Fresh off of nabbing his eighth Golden Globe nomination for playing Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (2008), Tom Cruise sat down to promote Valkyrie (2008) alongside director Brian Singer (The Usual Suspects, 1994; X-Men, 2000). The film is about Nazis in World War II, but not those evil Nazis that Steven Spielberg loves to portray. Cruise’s Nazis don’t like the party and want to dump the punchbowl by assassinating Hitler. Unfortunately, the film has already garnered more bad press and speculation than most films do by their DVD release, which Brian Singer and Tom Cruise touched on during the discussion, emphasizing the point that this is a “suspense thriller,” not a boring Holocaust film.

1- What made you want to do this film?

Tom Cruise: When I read the script I just thought how incredibly suspenseful it was; really, a great thriller.

I’ve always wanted to work with Brian [Singer] since I saw his film Usual Suspects. We met at the premiere of Mission: Impossible and I told him then: “I want to work with you.” When I put [the script] down, I thought this can’t be true. Then I sat down with Brian and found out that it is completely true. I’d never heard it before. There were certain things I thought had to be movie conventions, like Stauffenberg visiting Hitler the day after D-Day. It’s interesting and it actually happened. Actual dialogue in the film was taken out of letters and journals that [the film writers] had studied.

2- Do you think this is an important movie to come out among all the Holocaust films, so people can judge a country based on the whole and not individual events?

Cruise: That’s definitely important because I didn’t know the story. It’s important to know that it wasn’t everybody who believed that Nazi ideology. I grew up wanting to kill Nazis, wanting to kill Hitler, and I’d think: “Why didn’t someone just shoot him.” This was a massive, comprehensive story. We could have made it a five-hour, even a 10-hour miniseries. Brian, though, was always very specific that this was a suspense thriller about trying to kill Hitler.

Brian Singer: It’s not a Holocaust film. The movies and subject matter that’s happening to come out around this time is a coincidence, but this is far from a Holocaust movie. This is a conspiracy thriller about killing Hitler. As Tom was saying, it happens to be a bonus that this is true. It’s incredibly gripping and you may think they’re Hollywood conventions, some of the twists and turns, but it actually did happen.

3- What’s your definition of success?

Singer: Freedom. To be able to do the work you want to do. Sometimes it comes with money, financial freedom. Sometimes it comes with trust of people in your creative community. Either of those will give you creative freedom. As a director, if you’re able to do the work you want to do, then you’re successful — really successful — and that’s a blessing.

Cruise: I have to agree with Brian. I’m going to do this for the rest of my life and to have the ability to make the kinds of films I have and work with the people I’ve worked with is… I just love movies. As I’ve told people before, when I was making Taps or Risky Business, I just thought: “I want to enjoy these moments because I don’t know if they’re going to happen again.” Then there’s a certain moment when I started working with Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Spielberg, Scorsese, Oliver Stone, and Brian Singer. The kind of creative freedom that I’ve been privileged enough to have, I’m really proud of that.

But personal success is really being able to have my kids and raise a family. As much as I love movies, I’m very fortunate that my family is happy and healthy. That is the most important thing.

4- Why was the movie pushed back to this release date?

Singer: The movie was originally supposed to be released much earlier, but then the Tunisia sequence set us back.

Cruise: We didn’t move the release date back for awards season. Christmas is a great time of year for audiences; it’s the biggest time of year to go. You want to put your film in a place to reach a broader audience because that’s the type of movie this is. We could have made it four hours long, but we wanted to do a suspense thriller.

5- What was the actor/director relationship like on the set?

Cruise: I have great respect for him [Singer] as a director and as a storyteller. On a scale of 1 to 10, this film was a 20 in terms of difficulty to make.

Singer: The nice part about Tom is we spent a lot of time collaborating before we started shooting. But once we’re on the set…

Cruise: I want to take direction. I don’t stand outside myself and direct myself.

Singer: He doesn’t come to the monitor and watch himself after each scene.

Cruise: We’ve already done the research. Now I’m just ready to act.

Singer: Right. I knew that however many takes I asked him to do, it wouldn’t be as many as Stanley Kubrick asked (laughter). Whatever I asked, he always said: “Let’s do it.” There was never a lack of understanding, never a lack of trust. As the director, you feel nobody cares about the movie as much as you do, but the partnership you’re seeing here is because he does care about it as much as I do.

6- How do you balance Tom Cruise the actor with Tom Cruise the producer, because as just an actor you don’t have to worry about costs and the business side?

Cruise: I’ve produced a number of films, Mission: Impossible was my first and I went on to produce all the Mission: Impossible films… [and] Last Samurai. So, I produced a lot of movies before and there’s always that balance of art and commerce. I like to look at those as opportunities rather than restrictions. I mean, I own a piece of United Artists and since then we’ve had the writers’ strike, a pending actor’s strike, and it really comes down to just surrounding yourself with good people and I’ve done that. I am an actor first and foremost — I’ve never had an exclusive deal with a studio, ever.

7- Did the eye patch affect your vision?

Cruise: Yeah, it did. I was surprised at how much it did for the first few hours and days. Especially when it was dark, I lost depth perception and balance.

8- What were the biggest rewards about doing this film?

Cruise: The reward is working with Brian and these actors and having the challenges each day. That’s why I make movies. It’s not about me, it’s about us. It’s about the journey we all take together [and] to have those kinds of conversations… We got to shoot at the locations where the actual people were and died; it was very powerful.

9- How was shooting in Berlin?

Cruise: We had a lot of help from the Germans. A lot of time went into attention to detail. We studied a lot of films and we thought: “Why does it sometimes feel like these people are wearing wardrobe?” So, we found the authentic fabrics and discovered that some guys made their own uniforms. The level of detail is exact, even down to the signature that Hitler was making at that time and Stauffenberg’s too.

Singer: We went into people’s homes who collected Hitler’s furniture and saw what it looked like, the materials it was made with; there are these strange people in Germany who secretly collect that stuff.

10- Why didn’t you choose to have the actors speak in German accents?

Singer: The movie is an assassination thriller. I felt the accents would take away from that. Besides, the characters are all supposed to be German anyway. [Why] have everyone put on an affected German accent when, in reality, they were supposed to be speaking German? I promise you, [it] would [have]sounded silly after 20 minutes and would have distracted from the drive of the plot.

11- Are you going to be Santa for Christmas, Tom?

Cruise: I’m always Santa. I love being a father. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old I wanted to be a grown-up. I wanted to work and I’ve always wanted to be a father. All three of my kids I’ve enjoyed. It’s great to have the teenagers and the toddler at the same time and experience those ages.

12- Can you talk about the problems with making a movie where people already know the ending?

Cruise: Apollo 13, Titanic [or] any film made out of a book, people know the ending. Still, it was so surprising how caught up I got in the script.

Singer: Most audiences don’t know the full degree of how it ends.

13- What’s your next project?

Cruise: I’m waiting for things to come in. [I’ve] been working with writers and filmmakers and still deciding.

14- Do you have any plans to do a musical?

Cruise: I’d like to, but I don’t have one in mind. Do you have any suggestions?

15- Are you and Katie Holmes ever going to work together?

Cruise: We’d love to. We’re just looking for the right project.

(Source: Ask Men)