Chris McQuarrie: Thank you all for coming! I hope I can be informative!

Chris McQuarrie: Actually, no. I avoided study as much as possible in school, much to the chagrin of my parents. I should say that I was never involved in formal study, but I watched a great deal of film growing up.

Chris McQuarrie: Comedy. People often tell me that's the sort of thing I should write, and for the life of me I can't imagine how someone does that!

Chris McQuarrie: Write screenplays. The greatest advice I've ever received from anybody about a career in film is to make films - as often and as many as you can.

Chris McQuarrie: My office is at home and it used to be peaceful until our daughter was born. I like the view very much, but the noise is getting to be a little difficult. I will probably have to move to a new location. Normally, what I require is as few distractions as possible, so I tend to write better at night when everyone's gone to bed. But that's very difficult to do when you're a parent.

Chris McQuarrie: I would say the biggest mistake a screenwriter can make is attempting to write a screenplay for someone other than him or herself. If you're trying to write a screenplay in an effort to write what you think other people want, you'll ultimately fail. Another mistake is to become too attachedto any idea or concept or message that you're trying to convey. Screenwriting is a process of discovery, not a process of construction. And while it's important to have a goal, the journey is always more important than the destination.

Chris McQuarrie: Starting.

Chris McQuarrie: Usually I procrastinate before starting writing anyway, and by that point I'm in so much financial trouble that I simply can't afford to get stuck. However, when I get stuck something that I tend to do is something I learned from Benicio del Toro. When we were shooting "The Way of the Gun" I didn't know how I was going to make the action sequence at the end of the movie. That centered around $15 million in a gym bag. Benicio asked me how much $15 million weighs (he can become obsessive about detail!). I didn't care how much $15 weighed, but he kept insisting that I find out. I gave it to the prop masterto figure out. He weighed $15 million in 10s and 20s and 50s, and it weighed 2300 pounds and filled 23 printer paper boxes, which was enough to fill a small van. And so I asked how much would it weigh in $1000 bills, and the prop guy told me they didn't make $1000 bills any more and that the $1000 bills that existed were so rare they were worth $1500 a piece in good condition. I thought I would save that fact for another movie. When I asked how much it weighed in hundreds he said it weighed 375 pounds and filled three ENORMOUS gym bags. The prop guy suggested I reduce the ransom to $5 million and just have one enormous gym bag. I said no, we'll keep 3 gym bags and we'll let del Toro figure out how to carry all three and still be able to shoot a gun. From that question I managed to create the action sequence at the end of "The Way of the Gun." So, what I learned was that now when I'm stuck, or when a scene feels boring or routine, I ask myself, "How much does $15 million weigh?"

Chris McQuarrie: Oh, boy! How did it feel to win an Oscar...? It's the single worst thing that could ever happen to your writing - and I desperately hope to win another one! It's like winning the lottery and being convicted of murder,all at the same time, because it's extremely exhilarating but extremely terrifying. When it first happened I thought now I could make whatever I wanted to. But what I discovered was while everyone wants to work with you, they don't want to make your movies - they just want you to make their movies...and they're willing to pay more money to get you to do it. I have a few friends who have won Academy Awards early in their careers, and it sometimes takes them years to recover their sense of independence and the hunger that made them winners in the first place. But would I give it back? Never.

Chris McQuarrie: I completely disagree. I think the easiest thing to write is your first because you have no idea about your process. You have no idea about criticism. You have no concept of failure in the eyes of the audience. I think the hardest thing to write is the first script after your biggest success or your first script after your greatest failure.

Chris McQuarrie: They've already affected the film industry, but the industry's capacity for denial is infinite! The only effect that September 11 will have on the film business will be dictated by the effect it has on the audience becausethe audience really determines what direction the film industry will take. How it's affected my work personally...I'm more convinced than ever that the device of revenge as a motive for a hero is unacceptable and, in fact, it's destructive. Every single movie that's made today is in one way or anotherinfused with a need for revenge, to the point where revenge has become a noble pursuit and forgiveness is a sign of weakness. And in truth, I believe that is why September 11 happened in the first place.

Chris McQuarrie: Hmm...okay, the three movies I would take are "The Man Who Would Be King," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and "Citizen Kane." The three books I would take would be the Bible, the Torah, and the Q'uaran - because that's the only way I would ever have the time to read them!

Chris McQuarrie: The advantage is that it costs nothing to write a screenplay. The disadvantage is that you have to involve other people when you make it into a movie, so you come from a place of complete control over your material to no control whatsoever. And despite everyone's impression of the screenwriter, he or she is the only person in the film business that at any point ever has complete control of their work. Anyone who tells you that a director has complete control over a film has never directed a film.

Chris McQuarrie: I had been writing from the time I was 12 years old and I had been writing screenplays from the time I was about 22. I wrote "The Usual Suspects" when I was 24, and I won when I was 26. Julian Fellowes wrote his first feature screenplay two years ago and that was "Gosford Park," for which he just won the Academy Award. And he's 50 years old. So don't ever equate age with success. Writing is its own reward. Everything else is gravy.

Chris McQuarrie: That's a very good question. There are a few projects that I'm writing for other people and a few that I am writing with the intention of directing. I've just been hired to rewrite a film for John Woo about the transcontinental railroad. I'm writing another film that is a remake of a Hong Kong movie called "The Mission" about bodyguards. And I'm currently developing a western with Benicio del Toro.

Chris McQuarrie: Shocked and relieved! I was without a doubt the black sheep of the family. I was the only terrible student in the family and I was extremelydisruptive in school - always in trouble, always running from the police. So I think, if anything, my parents are just happy that I'm not in jail.

Chris McQuarrie: By any means necessary. If it means shooting on video, shoot on video. If it means borrowing money from anyone foolish enough to lend it to you, borrow it. I can tell you that Bryan Singer's entire career started when he extended all the limits on his credit cards as far as he could and literally paid for his first 35mm short film on credit. That short film got him his firstfeature. Most of the money that he made shooting that feature went to pay his debts from shooting the short. But by then it didn't matter because he was a director.

Chris McQuarrie: As realistically as possible. It's my personal belief that it's perfectly acceptable to put anything on film. The responsibility does not come from what to put into a film and what to leave out of a film, the responsibilitycomes in how you present it. And what I always try to do when I'm presenting violence is to always present the consequences of violence. As a result, "The Way of the Gun" was an extremely unpopular film, but I sleep very well at night.

Chris McQuarrie: I came up with the ending first. I was at the Sundance Film Festival and a friend of mine had asked me what my next movie was going to be after "Public Access." I told him that I had read an article in Spy magazine called "The Usual Suspects," and I thought that would make a great title for a movie. He asked me what the movie would be about and I didn't know, but I imagined it would be about the usual suspects - men who are always arrested when their particular type of crime is committed, regardless of their alibi. We set about designing the poster for this movie because we were standing in the lobby of this movie theater, surrounded by independent movie posters. We described the poster to Bryan Singer, who promptly forgot about it. Several months later I was working in a copy room at a law firm in downtown L.A. and Bryan was in Japan screening "Public Access" for the investors who had given us the money to make it. Bryan had become convinced that he could get $3 million from these investors. He called me at work and said, "We need to make an inexpensive film. Do you remember that poster you told me about?" I said yes, and he asked if I could write a movie to go with that. So, I was sitting in the break room at work, trying to come up with a story to go with the poster for "The Usual Suspects." The room that I was sitting in reminded me of an interrogation room, so I began to have a mock interrogation with myself in hopes of coming up with an idea. The person I imagined being interrogated didn't want to answer any questions and didn't want to get yelled at either, so he just talked about anything but the question. He talked so much that I started to call him Verbal. I needed a name for the interrogator, and the office manager at the place where I worked was named Dave Kujan. After a while this interrogation was going nowhere and I'd run out of word associations, so I started looking around the room for things to talk about. I looked up at the bulletin board in front of me. It was made by Quartet in Skokie, Illinois. And suddenly the ending of "The Usual Suspects" occurred to me. A few days later I met an attorney at the law firm whose name was Keyser Sume. We later changed the name - because you don't want to mess with a lawyer whose name is pronounced "sue me." We discovered that the Turkish word for verbal was soze, and Keyser Soze was born.

Chris McQuarrie: It was written specifically for Kevin Spacey because at the time Kevin was largely unknown. We knew if you cast a known actor in the role of Keyser/Verbal everyone would know where the movie was going. We firmly maintained that the movie worked on first-time audiences because people dismissed Kevin as the most likely candidate - not because of his disability, but because of his stature. I'm a big believer that you never fool the audience without their consent. I didn't fool anyone with the end of "The Usual Suspects," they all fooled themselves. The answer to the riddle is obvious. The riddle itself is what's so confusing because the riddle refused to obey convention, and everyone's assumption is that movies are, above all else, familiar.

Chris McQuarrie: I do everything I can to avoid writing. It's taken me a long time to learn that you never find the answer by looking for it, as in the case of the bulletin board. The hardest thing to do as a writer is to not write and trust that you're still working.

Chris McQuarrie: Nothing is set in stone. So many forces are working to change the screenplay, from cowardly executives, insecure actors, egotistical directors and incompetent writers, not to mention acts of God and Mother Nature! Or simply the budget. A film is written three times. Once on paper, once on film, and once in the editing room. In an ideal environment, such as was the case in "The Usual Suspects," the writer, the director, and all of the actors understand the material inherently and work to change it only in an effort to improve the overall product, not just their work in it. Everyone that I worked with on "The Usual Suspects" still maintains that despite how hard it was, it was one of the best experiences they had ever had because everyone was making the same movie and everyone was working to help everyone else. No one was working to serve themselves.

Chris McQuarrie: Absolutely! First and foremost your writing is for yourself. Kafka never showed anyone his work. No one ever knew he was a writer. It was found in a trunk after he had died. I truly believe that that is why Kafka was such a unique writer. As a writer you will always make someone unhappy or dissatisfied. If you have remained true to yourself in the process, this will not matter. If, however, you have compromised, even the greatest success will feel empty and mediocrity will feel like a tremendous failure. Never forget that your teacher merely teaches writing, while you're actually doing it. If you are enjoying the act of writing, you are fulfilled as a writer.

Chris McQuarrie: In writing a novel you have the freedom to express in direct words what a character is thinking or feeling or remembering. Thus, writing a novel is a three-dimensional form of writing. When writing for film you can only express what a character is seeing or hearing. You can never truly express what a character smells, tastes, feels or thinks unless the character says it out loud. In writing for a play there are no close-ups. There is no inter-cutting. There is no selection of lenses or filters. There is no score. In other words, there is nothing to manipulate the audience's emotions, and so all you are left with is the words. That's why I would choose to be a screenwriter. A great deal of the responsibility is left to other people, whereas as a novelist you are in control of everything. As a playwright, you are completely at the mercy of the actors and the audience.

Chris McQuarrie: If it's an original screenplay and I have not taken any money to write it, I decide who those producers are and I make those choices as they come. If I am being paid to write or rewrite a movie, I accept (at the same time I accept the check) that I am merely providing a service to those producers. If they choose to cut away my best ideas, that's their choice.

Chris McQuarrie: That it educates. I truly believe that film does not affect opinion nearly as much as it affects fashion. People do not imitate the philosophies expressed in film nearly as much as they imitate what people wear or how much they smoke. It's an extremely self-important medium that is largely incapable of expressing the truth, because inherently people don't go to the movies to hear truth - they go to hear that certain myths are true. That's not to take away from film's importance as a medium to inspire and to entertain. I think those things are extremely important. But people change the world; movies rarely do.

Chris McQuarrie: Even more so. But so is New York.

Chris McQuarrie: Hmm...let's see. That all depends on the year. It was television and then the Internet. There was a period in which it was video games. Now, it's my child.

Chris McQuarrie: The best film festival I ever attended was in Orlando, Florida. It was their second festival, so they were unaffected by the festival vibe. They had a fantastic movie theater that was also a restaurant. You sat at a table and they served you drinks and food while you watched the movie. That's the way I think all movie theaters should be.

Chris McQuarrie: Sadly, there was nothing confidential that I ever experienced. It's extremely boring work 98 percent of the time, and the other two percent is terror, like when someone tries to hit you on the head. One of these days I'd like to make a movie about my time at the detective agency. That will undoubtedly be the comedy people are asking me to write.

Chris McQuarrie: Because I didn't study in school. When I wrote "The Usual Suspects" I didn't know what any of the rules were and, as a result, I didn't know that I was breaking them. The more I learn about the rules, the harder theybecome to break. Sometimes in writing, ignorance can indeed be bliss.

Chris McQuarrie: Thank you all for coming. I wish you all the best of luck!