Christopher McQuarrie (born 1968) is an Academy Award winning American screenwriter and director. 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday. ... Although he never won an Oscar for any of his movie performances, the comedian Bob Hope received two honorary Oscars for his contributions to cinema. ...

Life

McQuarrie was born and raised in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, where he attended high school with director Bryan Singer and actor Ethan Hawke. In lieu of college he took a job working as an assistant teacher at a boarding school in Perth, Western Australia, and later hitchhiked around the western half of the continent. Returning to the United States a year later, he went to work for a detective agency in New Jersey for the next four years. In 1992, he applied to the New York City Police Department and was on his way to the academy when former schoolmate Singer offered him the opportunity to write their first feature film, Public Access, winner of the 1993 Sundance Film Festival’s grand jury prize. Princeton Junction is also a NJ Transit and Amtrak station on the Northeast Corridor line. ... Official language(s) None, English de facto Capital Trenton Largest city Newark Area  Ranked 47th  - Total 8,729 sq mi (22,608 km²)  - Width 70 miles (110 km)  - Length 150 miles (240 km)  - % water 14. ... Bryan Singer (born September 17, 1965) is an American film director. ... Ethan Hawke at press conference for Before Sunrise at the 1995 Berlinale. ... The Perth skyline viewed from the Swan River This article is about the urban area of Perth, Western Australia. ... NYPD emblem The New York City Police Department is the largest police department in the United States, the largest municipal police force in the world, and has the primary responsibility for law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City. ... Public access television is a cable television service that allows members of the public to use a cable companys facilities and equipment to create and broadcast their own content. ... The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival in the United States, and ranks alongside the Cannes, France, Moscow, Russia, Venice, Italy, Berlin, Germany, and Toronto, Canada festivals as one of the most prestigious in the world. ...

Career

Singer and McQuarrie collaborated again on the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, for which McQuarrie received best screenplay awards from Premiere magazine, The Texas Board of Review, and the Chicago Critics as well as the Edgar Award, The Independent Spirit Award, and the British and American Academy Awards. The film was later included on the New York Times list of the 1000 greatest films ever made, and the character Verbal Kint was included on AFI’s list of the 100 greatest Heroes and Villains of all time. In 2006, the Writers Guild of America voted The Usual Suspects #35 on their list of 101 Greatest Screenplays. The Usual Suspects is a 1995 British/American movie written by Christopher McQuarrie (who earned an Oscar for the screenplay) and directed by Bryan Singer. ... Premiere is an American and New York City-based film magazine published by Hachette Filipacchi Médias, beginning publication in 1987. ... The Edgar Allan Poe Awards (popularly called the Edgars), named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America. ... The New York Times is a newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ... The American Film Institute (AFI) is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act. ... AFIs 100 Years. ... The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is the collective bargaining representative, or labor union, for writers in the motion picture and television industries in the United States. ...

McQuarrie spent the next several years dividing his time between rewriting studio movies (such as Singer’s X-Men) and developing a screenplay on the life of Alexander the Great, written with Peter Buchman, for Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. (Scorsese and DiCaprio chose to do The Aviator first, making way for Oliver Stone to produce his version of Alexander.) X-Men is a 2000 American action movie, featuring a group of comic book superheroes called the X-Men. ... Alexander the Great (Greek: ,[1] Megas Alexandros; July 356 BC–June 11, 323 BC), also known as Alexander III, king of Macedon (336–323 BC), was one of the most successful military commanders in history. ... Martin Luciano Scorsese (IPA: AmE: ; Ita: []) (born November 17, 1942) is an Academy Award-winning American film director. ... Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio (born November 11, 1974[1]) is an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actor well known for his roles in blockbuster movies such as William Shakespeares Romeo + Juliet (1996), Titanic (1997), Catch Me If You Can (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), The... The Aviator is an Academy Award-winning 2004 biographical drama film, directed by Martin Scorsese. ... William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946), known simply as Oliver Stone, is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director and screenwriter. ... Alexander is a 2004 epic motion picture film, based on the life of Alexander the Great. ...

McQuarrie also wrote and directed The Way of the Gun, starring Benicio Del Toro, Ryan Phillippe, and James Caan. Despite a desire to move away from the crime genre, it was the only arena in which he could find any creative control. He set out to make a crime film about truly "criminal" criminals – a revisionist modern-day Western populated with multi-layered characters whose actions are not motivated by backstories contrived to make them endearing and sympathetic. He also rejected the stylized approach that had come to define the action-crime genre – choosing instead to rely on story and performance. The film failed to live up to the acclaim of McQuarrie’s earlier films. The Way of the Gun is a 2000 film, directed by Christopher McQuarrie and starring Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro as two reckless and brutal gunfighters who kidnap a woman (Juliette Lewis) who is carrying the child of a powerful mobster, hoping to obtain a huge cash payoff. ... Benicio Monserrat Rafael Del Toro Sanchez (born February 19, 1967, in San Germán, Puerto Rico) is an Academy Award winning Puerto Rican actor. ... Ryan Phillippe (born Matthew Ryan Phillippe on September 10, 1974) is an American actor. ... James Caan (born March 26, 1940) is an Academy Award, Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated American film, stage and television actor. ... i like western films The Western is an American genre in literature and film. ...

More recently McQuarrie has developed a script with co-writer Dylan Kussman about the life of John Wilkes Booth and The Last Mission with co-writer Nathan Alexander detailing the harrowing last hours of WWII in the Pacific. Dylan Kussman is an American film and television actor who played the part of Richard Cameron in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society. ... John Wilkes Booth John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American actor infamous for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. ...

He is presently preparing to produce and direct The Stanford Prison Experiment co-witten by Tim Talbott. Recently he co-wrote an untitled World War II script (also with Nathan Alexander) which Bryan Singer is directing with Tom Cruise slated to star. The project is set up at the newly revamped United Artists. Bryan Singer (born September 17, 1965) is an American film director. ... Tom Cruise (born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on July 3, 1962) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe Award-winning American actor and film producer. ... The current United Artists logo (a variant was used during the 1980s). ...

Screenplay credits

• 1993 Public Access, co-writer with Bryan Singer and Michael Feit Dougan
• 1995 The Usual Suspects
• 2000 X-Men, (uncredited) with David Hayter
• 2000 The Way of the Gun, also director

Public access television is a cable television service that allows members of the public to use a cable companys facilities and equipment to create and broadcast their own content. ... Bryan Singer (born September 17, 1965) is an American film director. ... The Usual Suspects is a 1995 British/American movie written by Christopher McQuarrie (who earned an Oscar for the screenplay) and directed by Bryan Singer. ... X-Men is a 2000 American action movie, featuring a group of comic book superheroes called the X-Men. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Way of the Gun is a 2000 film, directed by Christopher McQuarrie and starring Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro as two reckless and brutal gunfighters who kidnap a woman (Juliette Lewis) who is carrying the child of a powerful mobster, hoping to obtain a huge cash payoff. ...

Bibliography

• McQuarrie, Christopher (1996). "The Usual Suspects". Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-19153-3.

External links

• Christopher McQuarrie at the Internet Movie Database
• indieWIRE.com INTERVIEW: Christopher McQuarrie's Way of the Writer-Director. By Matthew Breen