Exclusive| Alejandro G Inarritu on Tom Cruise’s 10-minute monologue in Digger: ‘We had 70 versions of it’

Tom Cruise with Alejandro G Inarritu. Pics/AFP, By Special Arrangement

Death-defying stunts are part of Tom Cruise's on-screen persona. Emotionally charged moments are unusual territory for him. But as he shot for auteur Alejandro G Iñárritu's black comedy Digger, the action superstar embraced its high emotional points. That included doing take after take for a crucial 10-minute monologue.

Sharing with mid-day his experience of filming it, Cruise said, "There is this rhythm in Alejandro's communication and creation that you have to feel, and it's so much fun when you're living in it. I couldn't wait to do that 10-minute monologue, just to play the character in that way with Alejandro's staging and Chivo's [Emmanuel ‘Chivo' Lubezki, cinematographer] camera movements. It was a tightrope act for all of us. It wasn't daunting. I loved the intensity and the level of creativity."

Tom Cruise in Digger

In Digger, Cruise plays the titular role, a larger-than-life oil tycoon whose carefully controlled world is under threat due to an ecological crisis. This scene, a judgment day of sorts for the protagonist, is the movie's "spine" according to Iñárritu. So, it's not surprising that the director and his team of writers wrote 70 versions.

"We had maybe 70 different versions of the monologue as we wrote the script over nine years, because it was always the heart, the spine, and the mirror of the film. There are so many ways of expressing it, and so many lateral ideas connected to the same discussion about what we want reality to be and what it is," reflected Iñárritu.

If the Oscar-winning director made the sequence shine on paper, Cruise brought it alive on camera, giving him multiple takes before he was satisfied. "The first takes were good, and I kept giving him notes - seven or 12 at a time. On the fourth take, Tom nailed it. Absolute perfection! I said, ‘That's it.' Tom said, ‘What do you mean? We still have to shoot the coverage.' I said, ‘There is no coverage. You will not perform it better, and we will not shoot it better'," he said.

Did you know?

Alejandro G Iñárritu is one of three filmmakers to have consecutively won the Oscar for Best Director. He won it for ‘Birdman' in 2015, and ‘The Revenant' in 2016