Christopher Johnathan James Nolan Born in London in 30 July 1970, Christopher Nolan began making films at the age of seven using his father's super 8mm camera and an assortment of male-action figures. He graduated to making films involving real people, and his super 8mm surreal short 'tarantella' was shown on PBS' 'image union' in 1989. Chris studied English Literature at University College London while starting to make 16mm films at the college film society. His short film 'larceny' was shown at the Cambridge Film Festival in 1996, and his other 16mm shorts include a three- minute surreal film called 'doodlebug'.
"The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it." - commenting on working with actors who have distinctively different styles.
...I studied English Literature. I wasn't a very good student, but one thing I did get from it, while I was making films at the same time with the college film society, was that I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well.
As soon as television became the only secondary way in which films were watched, films had to adhere to a pretty linear system, whereby you can drift off for ten minutes and go and answer the phone and not really lose your place.
A lot of it is being done in commercials and music videos. I've never done them, but I think that those are forms in which cross-cutting and parallel action are absolutely standard and accepted as a mainstream language. Film-makers like myself enjoy the fruits of that experimentation and
absorption by the mainstream. I think people's capacity to absorb a fractured mise-en-scene is extraordinary now compared to forty years ago.
Yes, to me that's one of the most compelling fears in film noir and the psychological thriller genre - that fear of conspiracy. It's definitely something that I have a fear of - not being in control of your own life. I think that's something people can relate to, and those genres are most successful when they derive the material from genuine fears that people have.
The term 'genre' eventually becomes pejorative because you're referring to something that's so codified and ritualised that it ceases to have the power and meaning it had when it first started. What I'm trying to do is to create modern equivalents that speak to me of those tropes that have more of the original power.
I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. Alien, Blade Runner just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons.
[on using CGI in Batman Begins] "I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal, I know I've felt it. The demand we put on ourselves was to be as spectacular as possible, but not depend on computer graphics to do it."
[on casting Batman] "Batman is a marvelously complex character-somebody who has absolute charm and then, just like that, can turn it into ice-cold ruthlessness. There are very few actors who can do that, and Christian is one of them."
I think there's a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal. I know I've felt it.
Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He's not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he's a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide.
But there's a very limited pool of finance in the UK. To be honest, it's a very clubby kind of place. In Hollywood there's a great openness, almost a voracious appetite for new people. In England there's a great suspicion of the new. In cultural terms, that can be a good thing, but when you're trying to break into the film industry, it's definitely a bad thing. I never had any luck with interesting people in small projects when I was doing Following. Never had any support whatsoever from the British film industry, other than Working Title, the company that [producer] Emma Thomas was working for at the time. They let me use their photocopier, stuff like that, which is not to be underestimated.
I never considered myself a lucky person. I'm the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am.
We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don't, in small ways. That's what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale.
Working with a legend like Michael Caine is about as enjoyable and relaxing an experience on set as one could hope for. His vast experience gives him an air of good-humored calm that you could almost mistake for complacency until the camera rolls, and you see his focus and efficiency nail each scene on the first take. He once told me that he's never asked for a second take -- he's happy to do one if you have an idea for him to try, but he brings a definitive interpretation to every line. His method has the casual air of effortlessness that can only come from decades of dogged hard work, and you sense that he's still as hungry for every last morsel of a part as he was when he first captured everyone's imagination. A fine actor first, and screen icon second, he's a director's dream.
At the time I did Following, I was looking at the American ultra-low-budget model that didn't really exist in the UK. A low-budget film in England tended to be about £500,000 to £600,000. In America, there was a tradition of guys like Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith making films for thousands, and that's what we'd been doing for short films. So it was really just a case of using that knowledge and expanding it to feature length. I hear of people doing it in the UK now and I think that's a great thing.
(On "Memento") The budget was about £3million, which is low for an independent film - but yes, it was a huge leap of faith. Memento was clearly on a bigger scale than Following, but at the same time there were very strong stylistic connections. People want to see something that shows them you can do what you say. That's the trick.
The procedure is basically to try to get into film festivals. I'm half American, so I was able to come over to America and live here and start battering the American film festivals. There are a lot of great festivals, not just Sundance. So the key is to get it screened at a festival and start interesting people there.
I didn't go to film school. I guess my whole experience has been just to make films. What I've talked about on the commentary to the DVD of Following is the production method and how things came about. I feel like that might be a point of interest that a lot of people might be thinking about with their own films, so I've tried to put in as much of the detail as I can remember. The more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that everybody's situation is unique, and the one thing I've learned is that instead of copying someone else's model for a low-budget film, you really have to look at what you've got available and see how you can tell the story you want to tell, using the things that you have around you. That's what we did with Following, and on the DVD I try to explain how it worked for us and what I learned from it, but at the same time suggest that it'll be different for someone else.
(On "Following") We've got a pretty serious claim on being the cheapest film ever made.
I always find myself gravitating to the analogy of a maze. Think of film noir and if you picture the story as a maze, you don't want to be hanging above the maze watching the characters make the wrong choices because it's frustrating. You actually want to be in the maze with them, making the turns at their side, that keeps it more exciting...I quite like to be in that maze.
Films are subjective-what you like, what you don't like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there-I want that sincerity. And when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies.
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