Where does the inspiration for a Hollywood film originate? For Christopher McQuarrie, writer and producer of Tom Cruise's latest film, "Valkyrie," it came on a street in Berlin. On a tour of the city, McQuarrie found himself gazing upon a memorial for the German resistance against Adolf Hitler. "Berlin is a city of monuments," McQuarrie's guide told him, "but this is the only monument to any German who served in World War II."

I recently spoke with McQuarrie about the long journey from that German memorial to "Valkyrie," the story of one of World War II's most dramatic events: the assassination attempt on Hitler by senior members of his military staff and the unsuccessful coup that followed.

"The things that were really daunting about this movie," said McQuarrie, "are the concerns that it doesn't, on the surface, have all the earmarks of a Hollywood movie. The central premise of a movie set in WWII with no American characters...that's such an insurmountable obstacle... you're really in trouble right from the get go. What's going to draw you in is if you can make the characters compelling enough so that people become attached to them. The suspense lies in witnessing what each and every one of these men goes through in choosing to join the plot, and the decisions they each make in the course of its fateful execution."

McQuarrie, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for "The Usual Suspects," builds a tense political thriller out of men caught in the vice of history, treading a deadly path of conscience in a society where any hint of dissent is brutally wiped out. "They knew they had little chance of success, and they understood if they failed it would mean certain destruction." That did not keep McQuarrie from injecting a little black humor into the film. "Any problem on earth can be solved with the careful application of high explosives," proclaims Colonel Quirnheim, portrayed by Christian Berkel, "The trick is not to be around when they go off."

Director Bryan Singer juices up McQuarrie's script by bathing "Valkyrie" in a satisfying atmosphere of paranoia where even the slightest gesture will jangle your nerves. But much of the credit belongs to a first-rate supporting cast, including Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Terence Stamp, and their ability to create nuanced portraits of men who not only face extreme danger but must make decisions that run counter to their training and sense of honor.

"This was a culture where people truly believed that when you gave your word it was for life, and these men had all sworn an oath of loyalty to Hitler," said McQuarrie. "Yet they ultimately reasoned that Hitler broke his oath to the country with the atrocities he and his ministers were perpetrating. They realized they had to do something for the sake of a different future - even if it meant being vilified as traitors by their fellow countrymen. It was an agonizing moral dilemma."

For all the vivid characters that populate "Valkyrie," it is Tom Cruise's character, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who soon becomes the central figure of the plot. "As we started to focus in on the events of July 20th (the date of the coup), Stauffenberg began to emerge as the overwhelming central character of the story..." It was Stauffenberg who ultimately carried the satchel bomb into the fateful meeting with Hitler.

According to McQuarrie, Cruise was the natural choice to play Stauffenberg. "When Peter Hoffman who is Stauffenberg's biographer...saw the film, he said, 'there's two things you've done, you've captured the spirit of the German resistance and Tom Cruise is Stauffenberg.'"

Working along side an actor with the stature of Tom Cruise can be as fascinating as dealing with pivotal events in history. "When you work with Tom, you enter what I call the alternate reality bubble..." said McQuarrie.

To hear an audio interview with Christopher McQuarrie use this link:

http://hosted.robinsonnews.com/audio/CMinterview.mp3