If you asked ten people on the street to name the biggest "movie star" of the past two decades, odds are that nine of them would say Tom Cruise. Fresh off of his recent Golden Globe nomination for Supporting Actor in the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder, Cruise returns to the big screen for the lead role in the long delayed and much anticipated World War II thriller Valkyrie, about the real life assassination plot to kill Adolph Hitler in which Cruise's character, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, heads up the plan under the codename "Valkyrie". One of the most talked about films of 2008, Valkyrie also sees director Bryan Singer step back behind the camera to translate an often untold story about Nazi Germany during World War II, which was significant, dramatic, and emotional on a completely different level than other war films of the past given its "what could have been" factor.

With Valkyrie hitting theaters on December 25, we were on hand at the recent Valkyrie press junket in New York where Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer filled us, and a number of other journalists, in on the real story behind the film, why the release date was pushed back, how they both approached the sensitive elements of the real story, the reason for the actors maintaining their English accents, why Tom Cruise chose his roles in Risky Business, Top Gun, and Interview with a Vampire, plus why Tom Cruise will be an actor forever.

Tom, do you see this as some kind of a comeback? And, what was it about Von Stauffenberg that made it so irresistible?

TOM CRUISE: No, I don't really see it that way. I've just been making movies. You know, my daughter was born, and I've been making films - Tropic Thunder, and Valkyrie.

The Golden Globe nomination.

CRUISE: Yeah, that's fun. [laughs] That is incredible, and, no - You know what? When I read the script, I first just thought how incredibly suspenseful this was - really, a great thriller. And when I put it down - because Bryan is someone I've always wanted to work with, we met first when I saw his film The Usual Suspects and we met, actually, at the premiere of Mission Impossible - the first one, and I said, "Man, I want to work with you." And then, actually, when I put it down, I thought, "This can't be true - this story. How much of it is actually true?" And from sitting down with Bryan and finding out it was a true story, I just thought it was a great story. I'd never heard it before, and I wanted to work with him, and off it went.

Do you think this is an important movie as far as educating public about the real Germany, or aspects of Germany? And also, the fact that people should look at a country not in parts, but by the whole?

CRUISE: I think that's definitely - I mean, it's an important story because I didn't know it but I also felt that I want to entertain audiences. That was a bonus, really, for this - for the film. But it's something that Bryan and I, we've both spoken about that, that it's important to know of course that it's not everyone. It's not everybody that felt that way and fell into that - the Nazi ideology.

So that, to me, was surprising. I grew up wanting to kill Nazis, wanting to kill Hitler. You know, as a child you're looking at it and I think, "Why didn't someone just shoot him?" And to take this story, that it's also here and it's such a massive comprehensive story, we could've made this a five hour, ten hour movie, a miniseries. And Bryan was always specific; this is a suspense thriller about killing Hitler.

BRYAN SINGER: Yeah, this is not a Holocaust movie. There are movies that happen to take place in this subject matter that are coming out around this time, it's a coincidence. But this is far from a Holocaust movie. It's a conspiracy thriller about assassinating Hitler. As Tom was just saying, the bonus is that it happens to be true, it happens to be gripping. And even things that you might think are film conventions, Hollywood conventions that happen in the movie, some of the twists and turns actually really did happen.

CRUISE: We spent eight months working - Bryan spent more time than that before - but when Bryan wanted me to come on board and we started working with Chris [McQuarrie}, and Bryan, and Nathan [Alexander], every time, you know, you could make a movie - it's not a biopic. Every time we started talking about the Holocaust and the different characters, and trying to put as much into that story as possible, Bryan always went back to, "This is a piece of entertainment. This is a movie, a suspense thriller about killing Hitler." Throughout the film, the more you know about the history and the more you study it, there are so many moments that we were able to put those things in there - with his children, the moment where his daughter's saluting him.

Of course on the day, July 20th, and when you know the story, there's his children - his son was indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth. Now, knowing Stauffenberg who despised the Nazis, as a parent looking at this - and these little moments that Bryan wanted to seed in there, but never varying from the picture that he wanted to make where his daughter's saluting him, and him having not being able to have that conversation with his children down in the bunker and looking at his family, it's both the tension and falls into, of course, he's thinking of Valkyrie, he's gotta come up with the idea. But little moments like that for people who understand the history. I think the Germans who really know the [history], most Germans who know the story intimately and thoroughly - they understand that. But it's also there for a broad audience. We wanted to bring this movie to a broader audience.

Tom, I'd love to know your guys' definition of success. Is it something financial? Is it health? You know, you guys are two of the biggest structures in Hollywood. I'd love to know your definition of success.

CRUISE: Go man. [laughs]

SINGER: Freedom to be able to do the work that you want to do. Sometimes that comes with money - financial freedom - sometimes it comes with trust and having trust in the people in your community, in your creative community. Either of these things give you creative freedom. So, if you're at a point where you can, as a director - I could speak not as an actor - but as a director, if you're at a point where you can do what you want to creatively, then you're successful, really successful. I mean, that's a blessing.

CRUISE: I have to agree with Bryan for as far as the making films. You know, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life and to have the ability to make the kind of films that I've been able to make, and work with the people that I'm able to work with - I just love movies. So it's something that, as I've told people before when I was making Taps or Risky Business, there are moments where you're there and you think, "I just want to enjoy these moments because I don't know if it's going to end right here." And then there was a certain moment where I was able to, you know, when I started to work with - I've had the opportunities to work with Paul Newman, to work with Dustin Hoffman, and Gene Hackman, Scorsese, and Oliver Stone, and Spielberg, and the people that I've been able to work with, and Bryan Singer, that kind of creative freedom that I've been privileged enough to have is something that on that level, I'm really proud of that. And also, so many times I know there's been a few things written about this film before people have seen it - just a couple, and, you know, [laughs] we're going through it.

SINGER: We read them all out loud.

CRUISE: [laughs] We've read them all.

SINGER: Two hundred?

CRUISE: And there's so many times I've been through this, and certainly I think the internet has accelerated a lot of this kind of drama out there. So there's a perception out there versus what we're doing artistically. Even when I think people see the film, even our friends who have seen the film were like, "Oh, this is a suspense thriller. This is..."

SINGER: Yeah, what did you think we were making? Soup?

CRUISE: That's what we kept saying. I don't know what to say, but so many times in my career, even early on, people have said, "Why are you doing that?" Even when it was early, back when I was going to do Top Gun or Born on the Fourth of July, the things that Dustin and I went through in Rain Man, with that film we went through four directors, and two years to make. And of course, Interview with a Vampire was one also. I've always chosen things that I felt would be challenging, but I always wanted to entertain an audience. And that's what - I feel very privileged to do that. So I feel that I've been fortunate in having that kind of success. Personal success for me is raising my kids and my family, and that, to me, as much as I love movies, has always been the priority. And I feel also happy my family's happy and healthy and doing well. So that's the most important thing and always has been for me.

There're all these World War II movies and it's become kind of an underdog in the season, and I was curious why it wasn't just put up into a December release? Why has it been handled so mysteriously.

SINGER: Originally the schedule of completion had to do with that. It was going to come out a lot earlier, but then there was a sequence - the Tunisia sequence, which took time. I ended up scouting Jordan for a location, and then Spain, and those two locations didn't work out both aesthetically and economically. And then we figured we would just see what movie we had when we got home, cut it all together, and then go back and go to California where the location we found looks far more like Tunisia. We would have the equipment and resources, and we would sort of drop and pick up. And then that moved our intentions of release day, and then it was a crowded Christmas, and we didn't know where we were at finishing the movie, and then we felt - I mean, is that pretty much as you remember it, or...?

CRUISE: You know, we were making a film not for a release date, to be honest with you.

SINGER: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you.

CRUISE: I mean, I know today everything is about a release date, but I...

SINGER: The Usual Suspects, we made it and a year and a half later [before] it was released. This was never, this wasn't like a...

CRUISE: February was never a firm date. This is a film that's made for a broader audience. We also never wanted to say, "Hey, we want to put it in awards season." That's not even why we moved to Christmas. Christmas is a great time for audiences. It's the biggest time of the year for people to go . You want to put your film in a place where it can have the opportunity to have it available to as broad an audience as possible, because that's the nature of the film. I think that, as I said, we could've taken this film and made it two and a half, three and a half, four and a half, you know, it could've been a very different kind of movie. And this - right from the beginning this is a suspense thriller.

And yes, actually, when you know the history, these events occurred, they really did occur. When I read the script, I thought, "That had to be a movie convention." Stauffenberg going to Hitler the day after D-Day and I went, ‘Whoa.’ It's cool. And then you find out it really happened, and there are actual dialogue in the film that I discovered were from letters, were from journals that Chris and Nathan had studied. And I get this opportunity to work with Bryan and we're going through it, and the most important thing is the film, because that's something that, as I said, I want to entertain an audience. And when I'm making a film, that's so important. It's important. I've always felt that you want to get it right, and within the limited amount of time, and economics, you want to do the best that you can for the audience, for the subject matter, whatever it is.

Watching you here, it seems like a partnership as much as it is an actor-director relationship.

CRUISE: What do you mean by that?

I want to talk about how you work together.

CRUISE: Yeah, no, I have great respect for him as a filmmaker, as a storyteller and that's the way it is when you're going into a film like this. Out of a scale of one to ten, I think this film is a twenty to be able - as a challenge to make.

SINGER: We spent a lot of time, we had the ability, and the nice part about - Tom's interest in the project as well as position at the studios, we have the freedom to spend a lot of time working together, working with Chris and Nathan, and talking about the project. We moved to Germany, we learned more information. So now we're having more and more meetings about it and discussing it as collaborators. And then once we get on the set...

CRUISE: I want to be directed.

SINGER: Yeah, he becomes an actor.

CRUISE: I enjoy that.

SINGER: And I become a director and it's literally - for my experience there was never any difference. I knew that no matter how many takes I asked him to do, it would never be as much as Stanley Kubrick did on [Eyes Wide Shut] [laughs]. And we tried, we experimented and it was phenomenal because anything you'd ask, anything, you'd be like, "Let's do it." There was never a lack of wanting to try and never a lack of trust. And then afterwards, the full support of an actor - it's a rare opportunity with Tom where, as a director, you always feel like nobody cares about the movie as much as you do. And the partnership, what you probably see here is a relationship with someone who cares about this movie as much as I do, and I think that's what you're seeing here.

CRUISE: And he loves cinema, and so there's stuff where Bryan and I...

SINGER: We have a lot of fun talking about meetings. We've had meetings at Tom's house, twelve hours long. We'd throw in some movies, we'd order some drinks, things and...

CRUISE: Friends come by, and we're screening films, and we're getting into history and...

SINGER: And tangents, and we had some good experiences. We camped out in the desert when we were shooting the desert sequence and everyone's families were there. So, you're seeing a little bit of that, too. It's been a really great journey, but one that comes from caring about the project.

CRUISE: And as an actor, I do like to be directed. I don't stand outside myself and direct myself.

SINGER: He doesn't come to the monitor and look at it and say, "Oh, there's none of that," which some actors do, you know, "There's none of that and..."

CRUISE: Because we've already done the research and I just like to go on the scene. As an actor getting direction from him, he gave great notes on behavior and we were just tracking. I like that in a movie where as an actor I'm tracking with the director, and Bryan is, I think you see the performances that he gets, they're always very interesting and I have a lot of fun doing it.

Do you find that Tom Cruise, the actor, has to compete with Tom Cruise the businessman and worry about the cost of the film in Tunisia, or I guess it was in Imperial Valley where you shot that?

SINGER: It was called Cougar Buttes, that's where we shot.

But as Tom Cruise, the businessman, you have to worry about financing, and the future of United Artists.

CRUISE: Well, you know, I've produced a lot of films. And in producing - I mean, Mission Impossible was the first film that I produced and then I went on and I produced all the Mission films, The Last Samurai. You know, I've just produced a lot of movies before hand, so there's always the balance of art and commerce, and the challenges of that that I like to look at that as opportunities as opposed to with restriction. So that aspect of it has always been there. And as a director, Bryan faces that. And it's not just having talent in making a film, it's also important to know to surround yourself with great people. I own a piece of United Artists and we're starting it up and, you know, we had the writer's strike, we had a pending actors strike.

How much of it is you, and isn’t it a lot about managing the business?

CRUISE: Yep, and you know what? It just goes down to I've got very good people that I work with and I've always tried to surround myself with people that I respect, that I enjoy working with, and that's what we have. We have great people that we work with. I'm very happy to have these guys on board [laughs] with MGM. You know, they're the gang we have. You know, at the studio it's actually a very exciting time with Mary Parent who's come on at MGM, and it's interesting. But I am an actor first and foremost. The thing is that even with the way we've set it up, I've never had an exclusive deal as an actor with anyone, ever. This is the first time - even as producing films, you know, I produced The Last Samurai at Warner Brothers, I produced The Others with Miramax, and I have always been very careful not to say, "I am just going to be with one." And I am an actor, that is my love, acting, and so that's first and foremost for me.

I understand the eye patch initially gave you unexpected balance problems. Could you talk about that?

CRUISE: I was surprised. For a few hours and a few days, when we started working on it, yeah, it did, especially when it was dark. I lost depth perception and balance, and also, from visual cinematic storytelling, it was a challenge, I think, for Bryan. I really respect Bryan's staging, and his composition, and his storytelling. When I look at his movies, there is something very cinematic, it's classic storytelling, but it's cool. And I think that he understands cinema storytelling. And with the eye patch, he also understood it's a different story depending on where that camera is on my face. So, different profiles, shooting with the patch and the hand because, of course, part of the research, we researched nineteenth century, twentieth century - all the research that we did - but also his injuries and what Stauffenberg did and how he lived with that. And the eye patch itself and the hand, it was a challenge always going into a room, or which angle we shot...

SINGER: And staging a scene. If you're staging a scene on a set, and you really want to shoot out the set and make it look pretty, and position the actors in relation to one another, but if this side - you can't - this side's one thing and this side's the other thing, he can't see the other actor. So then that reverses where they are, that could end up reversing where the camera is in the room, which could end up reversing what part of the room we're shooting in. So in the morning you'd have to work these things out in relation to something as simple as, "Yeah, you put your hand on his shoulder." "What hand?" "Okay, you put your three fingers on the other hand." And even though all that's removed and done digitally, Tom's performance had to inform all of that long before we got into the visual effects and be cognizant of it.

CRUISE: And there are moments that, when you're making a film like this, where the tension – you've got to take the audience along and build that tension, build that tension. And every scene you have to move that story along, but every scene you're revealing more about the character and the characters. So there are certain things very early on that Bryan [crafted] - You know, this scene with Tom Wilkinson where he says, "I'll hear you say it, Colonel." There are certain things that Bryan knew from a story sense how you want to build to those moments, because - and I love movies like this that there are little pieces that build to a moment. There are rhythms and structure to a movie that I love as an audience. When I read a script, when I'm seeing a movie, I see it by an audience and not necessarily as a filmmaker, particularly when I get caught up in the picture. So that moment is something that was very [decisive] from the director, he knew what he wanted from that moment. So, even subtle things like physically you don't see the hand necessarily - you see that it's missing, but the reveal of that is what it is. They build to that so you see it in the bed, and there are certain moments in how he shot it, and he was very specific about doing that. And, you know, that kind of stuff is a lot of fun working on and building towards that.

What were the challenges for you and the rewards playing that character?

CRUISE: Well, the rewards are that I thought it was a very exciting film. I wanted to work with Bryan Singer, I loved Chris - his script. You know, reading a script like this, rarely do you sit down where you're just turning the pages like this. And also there's a story I'd never heard of before, and to be able to work with these actors, that's the reward every day, going and having that challenge. And also for me, as I said, to entertain an audience. I thought it'd be a very compelling story and a fascinating film. That's what I like. That's what I'm looking for in a film. I'm making movies, it's about us, it's not about me. It's about the journey that we all take together. To have those kinds of conversations, you know, to be there - we got to shoot in locations that these people were.

And died.

CRUISE: And, yes, and where they died, which was very powerful to be there and to see that, and to see the world. I grew up wanting to travel the world and I wanted an adventurous life. Sometimes a little more adventure than I had ever bargained for [laughs], but this was something I didn't want to pass on. You know, I grew up playing with the neighborhood kids in the yard wanting to kill Nazis.

SINGER: Chris and I used to make war films in my backyard.

CRUISE: And I saw the World of War, and also, the way that this film was told and directed, as I said, it's not like anything that I've see. You know, these films that I greatly admire, Schindler's List and Paths of Glory - this is very different.

I thought the choreography was pretty amazing. What was it like for you directing and performing this?

CRUISE: Yeah, the... You go.

SINGER: Well, just studying a lot of war photography. There was a huge amount. One thing Hitler did is he filmed everything so we had the benefit of a lot of motion picture film, both color and black and white, of that era. So it was important in recreating both the dimensions of that, which is why I shot 1:85 aspect ratio. Also, we were in Germany so we shot with Arriflex cameras and the Zeiss lenses. And also, with color - I know this is not part of the question - but also I wanted to mention as giving a sense of the vibrance and the color so it would look like it did back then to people who lived back then, as opposed to trying to approximate black and white and muddy the film or de-saturate it. And then, in terms of the pageantry and the military aspects of it, we have those references, thanks to all that recorded film material. So that's primarily the stuff that I looked at. And then we worked with the military advisors who knew the history, and who could help us with the movements and the salutes, and we could have authentic regarding the difference between the way a Colonel would salute to a Major, or would salute to a Field Marshall, or the Fuehrer.

CRUISE: And specifically at that time period.

SINGER: At that, yeah, which changed after the assassination attempt, certain things were more mandatory, a Fascist salute and things like that. And that's what made the scene where he throws up his hand so much fun. If you were missing your hand, you wouldn't put it up and give the Heil Hitler salute, and that's why it's interesting that he does. He shows his stump. It's sort of [like] he's giving the finger.

CRUISE: His choreography, with this kind of movie, I know from a production standpoint from the choreography of this because doing a lot of these films that the bomb sequence, this is a film that right in the beginning, when Bryan kept saying, "Look, this is a suspense thriller," it needed that kind of dynamic choreography to go in. And you had to be very specific because in editing these pieces together, they weren't just thrown together. That was all very thought out. From top to bottom of the production, we really had a lot of help and support from the Germans - their production, the stuff that they gave us. Even the wardrobe itself, the look of the film, a lot of attention - a lot of time went into how to do this.

When you talk about colors, the reds - and to make it something that is going to be what a Bryan Singer film is, and feel authentic, the whole point is to try to give that audience that visceral feeling of being on the edge of their seat, even down to the wardrobe because we went through and studied a lot of films and wondered, "Why does it look sometimes like people are wearing wardrobe? You know, it's like, it looks like wardrobe." And so, sitting down with Tom Sigel, the kind of film that he used, the lighting that he used, and also wardrobe with Joanna Johnston, the kind of fabrics, and also studying the fact that each guy - how certain people would make their own uniforms, the level of detail in the film, from top to bottom, you know, even down to Hitler's signature when he signed it, was to the best of our knowledge, exactly the signature that he signed at that time period, and the same with Stauffenberg. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that we film-geeked and history-geeked out on. You know what I mean?

SINGER: People were taken blindfolded to people's homes who collected Hitler's furniture so we could see it and know the furniture of the Berghof at his summer house. There's these strange people who collect this stuff secretly in Germany.

Like Neo-Nazis?

SINGER: I don't know, they just like the furniture.

CRUISE: I don't know. There are certain things, you go, "Look, I don't care."

SINGER: I don't want to know.

Could you talk about the creative decision from an actor's and a director's standpoint of not going with the accents?

SINGER: Well, we didn't want that to be what the movie was about. It's a thriller - assassination thriller. It should be exciting and the audience should be taken on a ride through the film. And the actors speak wonderfully the way they do in their current dialects, and the characters are all supposed to be German anyway. So to have everyone putting on an affecting German accent, measuring up - You know, we have an international cast - American actors, Dutch, German, British - to have everyone approximating German accents when in reality they're supposed to be speaking German, which, I promise after the first twenty minutes, you'd be sick of it, it would ultimately sound silly and it would distract from the drive of the plot. So the decision was made pretty quickly. They could do it, he's speaking German at the beginning of the movie, that's Tom, but it would ultimately be not as fun for the audience to ride with the actors as are - once it's established that they are Germans.

Tom, could you talk about the joys of being the dad of the most adorable two year old around?

CRUISE: [laughs] I'm gonna be Santa. I'm always Santa.

And what's it like to be the dad of a toddler?

CRUISE: I love it. I love being a father. I always wanted to, you know, as a kid... I couldn't wait to grow up as a kid. I remember, four and five years old I always wanted to work and grow up. I just always had that. And I remember I always wanted to be a father. And all three of my kids, I've enjoyed every part of that. I feel lucky to have the teenagers and to have the toddler also. To have the journey of both happening at the same time. And all my kids are phenomenal. And I'll be Santa.

Did either of you, with the research, find anything new about Hitler and his followers?

CRUISE: I did. I learned - and I thought I knew - I know a little bit about history, I enjoy it. I fly the Warburgs, I fly the P-51's myself, and by the way - all the airplanes - there are no computer generated airplanes. All of those planes are real.

SINGER: And we're really in them, too.

CRUISE: Yeah, we're in them.

SINGER: The scene where he's fleeing the Wolf's lair, we actually shot in the Junker and there wasn't enough room. There was only enough room for the actors, and myself, and the pilots, and the cameraman. So they gave me a quick lesson on how to do makeup -

CRUISE: - thirty seconds before we got on the airplane because we were losing light.

SINGER: So it's a hundred degrees in there and he's sweating and I'm like spotting his face with this little pad.

CRUISE: I know, "Look out the window!"

SINGER: But it was exciting, and Tom took me - to digress - but Tom took me formation flying with a group of pilots in P-51 Mustangs and Sea Fury over the deserts of California doing aerobatics and these incredible aircraft, and it was enthralling and a real good ramp up to heading to Germany and doing this.

CRUISE: In getting back to learning, the scene where Stauffenberg goes to Hitler after Berghof, it's challenging because - and I think for Bryan and I - I was thinking, "How is he going to direct this?" I was interested in the focus on Hitler because I've grown up with the footage of Hitler at rallies. And to see him, and particularly during that time period where he wasn't out, he wasn't so obviously - I mean, obviously he was insane, and utterly insane, and they're all insane, but to create that eerie, bizarre - You know, it has this eerie, terrifying feeling in that sequence. Just all of the detail where Goebbels is looking at Göring, all these little looks, that's really set up when you look at "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and he talks about what it was like during that time period. And Bryan was totally accurate to the behavior and what was happening during that time period.

SINGER: That meeting actually took place between Stauffenberg - it was his first time meeting Hitler at the big six. It was the day after D-Day and the thing that Stauffenberg noticed and went home and told his wife, it's not in the film, but we keyed off this testimony is that they - Göring had on makeup. There was this distrust between them, clearly the allies were at their door. Hitler was detached from what was going on, and the only one that seemed to have a clue was Speer, but he was just an architect along for the ride. And it's interesting - and what he did is he walked over and held Stauffenberg's hand and acknowledged his injuries and his heroism as a way of mocking his own people. And he would do that, he would always play one against the other. It was how Hitler rose in politics - through flattery, promises, and backstabbing. He did it with Stalin and he did it with the German people, and eventually that's how the war ended. So it was nice to put hints of that kind of detached, laconic Hitler that the people didn't get to see in the Berghof scene. And that scene genuinely happened, and all the specifics of that leading up to - You know, the reason that we have such, particularly in the third act of the film, such detail is because the Gestapo did a very stunning investigation into this assassination attempt, and trials were held and filmed. And so we have the benefit of all of those facts, and all of that information to inform our story as well as the research we've done, and actually talking to a lot of people who were with Hitler.

CRUISE: I was surprised how - like Stauffenberg at the beginning - it might seem like a movie convention, him upbraiding the General - he did that. He had those conversations with Generals exactly in that way and would have those kinds of conversations.

Which is why he ended up in Africa?

SINGER: Yeah.

CRUISE: Which is why he ended up in Africa, because he actually had court marshaled friends of his for war crimes. His uncle was concerned for him, arranged for him to go to Africa. And he was that outspoken with Generals because he was a supply officer. He wasn't necessarily on the - well, he was on the front lines, but he was behind saying, "What's happening? How can this happen? Why is this happening? This guy's a liar. This is not the country that we want, that I've wanted." The amount of desperation and pain for him - you know, he loved his country. He wanted a moral country, but one that was part and participated in the world, not annihilating, not the Holocaust, not world domination. He was a man that was able to really think for himself within all of that propaganda, and recognized very early on that insanity. And at first thinking, "Well, someone's got to stop him. Let's overthrow him." And then, "Someone's gotta shoot that bastard," is a quote of his. Then, as early as 1938 - and then suddenly being moved into the place after Africa, his uncle sending him away. And it's ironic that those injuries actually put him in the position of high command where he got on the inside and realized that the only way to stop this is from the inside. And really recognizing that it wasn't just enough to kill Hitler, you had to have something that's going to put people in a position where they're going to follow you because you have that oath which - as an American, it's just - to open the film, that struck me. It's so creepy to get people to not be able to think for themselves.

SINGER: Because the army was compelled to give an oath, an army of ten million people in Germany was compelled to give an oath to Hitler himself personally.

Were you thinking of "The Jackal", or other conspiracy film?

SINGER: Not so much. I haven't seen it in a while so I wish I could - no, but movies like that were discussed.

CRUISE: Yeah, definitely.

Well, in terms of people knew going in what the outcome was.

SINGER: Yeah, we talked about things like that.

CRUISE: You look at Apollo 13, Titanic, any film that's made out of a book, people know how it's going to end. And I had an idea when I read, of course, the script, but there's no way - You know, when I read it, I thought it was so surprising to me - this story, the details, and I was surprised in reading it that I was that caught up and I was whipping through the pages, which...

SINGER: And I think to say we know how it ended, I don't think audiences - you might if you know history, but I don't think audiences know the full degree of how this particular story ends, and that's an important thing.

CRUISE: And it didn't matter because when I read the script, I was totally drawn into it.

How was the P-51?

CRUISE: I love it.

SINGER: It was so cool.

CRUISE: We didn't use the P-51 in the film, but of course I did have to do a strafing run in the Panzer division in my P-51. We were in California, so I was very happy. We shot it. [laughs]

Do you know what you're doing next?

CRUISE: You know, I'm waiting for things to come in. I've been working with writers and filmmakers, and just going to decide.