Tom Cruise on Creativity
The Creative Rebellion • Dispatch #013 • 5 min. read
There's a riddle in the middle of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. It says:
What is always coming but never arrives?
(The answer is at the end of this post.)
Procrastination and its cousin, hesitation, are some of Resistance's greatest weapons. Anything we put off doing now is even less likely to get done tomorrow. Procrastination is pretty obvious: it's the putting off of doing what we know we need to do. Hesitation is related, but slightly different.
Hesitating might mean you don't follow the path that opens up in front of you. You don't explore it to find the treasure it may contain. You stubbornly stick to the plan, unwilling to see new possibilities. You don't follow that initial burst of inspiration. Hesitation can lead to procrastination, or worse, never trying.
I have a confession to make:
I'm a huge Tom Cruise fan.
I have been since I first saw the original Top Gun. I was too young to see it in theaters, but a few years later when it aired on network TV I recorded it on VHS tape. And yes, I paused during the commercials, for the ultimate at-home viewing experience.
Fast-forward over 30 years and I'm still a sucker for a Tom Cruise movie, and I've been looking forward to the latest M:I through its years of COVID-delayed release. When my wife and I arrived at the IMAX, an unexpected storm had beaten us there.
The sky fell out.
Trash cans blew across the parking lot of the nearby McAlister's Deli.
When the rain finally let up a bit and we ran inside, we found that the theater had lost power and all the projectors had reset. There was a long line of people getting refunds for their interrupted movies. Not a good sign.
We printed out our tickets and risked another power outage anyway. Thankfully the power stayed on for the rest of the evening.
(It was worth the wait. It's one of the top M:I films of the series and one of the best of Cruise's career. Once it gets going, it doesn't let up).
Now that I've seen it, I'm free to delve into interviews, trivia, and behind-the-scenes content without any fear of spoilers. That's how I came across the Light the Fuse podcast, in which the hosts interview Cruise and M:I 7 director, Chris McQuarrie (McQ). And I'm glad I did, because they share some great insights into their creative process, as well as creativity in general.
Contrary to the way many movies are made, for Cruise and McQ, the script is just a starting point. The majority of the plot, action, and dialogue are there, but it doesn't mean that's what the final movie will end up being. There's a lot of rewriting and restructuring based on what happens on the set. Words on the page, when said by an actor, may take on a different context. The tone of a scene can change. A small detail that changes can have a ripple effect on many other scenes in the movie.
To some that would spell disaster. They would hesitate.
But Cruise and McQ aren't interested in filming their initial ideas. They want to make the best movie possible. So every rewrite, reshoot, and rabbit trail that arises from something unplanned, from something in the moment, becomes an opportunity to make the story better. It's all in service of the story.
That's what making the movie is about: telling the best story possible.
One of the worst things you can do as a creative is to hesitate. To refuse to explore new ideas and possibilities as they happen. Cruise and McQ don't hesitate. Whether it's jumping a motorcycle off the side of a mountain or rewriting the movie as they shoot it, they take every challenge they encounter and sift through it to get every last bit of gold they can.
Now, procrastination...
There's a phrase Sir Paul McCartney recalls his father telling him and his brother when they were younger and it was time to get at their chores. The advice McCartney applies to his creative work ties in perfectly with the riddle from Mission: Impossible. When he begins to create, he doesn't stop. He finishes the song before he leaves. John Higgs recounts Paul's process in his book, Love and Let Die:
McCartney places great emphasis on starting and finishing work immediately, before you have had the chance to overanalyse or come up with an excuse not to do it. This is an attitude that he credits his father with instilling in him. Whenever Paul or his brother Mike would try to get out of a chore by saying they would do it tomorrow, their father would tell them ‘D.I.N. – do it now’. As he explains, ‘you get rid of the hesitation and the doubt, and you just steamroll through’. This approach paid dividends when he came to work with John Lennon. Every time they sat down to write a song they would finish it, and they never once came away from a writing session having failed to come up with something. “I’m all for that way of working,’ he has said. ‘Once John and I or I alone started a song, there was nowhere else to go; we had to finish it, and it was a great discipline. There’s something about doing it when you have the vision.’
These ideas about hesitation and procrastination that McCartney and Cruise share illustrate the importance of forward momentum. Push through the fear of the unknown.
Don't be afraid to experiment.
Start before you feel ready.
Explore options you aren't sure will work.
Finish your work before the moment passes.
So, what do you think the answer to the riddle is?
What is always coming but never arrives?
Tomorrow.
Don't put off that idea or that project. Get to work before the doubts and questions start to creep in. You don't have to have it all figured out to begin. The first draft doesn't need to be perfect. It doesn't have to make sense yet. The facts and details don't have to be correct. You're just getting as much as you can out of your head, so it can live, so it can breathe.
Some writers call this a "vomit" draft. You're just throwing it all up on the page. You can dig through the muck and sort out the good from the bad later.
Stay rebellious,
Travis
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Quick Inspiration
Listen: When in Rome with Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie - Light the Fuse podcast (40 min)
Read: Bluey teaches children and parents alike about how play supports creativity – and other life lessons - The Conversation (5 min)
Watch: The Curse of Creativity - Jordan Peterson, YouTube video (6:27 min)
Deeper Inspiration
Creativity, Inc. is a manual for anyone who strives for originality. It is, at its heart, a book about creativity—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.” (4.7/5 stars on Amazon, 4.2 stars on Goodreads)