Christopher Nolan

28:45It's less about like, could I tell somebody exactly what happened in every aspect? Maybe not, but I felt the journey of those characters. I felt the story. Is that something you're conscious of? I mean, do we make almost too much about the particulars of plot and maybe it is more about feeling it as one of your characters say in this film? Well, I think that one of the things that happens in film, in Hollywood film sometimes is the confusion between plot and premise and so when plot and premise are fused you get something kind of strong when they're separated too much and say okay the premise of the film you know uh you know time traveling secret agent you know whatever is a premise has nothing to do with the plot and those things are separated right there's an inherent weakness and quite often there was a period when i first stood up in hollywood in the early 2000s when you You were seeing movies that felt like the sequel to a movie you'd never seen.

29:42So it was almost as if the premise was in the trailer, and then they then construct a plot that functioned independent of the premise in the movie. And I think what you're really always trying to do is construct a premise where premise and plot are the same, and the story and the concept are fused. Now, the particulars of the story, I mean, it tends to strike people. Any film, it tends to strike people in different ways. And this goes back to, you know, Raymond Chandler and his novels and so forth. It's like how much you want to engage on the level of the specifics or what are the broad strokes that you're getting that are telling you where they are.

30:16one of the great misconceptions of the Bond films, not to dispute you, but if you look at the earliest ones, they had some of the most incredible plots. So if you look at Thunderbolt and you look at the plot behind that film, which is maybe why it was the subject of litigation for so many years, because the original screenplay, the treatment that was put together between Fleming and Kevin McClory, then eventually the rights became an issue because Fleming wrote it as a novel, which is where Never Say Never Again comes from. however they came up with that plot that's one of the great plots in in movies and and in books and i think that with something like the bond franchise at a certain point it was driven plot wise in the early days and then there's so much investment from the audience in the character the situation the episodic idea of it that yeah you get yourself a lot of freedom in terms of plot but those the classic bonds the early bonds particularly the plots were amazing really really tight and really original.

31:16What's your favorite Bond actor and what's your favorite Bond film? My favorite Bond film is on Her Majesty's Secret Service, as anyone who's seen Inception can probably figure out. My favorite Bond actor is Timothy Dalton. I love Living Daylights, I think, is one of the best. Living Daylights is very, very good. Very, very good. A little bit let down by the climax a bit in technical terms, I think, but it's very, very good a lot of the way through. He's fantastic. And even License to Kill, which is aging better than I expected in some ways. But I think he's closest to the character in the book.

31:52And it would have been interesting to see him do more. Did you get all of your Bond ideas out of your system on this one? I mean, I remember when we last spoke, you said, when the time is right, who knows? Like, if they need me, maybe that's the right time. Well, Christopher, they need a new Bond. maybe it's time for for you i think it would be uh it would be strange to follow up turn up with a bond film that would be weird um uh did i get that out of my system i mean yes and no i thought i had after inception but uh i think whenever you think about big action movies uh your brain is always going back to the things you grew up with so for me that's star wars that's bond that's raiders of the lost ark you know um which in some ways is bond with a hat and a whip you know but I think you inevitably are drawn back to the things that, that took you into different realms, you know, as a kid.

32:49And yeah. So for me, that'll always be the Bond films. I've seen a healthy amount of, of action films in my day. And I don't know about you, but I don't know about 10, 15 years ago, I started to just, it started not to work on me, whether it was the, the I'd seen too much or they were getting lazy in terms of the filmmaking. I mean, outside of Keanu Reeves, inventively killing people, I could watch that all day long and I think they do a hell of a job in those films. It's few and far between, frankly, to see innovative and emotional and powerful action. Clearly, you are pushing it in this. Is that one of the reasons, one of the exciting aspects of this is like, I am going to try to find a new way into action and present it to you in a unique way that you've never seen before?

33:34Very much. I mean, Tenet, the driving force of Tenet is to reimagine or represent some of those action tropes, the car chase, the plane crash, fist fight. We're trying to turn them on their heads and look at it in a very unique way. And it's partly because, yeah, you become immune to that drug. You sort of become, it's like, okay, how do I get that same fix of adrenaline that I used to get when I was younger watching something I hadn't seen before? And I think filmmakers really, they have to find ways. And you're referring to John Wick. And of course, the breakthrough there was in the particular approach to fight choreography and the integration of handguns into the particular violence and the way that was done, which it built on what had come before, but it also had a new wrinkle to it.

34:21It had a new thing to it. In the case of Tenet, the science fiction component of the story, of the premise, one of my interests in that and excitement about that is that you can then take a car chase and you can look at it forwards you can look at it backwards you can have it running both directions at the same time and suddenly using a lot of the same filmmaking techniques have been developing over years but you're looking at it differently it's having a different impact and you're looking at it in a different way and that was really the fun of making this film and hopefully it'll be the fun of watching the film for people More Happy Say Confused coming up.

35:26It's handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Croc store today. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

36:25as I did for 10 years, you start working on something as beloved as Batman. It's something people feel so protective on proprietary. You know, you very rapidly learn you can never look online. You're not going to be happy with what you see. So you have to trust that if you make a sincere attempt to make things the best way you can and really put your heart into it, that people will respect that even if they don't like it, you know, they don't like your interpretation of Batman or what have you. And so, so no, you can't really, you can't really dabble with the, the, the online world too much with, with the work you put out there or you'd get, you'd just get too self-conscious in truth.

37:11You've got to feel free to, to do things. You can't be, you don't want to be reactive in your filmmaking, you know, and then the truth is when you put out large scale films and they go out to the entire world one way or another, you can't even insulate yourself from people's reactions anyway. You certainly don't need to go looking for them. A couple of things I will bring up in case you haven't stumbled across them. And I don't want to get into spoiler stuff, but I'll just mention there's a theory about Rob's character in this. Are you aware of that at least, of who that person might be? And do you want to talk about that at all?

37:47I don't delve into the world of interpretations of my movies. I love that people think it's worth putting the time and attention into. I think if I were looking at any particular interpretation of something I had done, the only thing I would caution or ask people to look at is, is it indicated in the text? Because the truth is, a lot of the things that people at casual glance view as ambiguities in my work are not ambiguities. They are actually things that are pretty specified if you drill down and if you look at what the text is, what the film, what's actually in the movie. And to me, those are always going to be the most valid interpretations.

38:33Things beyond that, that's for the audience to decide. It's been said, it's been cited that at least two of your characters, including Rob's character in this film and Leonardo's character in Inception, somewhat resemble you, Christopher, in style, in look. Is this just a grand coincidence? Are they looking at their director and saying, hmm, maybe there's a model for me there? Is this something that you're aware of? I've been teased about it in the past. Funnily enough, I think there are, whether you're looking at Carl McLaughlin with David Lynch and Blue Velvet, what he does is, you know, I think there is a slightly mischievous tendency on the part of actors to see in the in the filmmakers see see where as a writer particularly the writer directors where they put a bit of themselves into something and then build on on that um i mean tom hardy maintains that bane is somehow based on me i've never heard of that one but in tom's mind wow that's a wrap i was gonna say in tom's mind there's some very complex interweaving of impulses and influences that somehow I have a voice in.

39:47But I think it's certainly not conscious on my part. And I think Rob with Neil, we talked a lot about a lot of different influences on that character, none of which were me. So we'll see. Rob, as you well know, was cast as Batman right when you started shooting, I believe. Since then, we've seen a glimpse of it. I assume you've seen the trailer from Matt Reeves. what do you make of it what do you i mean are you i mean now you're a spectator um is it fascinating to see someone else's slightly different take do you see similarities differences what excites you about what they're doing with their batman i mean first of all my stuff a couple things really exciting i mean matt reeves a great filmmaker that that right there uh but rob i mean having worked with rob i mean this guy he can do anything he's just just one of the greats and uh so for him putting his talent to that.

40:41I think that's something fans should really be looking forward to. Yeah, I mean, the first conversation I ever had with Paul Levitz, who's the head of DC Comics at the time, we flew out to New York when we knew we were going to do Batman, myself and David Goya. And we sat with him and, you know, talk about what were the parameters. What could we do? What couldn't we do? You know, we were sort of feeling it out with him. And one of the things he said is he said, Batman of all of the characters, more so than Superman, Batman is the one who really benefits from different interpretations and different interpretations that change over time, both in the comics and indeed then in the movies.

41:18And I think the success of our movies, the previous, the prior success of Tim Burton's movies, I mean, I think you see that very, very clearly. And then moving on to Zack Snyder's interpretation. And now there'll be, you know, Rob's version. I think it's really true that Batman is owned and interpreted differently by different generations. And it's one of the things that's kept that character alive and vital over the years, and I think will continue to do. You've had a great track record of eliciting some fantastic villainous performances in your career, and Kenneth Branagh continues that tradition.

41:54This is a character that almost could have belonged in a Bond film in a way. I'm curious I mean sorry a Batman film I meant a Bond film as well um but I think more a Batman film than a Bond film yeah perhaps right well he's so thuggish and it was something I talked to Ken a lot about it's not there's a there's a difference with the the Bond villains and I'm very familiar with the Bond villains and and the attraction of that but they tend to be philosophers they tend to be eloquent in a way that it didn't want Sater to be I wanted him to be this kind of extreme, white, middle-aged, entitled thuggery.

42:36And Ken is such a lovely human being. I think for him, he kept trying to find the poetry in it a little bit before we started shooting. And I kept really just saying to him, no, this is just as Heath in The Dark Knight was a force of sheer chaos with no more thought behind it than chaos. And he tapped into that. It's a primal thing. For Ken, it was a similarly primal thing. He had to be a thug. He just had to be a monstrous thug. And that's very difficult for somebody like him to play, but he really found it. I think he's terrifying in the film. I've told you before my obsession with Tom Hardy's depiction of Bane.

43:16I'm not alone in this, I know. What he did in that, what Heath obviously did as Joker, I think it's also fascinating because these are audacious kind of choices. These gentlemen made, I mean, this is, this is, there's no safety net for any of these guys. And Tom, you mentioned Tom Hardy. We talked about him a minute ago. I mean, what he did with that character has yet to be fully appreciated. It's an extraordinary performance and truly, you know, safety net. I mean, the voice, the relationship between the, just seeing the eyes and the brow, you know, all these discussions about the mask and what it would reveal, what it wouldn't reveal.

43:51And he, you know, one of the things I remember him saying to me is he sort of put his finger up to his temple, his eyebrow and said, can you give me this to play with? Let me let people see this. And sure enough, there in the film, there's this kind of Brando-esque sort of brow expressing all kinds of just monstrous things. I mean, it's really quite a performance. Do you remember a moment when, for Heath and or Tom, you saw them early on that gave you confidence that the choices they were making were going to pay off? In both cases, it was the same. And probably when I came to Dark Knight Rises, I was remembering that and pushed towards it.

44:29It was the hair and makeup test we did. and for the dark night you know I had Wally Pfister just get a handheld camera 35 mil put a light up on the stage Heath would come in with one particular type of wardrobe one particular type of makeup move around no sound recording so not self-conscious just moving trying different weapons different pairs of shoes and we all got to watch this sort of magical magical kind of transformation and watch him find not that he was finding it in that moment but he was just gradually unveiling the things he'd been working on for months and months and months and then he'd throw in a line or two even though there was no dialogue but you just hear him letting it out letting the laugh out into the room to echo around and just experimenting with it and uh yeah the tests were incredible looking and when we came to do dark night rises i i think probably with that in the back of my mind, I kind of waited till we really had the mask figured out, had endless discussions with Tom.

45:28He'd done all this kind of work in advance, but then to see him kind of walk into the harsh top light, kind of walk out there and, you know, assume that character. And I think in both cases, interestingly, the key stills of those characters, the one of Heath is a very big closeup of Heath with just his eyes and his mouth visible. It was very defining. I think it was the first image we put out that was taken during the hair and makeup test, not during principle. Similarly with Tom, there's a, there's a great shot of him sort of from behind looking across his back with his head to turn to the left that we put out right at the beginning.

46:05That was also from his hair and makeup test. So yeah, it's kind of, kind of been the way those things have come together, but that's the, the interesting thing with this generation of actors of which, you know, he's obviously a phenomenal leader in that. And, and Tom, you know, just one of the finest of his generation, they fuse the sort of psychological realism, the internal method-based acting of the 70s onwards, well, 50s onwards, really. But they also combine it with this older, more external, you know, call it Olivier, Charles Lawton, you know, that prior generation of, you know, sort of give me the hat and the walking stick and let me sort of find that and see how the walk informs the character.

46:48They're coming at it from both ends. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing such fantastic work from actors like that. They stand on the shoulders of prior generations who've gone this way or that way. Everything's been external or everything's been internal. And these actors, they're approaching it from both places. One of the things I truly always appreciate about your films is the way you know how to stick a landing. You know how to end a film. And that's obviously, as you well know, very important. That's the first thing people are going to be talking about when they leave the theater.

47:20Did this filmmaker disappoint me or leave me wondering about further stories? I mean, to a man, almost all of your films ask questions of the audience that are great to talk to with whoever you've just seen the movie with. Do you often start with the ending of a film? This film obviously is so symmetrical. It probably comes at once in a way. It has to work. Well, somewhat. But you have the storyline. line you have the chronology of the events and then you have the story as the audience is going to see it um i don't necessarily start with the ending but i would never in i would never go too far with a project without knowing the ending i would not sit down to write the script without knowing the ending the ending um is everything and it's it's absurd you're gonna have a three hour film and you know two hours and 45 minutes of it can be terrific and if the ending doesn't work it doesn't matter um the other way around can just about work uh you know but the ending is everything which it sounds absurd but at the same time in a way you know it's like if somebody tells a long anecdote that's you know if it doesn't have a punch line it's it's not they just trail off you're like we've all had that experience and but it's a it's a fascinating it's a fascinating thing it's the relationship between time and narrative because you can hear the longest story and if it has a great ending you don't feel you've wasted your time if the ending doesn't work you immediately retroactively are bored and you retroactively have a bad time listening to that story and uh you know that's very much what movies are you know you you need the ending you need to know where it's going and it it it has to land somehow um so you you got to have that to to my mind you got to have that before you get too far with the project one of the things I appreciate about you that maybe some people don't realize is you enjoy all manner of filmmaking.

49:17I remember when you came by my office, we were chit-chatting about our mutual love of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. You love 2001, but you also apparently love Kingpin and the Fast and the Furious movies, I've heard. Are you a Tokyo Drift guy, a Fast Five guy? What do you like about Fast and Furious? I'm sort of an original recipe. I mean, the Fast and Furious, Rob Kahn original. But I've got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift, actually. And then the skill as, you know, Justin Lin's iterations, you know, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger, they became something else, but something else kind of fun.

49:53You know, the fun thing about those movies is even as they've gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, as sequels have to do. Everyone always complains that sequels get bigger, but we are the people making sequels get bigger. We do want them bigger. You don't want them smaller. it's the alien three lesson that the venture led it's like you you know you can do it but it's not going to make anybody happy even though personally i love that film a lot more than he does i think we could talk about i love alien three as well and he refuses you mentioned that to him and it sent him to a dark place i've never dared mention it to him i i think you know he's very aware of the flaws and he's very aware of the appalling experience he had making it uh you know and and how put upon he was and i can only imagine i mean i truly can only imagine but his talent shines through in that movie.

50:36I came out of that film and had a conversation with a guy I was working with right away. I said, I've just seen the new Ridley Scott. I know who the new Ridley Scott is and it's David Fincher. And I wasn't wrong. It's there in the movie, whether he knows it's there or not. But his talent is absolutely there. Were you, prior to Batman, were you in the mix? Were you talking about franchises? Were you looking for another, for a kind of an opportunity to flex your muscles in that way in kind of a franchise? were there no not at all no it my agent actually um just sort of called out of the blue with this thing of well warner brothers they want to do something about remember they don't really know what they have a couple ideas but not not really it's sort of in limbo they hadn't made a film in seven years people hadn't liked the last one and so they they really kind of didn't know what to do and this it really was in the days before these sort of crown jewel properties were kind of put on a ticking clock schedule where it's like, we've got to find somebody to do something with this.

51:34Every asset must be exploited, that kind of thing. They hadn't really quite got into that rhythm yet. And so it was really this incredible opportunity to just go in and pitch really what I wanted to do freely. But no, I had actually spent that year writing a script about Howard Hughes, an adaptation that I labored over for a very long time and couldn't crack it and couldn't crack it. And I finally cracked it just as they went into production on The Aviators. But that's Hollywood, right? Look, it's been a few years now, obviously since that. And now it's been a few years since Warren Beatty's. Have you looked at that script in the last year or two?

52:16Are you ready to consider going back to that one? I haven't dusted that one off lately. I tend to go back to it every few years and have a read. But it's tricky because, you know, a passion is about the reinterpretation of the character. But, you know, having had, you know, a significant movie like, you know, Scorsese and DiCaprio's interpretation, you know, it's a tricky proposition. So I'll probably take a look at it again sometime soon and see if it still speaks to me. But I was very happy with the script when I wrote it. It was kind of the most fun, not the most fun, Do you have other screenplays in the drawer that you would or could go back to?

52:59Is that the only one that really jumps out as something that's in a state where you could seriously consider going back to? that's that's the only finished one that that you know i was ready to go kind of thing um and then i have i have a few that i uh wound up uh using for other things so when i took over interstellar from um spielberg was originally meant to do it my brother had been writing the script along with you know kip thorne and linda opes they developed the film for spielberg and when he decided he didn't want to do it um i went to to jonah and i said can i take this and put it together with a couple other ideas, a couple other scripts I'd written that hadn't quite come together for me, but I had, you know, big, big chunks of things.

53:42I want to take those things and integrate them into what you're doing. And, you know, fortunately he signed off on that and said, yeah, go for it. And so, yeah, I managed to make that into something that I was extremely invested in, in terms of ideas about time and loss and so forth that I've been trying to explore in other ways. And his amazing script that he had written just gave me this vehicle to kind of channel these things into. I'm curious. I want to end a couple of quick things. One I'm interested in is the necessity being the mother of invention. When you look back at following and memento, there are limited budget resources that spawn creativity, I'm sure.

54:27Now you're working on this ginormous canvas where you have a large budget and you're able to do a hell of a lot. Are there still limits when you endeavor in something like Tenet? Are there things that you can't accomplish for whatever reason, budget, time, whatever it is? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the limits are never not there. You never have enough time. You never have enough money if you're doing your job right because your job is to try and get the most on screen possible. So as the film's gotten bigger, as the budgets get bigger, you try and keep the films a little bit bigger than the budgets have got, if you know what I mean.

55:03So you try and get value for money. And certainly Tenet, you know, I'm very proud of the things we managed to get on screen with the resources, with the resources we had, even though the resources were the envy of, you know, any filmmaker. But that's the responsibility you feel. We were in a position where we could command a large budget from a studio. So we felt a huge responsibility to get as much as possible on screen for that, that money. so you're interestingly you're sort of back where you started with not enough time not enough money even though you're traveling the world and you've got all these people and you've got you know you're buying a 747 and crashing into a building and all that stuff but um you're still bumping up against limitations and the limitations as you say necessity is the mother of invention that's when some of your more interesting ideas come to the fore where is your head at today as we speak um about the future of theatrical.

55:55I mean, no one has been more at the forefront about advocating for this. We are facing an existential threat thanks to some insane circumstances this past year. Do you still have optimism that we're going to be back to where we were? Can we put the genie back in the bottle after audiences are used to seeing Dune at home and these large scale films at home? What's your thought? Well, Dune hasn't happened yet. It's a long way off. And I think there'll be a lot of water under the bridge before we can look at that as a fait accompli. I think the short answer is, of course, people are going to go back to movies when they can.

56:32With Tenet, we were fortunate to be able to release the film. The studio was able to release the film in 65 different countries around the world where they had a good approach to managing the virus. They were able to safely reopen their theaters with limited capacity, and the movie did great. All of those places. All of those places we saw appetite to come back to the movies. The US, we didn't really get to release the film because we couldn't do LA and New York and San Francisco and Detroit and so forth. And, you know, we did what we could where it was safe to do so, but we were unable to. But where it was possible, the appetite was back there immediately.

57:12what everybody forgets when they look at this issue is that you know wall street whoever it is there's a narrative that is constantly being put out there that cinema attendance is declining and it's not 2019 was the biggest year for movies in box office terms it was a very healthy year for attendance uh you know they always trot out this or the average ticket price is pushed up and that offsets declines it's not true the average ticket price um of a movie in 2019 was eight dollars 40 in 1977, it was$9.10. I mean, it's just, these things aren't true. Very, very healthy movie-going culture in the world and in America in particular, but it's dependent on the movies.

57:54So when, like in 2019, when you have some really anticipated movies coming out that are absolutely huge and over-performed, then you see growth and it all looks great. When you have a year when maybe the movies aren't quite as rewarding for people, then it goes down. Like, you know, I mean, that's the nature of the business. So long-term, I mean, I think everybody in the business understands that long-term people are going to want to go back to movie theaters. The question is how you get there. You know, all I hear these days is, you know, can exhibitions survive these awful circumstances? And I'm beginning to feel like the question isn't, can exhibitions survive?

58:31It's can the studio survive? Because it really is about trying to manage corporate expectations and Wall Street expectations of how you move into the future without throwing a baby out with a bathwater. And I'm not seeing a huge amount of leadership or skill in terms of parsing that out. And I'm speaking as somebody who has earned most of the money that I've ever earned in my career has been in home video and been with respect to streaming, DVD, Blu-ray, back to VHS. And, you know, I've spent years of my life in intense discussions with the people who manage home video on how to best do that and how to best make that work in concert with the theatrical release, how to draft off, you know, always hearing that the wide window, for example, between the theatrical campaign and the home video release is a problem.

59:27um we've always fought for the widest possible uh window not because we were doing that as any kind of favor to exhibition but because our home video made more money that way right and that's you know i i have the kids going through college to prove it that's you know that's the way we made our money and we looked at it's straight economics um you know you have to create a sense of anticipation as with every other industry you control the supply you control supply and demand You don't throw everything out to everybody at once and say, you wanted it here, you got it. Every other industry, every other marketing department in the world, they understand that it's all about supply and demand and controlling that.

1:00:10Not that everybody has to be as ruthless about it as De Beers with diamonds, for example. But whether it's car companies with a new model, whatever it is, people do control the release of it. You put out the hardback edition and then you wait before you put out the paperback edition, et cetera, et cetera. it's basic economics and the only thing that's really stopped that being apparent to to hollywood is that the theaters wouldn't necessarily let them do it right um now that the theaters don't have the leverage because they've had to close for the pandemic as so many other businesses are suffering uh i'm not proud that my industry is then holding a gun to their heads and saying you know uh now we'll take what we want um but that equation you know that the gun that's two exhibition's head is going to be put back in the drawer sometime next year and then everything will change again i like ending on an at least somewhat hopeful note you'll be happy to know your cohort and friend steven soderbergh i was on with today and had similar similar thoughts so yes um hope here's to a hopeful future for exhibition and get back into movie theaters uh christopher thanks again as always for the time i'm so pleased you came back on the podcast and so ends another edition of happy sad confused remember to review rate and subscribe to this show on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts i'm a big podcast person i'm daisy ridley and i definitely wasn't pressured to do this by josh

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