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Christopher Nolan's Slamdance honor: Q&A on budgets and that Brad Pitt rumor

'Interstellar' and 'Batman' director likes making big films right now, thank you

By Katie Hasty   Sunday, Jan 19, 2014 5:30 AM

Christopher Nolan with Slamdance president Peter Baxter

Credit: Slamdance

PARK CITY, Utah - Christopher Nolan's first film "Following" made its debut at the Slamdance Film Festival and the famed director was on hand this year to accept the fest's first annual Founder's Award in celebration of his achievements since that 1998 bow.

Nolan sat down with Slamdance president Peter Baxter and an intimate room of press and film fans to field a few questions, which ranged from working with a variety of budgets, to collaborating with loved once, to film criticism and analysis and even that one "Memento" story.

The British director will be releasing new "Interstellar" this year. Filmmaker-run, discovery oriented Slamdance spans over Jan. 17-23, concurrently with the Sundance Film Festival. Other Slamdance alumni includes Oren Peli, Marc Forster, Jared Hess, Lena Dunham, Lynn Shelton and more.
Here is a roundup of some of Nolan's answers to comments and questions from the group:

"Behind every good director is a great producer...": On Nolan's wife and producer Emma
Christopher Nolan: Emma has been a key component we've grown together, in sort of different senses... 16mm evolved into films in the studio, as somebody close to you who can support you but who also knows your weaknesses as well as your strengths and has no other agenda but to try and make a film the best it can be. See you do your best work as a director. That's what Emma's been for me.

What's the deal with Brad Pitt and "Memento," did Nolan turn Pitt down?

No, he turned me down! [Laughs] Truthfully, [Pitt] did read the script, that’s where the story comes from, is he read the script and he met with me about it when he didn’t have any reason to know who I was or anything about it. And nothing came of it, other than him being interested in it, I think within the sort of agency world where the script was circulating, just sort of perked up a bit of interest in what was a very obscure project otherwise.

And I think really that’s how it came to Guy Pearce’s attention, he sort of got the ball rolling. I'm very grateful to him... It was a very nice thing that he liked it.

Does Christopher Nolan ever get to the editing room and hated his takes? On "Inception"

Every film is a little bit different. I tend to start from scratch in the edit suite. My editor will do an assembly as we shoot, but I might never watch it fully. We’ll watch a scene at a time, and then we go back to dailies and review the dailies and we start putting it together. So the first few weeks when I cut the film is a process of discovery. And there are things that you’re thrilled with because they work better than you thought, and there are other things that you realize are going to be very difficult.

Cutting "Inception" with Lee [Smith], my editor, I remember we got to reel three and watched it. It was completely incomprehensible. And it took several weeks of sleepless nights of really trying to figure it out. Weirdly though, when I look back at the script compared with the way that section of the film turned out, it’s not that different.
But it can be very hard to find those things. One of the reasons I don’t watch the assembly as a lot of filmmakers do, is it’s four hours long and it’s a terrible film. So I just don’t want to start from that place. I’d rather start from the place of its sense of possibility, which is what you have in the dailies.

Much ado about the internet and criticism
Well one of the things I took away from doing the festival circuit — having a film here, for example — is that anybody paying any attention to your film is a fantastic thing. I remember the first time we were reviewed... and it wasn’t a very good review, apparently. But I was just thrilled and I called my then-agent and he said, "Oh don’t worry, no one’s gonna notice it, it’s Weekly Variety."
And I said, "But we got reviewed in Variety, it’s amazing!"
"They didn’t say great things."
I’m like, "Okay, well…"

By far the hardest thing for a filmmaker is to get eyeballs on your material. So I would never complain about people over-analyzing the detail. I mean, there can be a somewhat unrealistic level of analysis, in terms of divining the filmmaker’s intentions to be. But I think it’s a fun game anyway. I would never begrudge the attention on a film because it means that the film will have its chance. You get it out there, people see it, then they can judge it.

Will he return to smaller movies?

There are a lot of filmmakers that have taken a very different approach than me. My friend Steven Soderbergh for example, who helped me with my first studio film, he’s always made a very, very specific point about going back and forth between different sizes of film.

I’ve only ever been driven by story, set of characters that would grab me. And I try not to really think too much about why I want to make a film. It’s just if you want to make it, then you sort of go for it. And I think there’s also a sense in which if you have the opportunity to work on a big scale, that opportunity’s not always going to be there, so I certainly avail myself of it while it’s there.

I would never want to go to making a smaller film in an artificial sense. I would never want to do it for the sake of it. I’d be very very thrilled and happy to do it if I found the right story and the right thing in the back of my head that I wanted to get across, and I’m pretty sure that’s something I will do eventually. But I’m not in any rush. I like working the way I’m working now.

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Updates on my choices to direct Salt 2

Christopher Nolan, Matthew Vaughn and Nicholas Winding Refn were my top choices to helm Salt 2.  Vaughn and Refn now seem to have found other projects that may make them unavailable.  Nolan on the other hand is still talking about his passion to make a James Bond film while his post-TDKR slate remains clear.  Evelyn Salt is the female Bond so..... Nolan?

Separately, Angelina as the Scarlet Witch or even a villain in Avengers 2 remains a possibility since her children are fans of the Marvel characters.

Christopher Nolan Says His Howard Hughes Film Is Dead, But He'd Still Like To Do A Bond Film At Some Point

News by Oliver Lyttelton | June 4, 2012 8:22 AM

It's about six weeks to go before "The Dark Knight Rises" hits, closing up Christopher Nolan's Bat-trilogy, and it's likely only marking the end of the first act of his career (it's easy to forget that the director is only 41 -- a couple of decades younger than most of his A-list competition). Given that the film is a guaranteed hit, and it's off the back of "Inception," the most personal film of the director's career that also happened to make $800 million worldwide, the world is the director's oyster, as far as what comes next -- whatever he would like to make, he'll be given a handsome sum to do exactly that. Of course, what that film could be remains shrouded in secrecy. The director was on Warner Bros' wish-list to direct their reboot of "The Twilight Zone" before Matt Reeves got the gig, but otherwise, the only project he's known to have in the works, bar a producing job for a new film from director Keith Gordon, is his long-in-the-works Howard Hughes biopic. Originally in the works after "Insomnia" a decade ago, and set to star Jim Carrey as the reclusive billionaire, the project got put on hold when Martin Scorsese moved on with "The Aviator," but got a new lease of life last year, when it was reported that Nolan was using Michael Drosnin’s "Citizen Hughes: The Power, the Money and the Madness" as source material for a new iteratation, and was planning to shoot sometime in 2012 for a release in 2014.
If it was true then, however, it seems to no longer be the case. In the new, must-read issue of Empire Magazine, it emerges that the Hughes project is now off the table, the director saying he was able to scratch that itch with the Batman franchise -- "Luckily I managed to find another wealthy, quirky character who's orphaned at a young age." A shame certainly, but we'd always wondered if the long delay would make Nolan move on to other things, and it's exciting to think of what else might be out there.
One possibility, albeit a way down the line, is a Bond movie. The director, as most Brits who grew up watching the Ian Fleming franchise on rainy bank holidays such as this one are, is a long-time fan of the series, mentioning Bond as a key influence on both "Batman Begins" and "Inception" (principally the snowy final action sequence in the film, which owes a lot to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"), and a couple of years back, expressed an interest in directing an entry in the series at some point.
In the Empire interview, Nolan reiterates that he's serious about the prospect, and even says he's met with the franchise's producers at some point in the past, but cautions that "It would have to be the right situation and the right time in their cycle of things." To us, that would seem to suggest that Nolan would only like to take up the reins if he got to make a fresh start, including casting a new Bond, so as long as Daniel Craig is wearing the tux, we wouldn't hold up hope for a Nolan Bond. But maybe the next time they decide to shake things up...
The special "Dark Knight Rises" issue of Empire, with much more from the director, is on newsstands now, and the film hits theaters on July 20th.

‘X-Men: First Class’ Helmer Matthew Vaughn Options Max Barry Thriller Novel ‘Lexicon’

By MIKE FLEMING | Wednesday May 30, 2012 @ 8:15pm EDT

EXCLUSIVE: Using his own money, Matthew Vaughn has optioned Lexicon, the new thriller novel by Max Barry that will be published next year by Penguin in the U.S. and Mulholland in the UK. Vaughn is writing the script to direct.
Barry’s novels include Jennifer Government, Company and Machine. In Lexicon, the setting is contemporary but in a world where words are potentially lethal weapons–tools for persuading others to do what you want–which are wielded by members of a secret, ancient, global organization of people with an aptitude for persuasion in general. Their most gifted and troubled member, a young woman, breaks the society’s primary rule and falls in love.
Vaughn is coming off X-Men: First Class and is working on a sequel which Fox has on a fast track. He’s also producing a sequel to his film Kick-Ass, which will be directed by Jeff Wadlow and became real when Universal signed on. That’s plenty of action. This deal came about when Barry’s agents at Janklow & Nesbit Associates sent an advance copy of the book only to Vaughn, and the filmmaker responded.
Janklow & Nesbit, which almost always used a co-agent to make movie deals in the past (usually CAA,) now handles that task for most of the agency’s authors, since opening a Hollywood outpost in March. Janklow & Nesbit’s Carlo Martinelli and Amanda Schweitzer did this deal for Barry.

'Drive' Helmer Nicolas Winding Refn May Direct The ‘Button Man: The Killing Game’ For DreamWorks

News by Edward Davis | May 31, 2012 6:57 PM

Nicolas Winding Refn, the arty genre director of "Drive," "Bronson" and "Valhalla Rising," is apparently planning a few chess moves ahead. And again, he's dabbling with Hollywood and major studios. The Danish filmmaker, already adapting a remake of "Logan's Run" for Warner Bros. is in talks to direct an adaptation of the graphic novel,  "Button Man: The Killing Game" for DreamWorks.  Written by Arthur Ranson and John Wagner (who created the Judge Dredd graphic novel character), "Button Man: The Killing Game" centers on a former mercenary named Harry Exton, who is recruited into a game in which retired soldiers are sponsored by wealthy investors -- called "Voices," because they’re only heard on the telephone -- to face off against each other in fights to the death.
“Moneyball” producer Michael De Luca is one of the men shepherding this project. In development since at least 2008, scribes like Hillary Seitz (“Insomnia,” “Eagle Eye”) and Barry Levy (“Vantage Point”) have both written on this thriller. This one honestly feels a bit low on the list of projects we'd like to see Refn tackle, but a man's gotta eat and we're not going to argue (plus the deal's not done either). Next up for the filmmaker is his Thai boxing film thriller “Only God Forgives” which stars his bff Ryan Gosling, and should appear sometime during the fall film festival circuit, we’d imagine, though whether it goes after a 2012 release date feels unclear, as the year is becoming packed as it is, schedule-wise. Refn also has a horror film he wants to make with Carey Mulligan in the lead, called “I Walk With The Dead,” that already has Euro funding in place.
"Drive" is one of those major signal to noise ratio disconnect films. Meaning, it made many best of 2011 year end lists, and the critical buzz was as high as any last year, but it largely fell on deaf ears with American audiences upon its release. One might have thought it one of the most unappreciated films at the box-office shortly after its release when it appeared to be a DOA dud, but it did crawl to a very respectable $35 million domestically and $76 million worldwide, off a $15 million budget, so clearly no one landed with egg on their face with that one. [Deadline]

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