For some reason, that always makes me laugh. It's so classic. He's so good. But this was the thing I was so excited about doing in this movie when you first asked me. And thank you again for that question. if I wanted to do this movie. The thing I was so excited about was this exact thing of taking that romantic, sort of optimistic, human character kind of stuff that we just had at the hospital, and literally as counterpoint immediately to scenes like this that are about the team and about missions and about them working together. And I just love how it's in classic Mission Impossible form. You know a touch of what they're gonna do, but no real details, and then you watch it play out. Now this... That was our second day of shooting. Second day of shooting. There's Johnny. I couldn't believe how well this guy could speak Italian. One second, he's got this thick Irish accent, then he comes out of the car and he's screaming in Italian, like, Johnny. This was better than mine, I said. And the guy said, man, he's so good. You know, I'd just seen him as Elvis. That's true. He was just Elvis, and now... Well, he lived there for a while. He lived in Italy. He's, uh, you know, classic, uh... He's very good at accents. He's terrific. No, he... This guy's... Come on, that guy is, like, you cannot deny John Rhys-Myers. And look at him. He's, like, got such charisma. I know. He's just fantastic all around. Again, here's, you know, Michael Giacchino's score in classic spine, lower register piano, you know. Yeah, that kind of great stuff. This was back in concerto. You know, we did a lot of cool visual effects working all these pieces. That was ILM. That was ILM. This was back at the Paramount lot, an amazing set Scott Chang was built. This is back in Caserta. Again, all these pieces. Now, this is you actually doing this. I just want to say this. This is Tom actually doing what you're seeing. That actually hurt the knees, doing that. That impact on the wall. Fun. Fun, but impactful. Fun and impactful. Again, I mean, that piece... Okay, hold it, hold it. This is the Roman... I loved it when we showed it in Rome. The Romans love that. It was fun. Now, this is really on top of a wall set piece in Rome, but this, that side, is in concerto. So, again, in my favorite, you know, combining of multiple locations to make one moment work. We actually were in Rome. Right there, that's Rome. That's Rome. That's actually a green screen. in Caserta. You know what I'm saying? I love how every shot is... This guy's from Caserta. This guy, by coincidence, in Los Angeles, from Caserta. See, these are the kind of things I'm talking about. Little pieces like this, where you see he's measuring how far, attaching it to the back, and then homage to the mission... Now, I hit the ground on one of these takes. Yeah, in the next take after that, you actually did hit the ground. This take I actually thought was a better take.

Everyone behind the camera, behind the monitor screen. Joey Box. This, of course, is actually in Rome. Joey Box, I think he's lost about ten years of his life. Joey never found humor in that. We should actually just, in that one shot, when he goes down into the water, but that first piece was Rome, and then underwater, that was in Universal Studios, the tank. We couldn't control anything that you see behind Jonathan, which is actually in the Vatican proper. We could not control any of the crowds there. So what we did is, about a block and a half away from this location, we set up a phony shoot. And we had three girls in bikinis and three old women dressed as nuns. And we had a camera, and we had a tent, and we had a whole thing. We pretended to be shooting something. The interesting thing about shooting on this set was my tendency was to want to shoot the set and make a lot of the set, but I felt The more we did it, the more phony it looked. And in a weird way, my goal was to continuously shoot our sets as if they were really the locations. Stand by. We couldn't fly the walls. You know what I'm saying? Exactly, yeah. So it felt like we were somehow limited by... This is Caserta. This is Caserta. Now, one of my favorite ILM moments is coming up. Watch this. The detail of the hair. I love it. Okay. When I went down... And look at this. See the little hair? Yeah, the little antenna. I mean, come on. I know, I know. Well, it's funny, because we had a lot of discussions about that, about how should it unravel, should it be like a little spring, and they give these different samples and different versions, and then, you know. This was Caserta. Look at that gorgeous hallway. Oh, my God. It's fantastic. I couldn't believe that here we are making a movie in these locations. Oh, my God. I never get tired. Like this shot here, this reminded me of Get Smart. I know, I know. But... I started a hallway. Come on, I love Get Smart. But that hallway, this is back on set in L.A., but that hallway was, I just remember, you know, walking down a hallway and seeing a place and thinking, oh, my God. That's Caserta in Italy. Caserta, yeah. The Steadicam in low mode. Here we go. I love this. That's another camera there. And here we go. This is really in Italy. And this is in Rome. And she had never... She didn't know how to drive. And she learned how to drive for this movie. And we go from that dome to this dome. That's the set. That's L.A. Yeah, this is Los Angeles. Bravo standing by for transmission. I love using the cross as a transmitting device. I don't know. It's probably... My in-laws probably hate me now for that. So, anyway, there's the painting that we destroyed. When I was doing press in Italy, one of the Italian journalists would not stop giving me grief for having destroyed the... About that? Did you tell her it was a set? No. She thinks we actually destroyed a wall.

For what it's worth, that shot of Maggie leaning out of the car and looking at Jonathan was taken from a totally different scene, a B camera that we stuck there. Here's the red dress, the Colleen Atwood-designed dress.

This is a great set, by the way. Oh, it's fantastic. So there used to be another shot that showed the entrance of Philip Seymour Hoffman into the sequence that we actually cut and just decided to use this one because it slowed down the sequence, having the car arrive or his truck arrive. I like the aggression of sound. We added that sound of the glass. That's exactly right. We have a photo opportunity. Just give me the word. So this is where, for me, the fun really starts in terms of the team working together. And I love how, again, you don't quite know what's going on here, but the way you start to see that while they're separate, they're all working together. I love how Maggie, how easy she makes it look doing that kind of walking and... you know, kind of surreptitiously, you know, taking those pictures. It's just terrific. I like the cut that you made as opposed to Philip getting out of the car, just cutting right to the party, and there he is. It just keeps the story moving forward. It was a double reveal. This reveal is much stronger. We just know exactly who this guy is. I totally agree. Yeah, and that sound actually helps tell the story of, this guy's an asshole. It really does. This, by the way, was this sequence that we worked on for a while in editorial. Mary Jo Markey did an amazing job, I think, making this whole thing into one cohesive conversation, because there were all these little pieces, you know. And again, you're telling the story of the mask. Listen to the music. Come on, this is... I know. It's a great theme. I told Giacchino when he played it for me, it's one of my favorite themes that he did in the movie. And this I love, too. That's one of my favorite cues in the movie. And I love how, like, magical his music gets here. It's almost like you're in a sacred kind of, like, mysterious place, and it almost has, like, a music box quality to it, you know? Yeah. 23 months, that's as long as it'll last, and you got the baggage we do and the lifestyle we got. Really? Yeah, really. Look at me. I know what I'm talking about. And you know I know what I'm talking about. You're putting on a suit here to kind of, you know, give you some more body weight. But some people have said, oh, his body changes. I'm like, well, he puts a thing on, but there's so much going on, you don't always notice it. That cut from the mask to Phil, I wanted them to be the same size, same position, so that you saw the mask go to Phil. And I love this reveal of her. Again, the music, too, I have to say. No, this whole sequence is brilliant. The choreography of this is really... Also, if you watch the guard behind the background, he's facing to the right. And then in this shot, he's facing... Wait, he's facing to the right. Hold on. Now he's facing to the left. You can barely tell. We kept having flopping guard problems in post. We're going to have to move sooner than we thought. Can you identify who made the drop? Negative. Again, just, you know, a testament to ILM. Yeah, this is my favorite cue. I love this cue. I just... I went nuts when I heard this. And look at the spray. They put all that on later. The whole thing was there, but they added the paint and the spray in post-production. It was just amazing use of practical and visual effects. These two shots, that one and this one, we added later before this because the hair just kind of appeared, and I felt it was important that we see how the hair get put up. So this shot was a big deal. This shot was a big deal. not in the field anymore oh okay here's a retirement present and our job is always going to be something phil watched he was watching my performance so that is phil with the film mask so all those pulls and yanks and little by little it's becoming stop talking phil and watch the eyes too now watch phil he's acting it's a it's a And now it's Phil. Phil's wearing a makeup neck piece, too. That's Tom's voice, obviously. And Phil watched Tom actually do this performance to... Look, look at this move. Watch. That's so you. That was fantastic. When he did that, I was like, that's the greatest thing I ever saw. Because you actually start to feel like they're these two different guys. Phil watched how I move, and you can see what he's doing. And now he's moving like Ethan. I was going to cover the scene and we had a huge time crunch. This is Phil doing this. Look at Phil move. Look at him. His facial... You know what? You have to appreciate the detail of his work. It's true. And how hard he worked to get that movement. He was a wrestler. That shot of the guard walking down the hallway was actually shot in the hospital where we shot all of the Julia stuff and Ethan running in for Julia.

This was on the Paramount lot. This is on the stage above that basement where we shot earlier. This is one of the shots that I love as well. There were, I think, eight people in the camera crew, the dolly grips, the operator focus. You'll see in the shot as the bodyguard walks past, the camera just misses itself in the mirror. I love that. I love that. Look at that. And from that close up to her looking, look at this. Again, knowing that that stuff was shot in Italy at Caserta, this stuff was shot at Paramount. This reminds us that the case is important. You know what I mean? For some reason, we shot the inserts of his hands three different times. Finally, the hands that we used were actually Tom Peitzman's hands, who's our visual effects producer. I love this. Yeah. Look at this. Look at that. Now, we actually had a different struggle there. We actually cut that one shot a little bit shorter. Now, here's the amount of time it takes to get these loop lines correct. We spent... Yep. The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy. He put a tack on Miss Yancey's chair. I love the, you know, his performance shift. You know, how he's playing two different people. He makes it look so easy. Look at that. Yeah, I know. This was a motion control rig where Phil played both of those pieces. Alpha, you're about to have a visit. Finish! We're escaping like balloons. Alex and Bob wrote that piece. I know. It's just so bizarre. I laughed so hard. I was like, what the hell? Yeah, it's so ridiculous, but I loved it. How much fun did they have writing it? Okay. That's the hospital, and here's on the set again. Sir, is everything all right? Everything is not all right. Voice mask is still compiling. I need 30 seconds. It used to be I need six seconds, but we made it 30 seconds to milk it. Now, this sequence, we shot this once, and then, Tom, you saw the dailies and suggested that we needed an additional piece of this shot, of Jonathan this, and seeing him cross into Jonathan's shot to really play You know, Jonathan's fear. Jonathan's... That makes me laugh when I see it. But I think you're exactly right. And it gives you that moment of holding your breath, like, oh, my God, it just pushes the limit, you know? And we did that thing where the, uh, is your voice, and the I'm fine is Phil's voice, and there's that weird little electronic glitch. That you... Look at this. Now, look at these... That's so much fun. You just feel the team, and they're under pressure, and what are they gonna do? I also love that Phil makes it look so easy. It's so weird, because I actually, as I was working on this sequence, I actually would forget that it wasn't you. Like, it was weird. To me, it was just Ethan, but it was him. It was a very bizarre thing. He's incredibly good. What are we gonna do while we're waiting in your hotel room and I'm not wearing my shirt? This is my favorite kind of a thing, classic Mission Impossible style, where you've got two IMF team members playing roles in front of other people to make them believe that something is what it is not. And there's a whole other thing where you have to remember her. Yes, that's right. It's important in terms of casting her. And the music here, no question. Look at this. There's Academy Award winning Phil Hoffman just... being lowered unconscious. We had a blast this day. Do you remember when we were shooting this? Oh my God, this is terrific. And again, those pieces in the corridor, these were all on that same stage as the bathroom at Paramount. And again, this was all done on that stage when the car being above the sewer. Just poor man's process, shaking the camera, this stuff. Now, I remember the day, which I lost it when I... I love this so much. What's up? Nothing. What's up with you? Nothing. He's so good. And the way the music... And then the music kicks right back in. Yeah, Giacchino's a genius. This is one of my favorite shots we got. This was the last shot of the night at Caserta. And that was a shell of a car. He really was going down there. This is one of my favorite shots. Oh, Phil is there, you know, pulling off this makeup appliance. you are crouched down behind phil waiting to go up we push in and we're dialing in the whole time we whip over to her and it's the classic magic trick of the beautiful assistant when we blew that car up i was holding my kids yes penny gracie and we were already we just left yes that's right it was the first day shooting okay that was the first day look at that day

This shot, for whatever it's worth, was flopped. It was actually, he was, when he shot it, it was on the other side, but the next shot, this shot, didn't cut well. It was called bad planning on my part. So he flopped it. You're headed back now. Look at Fish. It's one of those crazy scenes where, as you're watching it, it needs to work in real time because you need to believe that there's something going on back at the IMF, and you're not supposed to, at this point, know who can you trust. I like the way... Billy backs out of the door. This is a cool shot. Yeah, I like this shot. I learned it for it. Very unique way, because you wanted to find a different way to reveal the airplane. We'd seen the establishing shot of the airplane. And also to see the water underneath, so it didn't seem like it was too high. So this is... This is a scene that you wrote ten minutes the day before we started shooting. We figured out literally the day before we were shooting. You figured out. Well, we figured out. You're dead, Mr. Davy. This is the scene where I was behind camera truly just laughing at how much fun it was to watch you two go up against each other. This was so much fun playing this scene. I'll meet you in the bathroom. And you're going to tell us everything. Every buyer you've worked with. Just for fun, to point out the things that... I love in this... First of all, there's obviously the big picture thing of he's... A hostage. Yeah, he's a... He is the hostage. He's been grabbed, but now he's turning the table. Right, that's right. He's been grabbed, but now he's in control. You know what I mean? But what I love is... I like Ving, how he... Exactly, like, what's Ethan going to do? Ethan just keeps going. They won't even stop. I'm going to make her bleed and cry and call out your name. And you're not going to be able to do shit. Do you know why? What is a rabbit's foot? Now, I know I love close-ups and maybe use them too often, but this is one of those scenes where I just desperately wanted to be right in your faces. I just wanted to get so, you know, crazy close. What's your name? What is a rapist? Who are you? And who's the buyer? You don't have any idea what the hell's going on, do you? I mean, you saw what I did to your little blonde friend at the factory, right? And then I love this. Yeah. And that was actually Mary Jo's idea also to go to Ving in that moment. I don't think that was fun. I like this reading. Look at that. Fun. And we see the blood boiling there. His little smile. His little smile right there. The little teenage things. And then boom. So we shot the scene over a couple of days, actually about a week apart. Shot it up to here. Now, this is actually tricky. Anytime someone, if I'm in a scene where someone's doing a stunt, I always feel a little more... With him? Yeah. Well, he did that. I mean, he let himself get slammed down. That was... And he's hanging there, and it's... And his head goes right past the metal. I mean, that was tough. And his face is red there because his face is red there. Yeah, and there's no camera there. There's no mat underneath. He's hanging. That's true. That's true. We had guys with straps off camera just moving them in front of the camera to help give it a sense of turbulence. Every time something moves in front of the camera, that's just guidance with straps. I like to see when the wind's blowing up and I step down to slam it back down. I know, I know. That was fun. This scene was the visual effects looking down into the... into the opening were done by Kevin Blank, who does all the visual effects. Now, that is violent. Yeah, that was... Throwing back was quite violent. Yeah, it was. That was pretty intense.

So the idea being, obviously, that in the course of that moment, Luther yelled out Ethan's name a number of times so that Davian knows it. What I'm selling and who I'm selling to is the last thing you should be concerned about. Ethan.

What I love is that, you know, Ethan's grabbed him, but somehow this guy is still not, he's not like, you know. This just isn't right. Yeah, he's not giving up at all. Now he knows my name. That's right, yeah, it's like, what is this guy, like, what's this guy about? His confidence is obviously due to the fact that he has someone on the inside and believes he's gonna be protected. There used to be some dialogue here, which we cut, but it ended up working out fine.

This is in Virginia. This was actually at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Arthur Anderson was there directing these shots. And this shot, as well, was actually in Virginia. Everything else you'll see from this point on is not in Virginia. These shots, this driving sequence was done in San Pedro, down outside of Los Angeles. This is San Pedro when you guys were driving along on the highway. That's right. The rest of it's done in Calabasas. to ID a man named Owen Davion. I tagged his phone and I intercepted a transmission. I traced the call through the IMF network and this is what came up. The call to Davion came from Brassel's office. It's Brassel. I think he's working with Davion. I think I'm being set up. Now that was unmanned. That was an unmanned truck that was launched into the air. Now coming up is Vic Armstrong's son, who I've known since he was a baby. Who's now doing... Now watch this. That! Yeah, right here. This, this, this. That one. Look at that. That whole thing is Scott. We went crazy when we saw that. That one was Scott. So in all these shots, you know, that you see, either... were shot against, you know, with the sky in the background, with a piece of mountain removed here and there. I am upside down there. There you are upside down. It was so hot when we were shooting here. It was. It was so hot. I love how, you know... I love this shot. Okay. Obviously that's all CG. That's all CG. And they add this, you know, camera operation, like... The way you see this piece, the UAV coming. Just watch the water in this shot. The way they had the smoke move. I love the music also. Okay, now this shot coming up, I love this shot coming up. And it was this one right here. This was on a separate piece of the bridge. That was the elevated piece, yeah. With these guys the first day. Look at the costumes also. Looking... I love that shot. Look at this. So they put all that water in there. All that water. But what I love about this, too, is that it's... But we did have to run. Yeah. Yeah, you were actually running. What I love about this is, you know, it's just sort of, you know, it's just... It's just mayhem, and, you know, you still don't even quite know what's going on. You have this chopper that's there, this UAV. So the story is still unfolding as you're watching this. You know, that whole structure is that wooden structure there that we built. So there's... This was used to sort of get rid of the rest of the team so that Ethan could sort of have the stage in a way. There's the shot where you know where you are. Yeah, you just give a little geography there. Boom. That was fun sliding. That was good. That was fun. And then all of a sudden you see the chopper there. Boom. Now, a little shot like that, like breaking glass, is always very dangerous because any time you're there, you don't know where that glass is going to go. Sometimes I get a little nervous. I love this because... I've had glass in my eye before. It's not nice. Look at this. Okay. See, that's CG, but that's real. So that's smoke. The close canister was a real canister. Combining elements. From the chopper was CG. Now, this slide, we came up with this on a Friday, did the slide. Practice that in the morning. I love that camera going in. So you know, he's sliding, here's the car. That's right. You know where the UAV is, you know where he is. The UAV, there's the helicopter. Now these guys are coming down. And Vic Armstrong actually shot these shots of the guys. Not this one, but the shots of the guys running across. That was enormously helpful. Now that is a real helicopter flying over our heads. Great pilot. Amazing piloting. I actually put... those subtitles there because I thought that was the one visual effect shot that wasn't my favorite. And I literally thought by putting the subtitles, it would take your eye away from the shot. I had to hit this mark. Do you see how far that suit? And it's got to be in focus, in frame. Look at that. OK, this is something we came up on a Friday. Boom. That hurt. Let me make this clear to you. Because the first couple of takes, I was flinching before I hit. I thought it was just... Before the... Yeah, and it was too close to the car, so I wasn't getting right across hard enough, but... Well, it looked up every time. The amazing thing was, you know, the padding... I don't know what kind of padding you had on, but the padding on the car was only a folded-over, I think, quarter-inch pad or half-inch pad, so it... It wasn't like the car was made of foam. It was like, it's a car. Okay, again, we're just reminding the audience where we are. Boom, wham, slam. Now, that's very impressive, having those elements, that that's ILM. That's amazing. No, they are incredible. Okay, now look, this is, you know, exactly... Helicopter, cars on fire, there's the hole. Yeah, the point of that shot was to say, there's the chopper, there's no way to pass that fiery truck, there's the hole. So you set up his dilemma, his problem. Boom. Look, this is, like, literally classic, old-school, serial film, literal cliffhanger moment. Yeah, I love that. Pulp fiction. I love that kind of stuff. It just doesn't get any more... It is literally a cliffhanger. That is a helicopter that was there, though, that they had to step into. That piloting is, that's very impressive. You know, and just for what it's worth as a, you know, if you're at all a fan of visual effects, just to go back through the sequence and watch shot for shot, you know, anytime you see water, as subtle as it may be, you know, to think how that was put in later, it's pretty incredible. I love how he just looks away from Ethan. It's like, you know, he doesn't even need to look at him anymore. He's won. And this is sort of like a great iconic hero who's just lost, you know? Hello. Rick, this is Ethan. Is Julia home? Hey, man. Hey, look, I hope you're not mad I'm here. Here we are, in the apartment, back to the personal... Yeah, back at home, the relatable, everyday-type stuff. Which friend? I don't know, just some English guy. I put English in... so that later when you, when Julia meets the guy in the hospital corridor, you hear his accent. So you know who it was. And also that it wasn't Phillip. That's right. And I remember I drove one take and went off the road. I remember that. Right there. All right, see you tomorrow, Sal. Good night, Lenny. So this was great. This was in San Pedro as well, the same day we shot Ethan and Luther. So this is Tom really driving. Now this shot is actually in Virginia, and as is that.

This shot was an idea that Mary Ann Brandon had with one of our editors, which was that it would be a great thing to see how that attack actually impacted the world, and it wasn't just this kind of, you know, vacuum. And it's one of those classic things where you know she's gonna get grabbed, you know, is gonna be in the shower, classic horror movie move, but we don't do it.

And this is the English accent that I was talking about. And he was in Ailes. This guy was in Ailes. He's a terrific actor. And he came to help out and actually came to China for a shot later on. There's Michelle. No one runs like Tom Cruise. Come on. Let's be honest. That went hard. Now, we restructured this a little bit. Where's Julia? This is all looped, too. That was looped. But we restructured it so that this used to be the first piece when you ran in. But the tension was gone because we knew that you'd missed her. So that that next piece, when you went to talk to that woman, the nurse, there was no tension there. So we restructured that and added the idea of the East Building. This was probably the hottest day. This is a hot day. My face is red. That's actually one line that to this day I sort of don't know if I would have kept in. Which one? Which says, you can always tell the character of someone how they treat someone they don't need to treat well. Every time I hear it, I always feel like I don't know if it actually fits in his mouth. It's one of those things. I always liked that line. I have to tell you, I did. You have 48 hours starting at my mark. Wait, wait, wait. Now, call me at this number when you have it. Just wait. Julia's life for the rabbit's foot. You have 48 hours or she dies. Wait, wait, wait. So it's her life for the rabbit's foot at this point. I love, by the way, the sound of the helicopter they put in there just gives another sense of, you know, another level of surveillance and professionalism that IMF has. Okay. Yeah, with that helicopter that he's got. Isn't that nice? Ethan, get in. We don't want to use force here. You know we will. Ethan, get in. Tell me you came here. I just like how your structure, you know. Just when this thing is happening, it's like, you know. And reading the script, it was a real page turner. That's where it is. Again, I love your running here. It became this sort of theme in the movie, inadvertently, that Ethan, you know... This is you, by the way, doing that, which, you know... That was a... And you landed on that... That rattles my motors, that one. But there's a thing in the movie where Ethan almost gets hit by four different cars or trucks in the course of the film. So here we are inside the... This set. Yeah, this set was beautiful. Again, Scott Chandler did an amazing job. I love that you're wheeled in wearing this mask. I know, the mask. It's so insane. When you came up with this mask, I just started laughing. I thought, what? This is... It's so over the top, but it's fantastic. Look at this. It's like, you know... I like the breath, the sound, the echo. The idea that you're... That's a terrific mix. Oh, yeah. The idea that, you know, your wife has been taken, and you can't even talk, and you know every moment ticking away is her life. How great is Laurence Fishburne? And look at Billy, how he's just nodding. Yeah, he's just, yeah, I'm with you. I love this dialogue, I have to say. This is Alex and Bob did the red blood on the flag. Which, when I read it, I went... I did love my sleep, just because I personally love my sleep. But Alex and Bob did the other stuff. But I have to say that... You don't really sleep much, though. More than you do, because you go like four days with like an hour. I love having him upside down like this. This is Alex and Bob's line. This was your idea when we were doing this scene that Billy Crudup, who's about to help out your character, that he wouldn't quietly speak because of the observation room here, and you thought they'd hear him. And then you had the idea, what if he allows Ethan to read his lips? We've already set it up. But we've already shot. That's the thing. The beauty of it was, it was just to show But now it became a set-up for this moment, which is one of my favorite sequences in the movie. I love things like that when you have those set-ups in those moments. I know, but that was a really... I'm so grateful for that idea. It was a great idea. I love this. I love your look to him here. And the music here, by the way, is... Listen carefully to the flute. Listen. This is... That's the Mission Impossible theme. Michael Giacchino, I was watching the sequence played fast, and played fast, you can hear the Mission Impossible theme. He's playing it really slowly. Giacchino's a genius. I love this. You kind of realize, oh, my God, he's given me a tool to help me. I love the wide lens. These guys are stunt guys that I've worked with on many films. These guys that are coming up in the elevator worked. We just worked together on War of the Worlds. Now, the kind of work it took to choreograph, train me, months, months of preparation. It was terrific.

I love this shot. You see the three guys. You see you. You see the knife. And then... I like the phone. That's great. That right there. He uses the phone as an extension of his hand. These guys. Buster did the fight. It was terrific. But you did the fight. And this is one of those, you know, pieces of... That was fun. I love that. Again, this is the kind of example of something... I shot this on a Sunday. Yeah, but this is the example of something you could not just get, you know, ever in TV, is those pieces of you climbing in the elevator. You just cut it, you know, but it adds a piece of drama to it. I love this shot here, too. I love this shot, and I love his performance in this. Colin Anderson is an amazing Steadicam operator and is tireless. It's Hunt. Oh, no, it's Hunt. Now, look at that. But how he's... Oh, hey, listen to the mic. Let me talk about the sound. They're actually taking your voice and Fish's voice, and they're alternating syllables, so you can't quite tell which voice is which. Now, Fish came in on that day and did the performance for me so that I could imitate it, so that we could try to do that. Now... This part of the movie, I love that it's below the Virginia Department of Transportation. So it's underground below that, and they don't even know it. Okay, now this. I just love Lawrence Fishburne. I never did that. Come on. Come on. I love your choice of music here and what you did and how you open it up at that point. It's sort of like a fun, momentary celebration. And this is a reveal. I remember we were trying to figure out how to shoot this on the day, and we came up with this, which I loved as a way to reveal, look what you've done. There used to be in the script a whole sequence. This is Michelle Arthur. She's a terrific actress. I also realized Kate was actually pregnant during this day. Are you kidding? Yeah, I didn't know until afterwards. Ladies and gentlemen, I had no idea. Fantastic. Yeah. Okay. Okay, now this bird is very... A very special bird. We were actually shooting in Chittag the day before this, and JJ turned around, and there was this bird that was doing flips. Like, only JJ would find this bird, and I was like, what are you talking about? We're in between shots. We're in between shots. You've got to see this. I'm like, what? Of course, now here we are, the whole crew, the pressure. The last night of our shoot. Yes, the last. This is it. This is it. The last night of the shoot. And we have this entire crew standing around, basically waiting for that guy, that bird. This is a set, a hallway set back at Paramount. Once again, Scott Chambliss just blowing our minds. Yeah, Dan Mendel, just look at that. We actually added that 1406 as an insert later because we thought it would be nice for the audience to see that, just to be clear that's where he went. But again, here's J.J. who loves finding a piece on the set and then opening the lock as opposed to pulling something out, which I... Well, I just love that Ethan constantly opens logic with anything. It's like my favorite thing. I love it. That's that magician in you. I love it. I love it. I know. And this, again, this set, this was one of those pieces that, you know, there was a green screen out there. That whole thing is green screen. Look, they put the city out there, and it just, the sound effects, the whole thing just makes you feel like you're really there. What was so strange was having been to Shanghai for the location scout, And then being on this set, I felt like I was there. It's so weird. I really, I just, it really was so beautifully dressed too. Don't kill me. I'm sorry. So I just love the way the team shows up. And it's about friendship. Musgrave told us about Julia. We're here to help. To get your wife, you'll need the rabbit's foot. According to the plans from Davian's briefcase, it's in a laboratory on the 56th floor of the Hengsheng Liu building. Which is a nightmare for just about every reason. They're a Chinese military contract. We have no pull, no details. The good news is... We added that shot later because to clearly show the audience. So later on when he pulls it out, we've seen it. From a thief's point of view, this is worst case scenario. The security guards are all privately contracted former People's Liberation Army... So you're getting all this information out, but it's really the friends going, look, warning him. Yeah. Yeah, which I love. It's all this exposition that we need, but each person's going, look, we have this, we've got this. That's right. I think, come on. That's right. The reflections added in on the window, I just love that. Yeah, I love the reflections like that. How tall is that building? Why? I love that shot of him. He's looking at his friend, you know. He just knows exactly what's going on in his head. Yeah, it's just... Distance between the buildings? 47.55 meters. Now I'm actually tracing now. How amazing is that? Isn't that incredible? Of course, Luther knows what's going on. There's a nice little, you know, when he says, you know, Langley was a cakewalk compared to this. I love the reference of the first film. You know what I mean? Yes. just for anyone who cares. Now, this mathematical equation actually is a real mathematical equation that we worked on. That's right. It was very specific about how it was a longer... Yeah, I was like, can he actually do this, you know, do this swing? And he was, like, sort of figuring it out, confirming his suspicion. What are you going to do? Land in the middle of Shanghai and hope no one notices? Central Park's two blocks away. I'm not saying I have a better idea, but there's a point where bold becomes stupid. Now, we don't even know what this thing is. And you're talking about... This is one of my favorite things here, too, which is the way you just say, no, here's the plan. This. So we can trace it and know where it is. Now you know we can get that gear here. I just delivered it myself. We contact Musgrave, have the IMF trace a tag, order a raid, get the rabbit's foot back, grab Davey. Like, Ethan's figured this whole thing out. It's one of my favorite things, where it's like, you've just got this whole plan, and what it comes down to is, you know, how far are you guys willing to go with me, you know, and... Then she's dead anyway. And so am I. You know? Goddamn it. As an actor, I enjoy having a scene like that. Oh, man. And I also have to tell you, we were all around talking that day about children when we were shooting around there, and I actually knew at this point that Kate was pregnant this day. And they were all talking about kids and, you know, children. And you didn't say anything. You were just like... And I was just looking, going... Of course we did.

So this is all actual Shanghai. Okay, Shanghai, Shanghai. Now, somewhere in this area... Earlier. The transition, yeah. The transition occurred. It gets made over time, and what's amazing is... Now, you came up with this on the day. Yeah, this I came up with, the idea of continuing all the way around. It originally was going to stop here. And you wrote this scene on the day. You're going to make it over there. Did I write that? Yeah, you did. Get back to the roof. Really? I don't remember. I remember. Oh, yeah, that's right. But this moment coming all the way around to the front was something that the guys who did the spider cam, Hammer and Panda, that's their nicknames, were able to pull off. So this sequence was, this is all pre-vis, trying to keep I lost it when I read this, though. We're trying to keep the clarity of geography that you've got these two slanted buildings, you've got these three buildings. We always had to make sure that the building you guys were on was on the left. It was just one of those things, trying to figure out the geography of all this was slightly challenging. The music's right here. When a baseball hit. When I read that, I lost it. We were shooting with Steven, and you'd written this, and I just, I absolutely lost it. I thought, this is, this is hilarious. What I love is that it's ridiculous in my favorite way. Now, these guys actually, when we were shooting it, spoke Mandarin, Chinese, Japanese. A couple of these guys were Jackie Chan's stunt team. But it was a whole thing, so we ended up having to loop some of this. And guys that I'd shot with on Collateral and War of the Worlds. They were terrific. Now, when I do this jump that's coming up, I actually have to jump far enough to ensure that I'm going to hit the airbag. Using collateral. Just to back up real quick, these shots, you know, we built a section of one of these roofs. And we used it for both of the roofs. And ILM connected them. It was really an amazing thing. Yeah, so here's the thing. I love this moment of being really tight on you, seeing the moment of truth and getting psyched up. And now here's the shot. We get to actually be on your face. And we see it's you, it's you. And that's you. That's all me. That's me. That's you. That's me. And I'll show you right where I separated the ribs. On right there. That little thing. You see, that's nothing. Somehow, how I was... I love what ILM did with this. This is fantastic. But this is actually you on the green screen stage. That was me. Now, that's me hitting right there. That was me hitting. That whole thing, I kept saying, you gotta see... That was one of the most dangerous things we did that night. This whole thing was done... This whole section was done on the back lot. of Universal on this big stage. Now, that whole shot, that is me dropping down. Yeah, dropping down. That is practical. Now, this line, this is the last final loop. Okay. Which you came up with. But that, okay, to me, it literally, it makes that moment, it's so funny. I know. That was the final, literally, we locked picture after that. Yeah, it was the last thing we did, and it's funny because that moment of Ving's line of, you know, he made it, I knew he'd make it, uh, It didn't play as well without it, but by giving Ethan that line of, okay, it sort of takes the onus off Luther's line, and it made it work better. It was a very weird thing. And again, you look at something, you're like, can it get better, can it get better, and you came up with that thing. And it fit in your mouth. It looks like you said it. And I went right there. That was so amazing. Yeah, we were right there. So this is the interior of the truck. We were downtown L.A. Again, Dan Mindel just taking some fluorescent lights and... Making it look like that was the same truck downtown L.A. Here. And this moment... I like this scene. Yeah, they're great in this scene. It's one of those moments that... It actually used to go on longer. We cut it shorter. What is that? He used to actually... He says, teach me. Teach it to me. And she actually started to. But it kind of went on a little bit longer than we needed it to. But this was your idea. to not show Ethan stealing the rabbit's foot. Originally, we were conceiving it. Oh, that's right. You're like, let's not even show it. We've seen that kind of thing a million times. Like, people have said to me, I love that you do not show Ethan stealing the rabbit's foot. What the hell do you mean you can't make it to the roof? Where are you? Look up, look up, look up! To me, that just makes me laugh. I'm sorry. This whole sequence is the Roadrunner Wile E. Coyote sequence in the movie. It's so ridiculous, like, the stuff that Ethan goes to.

Even the adding of the horns helps. I love that everything gets quiet for a couple frames, you know, before the slam, you know. This is where we were shooting when we were talking about it and I wrote the airplane scene. Yes, actually. See, now you see the rabbits. This day is when he wrote the airplane scene for Philip and I on the cargo plane. So now you've seen the rabbit's foot schematic, so now you know what the thing is. I love that. Islanded that, how you pulled backwards. It's fantastic. Now this was all shot actually downtown Los Angeles. We added some of the buildings and the signs. That's practical. Now this is practical. This is practical. This is actually you being dropped and being turned upside down at the last second. And the truck is coming. This is my least favorite. fun night on the movie because watching this thing drive over you at the end of the day it's like the driver just better do exactly the right thing it did freak me out it was not a pleasure it's not pleasant now was that ILM hitting the rabbit hole no that was actually the truck hitter although ILM turned one of the rear wheels so this area you're running as if you're running to a different cross street it's the same area I didn't enjoy running through that traffic that kind of freaked me out even though there's all stunt drivers doing this but It was early. Now, do you remember we came with this shot? This one, like, how are we going to end this? We were losing the light, remember? We were losing the darkness. Yeah, that's right. Ethan! Get in, they're coming! Who? Ben and security and they're pissed! Go, go, go! Right there is a sound effect that the sound guys... added that Mark Stechinger put in, you didn't actually hit the truck. You loved how the rabbit's foot goes into the coffee holder. Every time I see the rabbit foot go into the beverage holder, I'm just thrilled about that. You found that shot. It was like, please put it in the beverage holder. I don't know why it made me so happy. The beverage holder and the phone. I know. Now, some of this stuff was Vic Armstrong and the team shooting in Shanghai. This stuff, all the stuff, these are things in Shanghai. The interior, that's Shanghai. This is all downtown LA inside the truck. And this is downtown LA at Lower Grand, which Scott Chambliss dressed with lights. In fact, if you look down the roadway behind you guys, we did sort of forced perspective lighting to make it look as if The road just went on forever. Which is crazy. Look at that. It's fantastic. Both sides. You don't really notice it, but it looks like it just goes on and on and on. Put pressure on it. Tell me when you get a signal. What are you doing? It's hanging out. That is practical.

There was a guy in that car. I believe that was Scott as well. I don't know if that was Scott. I believe it was. I'm almost certain it was. I just know those things hurt. I've done one of those. It hurts. You only have five seconds left. Do you realize that? The rabbit's foot. I have it. The train yard at the Nanzong Lu. Wait for me there below. All right. So you got what you needed. Go secure it. We are. I have the rabbit's foot. You OK? I'm tagging it now. So this is the kind of thing that I love in movies like this where, you know... The detail of tagging. The detail and their expertise of this kind of stuff. You're so good at that stuff. I just love that you guys just know what's going on. Here's the tech stuff. Look at that. It's just, for some reason, it makes me smile. What I also love is that you've established now the GPS that you've got a locator that you can locate where someone is.

Come on. That's the Bond. It's beautiful. It's in Shanghai. The idea being at this point that you think that Brassel is not a good guy. And, of course, in a movie like this, you're always second-guessing every move. Who's who, what's what. Yeah, so you could think at that point that it's maybe Billy Crudup's character. This was the morning of the last day of shooting. Yeah. If you look at the background... See how the buildings are lit? We actually had to get permission from the Chinese government to get those buildings lit so that they'd stay lit. Vang and Maggie and Jonathan came to China basically for that... Just for that shot. And I won't see you back home. Better get back.

Even things like that, like the whip pen over getting the car, you know, our operators, Phil and Colin, they just make it look so easy. Yeah. I like the shot. You found this shot on the day, that reflection you walked in and went, look at that, the cup, the reflection. And we were actually, you know, we actually shot that in China right there. This is the last shot? That day, before we went to the rooftop. Drink it. No questions.

There's a scene that we shot that took place originally earlier in the film in the bathroom between Ethan and his wife that she was drawing a bath and he comes in and we ended up cutting it. But I loved, there was a very beautiful, sexy sort of warm quality to it. So I ended up using it here because I felt that it was actually nice to remember you know, who it is, you know, he's thinking of and what he's going after. And, you know, as Ethan's passing out, the memory of being with her and, you know, kissing her and then wham, he's suddenly in this weird place. In these shots, this is Tom looking up at Eddie, but the hand holding the gun is actually Tom's hand. Up your own nose. Up your own nose. I said, what? I love that. We couldn't get it any other way. That's hilarious to me. And here we are back at the beginning of the movie. You put an explosive charge in your head. Does that sound familiar? The rabbit's foot. Where is it? I gave it to you. I have to say, as an actor, you really enjoy playing this scene. It was amazing to watch you guys do it. It's one of these scenes you just keep playing over and over... ...and discover new things every time you do it. When we shot this, we had this side... But we couldn't get Laurence Fishburne here. So on this reverse shot, which was actually done there, there was another actor playing Laurence Fishburne in that shot, and they put his head in. And this shot was done in the Paramount back lot. This shot was done back at the tarmac. You think I'm playing? You think I'm playing? You don't think I'll do it? Where is it? Look at me. Where the hell is it? So Mary Ann Brandon, who cut this part of it, Mary Jo and Mary Ann sort of split reels of the movie to cut. Mary Ann did a sort of... a shortened version of, sort of an abridged version of the opening scene. It's not quite every moment, but it plays all the crucial beats. I want to help you get whatever you want. But you gotta do what's right. What you know is right. Please. No. How you got this tear to happen? That just happened. I discovered it.

I love this, too. This shot here, this one, is one that Alex, Kurtzman, and Bob Orsi kept saying, we need this shot, and they could not have been more right to cut back to the wide and seeing him left alone in this room. Yeah, and you realize there's someone else there, but you just don't know who it is. I just thought they were really smart about that.

I just love that you're just sort of numb. I like this. That goes out of focus. There he is. Now... Watch him. It's great. Now, watch the performance. You see where he was before, and I love that you say it's complicated. It's complicated. Come on, just... You know, the whole thing. It's just, what a great... It's like seeing the audience. Again, when I read that, I went, come on. You can't just... Come on. We had to make sure you brought the real thing. The rabbit's foot. Now we know.

Don't you touch her! Don't you touch her! There's Bahar and Michelle as one person. Bahar, who's brilliant. I should have mentioned her earlier. So we added that line, Davian's translator, so that people would really remember Bahar. But the thing about this, you can't see this, of course, but... Tom, in this shot, you know, you're holding cue cards up over half of your face. Billy kept calling saying, where's the scene? Where's the scene? I know. Hey, man, are you just messing with me? Where's the scene? Do you remember that weeks before? We didn't have the scene until literally that morning. As long as you tell me what was in Lindsay's message, I know she sent you a microdot from Berlin. He had cue cards when he needed them. And I think literally could not have been better in this scene. Incredible, because he just kept finding things as... He just dove in. We added that line later in post as well. Could I be compromised at IMF? And that line too. Did you buy the brass or set her up? You told him. This is always a tricky scene in a movie where you've got the... I thought you could get the ultimate explanation from a bad guy. But the fun of the movie for me is that the bad guy is so clearly established as Phil. And so they kind of, you know, the onus isn't entirely on him. And it is a long speech. Having said that, I'm actually fascinated by his... Motivation. I actually... No, I want to know also. I just love his performance. And I love his performance. He makes me want to know, and I'm interested. Yeah. I love this, the way he does this. And it's Christmas. Yeah, we had a longer version of this scene originally that we cut down. We'll have credible intel to prove it. U.S. Security Council will get a report by this time tomorrow. We're talking a military strike within a week. And when the sand settles... I remember we cast Billy, and Paul and I produced him in Without Limits. That's right. We played Steve Prefontaine. Yeah, he's amazing. My friend Kevin Smith saw the movie, and in his notes, he kept calling him Pre. Did Kevin do that? He would just refer to him as Pre. It was so crazy. You know the scene when Pre and Ethan are at the funeral? That's cool. It was very funny. It's the only play you have left. Until you're four. No, she's alive. Of course. Put her on. Jules? Ethan? Oh, we met. There was a lake near the mountain. No, Ethan had to bite Musgrave's hand, but we had the same problem. How could Tom actually bite Billy or Pri's hand? JJ came up and he said... So once again, I thought, wait a minute. That's Tom's hand. Once again, seriously. You said, bite your own hand. I did, and you did. Now, this was Steve Melton's idea, our prop genius, that he would extricate himself from these handcuffs using the pen refill. Benjamin Dunn? It's me, Ethan. What? No. Really? The music here is terrific as well. I need a trace location. The last call made from this phone. They're looking for you. Everyone's looking for you. Everyone I know, they're looking for you. I just looked it up. Okay, you're on Interpol's most wanted list, and that, by the way, is a spectacular list to be on. This is the steadicam shot on Ethan that was the tough. It was one long shot. This is actually all one shot on my side. It's all one. And I think it's all the same take. Yeah. Are you ready? All right. Just hang on. I'm gonna lose my citizenship because of this, you know? Seven, three, four, four, two, five, six, four, three, six, seven. Okay. Wait. Okay. Just hold the line, please. And we were all moving together, you know, through the... I was reading Benjamin's lines. It was really fun. You're reading Benjamin out. Listen to the music here. The way the music builds. And he picks the phone up again, the change. Listen. And you're back, you know. It's just the music. It keeps it going. We can share a jail cell together, you know. Look how this is lit. It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. The location of that number is Shanghai. There, I just told you, Shanghai. I've just aided and abetted an enemy of the state. That makes me laugh. Now, we shot all of these sequences with you before we ever went to China. Of course, knowing our locations, but never entirely sure what the weather was going to be like and if things would match. I knew we were going to go to a window. So what I love is this is interior LA going up, up, up to this. This is one of my favorite shots. This is Tom without any cable. Thousand-year-old fishing village. And this is Tom doing what he's doing. There's no trickery. God, that was so far down. This was nuts. Please, I do not want to fall in that water. Even that jump onto the step, I thought, please don't break your ankle. At every turn, I was like, this is not good. We used the spider cam for that shot as well. And... as we did for this shot coming up. Now this one here, and then the next one. Now this shot here, I could have added more head to it, which we had, but I just, I loved watching you run in this shot. I thought, why not just show people that you actually just did this. You just like, you know, ran this fast for this long. How many takes did I do? Six? I think six, seven takes, whatever. But, you know, this to me was just one of my favorite sequences. And we, you know, we made this all up on the day, the day before, just sort of finding the great pieces. The music there is great. And it was such a dream to be in Shetang. Still in Shetang here. This is it. This is Shetang. A great transition from Shetang to... Back to Shanghai. So this is back in Shanghai. This is Shanghai. The truck to reestablish. Yeah, the truck established so that you'll see it later. Okay, go down left. And now we're back in Chauteng. Now we're in Chauteng. And the brilliance of Scott Chambliss is never going to be more evident than in this moment. Here you have Tom running down this road to here. Now this begins our set at Paramount Studios. This is an interior set. Purposely you kept this all one shot so that you went from... Well, originally... Outside to inside. No, originally, remember, we were going to cut. And you went, no, no, I want to do the whole... That's right. We had the whole thing set up. You had this idea a couple of days beforehand about these guys playing this game. We had our casting directors go actually to Chinatown. And they were just terrific. And they had such, you know, fantastic faces. Look at those guys. I love them. Again, listen to the footsteps, the tension. Yeah, the sounds of the lights. They added sounds of pipes, steam and pipes. The creaking of the floor. And again, the creaking of the floor gives the set that additional sense of it being this old, real, true place.

It's all the disoriented nature of it. You just don't know where you are. And you're seeing these things. I've done most of my films. They're incredible. Yeah. And now you're looking to the right. So you're sort of focused left to right, but then that happens. And then this. And that to me, I love that Ethan screws up. I love it. But then he makes up for it. That was a tricky little stunt. My foot was really swollen after doing that kick. You do these things a number of times. And I loved the reveal of her in slow motion, by the way. That was really fun. The gun goes a little bit farther than it probably ever would, but I sort of love... This reminds me of a comic book frame for some reason, this shot. activated the charge in your head and she's heard this for the first time and i just love your commitment to this the pain in the head it was this was like this sequence was an intense sequence to shoot not just the fight which was intense but you know you're in this agony you know she's being terrorized it was just these days are these are tense days yeah intense

I like how Philip plays this. And I love his breathing, if we hear it, the wheezing that he makes. I know. That was his wheezing. We actually cut this down, this fight down, but it actually made the fight better because it made it more succinct. And you didn't start to resent the fight for being too brutal. I agree. I thought it was... I liked it more. This is one of those moments that I love his dragging him, but I love this. That's the breathing, too. Yeah. Now it's coming up the first time, the gun. Now look at this. Now this is two different shots. On the whip pan we did a cut, so it's pushing it on one direction and pushing it on the opposite axis. I love the way Michelle plays this also, the look on her face. Yes, like the agony of seeing... And also there's two great close-ups coming up that I really, as the tension builds, that I really... Look at how it's... And this is classic Giacchino music, what he's doing with the strings there playing the... Okay, so slow motion, we see the gun. He's reaching for the gun. Reaching for the gun, looking up. Now listen to the music and listen to these close-ups. Look at that. Look at what she's doing.

Look at this in the frame. I love that she's... The idea sort of in this moment, it's sort of how he sees her, but also she's looking at him saying, I love you, and she's giving him the power. Just willing him. To just do his thing. Now look at this. Through that glass. Now, I really had to hit Phil. Yeah, you slammed Phil into that. I had to slam him to get him through and then pull him off. And he went for it. Look at this. Those head snaps. That's intense. That's him selling it. That's him selling it. So here's that final... So here's the thing. Boom. And this is on our set. And then... Boom. Now we're in Shanghai. A week later, here we are in Shanghai shooting this. This is Philip's last day. Boom. Now, I love this. There's the shoe. Come on. That is classic Abrams to me. That is classic Abrams. It's once again... Now, rabbit's foot, there is the shoe, okay? I just... What I love about it is that... I lost it. Again, it's sort of like, you know... It's in the Warner Bros. cartoon category. And in this movie, it's like the baseball, the shoe, where it's just... Emotionally, his material, you have to commit 100%, and then it allows that... That, by the way, was so much fun, working with this cast, is everyone, and you really set the tone, committed so completely to situations that are often so extreme... you want to go with it because you go anywhere with these characters, these actors, you know. And this stuff was written the morning we shot it. Yeah, we... Yes, we knew... This is the last day we had in L.A. We knew we were going to be doing... We obviously knew what we were going to do, but the specifics... The dialogue, the geography... No, remember you found this room. Yeah, I knew I needed to use that room. It was such a great set. You walked in and said, okay, let's find this now. I'm really glad that we did that.

The sound there is great, hearing the energy and the power go down. The music's fantastic, too. The music even sounds like a little... This is all the stuff about the battery in there. You wrote that in the morning. Oh, actually, the battery line I'd had a while ago, it was one of the only lines that actually stayed, though. Because I remember that idea of trying to... You know, having him compare something so familiar and mundane... No, that was something that I had. I had that before. I know I did. And we were good. There we go. I mean, look. I love that stuff for me. I know, it makes me laugh too. I love this whole idea, I'm going to die unless you kill me. To be able to play a scene where... He's gone this whole way to save her. Now she's got to kill him. And he's just about, and he realizes, it's like, when you told me that moment, didn't know you got to take this stuff out and tell me you love her. Do you know what I mean? While we were shooting it, I saw you, saw you, you're like, okay, now, right before she's, you've got to go, wait, wait, wait. And I just went, come on. What was so great was... And you don't have time, you just don't want to get mushy about it, but you want to deliver it. And I find it so romantic. But you know what's funny? The idea that literally he's gone to the ends of the earth. He has, you know, risked his life God knows how many dozens of times. He finally gets to her, he's got a thing in his head that's going to kill her. It is literally so insane and so extreme that even though it's the I love you is a legitimate thing, it's like, it's such a sort of small drop in the bucket compared to the content. But you know it's so important to get that through. We're trying to figure out how does she see him? Oh, yeah. One of our prop guys just came in and put it right there. One of our prop guys said, you know, I just found this, this cart. And I hugged him. I was like, are you kidding me? The cart? I just love that idea that she scoots down season and then just, like, unloads. Boom. The whole thing. Now she's reloading. Just like the batteries in the flashlight. Boom. Now she's ready. Okay, now this shot... Now, we joked that this was gonna take all day. All day. I teased Billy about it. I said, this is gonna take forever. But then... I said, I'm going... And look at that. It literally rolled out perfectly. And, you know, they rigged the case so it opens up when he drops it. But Billy did it perfectly. And Colin, our camera operator, steadicam, moved right in on it. It was like, it was so perfect. You literally hear off camera people going, come on. Yeah, you said, come on. I know. It's like, it was so perfect. I have a plate on my chest. I had a chest piece in it. She could really wail. so that she could just get this done. It's pretty amazing, actually, because you really see it happening. It worked really well. What she did here, I think, is really... And I love the idea that the music is now playing... Wait a minute, he might not make it. I remember the first time you played this for me with the simple piano. To have that in this movie... This is Michael Giacchino, though. This is his... But to have that in this movie... He's amazing. Yeah, he's done some stuff. And to have this... She's so good. Yeah, she did a terrific job in this. This is one of those things, too, where we worked on the cut, and we had it much longer, and we had it much shorter, and we sort of tried to find a length that was long enough. Because, again, audiences are so savvy, you know. And there was a version where the music, there was more. Yes, that's right. And you stretched it away just to the simplicity of these notes. That's right. It's funny. I've seen this a couple times with... and, you know, there's this relief, but there's also this great kind of, there's a laughter in the fact that he wakes up and grabs the gun immediately. I just love that. I love that he was not present for any of that stuff. Yeah, I know. And those two lines and that push-in is something also that you added. Yeah. You did that? Yeah, wow. That I...

And again, you know, these were shots that we... This is in Chitaing. We're in Chitaing. It's beautiful. Beautiful morning light. And these are like... We re-shot this, didn't we? Not this. Yeah, the shot coming up. This shot, we shot the night before and didn't quite get it. And so we came back the next morning and shot this first thing. I was thinking you might want to tell me why we're in China. I know. This is an incredible location. The camera was on a crane here that we had on a dolly, so we pushed the dolly out. And once we cleared that roof, we could start to rise. For what it's worth, ILM had to remove a tower way in the background. I love this line. Impossible mission force. Shut up. I went, come on. To have this, it just plays right. What I love is that that is what it stands for, and when you hear it, you do kind of go, come on. But it's just, you know. There was a tower that was way in the background that was the spider-cam tower that ILM took out. This final sequence at one point was considerably longer and we trimmed it down quite a bit. Just kind of cut into the chase. You should know the White House has contacted me. There's a job that they are... At one point we discussed ending the movie just on that walk across the bridge, but it felt like it took... It took away from the closure of... And you wanted to see that Ethan and, you know, Musk and Brassel were getting along. I mean, you know, Fish has the great smile. And you want to see the teams alive. Look at that guy. He's the greatest. Here's the classic Fish. Here we go. Rabbit's foot. What is it? That's Fish. There you go. Promise me you'll stay, I'll tell you. I love that. He is the greatest. Come on. And again, the music, you know, the idea of this movie, you know, and it's definitely a sentimental thing, and it's sort of like, but to see her okay, and to see her at IMF, and to see that moment, and you go, wait a minute, what's going on? She's part of it now? They're all connected, you know? And seeing that they're okay, I just love seeing the team again. And again, Giacchino, and then of course Simon having his moment. I love the music here, the notes. Listen to how it goes. Yeah, this last little piece. I love that, that good thing. It's very sweet. You can go into slow motion. And ending the movie in like a small, you know, intimate way, I thought was sort of a... It's very romantic. It was romantic. It was fun. Strap me a poem. Should we read the credits? No, that's my mistake. Here, do it for me. Let's talk about Tommy Gormley for a while. Tommy's the greatest. Come on. It's hilarious. Thomas Harper. Oh, my God. Come on, Harper. Come on. Vic Armstrong. You did a lot of great stuff. There you go. Lilo. Lilo Schiffer. Come on. We were trying to get Lilo to actually play piano in the orchestra, but it didn't work out. Wouldn't that have been cool? It would have been great. God. Who did play, though? Dermot Mulroney. Dermot played cello. Played cello. We've got to thank Paula Wagner. Oh, please. Paula, I love you. We've made so many films together. You know, every movie I've made, I've made with Paula. And that's the only way I'm going to have it, if she'll have me. Thank you, Paula. Thank you, Paula. Eric Schwab found all of our locations in China. Yeah. So we're very... Appreciate it. Debbie Boston, the greatest. I forget about her. Everyone should hire Debbie Boston. And also Mark Stechinger. Yeah, Mark. I've done so many movies with Mark. Dan Sudek. Harry Liu had so many guns. I wish he'd quit bringing guns to the set. It's enough already. Becky Brake was huge with all the location stuff. There, let's see here. We don't leave anybody out. I know. You guys see your names. You all see your names. There's Athena and Sean. There's Jill. I can't say enough about Dan. Can't say enough about her. Let's see here. Let's go. Jill buys a lot of shoes. Can we talk about Jill and her shoes? Fantastic shoes. She's got great shoes. Great taste in shoes. And the woman works hard. Well, she has to with that many shoes. Oh, my goodness. Look, Sidney. Todd Hammer. If anyone thought we were lying. Yeah. Oh, Todd Hammer. His name is Todd Hammer? No, Todd Hammer. Oh, Todd Hammer. I didn't see it. Where's the panda? Panda? I don't think that's credit. Really? Panda, you should renegotiate your contract. I'm just saying. I'm just saying we didn't see Panda's name. And, you know, Imelda and Lucy, we had an amazing post-production crew, so thanks. Thanks, guys. And all the sound editors, dialogue. Seriously, I think these credits are about 15 or 18 minutes long. Yeah, we're going to be here for another 20 minutes. That's so impossible to get it. That's so impossible to get it. I just want to say thank you for letting me make this movie. This was the greatest, most fun experience. Seriously though, it was just remarkable. Thank you. It was so much fun. It was amazing. I can't wait to do it again. I cannot wait. I can't wait. Well, thank you. And also to anyone who's listened to us this far, thank you for your stamina. You guys have real stamina. Go get some coffee or something. They're probably sleeping now, so we could probably subliminally put things into their dreams. No, thanks very much. But I hope it was... Informative. Yeah, worth your time, for God's sake. Somewhat worth your time and entertainment. We had fun is the thing. I hope they had fun. I did it with Cameron on Jerry Maguire. Oh, we see. I would want to hear what you guys have to say about that. I don't even know what we did. I did it with Cuba, Renee. Oh, that must have been... We had a blast. Now I have to go out and buy that DVD. I'll give it to you. Yeah? I can hook you up, man. All right. You know, guy? I got some friends. I'm going to watch it tonight. I got some friends. I'm going to want to come back and redo this whole thing, though. Look at this. Because you're going to have really smart things to say about that. I should have watched that one first. I always make mistakes like this. This is Kanye's Mission version. Eric Schwab gets two credits. Seriously, how many times do you have to be credited? I get it. He gets... He did. He got two credits on that. I don't know. No, he did an amazing job. An amazing job. ILM. What about Klaus did great work. Oh, Klaus. I can't say enough about Klaus. Oh, the woman who gave me the tutorial on how to do my visual effects shots. Where is she? Hold on a second. Where is she? Digital artist? Look, see, I got my name there. Where, where, where? The bottom. Oh, yeah. Ha, ha, ha, ha. He just can't have your name enough. I can't complain about Eric Schwab. It's embarrassing. No, but I was given a tutorial. I can't believe what you're doing. She was back there. She's really good. There's Kevin Blank, who does the stuff on Lost and Alias. We can just go on and talk about all these people. Stefan, Company 3, Geniuses. There's Sarah Band. Uh, Lalo again, here we go. This goes on and on and on. I know, we've got, uh, Danny Bramson. How many? Michael Cicchino. Okay. All right, well, anything else? Thomas Dolby, one of my buddies. I know, my name's all over this movie. Thomas Dolby? Yeah. There you are again. I know, it's ridiculous. Did you just, how many times do you have your name in here? Doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. Is there some sort of union contractual deal? It is, I, yes. What's up with that? Uh, I don't know, I... They just kept asking me to do more credits. Oh, look. There we are. Paula Wagner. That's Paula Wagner. Look at that card. Thank you, Paramount.