Inside Secrets: Chuck Russell Reveals Untold Stories Behind Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx’s Iconic Film Collateral
Chuck Russell
I was born on a farm, but I’m from Chicago really originally, and I came out to LA. I went to University of Illinois, but I came out to LA without really a lot of connections. So I did it a little bit the old school way. I got a job sweeping stages, and I was always writing. I was writing one act plays back in Chicago area, and I just worked my way up traditionally in film production, from production assisting to assistant directing, and the whole time I was writing. Finally, I got a co-writing credit for doing a re-write on Dreamscape back in the day with Dennis Quaid, and it was soft to the races. I then got Nightmare on Elm Street 3 as a writer-director, and I brought my partner Frank Darabont in for a re-write of a Wes Craven script. So a very traditional kind of work your way up from the bottom, and it went pretty quickly, and I was having fun. I was 20 years old and loving moving to LA.
