In a recent Washington Post article, McQuarrie talked about
wanting to make a grand epic about Alexander the Great, but
when he couldn't get financing he finally relented and did
another crime movie:
"Why not another crime film? they kept saying to me. And
finally, I decided: Okay. Another crime film. But everybody
wanted a crime film, but nobody wanted a film about
criminals. No studio exec wants it darker and scarier. They
want to make violence enjoyable and say,
'Here's the one time where it's okay.' They wanted theories
of sympathy for the bad guys, ways of saying they weren't
really responsible.
"But I just couldn't make another Lethal Weapon. To me, it's
much more interesting to write from the point of view of what
is wrong. I didn't want to be about characters who are
sympathetic. I was convinced you could make a movie about
despicable characters and still follow the movie. I never
wanted to give you a reason to sympathize with them. There's
no theory of their evil. They're bad because they're
bad."
Not a bad manifesto for hardboiled, if you ask me.
Mark
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