#313 Christopher Nolan

0:00 Christopher Nolan's second film, Memento, had a long, anxious year spent trying to secure distribution. Nolan had been turned down by every distributor in town. With some variation of This is great. We love it.

0:12 We really want to work with you. And This is not for us. The film was personal to him. Memento was born into the world on the back of obsession.

0:20 Failure to find expression would have been almost inconceivable to him. Nolan made it. Because he had to. What happens when you make a film is you burrow into it. You dig in.

0:31 So you kinda can't see it anymore. You're immersed in it. The only thing you can do is trust your initial instincts. You just have to say This is what I'm making.

0:40 This is what I'm doing. It's going to work. Just trust it. Two years to the day after that disastrous screening for distributors, Memento earned two Oscar nominations. Nolan's assent since

0:53 has been near vertical. In the space of two decades, he has gone from eking out micro budget. three minute short films to making billion dollar blockbusters. His films have earned over five billion dollars.

1:07 He is as close to a sure thing as a director gets. One of the few filmmakers who can walk into a studio with an original script idea. One that is not part of a pre existing franchise, intellectual property, or sequel. And exit. with the two hundred million necessary to make it.

1:23 Like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas before him. He has become a franchise unto himself. And unusual for a director working at his level, he has either written or had a hand in writing All eleven of his movies to date. granting him entry to a very exclusive club of directors.

1:40 The only other two being Peter Jackson. And James Cameron. He has large ideas. He invented the post heroic superhero.

1:48 He came up with an idea for a science fiction heist. inside the moving contours of a dreaming mind. And he had the boldness and audacity to have the singular vision to make it happen. Among his collaborators, he is known for his punctuality, discipline, and secrecy. Of the more than six hundred people who worked on Dunkirk.

2:06 Only twenty were allowed to read the script. Copies of the script. Were watermarked with the actors' names so that any missing copies could be traced back to to their negligent owners. Nolan is notorious for coming to an actor's house with a copy of a script.

2:21 Insisting on staying with the actor. Until he had finished reading the script. And then taking it away with him. He is very secretive. on set, you wouldn't know he's the director. He's very quiet.

2:33 Very confident and very calm. He's a classicist. He doesn't look through monitors. He wants to see what the camera sees. The old fashioned way. He refuses to use his second unit. Preferring to shoot every frame himself.

2:45 Minds don't wander on a Chris Nolan set. said Matthew Conaughy. Nolan is known by his crews for shooting fast. Starting at seven AM And finishing at seven PM.

2:56 With a single break for lunch. And he has the kind of passionate following one associates with a cult director. Critics. have received death threats when they give his films a bad review. That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is the Nolan Variations, the movies, mysteries, and marvels of Christopher Nolan. And it was written by Tom Schoen.

3:14 Christopher Nolan. Uh worked Hand in hand. With Tom Shone. The the vast majority of the book. is actually large chunks of Christopher Nolan speaking directly to you because Tom

3:25 had been interviewing him over multiple years. And so I want to jump right into a conversation that they're having. It's gonna reference something that was stated about the movie Memento and Israeli

3:37 I think the most one of the most important things to understanding Christopher Nolan He's an obsessive. So it said, you know, that movie was born into the world on the back of obsession. In fact, that's a word that he's gonna use over and over again. In addition to reading this book, there is a this fantastic article in the Financial Times. That I'll link down below as well. where Christopher Nolan gives you an insight into his mind at the very end of the article.

3:57 the the interviewer is asking okay, after Oppenheimer, like what's your next film? And he says, I've never been any good at that. The only way I know how to work. is to sort of burrow in on one project very obsessively. And so the word obsessed is in this book over and over again.

4:13 I think the main idea, the reason I want to read this to you though. It's because The the idea behind what Christopher Nolan's about to tell us is like If you're obsessed with what you're making. You can make other people obsessed with it too.

4:24 And I love what he says here. He says people will say to me that there are people online who are obsessed with inception or obsessed with memento. They're asking me to comment on that. is if I thought it was weird or something. And I'm like, Well, I was obsessed with it. For years.

4:36 Genuinely obsessed with it. So it doesn't strike me as weird. We put a lot into these films. Every film, this is so good. Every film. I do I have to believe that I'm making the best film.

4:48 That's ever been made. Films are really hard to make. They are all consuming. So it had never occurred to me that there were people making films who weren't trying to make the best film that ever was. Why would you otherwise? That's a perfect insight.

5:02 into Nolan's mindset. Even if it's not going to be the best film that's ever been made, you have to believe that it could be. You just pour yourself into it. And when it affects someone that way, that is a huge thrill for me. It is a huge thrill. I feel like I've managed to wrap them up in it. The way I try to wrap myself up in it.

5:20 I absolutely love that. So I already mentioned James Cameron one time since him, Peter Jackson and Nolan are really uh the only group of uh directors operating at that level that are also writing. uh the movies that they're making. Because I just spent so much time Studying Cameron for episode three eleven. He was on my mind a lot while I was reading this book. And what is fascinating about

5:40 both Christopher Nolan and James Cameron is that they got to the top of their profession. They have a lot of similarities in their obsessive work habits, but they're also very different. And so as I go through Nolan's perspective on his own work, I'll try to compare and contrast the way he looks at it with the way James Cameron work looks at it. And I would start with the biggest difference is that Nolan doesn't like to use CGI and Cameron is literally inventing the new technology for other filmmakers. And so you see this in I watch a bunch of interviews with Nolan and then I watch a bunch of interviews

6:08 with people that worked with them. And one of the most remarkable things about Christopher Nolan is or most surprising things to me rather. would be the fact that he wants to live and work in an analog world. That is gonna be a recurring theme that you and I will revisit today. Yeah, so what I mean by that. Actors will talk about how hard it is to communicate with them. Like why is it hard? 'Cause Christopher Nolan does not have an email account and he doesn't use

6:32 A cell phone. You are usually scheduling things to his assistant and then he'll either call you or he'll just show up. Like, okay, we're gonna meet in a physical location at this time and date. And so he's something he talks about with not only his kids but younger generations is the fact that they're overstimulated by technology and as a result, they're not giving their imagination room to actually work. And I actually think that Nolan's desire to live and work in an analogue world is his version of mute the world and then build your own.

6:58 We're only in the first chapter of this book and I've already used the word obsessive and focused. And of singular mind. uh multiple times. And this I think is why. Like he puts a he puts a lot of

7:10 I find filming very difficult. I find it totally engaging, but it's an arduous process. There's a lot of strain on family, on personal relationships. It takes a lot of physical strength. So it's got to be great. It's got to be something that I love. And that last line, something that I love. That is his North Star. His North Star that you'll see him use throughout his career is like do I Love what I made.

7:30 And this idea of his that if you love what you made, one, it's easier to go out and sell it to other people, and two, it's easier to withstand the inevitable criticism. That anything that you create and put onto the world is going to receive. And so this idea of being in love with what you're making and then being obsessive about what you're making Chris he says in the book, he's like, Listen, I I don't feel people describe him as an artist. He's like, I don't feel like I'm an artist. I feel like I'm a craftsman.

7:51 Like five years ago, I read this incredible biography of George Lucas. It's called George Lucas, I think the life or a life. It's by Written by Brian G. Jones. And what's fascinating is I when I heard Nolan say that, you know, I'm a craftsman, I I don't feel like I'm an artist, I'm like, Wait a minute, that's almost exactly to the T. What

8:08 George Lucas said in that book. And this is a quote from George Lucas. He says I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm a craftsman. I don't make a work of art. I make a movie. And for Nolan, the first part of the craft, he just loves screenplays. And so he insists on writing all or part of every single screenplay.

8:25 that he's gonna turn into a movie and he says the best screenplays Are completely stripped down. They're very, very simple documents. The more you can strip them down, the better. And that's something he has common with some of the greatest leaders in history. If you go back and look at some of the how the greatest leaders in history communicated inside of their organization.

8:42 They they write short memos, they're really to the point. There's no wasted words. Churchill may be the best example of this'cause he even has this great quote that I love. He says it's slothful. Not to compress your thoughts. But uh I love the story that I found in one of David Ogilvy's books because Ogilvie's boss was a partial inspiration. For Ian Fleming when he was writing James Bond.

9:01 And what was fascinating and something that Ogby tried to copy when he was building his own organization, is that when you would send a memo to Ogee's boss it be returned to you with one of three Responses. Yes.

9:14 No Or speak. And speak meant come see me. So where did this obsession for the craft come from? Nolan has memories of loving cinema and loving movies.

9:25 For as long as he's had memories. And so one of the funny things is his younger brother uh write a ton of the screenplays. They wrong the screenplays together. And Nolan has a British accent and his brother Has an American accent.

9:39 So Nolan's dad was a British ad uh ad executive. His mom was a flight attendant and then later a teacher. And the family couldn't decide where they wanted to live permanently. So

9:49 depending on when you were born in the family. You either grow up most of your time in in England or most of your time in America. And this actually becomes really important later on because the movies would come out in America first. So if he happened to be living in America at the time He would see movies like Star Wars, for example, and then six months later he might be in England. when Star Wars is released. And so he'd go watch it again and again and again.

10:10 And so to this day, Christopher Nolan can tell you stories about being six years old and going to see movies with his dad. In fact, his parents actually there was a there's a connection to James Cameron here. His parents after they realized their young son was interested in movies. They actually took him to do like a tour and a visit of Pinewood Studios. Pinewood Studios was that studio in London that James Cameron hated.

10:32 Cameron said the crew that worked at Pinewood were actually lazy, insolent, and arrogant, and he does this hilarious He he was like obsessed with what he's working on. He said they were like lifers, they were just like kinda punching the clock. They weren't really into it. And so when he finally wraps on the last day, he couldn't wait to get out of there. Uh, he actually gets in front of the entire crew.

10:49 And he Cameron has a hilarious Like parting shot at them. He says this has been a long and difficult shoot, fraught by many problems. But the one thing that kept me going through it all was a certain knowledge that one day I would drive out of the gate of Pinewood and never come back.

11:02 And that you sorry bastards would still be here. And Cameron never did return. So that's the exact same studio. That Christopher Nolan's touring when he's might be, you know, six, seven, maybe ten years old. And so one of the most influential movies that Nolan ever saw.

11:15 when he was a kid was Star Wars, which came out in nineteen seventy seven. And his response to seeing Star Wars is not the s normal response that you would see with a seven year old. I think that true interest is revealed early. Like I had watched movies when I was a kid, I was like, Oh, that's a great movie. Christopher Nolan watches movies, right? And then he becomes obsessed with knowing how. The movies.

11:33 That he loves or mate. And so he would watch Star Wars over and over and over again. And then he'd find out, he'd find trade magazines. He's a little kid, for God's sake. This is something he does for his whole life. Like if he's interested in something, he reads about it obsessively. So he winds up finding like trade magazines. that go into detail about how Lucas' company, Industrial Light Magic We're able to make like the special effects and how the shots and everything else.

11:54 That is not normal behavior. From like an elementary school c age kid. And then once his dad sees how obsessed he is with movies His dad does something really smart. He takes him to a like another showing, a re release.

12:06 Of a movie that came out, you know, half a decade earlier. And this was actually Kubrick's two thousand one Space Odyssey. Now what is fascinating Is That movie. Is the same movie Cameron saw where he's like, Oh

12:17 I don't wanna just be interested in watching films, I wanna Be able to make them. And a young Christopher Nolan had the same response. He said he credits that movie with realizing, Oh Movies can be anything and I can make my own. And when I was reading about Christopher Nolan's like childhood, it reminded me very much. I I read a biography of Steven Spielberg all the way back on episode two oh two oh nine.

12:37 And it's the same thing. He starts making movies when he's like seven, eight, nine years old. I think they were making movies on the same kind of camera, these like super eight cameras that would let you record. for maybe like two and a half or three minutes long. Both Spielberg and Nolan would figure out how to make Crude. movie sets out of whatever's around the their house. Could be like egg boxes or cardboard.

12:55 Uh they would use like the Uh fellow kids in the neighborhood. And so from the age of eight to thirteen, Nolan's watching movies, he's trying to make little movies. But it's not until he realizes what a director is that he's like, Oh wait, that's the job that I want. So he would go back through. And

13:11 watch a bunch of his favorite movies. And some two of his favorite movies were Blade Runner and then Alien. And then one day he realizes, Wait a minute. That's the same director? What what is the director doing? And he realized the director was the connection between everything else. Like all both movies

13:25 had there was completely different stories, completely different people that wrote the screenplay, different they had different actors. It was different everything. The only thing that was the same The only thing that tied all those together was Ridley Scott. And so at thirteen, he says, I can remember saying, Oh my God, I want that job. One of the most interesting parts of Christopher Nolan's early life is the fact that his parents sent him to boarding school outside of London

13:47 And they were three thousand, four thousand miles away. uh living outside of Chicago. And so we see this obsession with movies has grown. To the point where they have this it's a very strict boarding school. The schedule is very regimented. Everybody goes to bed at the same time.

14:01 They wake up at the same time, they have breakfast at the same time, they have class at the same time. So what Nolan would do is after lights out, he would lie in bed. In the dark with his eyes closed. Listening to the soundtrack and the scores of like Star Wars and this other movie called Chariots of Fire on his Walkman.

14:18 He's listening to movie soundtracks in the dark. And so this is when he brings up the fact that his kids nowadays, right? If they're fascinated, they're interested in something, they can just go and Google it or they can follow like what they're interested in very fast. They can get the information right away. And he's like, Well, when I was a kid, that just wasn't the case. You actually have to work for it. And he thought this was something that's valuable, the fact that your imagination has to fill in the blanks for you.

14:41 And so that's why he'd want to listen to like the scores of other movies because they leave space for your imagination. It gives you room to actually sit and think. And so he talks about while he's doing this, his eyes are closed, he's listening to the film scores. This is where he's coming up. He's starting to use imagination. He's starting to get ideas for films. He's starting to get ideas for certain uh themes in a story. And he said this act was very important for the development, the the future development that comes down the line of him starting to make movies. And so there's a lot of detail in the book at his time at this boarding school. Uh, but one thing I thought was was fascinating because I think it gives you insight into just the the level of discipline that Nolan has.

15:15 That is constantly described at the people that work with him. And the boarding school Is trying to drill into these young adults. The importance of discipline of punctuality. Of a certain tolerance of pain.

15:26 It is described as a Darwinian environment. And some of the kids can't take it. They they wind up churning out. I think they use the term. They either sink or swim. And it's very obvious that Chris swam.

15:36 And so many years later, some of the actors that have worked for Chris Talk about the fact that you know he's Unbelievably punctual. His sets are very calm, but they're run in like a disciplined, almost like machine like manner. And that Nolan seems indifferent to both fatigue.

15:50 And like cold or extreme temperatures. And I think a lot of that was created in the like these formative years at this extreme boarding school. And so something he's doing during these years that he's going to do also when he goes to college. And really for the rest of his clear career.

16:05 It this reminded me very much when you when you read like early uh like read biographies of Kobe Bryant. How Kobe is you know. thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and he's watching game tape of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson relentlessly. Throughout Christopher Nolan's entire career. His version of watching game tape is he's constantly influenced.

16:23 Past filmmakers. And so he'll find a film. that maybe came out fifty years ago. that gives him an idea for like inception is an example that he's making in the early two thousands, and then he'll watch it and then he'll w he'll make sure all everybody on his team watches the same material as well. So they have the shared base of knowledge.

16:39 And so in many cases, he's not gonna use these ideas for multiple decades. This idea that ideas can ruminate for decades. This is just the same thing that you and I went over with James Cameron. So this movie comes out in nineteen eighty two. It's almost like Inception before Inception. And so he's watching it while he's at boarding school. Check this out. It was during one of his storytelling sessions after lights out. So this is when he's in the dark just thinking, right? That the idea for inception first took place.

17:01 The idea of sharing a dream, that was the jumping off point. And the use of music or playing music outside someone dreaming, and the idea that if you play music to somebody who was asleep. That it would translate in some interesting way. I really did come up with a couple ideas that went into inception when I was about sixteen. That film was a very long time in coming. It was just something I was thinking about for a very long time.

17:22 So when Christopher Nolan and James Cameron are around college age, they both want to go to film school, right? They wanna learn, they already know what they want to do. Christopher Nolan grew up like upper middle class. So he went to University College London. James Cameron didn't have any money. One of the my favorite stories ever of like what a high H C person is is the fact that Cameron wanted to go to film school. didn't have any money, goes and and uh photocopies all the graduate level thesis of all the film students, and then teaches himself. Essentially gives himself

17:49 A film sc uh film school education without ever meeting professor. Now Christopher Nolan does something similar inside. of the actual university. So he winds up becoming the president of the film and T V society. It is not at all clear to me. How much time he spent. Actually attending

18:06 Like his normal curriculum. He created just like James Cameron. He winds up creating his own curriculum. So They they talk about the fact that he had keys to since he was the president. He had keys to the film and TV society. It's like this basement under uh underground. He's gonna spend almost all of his time there. They said it was like his it w it was like his office.

18:25 And so the separate curriculum that he set up for himself is essentially learning. How to operate cameras. How to edit. How to cut film by hand. how to sync sound. So the way I think about this is the fact that

18:36 He just spent his college time. practicing and learning the job that he already knew he wanted. 'Cause when he was thirteen he's like, No, I know I'm gonna be a director. And so he's a great quote about this time in his life. He says, I learned a huge amount about the craft of putting films together. It was a great education. Another fascinating thing, right? Because you've already seen insight

18:54 Into Nolan's The way he approaches work, he says, Listen, when I when I'm on a film, I burrow into it. I do it obsessively. There's a lot of stress on my personal life. There's just a lot of stress on Uh my physical mental fatigue. I'll get to this later too.

19:05 Like the only solution I have for for for people like this that want both a relationship and have this like deep desire. and love for what they're w they're working on. is to make it a family business. This is what Christopher Lamoland did. On the very first day of

19:19 College he winds up meeting His future wife. Her name is Emma, and this is what he says about her. I remember seeing her on the very first evening of my first day. Emma has such a profound impact on my life, my work, and how I go about things. We've collaborated on everything I've done. We spent three years in college. Making short films, running the film society, r and then raising money to make more films.

19:40 And it was during his time in the film society that he learned how to make movies with minimal resources. This is going to be a main theme. of Christopher Nolan's career. He's constantly he's relentlessly resourceful, and he's doing that because he wants to spend as as little money as possible so he can maintain as much control over the project as possible. So to this day his wife is his partner. She works on all of his films.

20:01 And she's gonna help him make his very first movie. This movie's gonna be called Following. Now the crazy thing is He actually tries to apply to a bunch of other uh like film schools. Yeah, after graduating from his undergrad, and he winds up getting turned down. So he gets a job. His first job. outside of college is he's making videos for large corporations, like training videos and such.

20:22 And he only does that to get money to make a movie. He makes his first this is incredible. This is like one of the things that hate me up the most. is the fact that, you know, this guy's one of the greatest filmmakers ever lived. And he makes his first movie on the weekends while he working a full time job. They decided simply to use the bonus from his cameraman job and shoot the film only on weekends for almost a year, rehearsing each scene carefully. This goes back to this relentless resourcefulness that he has. And I've read what is this like the fifth?

20:47 biography of filmmaker. I've uh I've read Steven Spielberg. Uh, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas James Cameron. There is not one. Not one. The reason there's some of my favorite biographies to read for entrepreneuriers is they're all relentlessly resourceful. This is an example of that. Uh, so they're shooting the film only on weekends for almost a year. They rehearse each scene carefully, almost like a play, so they could shoot it in one or two takes, working out that they could afford to shoot and process between ten and fifteen minutes of footage a week.

21:14 Every weekend. Everyone would squeeze into the back of a taxi and head to whatever location they had been able to scrounge up. They shot without permits. Nolan operating the camera himself. And so that's another thing that Nolan has in common with Cameron.

21:28 This idea that they want to write, produce, shot, and edit them the movies themselves. Now Cameron's are uh His movies are way too complex to do this. Now, but he definitely has that same approach. He wants to be able to do every single job on the set. And so Christopher Nolan is gonna get this first movie, this following movie, finished w in nineteen ninety seven. He is twenty-seven. I wanna bring this to your attention. If this is what Christopher Nolan was doing at twenty seven. He's got this

21:52 film, it's created on like the shoestring budget. He's about to edit and release it. At the same time, though, he does something smart. Like this is another example of doing the best you can with the job in front of you. And by doing so, like you can open up opportunities that you can't possibly predict. He had already known he's like okay, when this is done, if this is well received, I need to have another project. 'Cause he doesn't want to work he wants to work be a filmmaker full time, right?

22:12 So it's like Let's say this comes out. I think it's good. I can convince other people it's good. Then what's gonna happen is once it's good and it starts spread like be incoming critically acclaimed, maybe making a little bit of money.

22:22 distributors and other movie series are like okay do you have anything next? He already had the idea for Memento. This is his second film. This is the thing that that causes his Creator to go vertical. Listen to this description of what he was doing at twenty seven years old, rather than being discouraged by his rejection from film school

22:37 He was hot on a new idea for a movie, the story of a guy who loses his short term memory and tries to solve the murder of his wife. by tattooing clues on his body. Like little mementos. It sounded complicated. Chris also wanted to tell the story backward. That was very important, he said. I couldn't quite see it, but when you're around someone who does, you start to believe it.

22:54 And so they finish the following. It is extremely well received, gets written about in all the major paper papers in San Francisco and New York. And so then people would ask him, Okay, what do you want to do next? Do you have another idea? And then he was able to hand them the completed script for Memento. He had his next job already lined up. That's extremely smart. So if you remember how the book starts, Memento is the the movie. That

23:15 was critically acclaimed. But for over a year they couldn't find a distributor. They eventually find distribution. But I do wanna point out I I wanna bring to your attention the fact that he feels That the screening of memento. was the turning point in his life. He is thirty years old when this is taking place.

23:31 Memento is being screened at the Venice Film Festival. There's gonna be fifteen hundred people in the venue. It was impossible to predict the audience's reaction. At that scale because Before he was just doing like these small, like personal screenings of like twenty

23:44 Other like twenty people. And so he talks about the fact that when the film Finishes. He was completely terrified because for a few seconds everybody was completely silent. And so in that few second window, he's like Oh my God, they hate it.

23:56 And then all at once there was this enormous standing ovation. And he says everything from that moment in his life changed. That was the turning point. Of his life. So at this point he's already w made two films. They're very small, maybe you know, considered really independent. I think Memento's budget was something like five somewhere between like five and nine million total.

24:18 Winds up making like forty million. getting like two, I think two nominations for Oscars. The first time he works for a big studio, though. is the next movie. It's Insomnia. Insomnia actually stars Al Pacino. And something that I learned about Nolan's career, it's very similar. We talked about this uh last week with Mark Twain.

24:33 It's this fact that Through our journey along the way, there's always gonna be these people. Usually there's like mil multiple examples of somebody else trying to help you. They have inside knowledge or relationships that you lack. They like what you're doing and so they push it forward. And so

24:48 Nolan is trying to pitch this idea to Warner Brothers. Now he's gonna wind up having a twenty year career with Warner Brothers after this, right? But at this point, They won't even take a meeting. And so this other filmmaker named Steven Sodenberg is the reason, according to Chris Roland, is the reason that insomnia gets made. And so Steven was a fan of Nolan's uh previous film. And he flipped his wig.

25:09 when he found out that he could that that Warner Brothers wouldn't even take a meeting with him. And so this is what he does. Upon hearing of Nolan's difficulties getting a meeting with the executives of Warner Brothers, Steven marched across the lot to the head of production and told him, You're insane if you don't meet with this guy. Offering to executive produce Insomnia himself in a way to guarantee the work of the then thirty-one year old director, which is Christopher Nolan. And so without that push by Steven Sodenberg, it's not at all clear what Christopher Nolan's career would have wind up.

25:37 And it was a h another turning point in his life. He says it was very vivid. This is Christopher Nolan speaking. It was a very vivid time in my life. It was my first studio film. It was the first time I'd work with huge movie stars. And that idea about learning to work within the system is incredibly important. Later on, uh Nolan forms this like long partnership with Hans Zimmer. And the way he describes

25:57 Why he likes working with Han Zimmer. Is really a description of Nolan himself. He says that Hans is a minimalist with maximalist production value. After reading this entire book, it's very clear that Nolan is the same way. And I think this is a great way to understand what he learned from his first interaction with like a big studio.

26:13 It's gonna help you understand like what is important to to Christopher Nolan and then how he gets it. He and this is uh these are themes that he uses throughout his entire life. The fact that he loves constraints. He feels constraints breed resourcefulness. But it also decreases the budget, which gives him more control. He's a all about maintaining control. By the end of the production he had learned an important lesson about working for the studios.

26:34 The efficiency of film making is for me a way of keeping control. The pressure of time, the pressure of money. Even though they feel like restrictions at the time and you chaf against them They're helping you. They really are.

26:46 If I know that the deadline is there, then my creative process ramps up exponentially. Creative power in filmmaking is very important to me. I am very protective of it. I get my power. From spending less and moving faster. Not giving anybody a reason to come visit me or to interfere or to complain.

27:03 I made that decision very early in my career. If I can work a little bit faster than people expect, if I can work a little bit cheaper than people expect. Then they'll have other problems to deal with and they'll let me do my thing. I mentioned earlier how He puts a lot of his life into what he's doing and yet he wants to be a good father and a good husband.

27:22 He's got a very interesting setup. So he's got a home in LA. Right. And then There's a house that's like next door. That is almost like the mirror image of his house. He buys that house.

27:33 And then turns it into like a production studio and an office. And so his commute is just walking from his backyard to the backyard of the other house. And so when Warner Brothers gives him the job to direct Batman begins. He starts working on it immediately without telling them.

27:49 And so Nolan and his team are working on both the script and The actual set designs at the same time. And he did this because he says he wanted to be able to hand it over to Warner Brothers as like a feta company. Like, hey, this is me maintaining creative control and communicating to them. What the film was supposed to be. And then the reason behind doing all this I thought was fascinating. He talks about the fact that big studios have a way of working. That just encourages waste. And doesn't give him

28:12 the control and the involvement that he desires. So he says You are encouraged in a big movie to very rapidly hire an enormous amount of people. Then you have to feed the beast. And so you're in a situation where you go, I need a robot for this science fiction film. Figure me out a robot.

28:25 And then you go away a while and they do whatever they feel like and then they come back with a robot. Which didn't suit my way of working at all. And so the way he's operating, he's like, Well, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And so he says once they were finished, Nolan invited the executives of Warner Brothers to his home to view their work. They were not happy about it.

28:43 But Warner Brothers had a lot of trouble with scripts leaking. So this idea that he wants to constantly maintain control that he's working He finds ways to work with in the studio. like a large movie studio system without somehow giving into the demands is something that pops up over and over again. This is a movie that he does back in uh two thousand six, so the movie after Batman begins. It's called The Prestige.

29:03 And I wanna bring this to your attention because like I said at the beginning, like this is a guy that wants to live and work in an analog world. You could tell that because he doesn't use email, he doesn't carry his cell phone, right? And so he says The Prestige was the first film. Where we were expected by the studio to digitize the negative and edit electronically. We had a lot of arguments with the post production team at Disney. But we carried on.

29:26 From the prestige on to this day. We have never converted to the other workflow. Used by most of the industry. We continue to shoot on film. Edit electronically.

29:37 Then take the frame numbers and cut the film by hand. And that is what goes out. The prestige was very much the point at which we separated. From the rest of the industry. Or rather

29:51 They separated From us. And I love that section for many reasons. One is because you see that he has very strong points of view as house. How he wants to work. And he's adamant about not relenting.

30:01 And let anybody uh anybody else convince him that he should be doing otherwise. The second part I think is a lot of people want to know, like, oh, what tools do you use? Like, what's your setup, what software you're using. And I think this example of him deviating from the rest of his industry. is another example that it's not the tools that matter, it's the person. And my favorite favorite example of this. Is One of my favorite fiction authors, unfortunately just passed passed away recently, Cormac McCarthy.

30:25 Cormac created novels that'll likely still be read a hundred years from now. And he did it on a fifty dollar typewriter. He paid fifty dollars for his typewriter. And used it for fifty years. To write over five million words. It's not the tools, it's the person.

30:40 And what I love about the fact is on his very next movie, he proves that he can still keep his workflow and still have massive commercial success. So he does the dark knight. The dark knight is his first billion dollar blockbuster. And the way to think about this is that The money that's made on this film. This is going to buy him the last word. The money's going to allow him to do what he always wanted to do.

30:59 That'll make more sense in a minute. The film's eventual box office take was one billion dollars. I cannot get my head around it, Nolan said. Nolan's ascent up to this point had been gradual. Even something of a zigzag. Following a pattern of advance and regroup. Advance and regroup.

31:13 Always pressing ahead, but always against resistance. Suddenly his position at Warner Brothers went from solid to unassailable. And this is what he said about that experience. It changed a lot of things, but the immediate thing that it did that was extraordinary was it allowed me to do whatever I wanted. As the next film. Everything up till that moment had been a fight.

31:34 Or a struggle. One way or another. And suddenly I'm realizing, Oh, I'm gonna get the last word. Every filmmak would give their teeth for that. So finally, you've got it.

31:45 What are you gonna do with it? For the first time, I was able to step back and say Okay. What do I want to do now? And I've always wanted to do inception. So what does he mean? What what do you mean you always want to do inception? Remember, he's sixteen years old. He's laying them in the dark, he's got this idea.

32:01 I I skipped over this part of the book, but You know, five years previous, he had sat down. and started writing Inception. He thought he was gonna do Inception after he did Insomnia. And he gets like Three quarters of the way

32:14 Through the script and he's like, I can't nail the ending. I think it was like eighty pages into the script and he had to he had to abandon it. He's like, I can't figure out how to do it. And I love the fact that he asked himself, like, what do I want to do most right now? What am I willing to obsess about? Over the next few years. I think it's a great idea to like pause and ask yourself that question.

32:34 And so this is yet another thing that James Cameron and Christopher Nolan have a comment. The importance of dreams in Their work. James Cameron talked about dreaming up Avatar. twenty years or thirty years before he made it. Same thing with the ali the the ending for the movie Aliens, way before

32:49 Uh, he actually did it. Same we see Christopher Nolan saying the exact same things. I've had dreams that have informed narrative choices. I first dreamed the end of the Dark Knight trilogy. Film this is fascinating how the The one thing about um Christopher Nolan. He's a very deep and soulful person.

33:05 If you do decide to buy the book, which I highly recommend, I would take your time reading through it. You would be fascinated by how much his favorite novels or literature or past films or even pieces of art influence his work and they pop up in the work. It was very fascinating to read this book. Film has a relationship to our own dreams that's difficult to articulate, but there's an extrapolation of your experience working things out through your dreams.

33:28 You're hoping to make connections and find things that are hidden from you. While you're living your life or being in the world. I think that's what films do for us. They're very dreamlike experiences. And one of the influences that Christopher Nolan brings up over and over again in the book

33:42 Is The short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. Christopher Nolan has lost count. on how many of Jorge's books

33:49 That he bought and gave out its gifts. But he makes this really important. point. Why he speaks so much about his influences Uh, it's the fact that like stories can add to your own thinking, but you need your own foundation to add them to first. And so some of Jorge's work is influencing inception, but he makes the point that as you're reading these short stories, you have to have something rattling inside. of you that already connects with what you're reading or what you're watching.

34:13 But if you're not already predisposed to that, it just comes to as a story and it doesn't necessarily spark anything. I think that's true with books, obviously. It's also true with podcasts. Like the stories can add to your own thinking, but you need your own foundation to add them to first. And so my favorite Christopher Nolan film is Dunkirk. I've watched it like four or five times. It annoys my wife all the time. She's like, Let's watch something. I was like, How we watch Dunker? You've seen it five times.

34:34 After Dunkirk, I think my f favorite Christopher Nolan film is Inception and this was incredible. What a what a paragraph. Inception was thus the work of half a lifetime. An idea first conceived by Nolan when he was sixteen. Nursed at university, elaborated upon when he came to Hollywood.

34:50 And finally executed in the wake of the Dark Knight's success. Inception took input from its maker at every major point of his life. The school boy. The university student. The Hollywood

35:02 The success story And the father. And so by the time he's doing inception, I think all of his four kids are already born. And this is what I meant about running he tries to run his career as a family business. His wife is his partner and his kids are on set. He has a great line on this. He says, I know it's more fun when we're all together and we can do the thing together.

35:20 That's why we keep it as a family business. And then let's go back to this idea of just wanting to live and work in an analog World. Um the book is fantastic because you can see all the drawings. He writes out so many things. By hand, like pen and paper, pencil.

35:36 And paper. But this is a fascinating idea and it's very similar to um when I read about the founding uh engineering genius of Rolls Royce. And it's this idea of like

35:47 First you flip it. So When Christopher Nolan first has an idea. His first instinct is to flip the idea backwards, right? And then he'll write it out or he'll draw it out. And essentially it's like turning an idea into like a three-dimensional object. that he can actually hold in his hands.

36:02 This is very similar to Henry Royce. Henry Royce would have an idea for some kind of thing he wants to prove on the cars that he's manufacturing. And so he would describe the idea, and then he'd have a wooden model of like the part. made he wanted to hold it in his hands to touch it to be able to turn that idea into this three dimensional object. And so you see these drawings, and you see these diagrams that Christopher Nolan has throughout the book.

36:23 And the way he's talks about this is is really a unique idea where he's like, Well That's the way you storytelling. You take storytelling, right? And you turn it into A three dimensional exercise like a sculpture. And so he's doing that with films and Henry Royce did that with parts that went in eventually went into Rolls Royce cars.

36:41 It's the same idea in two different domains. I thought it was fascinating. And so as the author and Christopher Nolan are going through so they work his way, they talk about it like his early life. Then they go through every single uh movies ever made. And he talks about like the influence he's had, why he made that decision, which I thought was fascinating. But this idea of hey, I wanna live in the real world and I wanna don't want to be dependent upon all these technologies was

37:02 was something that comes up over and over again. There's a great metaphor. He talks about it. It it's a metaphor for his filmmaking, but I think it's a metaphor for anybody building a business. And he says there's a there's a danger when we start to rely on particular technologies. or on corporations that manage our information and track our movements. They're encouraging dependency, meaning the people making these the these companies making these technologies.

37:22 And so this is the the metaphor goes into which I think it has to do with the same thing with making films and also building businesses. One of the things I try to teach my kids is that when we go to a new city, I like to wander around and get lost and then explain to them how I've managed to find my way without a phone and without a map. I just embrace it. I say, look, we're gonna get lost. But we will find our way, but we will find our way. It's something that applies to filmmaking very, very directly.

37:48 Because you look at the plan Or the set that you're building. So in this case like the screenplay. Or the actual physical set that he's building. And you're always reconciling Two dimensional imagery, so the idea in your mind.

38:00 With three dimensional space. And that's something that he repeats over and over again. He likes these stripped down screenplays, but he's like as g you can have the best screenplay in the world. And it's still only gonna have a loose association with the finished product. Just like if you make a business plan before you do anything, it's gonna have a loose association with the product you build or the performance of the business. I think I love that metaphor. And especially that attitude of listen. We're gonna get lost, but we will find our way. And so one way he finds his way is over time he's learned how to trust his instinct.

38:28 After decade or two of practice, he realized that the job of director And a lot of what he has to do. comes from his either unconscious or his instinct. And this word instinct was used so many times. In the book, I had an idea while I was going through this.

38:43 And I went to my ReadWise app and I was like, Okay. How many other founders that you and I have covered? Had ideas or said similar things about the importance of being able to trust your instinct. And so this is the list that I came up with. Steve Jobs, Edwin Land, Danny Meyer, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

38:58 J uh Michael Jordan, Sidney Harman, Rick Rubin, Andy Beale, Harry Snyder. James Cameron, Felix Dennis. Claude Shannon and Mark Twain. And now we add Christopher Nolan to that list as well. So there's two things that surprise me about the making of Interstellar. One

39:14 Did you know Interstellar was originally supposed to be made by Steven Spielberg? I didn't know that. That surprised me. The second thing is That I had no idea that Christopher Nolan's approach to work was very similar to Jeff Bezos when he was at Amazon. before he starts working on a a movie, right? Nolan will pull out his typewriter. Yes. Typewriter. Remember th this guy is all analog, right?

39:35 So he will pull out a typewriter. And then he will type up a one page like summary of his vision of the film. One, he likes to know where he's going, but two, he makes the good he makes the point. He says, I'll bang out a page Or a paragraph of what I think the film needs, like the bigger picture. What it is the thing that I'm trying to do. And then I put that away and I come back to it every now and again.

39:55 Just to remind myself. Because you get lost in movies as these things start. Right? So he's like Essentially he has this idea where he wants to know what the heart uh he uses a term. that you w you want to know what the heart of the movie is.

40:08 And you wanna do that first, right? If you have an idea for a business or a product you want to create, you wanna do that first. Because as you get into it, you'll get distracted, he says, because nothing is exactly the way you want it to be. It never is. Budget, location set. All that. So you start making all these decisions. And I won't say they're compromises because they're not necessarily But it is very difficult once you're fully engaged. It can be very hard To remember what it is you were trying to do in the first place.

40:31 Let me read this excerpt. From The Everything Store, which is the biography of Jeff Bezos. Every time. This is exactly what Amazon does, right? It's like They start every new product. They start at the end and then they work backwards and the their ending is the press release.

40:46 Every time a new feature or a product was proposed Jeff Bezos decree that the narrative should take the shape of a mock press release. The goal was to get employees to distill a pitch. Into its purest essence. What is the heart of this product, right? He just said it's the heart of the film. What is the heart of this product? To start from something the customer might see.

41:04 Bezos did not believe that. Anyone can make a decision about a feature or product without knowing precisely How it would be communicated to the world. I love that. And one way that Nolan figures out.

41:16 and adheres to like what the heart of the movie is. I always say the best description of a founder I've ever heard is that the founder is the guardian of the company's soul. the guardian of the company's soul. The director is the same thing for the film. And so he puts himself. into his movies. And so as his kids are aging

41:34 He's realizing his time with them are is is limited. So the original s script for Interstellar Uh, Matthew McConahay's character, have you seen the movie? it it's his relationship with his daughter. Eventually at at the beginning it was supposed to be his son. But Christopher Nolan's daughter

41:49 was the same age at the time he's making Interstellar that the character is an interstellar. So he changed it from A boy to a girl. And this is why he s talks about this. I very much related to the dilemma of somebody who's having to go off and do this thing, leaving his kids, whom he dearly wants to be with.

42:04 But he really wants to go and do this thing. My job is something that I absolutely love. I consider myself unbelievably lucky to do it. But there's a lot of guilt involved in doing that. A lot of guilt. I have a daughter who is the same age as the character. He's talking about the the the comparison between his own life And then obviously what Matthew Conaughey is doing in that movie.

42:21 And then they're having a discussion because he's got this close friendship and create a partnership with Han Zimmer. And Han said something that's excellent. And Han's kids, I think are like fifteen or sixteen at the time, he says this. He says, Once your children are born. You can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore. You always look at yourself through their eyes.

42:41 And I love that looking at yourself through your kids' eyes. I think in large part what drives me is I want my kids I want to do something that I can point to And I want them to be proud of me. That like pushes me forward. That keeps me working harder.

42:55 keeps me trying to improve, keeps me trying to make something, completely focused on making something. That makes somebody else's life better. Бізасі май. Through their eyes. That's an incredible Incredible quote from Hans Zimmer. Once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore.

43:12 You always look at yourself through their eyes. And I think we would all make better decisions if we Analyze the decision we're about to make is if our children see the result of that decision that we're making. And there's another story about the making of Interstellar that I think compares and contrasts Christopher Nolan and James Cameron.

43:29 They'll both grow to great lengths to accomplish what they want to do. Cameron will do four hundred and five different takes. CGI or one scene using CGI. Nolan will go to great lengths not to have to use CGI. So if you've seen the beginning of Intercellar where they like drive through

43:48 That uh that cornfield. Nolan was so adamant about not using CGI for for that shot. that they actually planted he had planted five hundred acres of corn. Just to be able to get to that shot, and the funny thing was That the crop grew so well that they actually sold the corn for a profit.

44:06 So previously Nolan said, Hey, I have my first instinct when I have an idea is to flip it. Then I try to make something in like I turn it from a two dimensional idea to a three dimensional, like something I can actually hold in my hand. I can walk around. I can actually think more deeply about that way. Another thing that he does is like trying to do trying to take his approach to like a uh a gen a specific genre of a movie.

44:26 Is to do like to make a problem pr product Defined by all the things it lacks. And if you've seen Dunkirk, I think Dunkirk is the movie that describes this the best. Like just look at if you haven't seen it.

44:38 Think right now it's available, you can watch it on Netflix. Just watch the first five minutes and you'll understand exactly what he means by that. He's like How many World War Two movies have there been? There's a ton, right?

44:48 And usually they have a very similar structure. And so he talks about I was like, Well How do I make a a fascinating and compelling Uh w movie. About war.

44:57 that doesn't have all the stuff that norm that you normally think that wars have. And so he's he's he's describing Dunkirk. And he was actually influenced by two movies. Uh gravity.

45:08 And then Mad Max Fury Road. And so he says it is pure present tense it's pure climax There would be no shots of generals pushing boats across a map. No Churchill, no politics. From its very first sequence, we are given the film starkly moral calculus.

45:24 Survive or die. What I did was strip away the backstory for Dunkirk. And before I go on, what's even crazier about that is like the entire set. If you if you watch the movie, it's like Everything happens within like a two mile stretch of beach. So he says I wanted to go in more minimalist directions. So the point where we made a war film

45:41 In which we don't use any of the visually chaotic devices, lots of quick cuts. Lots of activity, lots of smoke, lots of fire. Bomb flying everywhere. You you know exactly like when he describes this, like how many war They're all They're very similar.

45:54 And so his point is Dunkirk is entirely About the absence of those things. And because Nolan has this insistence that he wants to film as much as possible out in the real world. He constantly has to deal with the unpredictability of weather. Now this was a fascinating paragraph. Because it talks uh you when you read in the book and you also ta uh hear

46:13 people that work with him describe him. They talk about like his intolerance to uh to fatigue. Uh, he seems in completely indifferent. to like extreme temperatures, whether it's cold or heat. And this is what he says about that. I'm known in the film business for having good luck with the weather.

46:27 That's inaccurate. I often have terrible luck with the weather. But my philosophy is to just shoot no matter what the weather is. I'm always shooting no matter what the weather is. Just keep going, just keep going, letting everybody in the crew and cast know. That were really serious about doing that.

46:42 No matter what the conditions are. So they're not looking out the window first thing and going, Oh well, we won't we will or we will not shoot today. This doesn't u just apply to weather, but I think it's a great metaphor for his entire approach. to getting the film made. I am going to keep going no matter what. And I make sure that my team knows it.

47:02 And then I think the starting and ending point with Christopher Nolan is the same. It all comes back to his original obsession. of cinema itself. The way he talks about movies. I it's very similar to me, it's the way like I described the way Enzo Ferrari would describe his products is the way you would describe your lover.

47:19 Christopher Nolan has a bit of that and this is an example. Directing is a job Where you have to know a bit of everything. Jack of all trades and master of none. I know that I've never had the dedication or the talent to be a musician. But I'm musically inclined and I know how to use that in my work.

47:33 I could write a screenplay, but I don't think I could write a novel. I can draw a picture, but not well enough to be a storyboard artist. I'm a passionate fan of other filmmakers. and a great believer in the job of directing. I think it's a great job.

47:46 The thing that makes films completely unique is the combination of subjectivity. The visual experience With shared experience and empathy with the rest of the audience. It's a borderline mystical experience. movies have this very, very unique mixture.

48:03 A the subjective and immersive. But it is also shared. It doesn't happen. With any other medium. Which is why it's fabulous.

48:11 And forever. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. I highly recommend getting the book. And then if you do buy the book, take your time with it. It is giant. I have the hardcover. It's not quite a coffee table book, but it is really, really detailed and beautiful. So I would definitely take your time going through it. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes for your podcast player. You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.

48:32 That is three hundred and thirteen books down. One thousand ago. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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