Hollywood's Rogue Mogul: How Terminator Director McG Is Blowing Up the Movie Business

By: Mark BordenFri May 1, 2009 at 2:00 PM

Photo Illustration by Jill Greenberg

How McG (yes, that's his name -- he directed the new Terminator movie) evolved from bubblegum auteur into a tinseltown killing machine.

Enlarge

The Germinator: McG is using his ever-expanding financial leverage to explore new ways to make -- and own -- his work. | Photo by Jill Greenberg

Enlarge

The Antihero: The new Terminator's gritty aesthetic seems to set it on a new artistic plane. "In this world," says McG, "Everything's ability-based." | Photo by Jill Greenberg

Related Content

If and when he does it -- and he certainly seems determined to try -- McG's ability to leverage his own various forms of capital could push him over the invisible line between talent and titan. "That's how you create a media company," he tells me. "In an online era where movie houses have transitioned to digital projectors with cables sticking out the back, to fund a dinosaur studio system does not make sense. We as filmmakers are able to hit return on our computers and send prints the world over just like sending a blanket email. That is a revolution."

But for McG, it turns out, it's not all about his own control. "My dream is to create a new United Artists and a legacy that puts the people who create content at the top," he says. "I would partner with J.J. Abrams and Danny Boyle and Spike Jonze and David Fincher and provide the vehicle where we can make movies our own way, distribute the movies our own way, and take a leap of faith that people are going to want to watch them. I believe it is content that drives the audience, not some multimedia conglomerate."

"McG is a guy who is always going to be hungry and push limits," says Abrams, who directed the new Star Trek film. "Smaller films are going to be realized by smaller homegrown entities and the studios have to acknowledge the fact that legitimate movies will increasingly be done by people they don't control -- and distributed in ways that circumvent what they do."

McG is standing before me at the guest-room door of his beachfront house in Newport. He is shirtless and barefoot in a pair of jeans. A few hours earlier, we were in the kitchen, passing a 1970 Gibson Hummingbird guitar between us.

At one point, talk turned to the idea of hit making. "How is it that for 20 years, Paul McCartney couldn't not write a hit song," McG asks, "and then for 20 years, he can't write a hit song if his life depends on it? I think there must be a chemical theory to the muse."

Even before his cranial rehab, McG was fascinated with the workings of the mind. He once said, "Certain songs and arrangements of music release a chemical reaction in my brain. It's such a euphoric experience that I want to chase that experience as often as possible. Of course, it's also that set of chemical circumstances in my brain that makes me fucked up. So you take the good with the bad."

Now that he has a method for defusing the bad, he's going for permanent euphoria.

It was after midnight when we decided to crash. Since I had a 6:30 a.m. flight out of LAX, McG put me up, promising to make sure I was out by 4:30. I'd told him not to bother, but at 4:30, there he is, shaking my hand and mumbling a "have a safe trip" and "talk soon" before making a somnambulant return to his bed. It seems some details are best not left to chance.

Related videos:

From Issue 135 | May 2009

Print Newsletters

Browse current issue ›

Subscribe to Fast Company ›

Recent Comments | 33 Total

May 25, 2009 at 12:02am by David Doidge

McG is very impressive and inspiring. Mark Borden relays the story with such a personal stream of consciousness I felt like I was there. Well done, Bordo!

Hollywood's Rogue Mogul: How Terminator Director McG Is Blowing Up the Movie Business

Related Content

Recent Comments | 33 Total

Sponsored Links