J.J. Abrams Full Interview: "I wanted to be there and do anything. Just being there."

Q: Do you enjoy it as a day-to-day experience, making a film like this, or is it a retrospective pleasure?

A: Well, there's both. In retrospect you think `wow we just went on that journey and it's been incredible..' because it is. You know, it's a 100 day shoot and it's amazing to go through and I feel lucky to have done it. But day to day, I've never laughed more, I've never felt more challenged or satisfied or lucky, to get a chance to work on anything.

Q: How does the collaboration with Tom work? Give me that in essence...

A: You know from the beginning there was a mutual appreciation for the genre, a mutual appreciation for a character-first story and somehow a mutual agreement of what was best for that movie. So there was no ego involved in plotting this film, casting this film, directing, editing - the only thing that mattered was this movie. Now, I'm not saying that I don't have an ego or that Tom doesn't have an ego but I am saying that never did someone's decision or artistic choice supersede what was best for the story at that time.

Q: In other words, a good collaboration?

A: Yes, So Tom might have had an idea, you know, on any given day at and I was able to recognise very quickly if it was something I felt was right for this movie. And if I didn't, I would say `I don't think we should go that way and this is why' and he would say `OK, good.' There was never, ever, not one time when it was `no, I want to do it that way.' Not ever. And you can only think of so many things at one time so to have someone else who is there is a real blessing - and he is such a good producer.

Q: That could be tricky. The star of the film who is the producer…

A: Yes and I was warned by a number of people you know, `the star and the producer? Good luck!' But he was so clever and so smart about how moments would ripple and have consequences and how certain set ups in the movie could be stronger, or certain moments that weren't even intended as set ups could be paid off later. He was so aware of the macro and the micro all at once. Now, just to have that mind around at every step is such a benefit. He didn't have to be in the movie to be the best producer I could have been working with. He was really phenomenal.

Q: Is it true that the scene on the bridge, where Ethan is thrown against a car as a missile explodes, that Tom did that stunt himself?

A: Yes that was Tom running full bore and getting ratcheted and slammed into the car. I have to say that the thing that excites me about Tom doing these stunts is not simply the idea that if you see this movie you get to see him doing his own stunts, because I think although that is interesting to me that is not a compelling reason to see this movie. The difference between Tom doing these stunts and our putting Tom's face on a stunt man in post, is that he is such a good actor that he is not just doing a stunt, he is a performing a scene.

So if you look at that scene where he goes slamming into the car, it's not great because he ran and got slammed into a car, it's great because if you watch his face, if you watch how he is running with such utter fear, he is selling the idea that a missile is literally about to blow up the car he is in. And when he hits that car his performance as he hits and then immediately after he hits, is as good as it gets.

Now we could have had the greatest stunt man ever do that but you never would have had that feeling of truth that this character was going through this moment if Tom didn't do those things. And to me it's the reason that this movie and those sequences work as well as they do, it's because there is an inherent honesty. Even as crazy and preposterous as this movie may get, at every moment these sequences are believable and made more believable because Tom was not just willing to but hungry to actually perform those moments…

Q: Is it a heart stopping moment though, for you as a director when you have the world's biggest star performing some of those stunts?

A: Well it is and it isn't and this is why. It is because clearly the last thing you want is for him to do anything that you think is truly risky. And it's not because we have incredibly talented and wildly capable stunt teams. Vic Armstrong (stunt coordinator) is just a legend and he is an amazing stunt co-ordinator and allowed us to feel comforted despite the risks. On the other hand, you can't prepare for everything and there are variables and some of these things did hurt. But the most remarkable thing about Tom doing these stunts wasn't just that he did them, but when you look at what our day to day was on this film, over a 100 days, he would do these stunts, every day where they were required often times in the same day, to turn around and do a two page dialogue scene.

So unlike a stuntman who could prep for weeks and then recover, he had to keep going every day whether he was jumping, slamming, falling, fighting, hitting, dropping, whatever he was doing he was doing it in the context of making a movie and starring in almost every scene. So it was an incredible thing to behold, watching this guy not just do the stunts but know his body well enough to know he has to warm up for this amount of time, whatever his regime was, his discipline, he followed it to make sure that he was physically at the peak place he needed to be to perform whatever stunt he had to perform but was never a diva about it, he was never a star. He wanted to do a great job and then got on with it - and he did, ever day.

Q: Your father is a television producer. Is it in the genes? Did you grow up thinking that this was what you were going to do?

A: Well, the first time I realised I wanted to do it was when my grandfather took me to Universal Studios. I was eight and I realised that this was the thing. And my father around the same time, went from selling commercial time for CBS to being assistant producer on a TV movie then co-producer and producer and exec producer. He made TV movies when I was growing up.

Q: And did you go on set with him?

A: Oh yeah. And it was an amazing thing, because I would go and I would be so absolutely desperate to be on the floor and be working, doing something, it was like a physical pain, I so wanted to do it. And I didn't care what, I wanted to be there and do anything. Just being there. And when he had an office at Paramount, which he did for a number of years, when I would go to work with him I got to know some of the guards there and they would let me go in and watch the rehearsals of these sitcoms - Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy. I would soak it all up and that's how it started. But it gave me a comfort level on sets which was an enormous asset - not that you don't get comfortable after ten minutes, but it made feel like that was where I really wanted to be. And I consider myself incredibly lucky to be able to do it.

Q: And was directing the ultimate goal?

A: No question. Oh my God, I started to write in order to be given the opportunity to director and the fact that this came up in the way that it did, I am so grateful for this chance. And it's really just Tom and Paula Wagner's very suspicious faith in me that gave me the chance to do it.

Q: I understand that your wife was pregnant during filming of Mission: Impossible III. Is that true and did it add to the pressure on you?

A: We had our baby seven weeks ago (early January), a boy, August, who is lovely, thank you. It was crazy, especially during the last few months when we had to go to China to shoot for a few weeks there and I was just terrified every day that the phone was going to ring and it would be `I'm in labour!' and I would have to say `bye Tom!' so I we were very lucky that that didn't happen. But it's been a very busy year, we have two other kids, and it's been crazy.

Q: And you've got the little matter of a hit television show called Lost to take care of too. How does that work?

A: The TV shows are being run by incredibly talented writers and producers so while a lot of people say `I love Lost this season…' my response is `I have so little to do with it really..' I'm so happy but it wish I could take more credit for it than I can. I keep up on it and stuff and we have a new pilot that is shooting next week in New York so it's busy. But of all of these things, working with Tom is the least amount of effort, it has truly been a dream collaboration. He has been so focused and professional and not just collaborative, but deferential. He let me write the movie with my co writers, the movie I wanted to write, he let me cast it the way I wanted to cast it. He let me direct the movie I wanted to direct it, he let me cut the movie I wanted it cut and this is a guy who could micro-manage every aspect of this movie if he wanted to. I am forever grateful to him for this opportunity. It's unbelievable.

Q: How did you approach the story?

A: Well, that's a good question. I just wanted to make a movie that is worth seeing. Meaning just because it's Mission: Impossible III really wasn't enough. Of course I was excited by the opportunity, but when I saw the script that they were going to shoot, as brilliantly written as it was, I knew it wasn't a movie that I could do justice to. I knew it wasn't a version of the film that I could deliver - just because it wasn't what interested me. That's not to say it wouldn't be a great movie and still couldn't, it just wasn't the version that I felt like I could say to them `I'm the guy for this..' so when I realised that I was in a very awkward position because I was being given an opportunity to direct this movie but I didn't want to direct the movie they were going to make.

Q: Did you turn it down?

A: I said to Tom `I get this but this is just not my thing..' and he said `well, then let's do your thing, and we'll wait a year..' Literally it was shock after shock and so it was like `OK, let's do that..' so I got these two friends, co writers of the movie, Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci, who I'd worked with on Alias, and we just started outlining this story that for me made it interesting. Which was a story about a man who is this spy but would come home and how that would actually affect him as a person. And if he has to live his life undercover, how do you do that? What is that? And we hadn't seen that in the Mission films and that was interesting to me. Who is that guy when the mission is over and he goes back home?

Q: Do you need to find a new enemy, now that the Cold War is over?

A: Sure and just as Mission: Impossible inspired Alias and Alias had to, in the same way, deal with a different kind of bad guy. Certainly there are no shortage of bad guys in the world. The idea of trying to figure out how to tell a story - whoever the bad guy was - from Ethan Hunt's point of view, not as a spy but as a man, that to me was the way in. Developing who the bad guy was came out of that, There were a number of different options of who we could use as our bad guy and that wasn't a hard thing to find, actually.

Q: What was your approach to the action sequences?

A: Well, I know that in the first two films, Brian De Palma and John Woo, their fingerprints are so clear, like you look at a movie and you can identify a Woo film very easily and very similarly with De Palma - their style is very clear. I have no idea what my style is at all, if I have one. I'm probably bereft of style but I do know that when I looked at these sequences I wanted them to feel real and grounded. And as huge as some of them are and as preposterous as some of the stuff may be, the only way I knew it would feel grounded and real was by treating them that way and by always tracking our characters and what they were going through. So instead of imposing a style arbitrarily, I wanted to be true to the story, making sure I'm tracking the characters at all times. It became very clear very quickly and was a huge comfort, that there was only one way to shoot this movie, and that was to do it as honestly as possible and not try and be cute about it.

Q: There's the sequence on the bridge. How did that work?

A: I wanted it to feel like it was a war zone, that it was incredibly spontaneous and violent, but it wasn't about slick and it wasn't about ballet and it wasn't trying to crib from any sort of filmic approach. It was `what are these people going through?' And dramatise that. so it was almost like the characters themselves and the sequences dictated the filmic approach. So the sequence in the Vatican, which is a huge sequence, 18 minutes or whatever, is much more fluid, much more confidently told, because in many ways our characters are in control in that sequence. With the sequence on the bridge, our guys were flailing and terrified, so it had to be hand held, it had to be unbridled fear and spontaneity. So even in some moments that were CG stuff, the approach was always to make that feel as unexpected and sudden and scary as you can, keeping it very edgy in that regard. Every sequence had a different requirement but it all came down to what our characters were going through and how did we make that feel honest.