What does it take to be an A-List screenwriter?  What road did some of today’s most successful scribes walk before they hit it big?  In ‘The Screen Life’ we examine the path to success for some of Hollywood ’s biggest.   

Christopher McQuarrie. A native of southern New Jersey, he attended high school with Bryan Singer, his future collaborator on such monstrously popular projects as "The Usual Suspects" (1995) and "X-Men" (2000). After graduation, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter spent a year working in Western Australia before returning to the USA and a job at a Garden State detective agency, where his job entailed working as a glorified security guard at a rough urban movie theater, as opposed to requiring him to crack many interesting cases.

While not exactly the exciting life McQuarrie imagined leading, the experience was a valuable one as it allowed him to study movies and audiences' reaction to them. Just as he was about to give up the detective agency in favor of a career with the New York City Police Department, he was approached by Singer to co-write the screenplay for "Public Access" (1993), a thriller about a small town whose secrets are revealed by the host of a local TV show. "Public Access" was named co-winner (with Victor Nunez's "Ruby in Paradise ") of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. Singer and McQuarrie reteamed for the acclaimed "The Usual Suspects", another film noir thriller with an acclaimed script filled with twists and surprises brought to life by an impeccable cast. McQuarrie won both the Oscar and the BAFTA Award for his efforts.

The screenwriter followed up that success by contributing to the shooting script for Singer's big-budget, effects-laden comic-book adventure, "X-Men" (2000). That same year, he marked his own directorial debut with "The Way of the Gun", another crime thriller starring usual suspect Benicio Del Toro and veteran actor James Caan.