Editing The Usual Suspects (section)

=== Origins ===
[[Bryan Singer]] met [[Kevin Spacey]] at a party after a screening of Singer's first film, ''[[Public Access (film)|Public Access]]'', at the 1993 [[Sundance Film Festival]], where it won the Grand Jury Prize.<ref name="ryan">{{cite news |last=Ryan |first=James |title=''The Usual Suspects'' Puts Together Unusual Cast |work=BPI Entertainment News Wire |date=August 17, 1995}}</ref> Spacey had been encouraged by a number of people he knew who had seen it,<ref name="Burnett"/> and was so impressed that he told Singer and his screenwriting partner [[Christopher McQuarrie]], that he wanted to be in whatever film they did next. Singer read a column in ''Spy'' magazine called "The Usual Suspects" after Claude Rains' line in ''[[Casablanca (film)|Casablanca]].'' Singer thought that it would be a good title for a film.<ref name="larsen">{{cite news |last=Larsen |first=Ernest |title=''The Usual Suspects'' |publisher=[[British Film Institute]] |year=2005}}</ref> When asked by a reporter at Sundance what their next film was about, McQuarrie replied, "I guess it's about a bunch of criminals who meet in a police line-up,"<ref name="larsen"/> which incidentally was the first visual idea that he and Singer had for the poster: "five guys who meet in a line-up," Singer remembers.<ref name="hartl">{{cite news |last=Hartl |first=John |title="Surprises and No Holes" in Director's Prize-Winning Mystery |work=[[Seattle Times]] |date=August 13, 1995}}</ref> The director also envisioned a tagline for the poster, "All of you can go to Hell."<ref name="Burnett"/> Singer then asked the question, "What would possibly bring these five felons together in one line-up?"<ref name="lacey">{{cite news |last=Lacey |first=Liam |title=Bryan Singer's Film Fever |work=[[The Globe and Mail]] |date=September 21, 1995}}</ref> McQuarrie revamped an idea from one of his own unpublished screenplays — the story of a man who murders his own family and disappears. The writer mixed this with the idea of a team of criminals.<ref name="larsen"/>

Söze's character is based on [[John List (serial killer)|John List]], a [[New Jersey]] accountant who murdered his family in 1971 and then disappeared for almost two decades, assuming a new identity before he was ultimately apprehended.<ref name="DVDcom">''The Usual Suspects'' DVD commentary featuring [[Bryan Singer]] and [[Christopher McQuarrie]], [2000]. Retrieved September 27, 2002</ref> McQuarrie based the name of Keyser Söze on one of his previous supervisors, Kayser Sume, at a Los Angeles law firm where he worked,<ref name="nashawaty">{{cite magazine |last=Nashawaty |first=Chris |title=Starring Lineup |magazine=[[Entertainment Weekly]] |date=February 3, 2006 |url=https://ew.com/article/2006/02/03/usual-suspects-oscar-upset/ |access-date=July 6, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080828084202/http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1155960,00.html|archive-date=August 28, 2008|url-status=live}}</ref> but decided to change the last name because he thought that his former boss would object to how it was used. He found the word ''söze'' in his roommate's English-to-[[Turkish language|Turkish]] dictionary, which translates as "talk too much".<ref name="Burnett"/> All the characters' names are taken from staff members of the law firm at the time of his employment.<ref name="Burnett"/> McQuarrie had also worked for a detective agency, and this influenced the depiction of criminals and law enforcement officials in the script.<ref name="francis">{{cite news |last=Francis |first=Patrick |title=Bryan Singer, Confidence Man |work=Moviemaker |date=December 1, 1998 |url=http://www.moviemaker.com/articles-directing/bryan-singer-confidence-man-3221/ |access-date=February 13, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140201185040/http://www.moviemaker.com/articles-directing/bryan-singer-confidence-man-3221/|archive-date=February 1, 2014|url-status=live}}</ref>

Singer described the film as ''[[Double Indemnity]]'' meets ''[[Rashomon]],'' and said that it was made "so you can go back and see all sorts of things you didn't realize were there the first time. You can get it a second time in a way you never could have the first time around."<ref name="wells"/> He also compared the film's structure to ''[[Citizen Kane]]'' (which also contained an interrogator and a subject who is telling a story) and the criminal caper ''[[The Anderson Tapes]]''.<ref name="lacey"/>