#313 Christopher Nolan
48:37 Share

Christopher nolan's second film, amenta, had a long, anxious year spent trying to secure distribution. Newland had been turned down by every distributor in town with some variation of this is great. We love IT.

We really want to work with you. And this is not for us. The film was personal to him.

Momenta was born into the world on the back of obsession. There to find expression would have been almost inconceivable to him. No one made IT because he had to.

What happens when you make a film is you borrow into IT, you dig in so you can can't see IT anymore. You're a most, and the only thing you can do is trust your initial instinct. Ts, you just have to say, this is what i'm making.

This is what i'm doing. It's going to work, just trusted two years of the day after that disastrous screening for distributors. Momento aren't two Oscar nominations. Newlands accent since has been near vertical in the space of two decades, he has gone from seeking out micro budget, three minutes short films to making billion dollar blockbusters. His films have earned over five billion dollars to the studios.

He is as close to a shirt thing as a director, gets one of the film filmmakers who can walk into a studio with an original script idea, one that is not part of a preexisting franchise. Intellectual property are equal, and exit with the two hundred million necessary to make IT like Stephen steel berg and George lucas before him, he has become a franchise onto 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, the only other two being Peter Jackson and James Cameron.

He has large ideas. He invented the poster rogue super hero. He came up with an idea for a science fiction highest inside the moving controls of a dreaming mind.

And he had the boldness and audacity to have the singular vision to make that happen. Among his collaborators, he is known for his punctuality, discipline and secrecy. Of the more than six hundred people who worked on don kirk, only twenty were allowed to read the script.

Copies of the script were watermark with the actor's names so that any missing copies could be traced back to the negligent owners. Newlin is notorious for coming to an actor's house with a copy of script, 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 would know he's the director. He's very quiet, very confident and very calm. He's a classicist. He doesn't look to monitors. He wants to see with the cameras the old fashion way.

He refuses to use the second unit, preferred to shoot every frame himself minds don't wonder on a, Chris knowen said, said Matthew economy. Knowen is known by his cruise for shooting fast, starting at seven am and finishing at seven P. M, with a single break for lunch. And he has a kind of passionate of following one associates with a coat director.

Critics have received death threats when they give his films a bad review that is an expert from the books and we can talk about today, which is the nolen variations, the movies, mysteries and marvles of Christopher nolan, and was written by tom, shown Christopher nolan a work hand in hand with tom, showed the the vast majority of the book is actually large chunks of Christopher knowlton speaking directly to you, because tom had been interviewing him over multiple years. And so what I want to jump right into a conversation that they are having, it's going to reference something that was stated about the movie momento, and is really, I think, the one of the most important things to understanding. Christopher Norman, he's in the obsessive.

So I said, you know, that movie was born into the world on the back of obsession. In fact, that's a word that he's going to use over over gan. 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 knowledge gives you an insight into his mind at the very end of the article, the the interviewer is asking, like, after open hammer, like, watch your next film and he says, i've never been any good at that.

The only way I know how to work is the sort of borrow in on one project, very obsessively. And so the word of obsessed is in this book over over again. I think the main idea, the reason I want to read this to you though, is because the idea behind what Christopher and owns about the tales is like if you're obsessed with what you're making, you can make other people obsessed with IT too.

And I love what he says here. He says, people will say to me that there are people online who are obsess with inception or obsessed with momento. They are asked me to comment on that is, if I thought I was weird d or something and i'm like, well, I was obsessed with IT for years, genuinely obsessed sed with IT.

So IT doesn't shake 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 are making the best film that ever been made. Films are really hard to make. They are all consuming.

So what 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 into knowles's mindset, even if it's not going to be the best film that ever been made.

You have to believe that I could be you just pour yourself into IT and when to affect someone that way. That is a huge thrill for me. That is a huge thrill.

I feel like I managed to wrap them up in IT. The way I try to wrap myself up in IT, I absolutely love that. So I already mention James Cameron one time since him, Peter Jackson.

And no one are really a the only group of directors Operating at the level that are also writing, uh, the movies that they're making. Because I just spent so much time studying Cameron for epo de three eleven, he was on my mind a lot while I was reading this book. And what is fascinating about both Christophor elland and James Cameron as they get to the top of their profession, they have a lot of similarities in their obsessive work habits, but also very different.

And so as I go through knowledge perspective on his own work, i'll try to compare, in contrast, the way he looks at IT with the way James Cameron work looks at IT. And I was started with, the biggest difference is that no one doesn't like to use cgi, and Cameron is literally inventing the new technology for other filmmakers. And so you see this, and I watch about interviews with knowen, and I watch interviews with people that work with them.

And one of the most remarkable things about Christopher owen is, are most surprising things, to me, rather, would be the fact that he wants to live and work in an analog world. That is going to be a recurrent thing. That unit will be visit today.

It's what I mean about that actors to talk about how hard IT is to communicate. But i'm like, why is a hard? Because Christopher rolland does not have an email account and he doesn't use a cell phone.

You were usually scheduling things to his assistant and then he'll either call you or he'll just show up. But like, okay, we're going to meet in a local location at this time and date. And so he's something he talks about with now kids.

But Younger generations is the fact that they are over simulated by technology. And as a result, they're not giving their imagination room to actually work and actually think that newland's desire to live in work in an analog world is his version of mute the world and then build your own. We're only in the first chapter, this book, and have already use the word obsessive and focused and a singular mind a multiple times.

And this, I think, is why like he puts, he puts a lot of like, time and effort into what he's doing. 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 in that last line, something that I love that is his north star. His north star that you'll see him use though, that is a career.

Like, do I love what I made in this idea of is that if you love what you made, one is easier to go and sell, tell the people. And too, it's easier to withstand the inevitable criticism that anything that you create and put onto the world is going to receive. So this idea of being in love with your making and then being obsessive about your making, Chris, he says in the book, is like, listen, I don't feel people describe him as an artist.

He's like, I don't feel like artist. I feel like i'm a craft man. Like five years ago, I read this incredible biography of George lucas.

It's called George lucas. I think the life for a life is by ring, by brand j. Jones. And what's fastest is when I heard knowen say that, you know, a crash man, I don't feel like an artist of my IT. That's almost exactly to the tea.

What George lucas said in that book in the eco from George lucas, he says, I don't think of myself as an artist. I'm a craft man. I don't make a work of art.

I make a movie. And for no, in the first part of the craft, he just loves screen place. And so he insists on writing all or part of every single screen play that he's gona turn into a movie.

And he says the best screen place are completely stripped down. They are very, very simple documents. The more you can rip them down, the Better. And that's something he is coming with some of the greatest leaders in history.

If you go back and look at some of how the greatest leaders and histories communicated inside of their organza that they write short memo s that really, to the point, there's no wasted words. Church may be the best example of this, because he even has a great quote I love. He says it's slaughter.

Not to impress your thought, but I love the story that I found to want to divide ogowe es books, because ogata boss was a partial inspiration for inflaming when he was ready, James bond and what was facing, and something that all will be tried to copy when he was building his own organization. Is that when you would send a memo to organ boss, A, B, return to you with one of three responses, yes, no. Are speak and speakman.

Come see me. So where do this subsection sion for the craft come from? No one has memories of loving cinema and loving movies. For as long as he's had memories.

And so one of the funning things that his Younger brother write a tome of the screen plays, they write a ton screen plays together. And nolan has a british accent, and his brother has an american accent. So newlands dad was a british and executive, his mom was a flight attendant and later teacher.

And the family could decide where they wanted to live permanently. So depending on when you were born in the family, either grow most your time in land or most time in america. And this actually comes really later, because the movies will 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 in at six months later, he might be in england when store is released. And so he go watch IT again and again and again.

And so to this day, Christopher knowlton can tell you stories about being sexual old and going to see movies with his dad. In fact, his parents, actually, there's a connection of 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.

Cameron said the crew that worked upon would actually lazy, insulted and arrogant. And he does is hilarious. He was like, obsessed that I was working on.

He said they were like life first. They were just like kind punch in o'clock. They weren't really into IT. And so when he finally wraps on the last day, good way to get out of there, he actually gets in front of the entire crew, and he, Cameron has a solarium like parting shot at them. He says, this has been a long and difficult to de fought by many problems.

But the one thing that kept me going through at all was a great knowledge that one day I would drive out of the gate of pinewood and never come back, and that you sorry bastard would still be here. And Cameron never did return. So that's exact same studio that Christian no is touring when he might be, you know, six, seven, maybe ten years old.

And so one of most influential movies that knowen never saw when he was a kid was star wars, which came out one thousand nine hundred seventy seven. And his response to seeing star was, is not the Normal response duty with a seven year old. I think that true interest is revealed early like I D watched movies and his co S, I go, that's a great movie, Christopher on watches movies, right? And then he becomes subsets with knowing how the movies that he loves are made.

And so he would watch towers over and over and over again. And then he'd find out he'd find trade magazine. He's a little kid for got sick. This is something he does for whole life, like he's interesting, something he reads about IT obsessively.

So he once of finding the trade magazines that go into detail about how lucas company industrial magic were able to make like, the special facts and how the shots and everything else that is not Normal behavior from, like, an elementary school cut age kid. And then once his dad, she's help as he is with movies, his dad does something really smart. He takes him to a like a another, showing a rerelease of a movie that came out, you know, a half a decade earlier.

And this was actually kubrick, two thousand want to space. And now what is fascinating is that movie is the same movie cameras always like, oh, I don't want to just be interested in watching films. I want to 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 I can make my own. And when I was reading about Christopher knows like childhood reminding me very much, I I read a bartering of Steven spoiler g all way back on episode two, nine.

And it's the same thing. He starts making movies on this, like seven, eight, nine years old. I think they were making movies on the same kind of camera that's like super ate cameras. I will let you record for maybe like two and a half or three minutes long.

Both spiller g and known would figure out how to make crude movie sets out of whatever s around that their house could be like egg boxes or cardboard they would use like the the fellow kids in neighborhood. And so from the age of eat to thirteen knowler s watching movies, he trying to make little movies, but it's not. So he realizes what a director is, is, oh, that's the job that I want to.

He would go back through and watch a bunch of his favorite movies. And some two of his favorite movies were blade runner and an alien. And then one day he realized one minute, that's the same director, what? What is director doing? And he realized the director was the connection between everything else, like both movies had.

There is completely different stories, completely different people who wrote the screen play. They had different actors. IT was different everything. The only thing that was the same, the only thing that I tied all those together, was readily, 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 Christina land's early life is the fact that his parents sent him to boarding school outside of london. And they were three thousand, four thousand miles away, living outside of chicago. And so we see the subsection sion with movies has grown to the point where they have is a very strict boarding school.

The schedules very regimented. Everybody goes to bed at the same time they wake up, at the same time they had breakfast, the same time. They had class at the same time.

So what knowing would do is after lights out, he would lie in bed in the dark with his ice clothes, listening to the soundtrack and the scores of, like star wars and the other movie called cherries of fire on his walkman. He's listening to movie soundtracks in the dark. And so this is when he brings with the fact that his kids nowadays, right, if they are fascinated, interest something, they can just go google later.

They can follow, like what they are interested in very fast, and 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 something was valuable, the fact that your imagination has to fill in the banks for you.

And so that's why he'd wanted listen to, like the scores of other movies, because they leave space for your imagination that gives you room to actually sit and think. And so he talks about while he's doing this as either clothes, he's listening to the film scores. This is where he's coming up.

He started to use imagination. He's starting to get ideas for films. He's is start to get ideas for certain themes in a story. And he said this act was very important for the development, the future development, that comes down the line of him starting to make movies.

And so as I detail the book at his time at this morning school, but one thing I thought was was fascinating because I think gives you excited to just the level of discipline that noman has that is constantly described that the people 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. IT is described as a Darwinian environment.

And some of the kids can't take IT one of turning out. I think they use the term that either sink or swim. And it's very obvious that Chris swim, and so many years later, some of the actors that have worked for Chris talk about the fact that, you know, he's unable punch al.

His sets are very calm, but they're run like a discipline, almost like machine like manner. And that knowledge seems indifferent to both fatigue and like cold extreme temperatures. And I think a lot of that was created in the these formative years at the 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 is a career. This reminding me very much when you when you read like early ah like read bug graphic a kobe Brant how kobe is know thirteen, fourteen, fifty and sixteen. And he's watching game type of Michael Jordan magic Johnson relentlessly throughout Christopher nolan entire career.

His version of watching game tape is he's constantly influenced and inspired by past filmmakers. And so he'll find a film that maybe came out fifty years ago that gives me an idea for, like, inception is an example that he's making in the early two thousands. And then he will watch IT and then make sure everybody in his team watches the same materials.

Well, so they have a shared base of knowledge. And so in many cases, he's not going to use these ideas for multiple decades. This idea that ideas can ruminate for decades is the same thing that you and I want over with James Cameron.

So as the movie becomes in one thousand nine hundred and and two is 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 darkest thinking, right, that the idea for inception first took place, 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 played 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. So when Christopher nolan and James Cameron are around colleges, they both want to go to film school, they want to learn. They really know what want to do. Chris for owen group, like upper modal class. So he went to university college london.

James Cameron, in how many money one of my favorite stories ever have, like what a high g sea person is, is the fact that Cameron want to go to film school, didn't have many money, goes and all the graduate level, there's sis of all the film students and and teaches himself, especially gives himself a film film school education without every meeting professor, or now Christopher, no one does something similar inside of the actual university. So he goes up becoming the president of the film in TV society. IT is not at all clear to me how much time he spent actually attending, like his Normal cricket he created.

Just like jim Cameron, he once of creating his own curriculum. So they talk about the fact that he had keys sce. He was the president, he had keys to the film and T, V.

Societies like this facemask ground. He's to spend almost all of his time there, he said. He was like his IT was like his office. And so the separate circuit set up for himself is essentially learning how to Operate cameras, how to edit, how to cut film by hand, how to sink.

Sounds of the way I think about this is the fact that he just spent his college time practicing and learning the job that he already knew he wanted. Because when he was start, like, no, I I know i'm going to be a director. And so he is 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 into newlands the way he, a purchase work he has.

Listen, when i'm on a film, I borrow into IT, I do obsessively. There's a lot of stress on my personality. There's A A lot of stress on my physical, mental fatigue.

Aug to this later too. Like the only solution I have for people like this, that one want both of relationship and have this like deep desire and love. What they they're working on is to make a family business.

This is what Christopher known did on the very first day of college. He wants a meeting, his future wife. Her name is ema.

This is what he says about, I remember seeing her in the very first evening of my first day, and I had 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 and then raising money to make more films.

And he was during his time in the film society that he learned how to make movies with minimal resources. This is going to be main theme. Christopher nld's career.

He's constantly, his relentless, resourceful. He's doing that because he wants to spend this as little money as possible, so he can maintain as much control over the projects possible. So to this day, his wife is his partner.

He works on all of his films, and she's going to help him make his very first movie. This movie gonna call the following. Now the crazy thing is he actually tries to apply to a bunch of other uh like film schools after graduating from his undergrad.

And he once up getting turned out so he gets a job. His first job as at the college is his making videos for large corporations, training videos and such. And he only does that to get money to make a movie.

He makes his first. This is incredible. This is like one of things I hate up the most is the fact that, you know, this guy is one of the greatest film kers ever live, 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 camera man job and shoot the film only on weekends for almost a year, rehearsing each scene carefully. This goes back to this reland, the resource minister he has. And i've read what is like a fifth biography of film ker.

I've read Steven spielberg, Francis for copa, George lucas, James Cameron. There is not one, not one the reason to some of my favorite phy to read french murder, because they're all resource. This an example of that.

So the shooting in four, in weekends, for almost a year, they reheard each seen carefully, almost like a play, so they could shoot IT in one or two takes, working out that they could afford to shoot in process between ten and fifteen minutes of footage a week. Every weekend, everyone would squeak into the back of a taxi and had to whatever location they had been able to scran up. They shot without permits, knowen Operating the camera himself.

And so it's another thing that knowler has in common with Cameron, this idea that they want to, right, produce shot and the movies themselves. Now Camerons are, uh, his movies are way too complex to do this now. But he definitely has the same approach.

He wants be able to do every single job on the set. And so Christopher only is going to get this first movie, this following movie finish in one thousand nine, eight, seven. He is twenty seven.

I want to bring this attention. This is what Christopher annam was doing at two and seven. He's got this film is creating disuse ing budget.

He's about to edit and release IT at the same time, though, he doesn't smart. Like this is another example of doing you can with the job in front of you. And by doing so, like you can open up opportunities you can possibly predict.

He had already known everything when this is done. If this is well received, I need to have another project because he doesn't want to work. He wants to work up.

Be a film. Acer, full time, right? So like, let's say this comes out, I think it's good. I can convince other people's good.

Then what's going to happen is, once it's good, in a start, spirit, like being coming, critically claimed, maybe making liba money. Distributors and other movies are great. Do you have anything next? He already had the idea for momento. This is his second film, is the thing that that causes his critical vertical. Listen to this description of what he was doing at twenty seven years old, rather than than being discouraged by his rejection from film school.

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 tatti includes on his body, like little momentous IT sounds 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? And so they finish the following. IT is extremely well received to rain about and all the major po papers and said atis co.

In new york. And so then people would ask, okay, what do you want to do next to have another idea? And then he was able to hand them the completed script from a mental.

He had his next job already lined up that was extremely smart. So if you remember how the book starts, momento is the the movie that was critically claimed. But for over a year, they couldn't find a distribute.

They eventually find a distribution. But I do want to point out, I want to bring to your attention in the fact that he feels that the screening of momento was the turning point in his life. He is thirty years old.

When this is taking place, momenta is being screened at the venice film festival theme, 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 a small, like personal screenings of like twenty 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 a few second windows, that, oh my god, they hate IT. 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 made. Two films are very small, maybe, you know, considered really independent. I think my mentos budget with something like five, somewhere between five and nine million total ones are 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 is in salmonia in soma, actually stars alpaca o and something that I learned about nld's career is very similar. We talked about this, uh, last week with my train, is this fact that h through our journey along the way, there's always going to be these people. Usually there's like multiple examples of somebody else trying to help you.

They have insight, knowledge of relationship that you lack. They like what you're doing. And so they push IT forward. And so knowledge is trying to pitch this idea to wonder brothers. And now he's going to want to having a chin year career with wonder brothers after right at this point, they wanted to take a meeting. And so this other file maker name, Steven saddam berg, is the reason, according to Christmas, is the reason that insomnia gets made.

And so Stephen was a fan of knowledge, previous film, and he flipped his week when he found out that he could, that Warner brothers wouldn't even take a meeting with them. So this is what he does. Upon hearing of knowledge difficulties getting a meeting with the executives of Warner brothers, Stephen march across a lot to the header of production and told him, you're insane if you don't meet with this guy offering to executive produce in soma himself in a way to guarantee the work of the then thirty one year old director, which is Christopher her noon.

And so without that pushed by Stephen sodomy g, it's not at all clear what Christopher Allen career would to wind up. And IT was another turning point in his life. He says he was very vivid.

This is Christian, no speaking. IT was a very vivid time in my life. I was my first studio film. IT was the first time we'd work with huge movie stars. And that idea about learning to work with in the system is incredibly important later on, uh, knowler forms is like long partnership with home zimmer. And the way he describes why he likes working with hands, immer is really description of nylon itself.

He says that hans is a minimal alist with maxim alist production value after reading the entire book is very clear that knowing is the same way, and I think is a great way to understand what he learned from his first interaction with, like, a big studio. IT is going to hope you understand, like what is important to Christopher milan and then how he gets IT. This is, these are themes that he uses the out his entire life, the fact that he loves constraints.

He, he feels constraints breathe resourcefulness. But IT also decreases a budget, which gives him more control. He is all about maintaining control. By the end of the production, he had learned an important lesson about working for the studios.

The efficiency of filmmaking 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. If I know that the deadline is there, then my creative process rams up exponentially.

Creative power and 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 converse me or to interfere or to complain.

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, there no have other problems to deal with, they'll let me do my thing. Something fascinating.

I mentioned everywhere how he put a lot of his life into what he's doing and yet he wants to be a good father and a good husband. He's got a very interesting set up. So he's got a home and only right? And then there's a house that's like next store that is almost like the mere image of his house.

He buys that house and then turns IT into like a production studio in 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 started working on IT immediately without telling them.

And so no one and his team are working on both the script and the actual set designs at the same time. And he did is because he says he wanted to be able to handed over. The Warner brothers is like a fata, completely like 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, that that was faster. He talks about the fact that big studios have a way of working that just encourages waste and doesn't give him the control and the involved that he desires. So he says, you are encouraging a big movie to very rapidly hire an enormous amount people.

Then you have to feed the beast. And so you're in a situation where you go, I need a robot for the science fiction film, figure me out a robot, 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, his ego was Better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And so he says, once they were finished, newlin invited the executives of Warner brothers to his home to view their work. They were not happy about IT, but Warner brothers had a lot of trouble with scripts leaking.

So this idea that he wants to consummate control, that he is 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 over. This is a movie that he does back in, uh, two thousand and six of the movie, after a bad man begins. This called the prestige.

And I wanna bring this attention because, like I said at the begin, this is a guy that wants to live and work in an analogue world. You can tell that because he doesn't use email, he doesn't Carry a 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 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 and electronically, 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, they separated from us. And I love that section for many reasons.

One is because you see that he has a very strong point of view house, how he wants to work, and he's adamant about not relenting and let anybody, anybody else convince him he should be doing otherwise. The second part, I think, is a lot of people want to know like oh, what tools you use, like what you're set up, what software using. And I think this example of him deviating from the rest of industry is another example.

That is not the tools that matter. It's the person in my favorite greate example. This is one of my favorite fiction authors, unformed, just passed away recently. Cormac, mock thy cormac created novels that are likely still be read one hundred years now.

And he did IT on a fifty dollar type, or he paid fifty dollars for his type atter and use IT for fifty years to write over five million words. It's not the tools, it's the person. 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 night. The dark night is his first billion dollar blockbuster. And in a way to think about this is that the money is made on this film.

This is going to buy him the last word. The money is going to allow him to do what he always wanted to do, that make more sense in a minute. The film's eventual box office take was one billion dollars.

I cannot get my head around. Its none, said wen is set up to this point had been gradual, even something of a ziz ag, following a pattern of advance and regroup, advance and regroup, always pressing ahead, but always against resistance. Suddenly his position at Warner brothers went from solid to, and this is what he said about that experience.

IT changed a lot of things. But the immediate thing that I did that was extraordinary was that allowed me to do whatever I wanted as the next film. Everything up till that moment had been a fight or a struggle one way or another.

And suddenly i'm realizing, oh, i'm gna get the last word every filmmaker would give their teeth for that. So finally, you've got IT what you're gone to 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 you mean? You always wanted do inception? Member, he sixteen years old. He's lying me in the dark. He's got this idea, the corneal of idea, for inception.

I skip over this part of the book, but you know, five years previous, he had SAT down and started writing inception. He thought he was going to do inception after he did in soma. And he gets like three quarters the way to the script. And it's like, I can't nail the ending I think was like eighty pages into the script. He had he had to abandon IT.

He's like, I can't figure how to do IT and I love the fact that he asked himself, 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, like pause and ask yourself that question.

And so this is yet another thing that James Cameron, Christopher and all have a comment, the importance of dreams in their work. James Cameron talked about dreaming up avatar twenty years or thirty years before we made IT. Same thing for the the ending for the movie aliens.

Way before. Yeah, we did IT saying we secrets of no one saying the exacting things. I've had dreams that have informed narrative choices.

I first dreamed the end of the dark nature logy film. This is fascinating how the one thing about um Christopher noan he's a very deep and soul person. If you do decide to buy the book, which I highly recommend, I would take your time reading trip.

You'd be fascine 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 faster to read this book. Film has a relationship to our own dreams, is difficult to articulate, but there's an extrapolating of your experience, working things out through your dreams.

You're hoping to make connections and find things that are hidden from you while you're living your life are being in the world. I think that's what films do for us. They're very dream like experiences.

And one of the influences that chrysler nolen brings up over over in the book is the short stories of horai Louis bahais cristopher. Alan has lost count on how many of her haz books that he bought and gave out his gifts. But he makes this really important point, why he speaks so much about his influences.

H is 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 our he's work is influencing inception. But he makes the point that as you're reading the short story, you have to have something rattling inside of you that already connected with what you're reading or what you're watching.

But if you're not already pretty pose that IT just comes to as a story and IT doesn't necessary Spark anything. I think the truth books, obviously also true with podcast like the stories, can add to your own thinking, but you need your own foundation to add them to first. And so my favor, Christopher alan film is dunark.

I've watched like four, five times. IT annoyed my wife all the time. So like, let's watch something. I like how we watch a dunk irk because like you've seen to five times after dunk irk, I think my favor, Christopher, no en film is inception. And this was incredible, what a paragraphs consumption was.

Thus the work of half a lifetime, an idea first conceived by knowing when he was sixteen, nursed university, elaborated upon when he came to hollywood, and finally executed in the wake of the dark nights success. Inception took input from its major, every major point of his life, the schoolboy, the university student, the hollywood new fight, the success story and the father. And so by the time he's doing inception, I think all of us for 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 is a great line on this. He says, I know it's more fun and we're all together and we can do the thing together. That's why we keep IT as a family business. And then let's go back to this idea, just wanting to live in work in an anode 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 and paper but this is a fascine idea and it's very soner to um when I read about the founding of engineering genius, several rice and it's the idea of like first you flip IT so when Christopher nolan first has an idea, his first instinct is to foot out a backwards right and then who write IT out or whole draw IT out and essentially like turning an idea til like a three dimensional object that you can actually hold in his hands. This is very similar to Henry voice. Henry voice would have an idea for some kind of saying he wants to prove on the cars that he's manufacturing.

And so he would describe the idea. Then he'd have a wooden model of, like the part made he wanted to hold in his hands to touch IT, to be able to turn that idea into the three dimensional object. And so you see these drawings and you see these diagrams that, Christopher, no one has to rob the book.

And the way he's talks about this is is really unique. Idea is like, well, that's the way storytelling. You take storytelling, right? And you turn this into a three dimensional exercise like a sculpture.

And so he's doing that with films. And Henry worries did that with parts that win eventually went into rolls royce cars. It's the same idea and two different domains I thought was.

And so as the author and Christopher owen are going through, so they work his way, they talk about like is our your life. Then they go through every single uh, movies ever. Many talks about the influences, add why he made that decision, which I thought was fascinating.

But the idea here want to live in the real world. I want, don't want to be dependent upon all these technologies, was was something that comes up over over again. There's a great metaphor he talks about is a metaphor for his filmmaking.

But I think it's a metaphor for anybody building a business. And he says there's a danger when we start to rely on particular technologies or on corporations that manager information and track our movements. They're encouraging dependency, meaning the people making these, these companies making these technology.

And so this is the the metaphor goes into which I think he has to do with the same thing of making films and also building. One of the things I tried to teach my kids is that when we go to 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 is something that applies to film making very, very directly. Because you look at the plan are the set that you're building.

So in this case, like the screen play or the actual physical set that is building, and you're always reconciling two dimensional imaging of the idea in your mind with three dimensional space. And that's something that he repeats over over again. He likes these stripped down screen place, but he's like as you can have the best Green play in the world and it's still only can have a loose association with the finished product.

Just like if you make a business before you do anything, it's going to 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 loss, but we will find our way. And so one way he finds his ways over time, he's learned how to trust his instinct.

After a 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, I was going to this, and I went to my read wise APP.

And I was like, okay, how many other founders that you would know I have covered had ideas are said similar things about the importance of being able, trust, instinct. And so this is the list that I came up with, Steve jobs, Edwin land, dane mayer, or no short singer, Michael Jordan, sydney hammond, rick rubin, andy bill, Harry snider, James Cameron, felix tanis, caught shannon and mark train. And now we had Christopher nuance that list as well.

So there's two things that surprised me about the making of inner seller. One, did you know inter Stellar was originally little to be made by Stephen silber? I didn't know that that surprise me.

The second thing is that I had no idea that Christopher, her nolans approach to work was very similar to jeff bases when he was at amazon resource. Start working on a movie, right? Nolan will pull out his type rider, yes, type rider.

Remember this guys all animal, right? So he will pull out a type er 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 too, he makes a good, he makes the point, he says, are buying out a page, are 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, just to remind myself, because you get lost in movies as these things start, right? So he's like, essentially he has a idea where he wants to know what the heart he uses, the term that you you want to know what the heart of the movie is, and you want to do that first, right?

If you have an idea for a business or project you want to create, you want to do that first because as you get into IT, you'll get distracted, he said, because nothing is exactly the way you wanted to be. IT never is. Budget, location said all that.

So you started making all these decisions. And I won't say their compromise is because they're not necessarily. But IT is very difficult when you're fully engage. IT can be very hard to remember what IT is you are trying to do in the first place. Let me read this expert from the everything store is the biography, jeff theos.

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 that their ending is the press release every time a new feature or a product was proposed. Jeff faces to create that the narrative should take the shape of a mock pressly.

The goal was to get employees to to still a pitch into its pierce essence. What is the heart of this product? 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 the public announcement and then work backwards. Bases did not believe anyone can make a decision about a future product without knowing precisely how would be communicated to the world.

I love that in one way that knowen figures out. And here select what the heart of the movie is. I always say the best description of the founder i've ever heard is that the founders, the guardian of the company, soul, the guardian of the company, saw the director is the same thing for the film.

And so he puts himself into his movies. And so as his kids are aging, he's realizing his time with them. Arl is is limited.

So the original script for inter Stellar uh, mathematica hates character. You've en the movie is his relationship with his daughter. Eventually, at the beginning, I was able to be his son, but Christopher nolan's daughter was the same age at the time.

He's making inner seller, that the character is an inner seller. So he changed IT from a boy to a girl. And this is why he's talking about this.

I very much related to the column of somebody who's having to go off and do this thing, leaving his kids, whom he dearly wants to be with, but he really wants to go and do this thing. My job is something that I absolutely love. I consider myself unbelievable, 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 is talking about that the the comparison between his own life and then obviously matter cona hay is doing in that movie and then they're having a discussion because he's got this close friendship and create a partnership with haunt zimmerman and hahn said, something is excEllent. And han kids, I think you're like fifteen or sixteen at the time, he says, he says, one year children are born. You can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore.

You always look at yourself through their eyes. And I love that looking at yourself through your kid's eyes. I think your large power 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 keep me working harder, keeps you trying to improve, keep you trying to make something completely focused on making something that makes somebody else's life Better, because I want to see my life through their eyes. That's an incredible, incredible quote from hand zimmers. Once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your own eyes anymore.

You always look at yourself through their eyes. And I think we would all make Better decisions if we analyze the decision were able to make as if our children see the result of that decision they were making. And is another story about the making a winner slow that I think compares.

In contrast, Christopher lan, James Cameron, they'll both grow to great links to compare what they want to do. Cameron will do four hundred and five different takes of, like one C, G, I or one scene using C. G.

I. No little go to great links not to have to use C, G. I.

So if you've seen the beginning in the cellars where they like drive through that, uh, that corn field knowledge was so adamant about not using C. G. I for for that shot that they actually planned. He had planned five hundred acres of corn just to be able to get to that shot. The funny thing was that the crop grew so well that ace's hold the corn for a profit.

So previously known that, hey, I have my first instinct when I have an ideas 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 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, like a joe, a fix general of a movie. It's to do like to make a product define by all the things that lacks. And if you've seen done kirk, I think dn kirk is the movie that describes this the best.

Like just look at if you, having seen IT, think right now available, you can watch on networks, just watched the first five minutes, and you understand exactly what he means by that. He's like, how many war or two movies have? They're there's a time, right? And usually they have very summer structure.

And so he talks about the goal, how do I make a fasten and compelling a movie about war that doesn't have all the stuff that you Normally think that wars have? And so he's describing dn kirk. And he actually influences by two modes, uh, gravity and then mad max, fury road.

And so he says, IT is pure present tense. Its pure climactic. There will be no shots of generals pushing boat across a map, no churches, no politics.

From its very first sequence, we are given the film darkly. Moral calculus, survive or die. What I did was strip away the back story for dn kirk. And before I go on with even crazy about that is like the entire set, if you if you watch the movie is like everything happens within like a two mile stretch of beach.

So he says I wanted to go in more minimal direction at the point where we made a war film in which we don't use any of the visually chaotic devices. Lots of quit cuts, lots of activity, lots of smoke, lots of fire bombs flying everywhere. You know exactly when he to be, like, how many were there are? They're very similar.

And so this point is dunque is entirely about the absence of those things. And because knowen has this insist that he wants to film as much as possible out in the real world, he conscience to deal with the unpredictable ly of weather. Now this was a facing paragraph because he talks when you read in the book and you also uh hear people that work with them describe and they talk about like his and tolerance to a to fatigue.

Uh, he seems completely indifferent to like extreme temperatures with its cold or heat and this is what he says about that. I'm known the film business for having good luck with the weather. 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 cats know that we're really serious about doing that no matter what the conditions are.

So they're not looking out the window first thing and going, oh, well, we we will or we will not shoot today. This doesn't just apply to whether, 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.

And then I think the starting and ending point where Christopher and is the same IT, all comes back to his original session of cinema itself. The way he talks about movies, I is very longer to me, is way like I described the way. And so for where would describe his products is the way you would describe your lover.

Christopher known, 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 not. I know that i've never had the dedication of the talent to be musician, but i'm musically inclined, and I know how to use that in my work.

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

I think it's a great job. The thing that make 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 border line.

Mystic experience. Movies have this very, very unique mixture of the subjective and immersive, but IT is also shared. IT doesn't happen with any other medium, which is why it's fabulous and forever.

And that is, well, leave for the full story that I highly recommend getting the book. And then if you do buy the book, take your time with that. IT is giant.

I have the hard cover. It's not quite a coffee table book, but IT is really, really detailed and beautiful. So I would definite take your time going through IT.

If you buy the book using the links in the show is your packets payer, you'll be supporting the packett at the same time. That is three hundred and thirteen books down one thousand ago. And I talked again soon.