Q DID you know this story?
A NO, I just knew pieces of it. The bomb under the table, I knew how that ended, but I still found it an utterly compelling film. Reading it in history, it was like a suspense thriller.
And to see when we finally finished the film and put it before an American audience was quite an experience.
I’m looking forward to going to Europe and Germany to share it with them also.Q HAVE your feelings changed about Germany since making this movie?
Tag: Valkyrie interview
Tom Cruise in Berlin for ‘Valkyrie’ premiere
“I would also have tried to kill Hitler like Stauffenberg!”
Hollywood star Tom Cruise has told BILD he would have tried to kill Hitler – just like Claus von Stauffenberg, who he plays in hit film ‘Valkyrie’, did in real life.
The actor made the revelations during an interview in the Los Angeles Beverley Hills Hotel. ‘TC’ sauntered into the restaurant – slim, sparkling teeth, wearing jeans, a jacket and an open shirt.
BILD: How are you, Tom?
Tom Cruise: Very, very well. I am excited!
Valykrie has already earned $71 million in 2,800 US cinemas in 18 days. The ‘Washington Post’ called it an “entertainment juggernaut.â€
Tom has changed over the last years. He is still the $7 billion man – the box office total from his 25-year career – but he also has many other strings to his bow.
He is now a film mogul, financier, producer, world star and family man.
BERLIN (AFP) — US actor Tom Cruise was “deeply moved” by playing the would-be assassin of Adolf Hitler in the movie “Valkyrie,” he said in an interview with a German magazine released on Tuesday.
“All I can say is that I was deeply moved by the experience,” Cruise told Bunte magazine in comments translated into German.
In the film, which premiered in the United States on December 25 and opens in much of Europe next month, Cruise plays Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, a Prussian aristocrat who played a key role in a July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler.
Von Stauffenberg placed a bomb under a table in Hitler’s eastern headquarters in East Prussia, in modern day Poland, but the German leader escaped with slight injuries because the briefcase was behind a solid leg of the oak table.
Von Stauffenberg and other conspirators were rounded up and executed by firing squad — a fate which Cruise said saddened but also inspired him. He also said it was one of his most challenging parts.
The filming of the movie caused unease in Germany because of fears of how Hollywood would treat the episode and because of Cruise’s membership of the Church of Scientology.
Authorities initially denied the makers of “Valkyrie” permission to film at the Bendlerblock, a complex of buildings in Berlin where Operation Valkyrie was planned and where von Stauffenberg and other conspirators were executed.
(Source: AFP)
Bryan Singer has directed all sorts of movies, from the surprise-ending The Usual Suspects to such big-budget blockbusters as X-Men and Superman Returns.
But he had never directed Tom Cruise – until now.
Singer made Valkyrie, about an attempt to kill Adolf Hitler by the German army, with Cruise. There were rumors aplenty, and the film’s release date was moved several times, adding fuel to the fire. Cruise’s practice of Scientology also caused a flap in the German media, and the production was first denied permission to shoot at the Benderblock, where some of the plotters were executed (permission was later granted).
Singer spoke recently about the film, which opened Thursday, about gossip and buzz and what it’s like hanging around with big stars.
NEW YORK, Dec. 26 (UPI) — U.S. director Bryan Singer says he decided not to have the international cast of “Valkyrie” speak with German accents because it would be distracting.
The World War II-set movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler stars Hollywood actor Tom Cruise, Northern Irish star Kenneth Branagh and British thespians Eddie Izzard, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp and Tom Wilkinson.
“We didn’t want that to be what the movie was about,” Singer told reporters in New York recently when asked why the German characters in his film didn’t speak with German accents.
“It’s a thriller,” Singer explained. “It should be exciting and the audience should be taken on a ride through the film. And the actors speak wonderfully the way they do in their current dialects and the characters are all supposed to be German any way. … We have an international cast — American actors, Dutch, German, British. To have everyone approximating German accents when, in reality, they’re supposed to be speaking German, which, I promise after the first 20 minutes, you’d be sick of it. It would ultimately sound silly. And it would distract from the drive of the plot. So, the decision was made pretty quickly.”
Singer said he had no doubt his actors could’ve adopted the German accent, if it was required.
“They could do it. (Cruise is) speaking German at the beginning of the movie, that’s Tom,” Singer said. “But, it would ultimately be not as fun for the audience.”
Cinema Blend also interviewed Chris McQuarrie, screenwriter for Valkyrie. Read the article here:
Christopher McQuarrie technically isn’t running United Artists alongside Tom Cruise, but he does seem to be a key element of rebuilding the venerated studio. He’s starting things off as the screenwriter for Valkyrie, and has two more projects lined up over there, with more surely to come. So even though McQuarrie won an Oscar in 1994 for writing The Usual Suspects, his best years may still be yet to come.
At the moment he’s making the rounds as what you might call a Nazi expert, answering press questions about how to write a screenplay about killing Hitler when everyone knows it didn’t work, not to mention the notion of making members of Hitler’s staff look sympathetic. During a press conference for Valkyrie last week he answered most of the questions lobbed at the panel, which also included his co-writer Nathan Alexander. We’ve excerpted a few of those questions and answers below. He’s a smart guy, so pay attention!
San Diego 6 interviewed Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer, watch the video here:
and also Kenneth Branagh and Terence Stamp, watch the video here:
NEW YORK – “I make a lot of different kinds of movies,” Tom Cruise says, “and I’m always looking for something that’s challenging. But I want to entertain an audience.”
Cruise is describing what drew him to his new movie, “Valkyrie,” which opens Thursday. However indirectly, he’s also describing what it means to succeed at having it both ways: art and entertainment, critics and audience, respect and fame.
One definition of stardom might be as the shortest distance between having it both ways. And while Cruise is a very big star, “Valkyrie” puts that stardom to the test and at a peculiar point in his career.
“Risky Business” was 25 years ago, but Tom Cruise still looks boyish. In Seattle for a few hours last month, as part of the media barrage accompanying his new film “Valkyrie” (opening Thursday), he grinned when reminded of the anniversary. (Then again, Cruise tends to grin — that familiar, blinding movie-star smile — at just about everything.)
“I can’t believe I’m still here,” he said, “still fortunate enough to be making movies.”
