`A RIDE YOU GO ON'
Christopher Nolan discusses ethics and ethos of filmmaking
There may be no stranger time to make big movies. And nobody makes them bigger than writer-director Christopher Nolan.
Many of his films twist time and space and the conventions of traditional cinema. They also bend budgets, with his latest, Tenet, costing US$205 million. Which might be part of why so much of the film's release — both in theatres in September and since Dec. 15 on DVD — has been centred on the tenuous state of an industry crushed by COVID-19 shutdowns.
Nolan finds himself blasting his own studio, Warner Bros., for its decision to kick its entire slate of 2021 films to HBO Max, as well as theatres. (Plans for Canada remain up in the air.) He declined to say how the decision would affect his long-term relationship with Warner Bros. The studio declined to comment for this story.
Q You say your issue with Warner Bros. isn't about money, but about betraying filmmakers.
A It's about what the French call droit moral. Do they own it absolutely, because they paid for it or they financed it? And that is not a purely legalistic question. It's a question of ethics, as well. It's a question of partnership and collaboration. They did not speak to those filmmakers. They did not consult them about what their plans were for their work. And I felt that somebody needed to point out that wasn't the right way to treat those filmmakers.
Q In some ways this DVD is the real release of Tenet. Back in September, hardly any theatres here were open for business.
A With all of the adversity in the world for 2020 affecting people in all kinds of horrendous ways, we were very lucky, very privileged to be able to release the film in parts of the world that managed the virus with appropriate response and then figuring out ways to safely reopen theatres. … The reality is, there's people in the world with real problems. This is a pretty trivial concern about the release of film. (But also) I'm just super excited for people in America, in L.A. and New York in particular, to be able to see the movie.
Q A bit about process: Do you outline?
A An outline is maybe too formal for me. But I'll tend to draw diagrams of the structure of the story, of the bigger movements of it. And I'll write a lot of notes about this line of dialogue, just a guide of where I'm going to wind up. And I try to really have a sense of the movie before I sit down to write. And when I write, I write in an intensely linear fashion ... I want to always see it from the point of view of the audience, how they're going to receive the narrative, rather than writing it chronologically, cutting it up and reassembling it. I write from the first image of the film to the last image of the film, and I rewrite as I go.
Q I watched Interstellar with my 10-year-old — and I know you're not making movies for 10-year-olds — but he loved it and immediately wanted to watch again. With Tenet, he eventually walked away. He just couldn't follow.
A What I find is people who just watch the movies to be entertained and have a good time, they get the movies and they understand the movies far better than people who fight the movies, who feel they're in some kind of chess match with the movie while they're watching it. And the reality is, the reason people get frustrated like that, is because it's not a level playing field. I've had 20 years to think about these ideas. So it's not a level playing field in that sense.
It's not meant to be a chess match between filmmaker and audience. It's entertainment.
It's a ride you go on and, if done right, there will be aspects to it that will reward a second viewing.
Q The new Tom Shone book, The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries and Marvels of Christopher Nolan, reveals a lot about your filmmaking and your life. I imagine you resisted participating in it for years. A I first met Tom 20 years ago when he interviewed me for Talk magazine. But over the years he floated this idea to me. And what I actually felt was I hadn't done enough films, and it wasn't sort of false modesty or anything like that ... I finally had to concede to Tom after Dunkirk, I had a body of work.
I write from the first image of the film to the last image of the film, and I rewrite as I go.
Q Shone comes up with these excellent little challenges to test out some of the scientific ideas you're exploring.
A I maintain that the mechanism of time in films is more complicated in what you call a conventional film than in one of my films, where I'm drawing attention to the very sophisticated mechanism of film narrative and its relationship to time and how it handles time.
And I gave Tom this whole spiel one day, and then the next time I saw him, he had conducted this experiment where he had taken a romantic comedy, he had taken Sydney Pollack's Tootsie, and he had gathered a focus group and he showed them the film and then asked them to independently write down ... what's the time scale of the film you just saw, did it take place over three weeks, a year or two years? I was very pleased ... because it was a wide, very varied set of assessments.
Q What also got me from that discussion is your referencing of Frank Drebin and The Naked Gun and the way it plays with time, which is not a film I thought you'd have at the ready.
A Well, I mean, yes, people are always surprised when I reference comedy. I guess that speaks to people's image of who I am or how serious I am or whatever. But it's interesting, because I read somewhere, not to compare myself to Stanley Kubrick, but Stripes was one of his favourite comedies.
And the crazy thing is if you watch Full Metal Jacket having watched Stripes recently ... the connections and similarities are actually mind blowing.