Transcript of How Obsession Built Christopher Nolan

0:00 Christopher Nolan had just spent a long 0:01 anxious year trying to secure 0:03 distribution. He had been turned down by 0:05 every distributor in town with the same 0:06 variation of this is great, we love it, 0:08 we really want to work with you, but 0:10 this is not for us. This film was 0:13 personal to him. Momento was born into 0:16 the world on the back of obsession. 0:18 Failure to find expression would have 0:20 been almost inconceivable to Christopher 0:23 Nolan. Nolan made the movie because he 0:26 had to. What happens when you make a 0:28 film is you burrow into it. You dig in 0:30 so deep, so you kind of can't see it 0:32 anymore. You're fully immersed in it. He 0:34 said, "The only thing you can do is 0:36 trust your initial instincts. You just 0:38 have to say, "This is what I'm making. 0:40 This is what I'm doing. It's going to 0:42 work. Just trust it." Momento would go 0:45 on to earn two Oscar nominations, nearly 0:47 two years to the day after that 0:49 disastrous screening for distributors. 0:51 Nolan's ascent since that movie has been 0:53 near vertical. In the space of two 0:56 decades, Christopher Nolan has gone from 0:58 eating out microbudgeted threeinut 1:00 shorts to making billiondoll 1:02 blockbusters. Nolan's films have earned 1:04 over $5 billion at the box office. To 1:08 the studios, he is as close to a sure 1:10 thing as a director gets. One of the few 1:13 filmmakers who can walk into a studio 1:14 with an original script idea and walk 1:17 out with the $200 million necessary to 1:20 make it. Like Spielberg and George Lucas 1:23 before him, he has become a franchise 1:26 unto himself. And unusual for a director 1:29 working at this level, he has either 1:30 written or had a hand in writing all 11 1:33 of his movies to date, granting him 1:35 entry into a very exclusive club of 1:38 directors. Among his collaborators, he 1:41 is known for his punctuality, 1:42 discipline, and secrecy. Of the more 1:45 than 600 people who worked on Dunkirk, 1:47 only 20 were allowed to read the script. 1:51 Copies of the script, which were kept on 1:53 set, were watermarked with the actors 1:55 names so that any missing copies could 1:57 be traced back to their negligent 1:59 owners. Nolan came, this is hilarious, 2:01 when he he's trying to recruit people to 2:03 be in his movie. They're like, great, 2:05 send over the script. I'll read it. 2:06 Well, he's coming with the script. So, 2:09 it says Nolan came to the actor's house 2:10 with a copy of the script. Nolan 2:13 insisted on staying with him, drinking 2:15 tea in the actor's living room until he 2:17 had finished the script and then took it 2:19 away with him. He refuses to use a 2:22 second unit, preferring to shoot every 2:23 frame himself. Minds don't wander on a 2:27 Chris Nolan set, said Matthew McConna. 2:30 Nolan is known by his crews for shooting 2:32 fast, starting at 7:00 a.m. and 2:34 finishing at 7:00 p.m. with a single 2:36 break for lunch. He has the kind of 2:39 passionate following one associates with 2:41 a cult director. Critics have received 2:43 death threats when they give his films a 2:46 bad review. He has the mystique of a 2:48 magician who takes his applause below 2:51 the stage having just disappeared 2:52 through it. People will say to me, 2:54 "There are people online who are 2:56 obsessed with Inception or obsessed with 2:58 Mento. They're asking me to comment on 3:00 that as if I thought it was weird or 3:02 something." And I'm like, "Well, I was 3:03 obsessed with it for years. Genuinely 3:06 obsessed with it, so it doesn't strike 3:08 me as weird. Every film I do, I have to 3:11 believe that I'm making the best film 3:13 that's ever been made. Films are really 3:16 hard to make. They are all consuming. 3:18 So, it had never occurred to me that 3:20 there are people doing it who weren't 3:22 trying to make the best film that ever 3:24 was. Why would you do this otherwise? 3:27 Even if it's not going to be the best 3:29 film that's ever been made, you have to 3:31 believe that it could be. You just pour 3:33 yourself into it. And when it affects 3:35 someone that way, that is a huge thrill 3:37 for me. It is a huge thrill. I feel like 3:41 I've managed to wrap them up in it the 3:43 way I try to wrap myself up in it. That 3:46 is an excerpt from the book that I'm 3:48 going to talk to you about today, which 3:49 is The Nolan Variations: The Movies, 3:51 Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher 3:52 Nolan. And it was written by Tom Shown. 3:55 One of my favorite books I ever read, I 3:56 think the first time I read it was about 3:57 three years ago. And with Christopher 3:59 Nolan's new movie coming back out, uh 4:01 I've just been thinking about especially 4:03 his idea that he wants to live in an 4:05 analog world. So there's like a handful 4:06 of ideas. There's probably like six 4:07 ideas that we'll repeat over and over 4:09 again. uh because we're going to move 4:10 through the book in chronological order, 4:12 which also covers his filmography in 4:13 chronological order, but I'd say he has 4:15 a handful of ideas that he just repeats 4:16 over and over again. And one of them 4:18 that's been on my mind is his desire to 4:20 live in this analog world. So, we're 4:22 going to go right into that. That'll 4:23 that's something that will reappear 4:23 throughout our conversation today. And 4:25 it goes into the fact that Nolan does 4:26 not have an email account or a 4:28 smartphone. He has like a like a flip 4:30 phone. So, the the the basis of this 4:32 book was a series of interviews done 4:35 over many years with Christopher Nolan 4:37 and Tom Shown. And so if Tom wants to 4:40 get in touch with Chris, he's got to go 4:41 through his assistant. And eventually 4:43 Chris will say, "Okay, I'll meet you 4:44 here in this physical location at this 4:47 time in this day." And so he wants to he 4:50 talks about over and over again about 4:51 making sure that we're using technology 4:52 and that technology is not using us and 4:54 that he wants to live in an analog 4:55 world. In fact, it sounds very similar 4:57 if you listen to a few weeks ago when I 4:58 did the episode on the founder of Honda. 5:00 He talked about that. He's like, "We are 5:01 building technology to serve man, not 5:04 the other way around. Make sure that you 5:05 are using the machines and the machines 5:07 are not using you." who is what the 5:08 Honda founder says. So then he just goes 5:10 into the fact that hey uh I would say 5:12 the main idea of the book uh is the fact 5:14 that obsession is the engine for his 5:17 entire career and he he's going to give 5:19 a lot of his life energy into his craft 5:22 into his work. He considers himself a 5:23 craftsman and if I'm going to be giving 5:26 over my limited life energy you know the 5:28 only finite resource I have I will run 5:30 out of time one day then what we're 5:32 making has to be great. It has to be the 5:33 best. And I love what he said. It's 5:34 like, listen, I'm going into this with 5:36 every movie assuming that I'm going to 5:37 make the best movie there ever was. Now, 5:39 he knows that's not going to be the 5:41 outcome, but he acts as if that is going 5:43 to be the outcome. I love that. So, he 5:44 says, I find filming very difficult. I 5:46 find it totally engaging, but it's an 5:47 arduous process. There's a lot of strain 5:49 on the family, a lot of strain on my 5:51 personal relationships. It takes a lot 5:53 of physical strength. So, the movie's 5:55 got to be great. It's got to be 5:57 something that I love. And then he talks 5:59 about the fact that he likes to do the 6:01 work. I we'll get into the the the even 6:05 though he's known now, you know, he's 6:06 made billions and billions of dollars at 6:07 the box office. He's had this 6:08 multi-deade partnership with a major 6:10 movie studio, he likes being involved in 6:13 all aspects of the movie. And like I 6:16 said at the in the very beginning, he 6:18 either wrote the entire script or had a 6:20 hand in writing the script of every 6:21 single one of his movies. And he talks 6:22 about this. He goes, "I'm not really 6:23 looking for a script to come fully 6:24 formed and land on my desk. No project 6:26 that I've ever been involved with has 6:28 been like that." He doesn't like that. 6:30 He wants to have complete control. Now 6:32 he talks about how the fact that he 6:34 enjoys screenlight writing and then how 6:36 he does it. I enjoy writing screenplays 6:38 because they are very stripped down 6:40 simple documents and the more stripped 6:43 down they are the better they are. So 6:45 it's interesting. I went back and looked 6:46 at some of my old highlights for this 6:48 book. This is a different I have I had 6:49 the hard cop cover before. Now this is 6:51 uh the paperback. But I went in and and 6:54 searched all my highlights for this 6:55 book. And when I got to that section, I 6:57 had forgotten one of my favorite uh one 6:59 of my personal heroes is this guy named 7:00 David Oggovy. He built, you know, one of 7:02 the most successful advertising agencies 7:03 of all time. I found him because I was 7:06 reading through all of uh Warren 7:08 Buffett's shareholder letters and he 7:09 kept calling this guy David Olga a 7:11 genius. I'm like, well, Warren Buffett's 7:13 calling you a genius. I need to go, you 7:15 know, research this guy. So, I started 7:16 reading about him. So, David, one of his 7:18 bosses before he was a found founder of 7:20 his own company, this idea that's like 7:23 you you need to just strip things down. 7:25 you need to get to the essence. This is 7:26 something that Nolan will repeat over 7:28 and over again. And you'll see I like 7:30 that he's starting with the written 7:31 document uh because he sees that he's 7:33 got this really clear thinking and he 7:34 knows the essence of what he's trying to 7:36 make. But David Ogrey's boss taught him 7:38 the the importance of what he called the 7:40 TUR memo. So he would send you a 7:43 message, David Ogre's boss, and it be 7:45 it'd have three responses, right? So you 7:47 you send him, you know, hey boss, I what 7:49 do you think of this, you know, this 7:50 thing we're working on? You get come 7:52 back to you in one of three ways. Yes, 7:55 no, or speak. And if he says speak, that 7:57 means come see me and we're actually 7:59 gonna talk. It's faster than me writing 8:00 it out. But I love that. Yes, no, or 8:02 speak. Uh, then he gets into the fact 8:04 that he says, I feel more of a craftsman 8:07 than an artist. Everybody says, you 8:09 know, if you're a filmmaker, you're an 8:10 artist, you're you're making a movie, 8:12 you're making art. Christopher Nolan 8:14 says, you know, I I'm a craftsman, not 8:16 an artist. George Lucas has that almost 8:17 exact same line in his biography that's 8:19 written by Brian Jane Jones, which I 8:21 think the book is called George Lucas 8:22 Life. you know, he he says that I don't 8:25 make a work of art, I make a movie. I 8:27 don't I'm not an artist. I'm a 8:28 craftsman. So, you see that Christopher 8:30 Nolan arrived at the same conclusion 8:32 that that uh George Lucas does. And then 8:34 there's just some oneliners that he's 8:36 got a very unique personality. It's 8:37 almost like, you know, I've watched 8:39 every single one of his movies. I get to 8:40 the end of Tenant. I've watched 8:42 Inception, you know, I don't know, six 8:43 times. I still don't completely 8:46 understand it. And I think that Nolan's 8:49 very comfortable with ambiguity. He he 8:50 thinks that there's much more to the 8:51 world than meets the eye. That the world 8:53 is, you know, beyond our comprehension. 8:55 And so there's just some lines in 8:56 throughout the book that I just think 8:57 make you think and kind of give you an 8:59 insight to this unique individual that 9:00 we're dealing with. And it says he 9:01 dreams with his eyes open. Before we get 9:04 back into this, I want to tell you about 9:05 the presenting sponsor of this podcast, 9:07 Ramp. I have been reading a lot about 9:09 SpaceX lately. 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Many of 9:58 the top founders and CEOs that I know 10:00 run their business on RAM. I run my 10:02 business on Ramp and you should too. Go 10:04 to ramp.com today to learn how they can 10:06 help your business save time, save 10:08 money, and grow revenue. That is 10:10 ramp.com. 10:12 And so then he talks about throughout 10:14 the book as he's being interviewed, 10:16 he'll use the word fascinating a lot. He 10:18 says, "I'm fascinated by this. I'm 10:19 fascinated by this." And could be art. 10:21 It could be like literally a piece of 10:23 art. Could be a short story. It could be 10:25 a piece of architecture. It could be an 10:27 idea. It could be a sentence. And what 10:29 Tom realized is talking uh to 10:32 Christopher Nolan is everything he's 10:33 fascinated goes back to his craft. It's 10:36 almost like he's using the world as a 10:37 classroom. So it says all roads lead 10:39 back to the original fascination cinema 10:42 itself. And again, this is something 10:45 that's going to come up with the book 10:46 because he starts making like little 10:47 home movies when he's like 8 years old. 10:48 So this idea of that true interest is re 10:50 is revealed early. He's been obsessed by 10:53 the time this book is published. He's 10:54 been obsessed with movies for as long as 10:57 he's had memories. Um there is one thing 11:00 that I think is super important because 11:02 he talks about he takes these 11:04 inspirations we'll talk about this later 11:05 on but he takes these inspirations from 11:06 you know he'll read a short story or 11:08 he'll watch another movie or he'll have 11:09 an experience or he'll go for a walk or 11:11 he'll sit in the dark with his eyes 11:12 closed and he's just giving his his 11:15 brain space to think and to work and 11:18 then he takes all the calculations the 11:20 computations of his own brain and 11:21 applies it to his work. And so in 11:24 inception, my favorite line inception is 11:27 this. And I think this is really large 11:29 part of what you and I are doing 11:30 together every week where you know you 11:32 I've done I don't know 426 of these was 11:36 that thousand hours at least a decade of 11:38 doing this. And I think what we're 11:40 looking for is we're just looking for 11:41 ideas. And I think the reason this works 11:43 whether you read these biographies 11:44 yourself, you listen to the podcast, 11:46 what you're looking for is this idea 11:48 that you can make your own. Why is that 11:50 important? Because if you think about 11:51 the movie Inception, the character of 11:53 Leonardo DiCaprio is saying this uh to 11:56 another character. He says, "What is the 11:57 most resilient parasite?" Uh bacteria, a 12:00 virus, an intestinal worm. It's an idea. 12:04 Resilient, highly contagious. And once 12:07 an idea has taken hold of the brain, 12:09 it's almost impossible to eradicate. And 12:11 if you've seen that movie, you know that 12:12 can't be an idea that somebody else gave 12:14 you. Can't be said, you should believe 12:15 X, Y, and Z. You've got to do the mental 12:18 calculus yourself. and then you take 12:20 ownership of the idea. If you've seen 12:21 Inception, you know exactly how they do 12:23 that uh with what they're trying the 12:25 main goal of what they're trying to 12:26 accomplish uh in the movie. So, I want 12:28 to touch on most of this is really how 12:29 Christopher Nolan thinks about work, 12:30 which I think is applicable to, you 12:32 know, all the businesses that you and I 12:33 are building. But, I do want to give you 12:35 some of this these biographical details 12:37 cuz I think it's really important. And 12:38 the first thing I want to tell you is 12:39 the fact that when he was 7 years old, 12:40 he's inspired by the work of George 12:42 Lucas. Nolan remember seeing George 12:43 Lucas Star Wars upon its release in 12:44 1977. He was seven years old. I was the 12:47 kid who saw it the most times. I had a 12:49 real fascination with those films and 12:51 with the technology behind them. I 12:53 remember I had a magazine about 12:55 Industrial Light and Magic that I read 12:56 obsessively. Anything about the behind 12:58 the scenes and how they made those films 13:00 were fascinating to me. So this is again 13:02 he's seven in the next page. He's eight. 13:05 He's going to start making movies. But 13:06 this is something that he does his whole 13:07 life when he gets obsessed with 13:09 something he will watch it over and over 13:11 again. He will read it over and over 13:12 again. He will look at it over and over 13:13 again. And then he will read everything 13:15 that he can get his hands on because 13:18 what he's seeking and what I would say 13:19 he's obsessed with he's he's obsessed 13:21 with how the movies are made. And I I I 13:25 went back and listened to the first 13:26 Christopher Nolan episode I did and then 13:28 reread all the highlights and I just 13:29 jotted down some notes to myself and one 13:31 of the notes I I left myself was oh like 13:33 this guy's obsessed with understanding. 13:35 That is what he's trying to figure out. 13:36 He's trying to understand. He deep he 13:38 has a deep desire to understand. So when 13:41 he turns eight, his dad gives him these 13:42 like little Super Eight cameras. And so 13:44 his first version of a movie is going to 13:46 play on the Super 8 camera. Super eight 13:48 camera only holds they can record for 13:49 like two and a half minutes if I'm not 13:51 mistaken. It might have been in black 13:52 and white and it definitely had no 13:54 sound. Now at 13. Okay, so he knows he 13:59 he liked making films. He didn't know 14:00 what the job was. So you're just a kid, 14:01 right? But at 13, with Ridley Scott's 14:04 help, Nolan is going to find his life's 14:07 work. So Nolan starts watching a bunch 14:11 of movies and two of the movies that he 14:13 loved were Bladeunner and Alien and he 14:17 then discovers after the fact that he 14:18 winds up being shocked. He's like, "Oh, 14:20 wait. What these two things have in 14:22 common, even though they're vastly 14:23 different, is the same person made them. 14:26 What is that person? What job is that? I 14:28 want that job." So he says, uh, the 14:30 direct direct quote from Nolan here. 14:32 Then when I found out it was the same 14:33 director. Wow. So totally different 14:35 story, different writers, different 14:36 actors, different everything. All the 14:38 things that as a kid you identify as 14:39 making films what they are, all those 14:41 things are different, but there's a 14:43 connection and that connection is the 14:45 director. I can remember thinking that's 14:47 the job I want. And so his family, so 14:52 his dad is from England, his mother is 14:55 American. They're going to move back and 14:57 forth across the Atlantic quite a bit. 14:59 And they actually send him to this 15:02 boarding school and it's called Haley 15:05 Bur. And this is really important 15:07 because we talked at the very beginning 15:09 the fact that he runs a very strict 15:10 schedule. He likes to do all the work 15:12 himself. He's accustomed himself to 15:14 handling a large workload. He's kind of 15:16 indifferent to, you know, problems. He's 15:18 indifferent to heat, to cold. He has 15:20 this like very strong discipline and a 15:22 high pain tolerance. He learned that at 15:24 this boarding school. O says this is 15:27 what they used to say about the boarding 15:29 school they went to that if you could 15:30 survive your first two years there you 15:31 can survive anything. It was a Spartan 15:34 oldfashioned institution. Then 15:36 Christopher Nolan says I remember Steven 15:38 Fry being asked about jail in an 15:39 interview and him saying oh I went to 15:40 boarding school. It's not so bad. 15:42 Meaning jail is not so bad. That was not 15:44 my experience. I enjoyed it but I also 15:45 recognized that a lot of people didn't. 15:47 I always referred to boarding schools as 15:49 a Darwinian environment. It is sink or 15:52 swim. It was very militaristic. You 15:54 either roll with it or you absolutely 15:56 hate it. Life at the school was lived 15:59 under the clock in every sense. Every 16:01 minute of every day rigorously 16:04 timelabeled. Now they keep them busy 16:06 from the time they wake up. By the time 16:08 they go to bed around 9:00 says by the 16:10 end of the day, everybody's just too 16:11 tired. All they can do is just fall into 16:13 their bed exhausted. Now this is what 16:16 obsession looks like. Nolan is going to 16:19 be sitting in the dark. instead of 16:21 sleeping, he's going to be listening to 16:25 scores and soundtracks from movies in 16:27 the dark and just thinking and and 16:29 tapping into his imagination. So, it 16:30 says no one remembers lying in bed after 16:32 lights out listening to the soundtracks 16:34 of Star Wars, the movie 2001, or 16:36 Chariots of Fire on his Walkman. This is 16:39 what he says. Film scores leave a bit of 16:41 space for the pictures and for your 16:42 imagination. He used the word 16:43 imagination over and over again. It gave 16:45 me a bit more space to think. That's 16:47 something he also repeats. More like 16:49 ambient music, I suppose. I certainly 16:51 prized the imaginative space of 16:54 listening to music in the dark, thinking 16:56 about things, imagining things, films, 16:59 stories. That was very important to me. 17:02 This idea of people just laying down 17:04 either in the dark. So I think Jim 17:06 Simons, founder of Renaissance 17:07 Technologies. I stole this idea. I think 17:09 the first time I read about Jim was like 17:10 all the way back on episode 80. So this 17:11 probably like seven years ago. And 17:13 people would go into his office and 17:14 they'd see him, the lights would be off. 17:16 He'd be lying on like prone on his sofa. 17:19 They thought he was taking a nap. He's 17:20 like, "No, I'm not taking a nap. I'm 17:22 thinking." So, no noise, no light, no he 17:25 can't see anything. And he just lets his 17:27 mind try to chew on the problem uh that 17:30 that like that he's trying to solve. 17:32 There's a great uh there's a great 17:34 anecdote and a great story from the 17:36 early days of Bill Gates career when he 17:37 was building Microsoft. This journalist 17:40 gets in the car with him and they're 17:41 like, "Oh my god, somebody broke into 17:42 your car, Bill, and stole your car 17:44 radio." And Bill's like, "What are you 17:45 talking about?" He's like, "You don't 17:46 have a car radio?" "Oh, he's like, 17:47 "Yeah, I removed one on purpose." And he 17:49 does. in in a typically geeky way. He he 17:51 figured out was okay the from the office 17:53 from my house to the office is eight 17:55 minutes and from the office to the 17:57 airport's you know 15 minutes and I go 17:58 home you know this many times a week and 18:00 I go to the airport this many times a 18:02 week and so basically it's just like oh 18:03 I took it out because then I save you 18:06 know whatever 120 minutes a week instead 18:08 of listening to music I can be thinking 18:10 about Microsoft so this idea I think is 18:12 really important that uh Nolan will 18:14 repeat he's like you have to give your 18:16 brain space to think now there's another 18:20 thing where where he talks about his 18:21 fascinations over and over again. Again, 18:24 a lot some of this is like almost like 18:26 put ideas into your head and then maybe 18:28 your subconscious does something with it 18:29 later. Maybe feed your intuition or 18:31 something. But he is fascinated 18:33 interesting that he became a filmmaker 18:35 because he's fascinated with the fact 18:36 that cameras can see time in ways we 18:38 cannot. So just think about his the 18:40 movies in this nonlinear structure and 18:44 the way he he explains uh presents the 18:46 plot in his movies. the fact that he is 18:48 obsessed with seeing time in a way that 18:50 we cannot. So he says there's no other 18:52 way to conceive of this. The camera sees 18:53 time in a way that we can't. That's the 18:55 essence of it. That for me was the 18:56 magical thing. It's about that 18:58 fascination. He goes, he talks about 19:00 time over and over again. Time is 19:02 something that we can't really 19:03 understand, but we can feel it. We have 19:04 a very strong sense of time. It affects 19:06 us greatly, but we don't know what it 19:08 is. We have clocks and watches, but time 19:11 is inherently subjective. So then he 19:14 goes back to the fact that the 19:16 discipline that he learned as a very 19:17 young man in high school age uh of the 19:20 from the boarding school winds up being 19:22 a godsend. So it says it was at this 19:24 boarding school that he acquired the 19:25 punctuality, discipline and indifference 19:27 to cold weather for which he would be 19:29 famous among his film crews for. Now 19:32 he's also used to being different and 19:35 separate and making his own decisions. 19:38 Part of this is because he he says 19:39 there's like kind of this paradox where 19:40 okay his family left him in England. 19:43 They live in Chicago at the time. He's 19:44 like 4,000 miles away from his parents. 19:47 So he's like, you have the freedom that 19:49 you're kind of on your own as a young 19:50 man, but then you have this like rigid 19:52 discipline almost like constraints put 19:55 around you that you have to operate in. 19:57 So you're at time way more free than 19:59 like a typical, let's say, 16-year-old, 20:01 but also way more strict and disciplined 20:04 environment. And then all this time of 20:06 being alone is really interesting. So 20:08 this this is pretty crazy cuz I think 20:10 before Dunkerk came out, I would say 20:12 Inception is probably my favorite uh 20:14 Christopher Nolan movie, but he worked 20:16 he had the ideas. So from the the the 20:19 coming up with the idea for Inception to 20:21 actually doing it something like 23 20:23 years in between that gap. And so he was 20:27 talking about when he's in these 20:29 sessions at night, he first comes up 20:32 with this idea of like, oh, like what 20:34 about this idea of playing music or a 20:35 dream within a dream? And so he says it 20:37 was during one of these late night 20:38 sessions after lights out that the idea 20:40 for inception first took shape and he 20:42 talk he describes it. He says the idea 20:43 of sharing a dream that was a jumping 20:45 off point and the use of music or 20:46 playing music outside someone dreaming 20:48 and the idea that if you played music to 20:50 somebody who was asleep that it would 20:51 translate in some interesting way. I 20:53 really did come up with a couple ideas 20:55 that went into it inception when I was 20:57 about 16. The film was a very long time 21:00 in coming. I said it was 10 years. It 21:03 was probably more like 20. It was 21:05 something I was thinking about for a 21:06 very very long time. I mean, I think it 21:10 was what uh I know I've been talking 21:11 about Edwin Land a lot. I gotta do 21:13 another episode on him, I guess. But I 21:14 think he came up with the idea for the 21:17 instant photography camera somewhere in 21:19 the 1946. And by the time it was fully 21:22 finished and it was the size he wanted 21:24 and it could do color, I think it was 21:25 like 1973. So, it's like 30 years of 21:27 working on the same idea. Go back to 21:29 Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs would talk about 21:30 in the 1980s about having a handheld 21:33 computer and when you read about what 21:36 he's imagining and what he's envisioning 21:38 that he could accomplish one day in the 21:40 1980s remember I think the iPad came out 21:42 what 2009 something like that uh sounds 21:44 hell of a lot like an iPad 40 years 21:46 before there were iPads iPads. So I just 21:48 love this idea of the find the idea that 21:51 ideas can just like sit in your mind and 21:53 you just have to kind of you just wait. 21:55 You don't know how to make the thing 21:56 yet, but you can use the ideas you have 21:58 today 15, 20, 30 years from now. So, at 22:02 this point in the story, now Nolan is in 22:05 college, going to college. He kind of 22:07 doesn't even go to college. He is the 22:09 president of the film and TV society. 22:11 Okay? And he spends much of the time 22:13 that he's supposed to be in college in 22:15 this windowless soundproof basement. 22:17 They said it was essentially his office. 22:19 And what is he doing at when he's at the 22:21 University of College uh College London? 22:24 He essentially creates his own 22:25 curriculum. He spent most of his time in 22:28 the film and TV society and he's 22:29 practicing learning the job that he 22:32 already knew that he wanted. What's the 22:33 point of me going and taking these other 22:35 classes very seriously? He there was 22:37 this great discussion in the book where 22:39 one of his prof I think it's the 22:40 literature professor is like, "Hey, I 22:41 can see obsessed with with movies. What 22:43 I need you to do is that same obsession 22:45 that you have for movies. I need you to 22:46 have that same obsession for the books." 22:48 And no one's like, "I just know that 22:49 will never happen." So he knew the job 22:51 what he already wanted. And so he's 22:52 like, I'm just going to build my own 22:53 curriculum and use this time, make the 22:54 most use of my time, and actually learn 22:55 how the hell do I make a movie. So he 22:57 said he did spend most of his time in 22:59 the basement of the film and TV society, 23:00 learning firsthand how to operate 23:01 cameras, how to edit, how to cut film by 23:03 hand, and how to sync sound. We spent 23:05 three years in college making short 23:07 films, running the film society, raising 23:08 money to make more films. It was 23:09 studentled. I learned a huge amount 23:12 about the craft of putting films 23:14 together. It was a great education. And 23:17 before we get back into this, I want to 23:18 tell you about Applov. And one of my 23:20 all-time favorite quotes is from the 23:21 book 0ero to1. In that book, Peter Teal 23:24 writes, he says, "The single most 23:25 powerful pattern I have noticed is that 23:27 successful people find value in 23:28 unexpected places. And they do this by 23:31 thinking about business from first 23:32 principles instead of formulas." And 23:34 that is exactly what Apploven has done 23:36 with their advertising platform. 23:37 Apploven connects you with over a 23:39 billion potential new customers in 23:41 mobile games. Apploven allows you to 23:44 capture undivided attention. 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That is 25:16 vanta.com/founders. 25:19 And then a few pages later, there's just 25:20 one line. Again, I think he's talking 25:21 about filmmakers. I think the best 25:23 founders have this. You have a distinct 25:24 point of view. You we talked about last 25:26 week, what is the point of building an 25:27 undifferiated commodity business? You 25:29 should have something unique to say. You 25:31 should have a new take on the world. And 25:32 so he says, everything you do as a 25:33 filmmaker is about a point of view. I 25:36 think the best founders obviously uh 25:38 have the same thing. I have this sticky 25:40 note that's on my desk right in front of 25:41 me and it's just it's the point of view 25:43 of Steve Jobs summarized in three words. 25:45 Insanely great products. That was his 25:46 point of view. So his first job out of 25:48 college is actually making videos for 25:50 large corporations. Says after 25:51 graduating, Nolan had applied to and was 25:53 turned down by the National Film and 25:55 Television School in England and the 25:56 Royal College of Art. But he immediately 25:58 found work as a camera operator in a 25:59 small video shop turning out corporate 26:01 videos and media training uh videos for 26:03 large corporations. This is really 26:04 important cuz then we start hitting on 26:06 the fact that he is going to be 26:07 relentlessly resourceful. All these 26:09 ideas I'm discussing with you will fit 26:11 together just like the plots in a lot of 26:13 his movies. 26:14 The relentless resourcefulness is 26:16 because he's going to be obsessed with 26:17 control which we'll get to in a minute. 26:19 But this is what's fascinating. It's 26:20 like how bad do you actually want it? He 26:21 made his first movie on the weekends 26:23 while working a full-time job. So he 26:26 says uh the script was written with a 26:28 view of what can I do with really no 26:30 resources just with a camera and 26:31 scraping together money. He wrote the 26:33 script on a typewriter. They decided 26:36 simply to use the bonus from his 26:37 cameraman job and shoot the film only on 26:39 weekends for almost a year. They had to 26:41 rehearse each scene carefully, almost 26:42 like a play, so they could shoot it in 26:44 one or two takes, working out they could 26:46 afford to shoot and process between 10 26:48 to 15 minutes of footage a week. Every 26:50 weekend, everyone would squeeze into the 26:52 back of a taxi and head to whatever 26:54 location they'd been able to scrge up. 26:56 They shot without permits. Nolan 26:58 operated the camera himself. And so 27:01 again, I just love this idea. It's like 27:03 relentless resourceful. I have this goal 27:05 that I have. Well, I also need to to to 27:07 eat and I don't have any money, so I'm 27:09 going to work during the week and then 27:10 at the weekend I'm going to chase my 27:12 dreams and okay, maybe if I was working 27:14 on this full-time, I could do this this 27:15 movie in two months, but it's going to 27:17 take me a year. So, so be it. That's 27:18 what it's going to do. And I love this 27:19 idea of um doing it on a typewriter. He 27:22 again goes back to this analog world. Um 27:24 one of my favorite um fiction authors is 27:26 Cormack McCarthy. And one of my favorite 27:28 facts about one of my favorite fiction 27:29 authors is the fact that Cormack 27:30 McCarthy bought a typewriter for $50. 27:34 He used that typewriter for 50 years and 27:36 wrote 5 million words on that 27:38 typewriter. It's not it's not the tools. 27:41 It's it's that it's the person, it's the 27:44 talent. And this is what again 27:45 Christopher Nolan has a very unique way 27:47 of working. But I just love that idea. 27:48 It's like think about Blood Meridian if 27:51 you read it or The Road or any of 27:52 Cormack McCarthy's one incredible books 27:55 that came from hands on a $50 27:58 typewriter. It's absolutely incredible. 28:00 So then we get into the fact that he 28:02 goes to time and he had written the 28:05 original for his first movie. He wrote 28:07 that script in chronological order and 28:08 then he rearranged the order of the 28:10 scenes. And so he was a fan of Quinton 28:12 Tarantino's time. He says it was heavily 28:14 influenced by Reserve Dogs. So I was 28:15 very interested to see what Tarantino 28:17 had done for his follow-up. And so he 28:18 says if you look at pulp fiction and 28:19 citizen can so again anybody gets the 28:21 top of their profession is going to have 28:22 this historical database of knowledge in 28:24 their head that they're going to they're 28:26 going to draw from. So he's constantly 28:27 referencing these movies in some cases 28:29 that were made 50 years 60 years in the 28:31 past. Uh they have a lot of similarities 28:33 in terms of their structure. In no other 28:34 media is there this insistence that 28:36 information be introduced 28:37 chronologically. 28:38 So he's like so why should it be 28:40 introduced chronologically in my very 28:41 first film? So again he writes the 28:43 script in chronological order. Then he 28:45 cuts it up and literally rearranges the 28:47 orders of the scene. And he he says he 28:50 rejects chronological conservatism, 28:53 which I thought was a funny term. He 28:55 says, "We don't tend to have 28:56 chronological conversations either. They 28:58 go all over the place." So again, he's 29:00 just saying, "Okay, well, why am I 29:02 expecting?" And he thinks because of TV. 29:04 TV presents things in more of a 29:05 chronological order that influenced 29:07 filmm. But if you go back in the films 29:09 of the past, kind of reject that 29:10 chronological conservatism. Think about 29:12 the the books you read. They're not in 29:14 chronological order. The conversations 29:15 you're having are not in chronological 29:16 order. So I don't my movie shouldn't 29:17 have to be either. And then I just love 29:20 this idea. I always think about like a 29:21 person's setup like what is their setup? 29:23 Like what is their home life like in 29:25 relation to their work? I just did this 29:27 episode last week on the merchant 29:28 bankers and there was one guy in the 29:30 book that I thought was interesting. I 29:31 think it was an Italian guy and he had a 29:33 house or excuse the apartment, merchant 29:35 bank and a publishing house and it was 29:37 like on the street say not only was on 29:39 the same street it was on the same side 29:40 of the street just so he wouldn't have 29:41 to cross the street and so um in 29:45 Christopher Nolan's case he's got a 29:46 house in Los Angeles. Okay, so it says 29:48 his home in Los Angeles and the 29:50 production facility that sits in a 29:51 nearly identical residence at the end of 29:54 his garden. So the two residences sit 29:57 back to back on opposite sides of the 29:58 same block like mirror images of each 30:00 other like a tenant com. So he's in his 30:04 house and then to commute to his work he 30:06 has to walk through the the backyard of 30:10 his house to the backyard of his other 30:12 house which is then his production 30:13 facility. And it says uh his commute 30:15 between his home and his work can be 30:18 completed in under one minute. And so 30:21 here's Christopher Nolan at 27 years 30:23 old. his first movie following is going 30:25 to lead to momento. And really the 30:27 reason I'm reading this paragraph is 30:28 because I think doing the best job you 30:29 can with the opportunities in front of 30:31 you is going to lead uh to opportunities 30:33 in the future you can't possibly 30:34 predict. And so there this other friend 30:38 of his at the time is describing 30:39 Christopher Nolan when Christopher Nolan 30:40 is 27. Rather than being discouraged by 30:41 his rejection from his film school, he 30:43 was hot on a new idea for a movie. The 30:45 story of a guy who loses his short-term 30:46 memory and tries to solve the murder of 30:48 his wife by tattooing clues on his body 30:50 like little momentos. 30:52 Chris also wanted to tell the story 30:53 backward. That was very important. He 30:55 said, "I couldn't quite see it, but when 30:57 you're around someone who does, you 30:59 start to believe it." Again, you could, 31:00 you know, be sad or depressed that you 31:01 got rejected from what you thought you 31:03 wanted to do. That leads him to this 31:04 next idea, which again how we started 31:06 the conversation today. Momento is what 31:08 causes his his the new like near 31:11 vertical ascent of his career. So he 31:15 actually in the year 2000 debuts Momento 31:18 at the Venice Film Festival and he 31:20 describes the turning point of his life 31:21 which I absolutely love. So he says my 31:24 films always end the same way with some 31:25 sort of sudden flourish. It's building 31:27 to that moment and then the film ends 31:28 very abruptly and for a few seconds 31:30 everyone was completely silent. I 31:32 thought oh no they hate it. There were a 31:35 couple seconds where literally I had no 31:36 idea what was about to happen. I was 31:38 very frightened. And then there was an 31:41 enormous standing ovation and 31:43 everything. It was extraordinary. It was 31:46 the turning point of my life. And so 31:50 each chapter goes into great detail of 31:52 how they make each movie. The chapter on 31:54 Momento is obviously the one we're in. 31:56 There's just one line from there. Again, 31:57 I think these lines give you an insight 31:58 into who this is, who this p this unique 32:00 person we're talking about is. He's 32:02 talking about Momento, but he's really 32:03 talking about what he believes in real 32:04 life. I think this goes back to the fact 32:06 that he just feels that there's way more 32:07 to the world than we understand. There's 32:09 way more to the world than meets the 32:11 eye. He says, "I find the idea of not 32:12 being able to trust your own mind very 32:15 creepy." And so for the next movie to be 32:18 made, Chris Nolan actually had to have 32:20 the help of an older, more experienced 32:23 director. So, he's going to make this uh 32:26 movie called Insomnia and another 32:28 director called Steven Sodenberg. He 32:30 says Steven was the one that basically 32:32 got Insomnia made at the time. Nolan's 32:34 going around and trying to pitch his 32:36 movie to a bunch of major studios and he 32:39 couldn't even get meetings. And so 32:41 Steven Solderberg upon hearing of 32:42 Nolan's difficulties getting a meeting 32:44 with the executives of Warner Brothers 32:45 marched across the lot to the head of 32:46 production and told him, "You're insane 32:48 if you don't meet with this guy." He 32:50 even offered to executive produce 32:52 Insomnia himself along with George 32:54 Clooney by the way of guaranteeing the 32:57 then 31-year-old director, which is 32:58 Christopher Nolan. And Christopher Nolan 33:00 says Steven didn't have to do that, but 33:02 he did. He and George became the 33:03 executive producers of Insomnia. And 33:05 this was another very important turning 33:07 point of Christopher Nola's life because 33:08 then he starts to learn how to operate 33:10 within the studio system. How to work 33:13 with the big studios. The way I describe 33:15 what's about to happen this with this 33:16 and the way Christopher Nola approaches 33:18 work is that constraints breed 33:19 resourcefulness and then resourcefulness 33:21 helps you maintain control. By the end 33:23 of the production, he had learned an 33:24 important lesson about working for the 33:25 studios. This is what he said. The 33:27 efficiency of filmm is for me a way to 33:29 keep of keeping control. the pressure of 33:30 time, the pressure of money. Even though 33:32 they feel like restrictions at the time 33:34 and you chafe against them, they're 33:35 helping you make decisions. They really 33:37 are. If I, this is great, if I know that 33:40 deadline is there, then my creative 33:41 process ramps up exponentially. Creative 33:43 power in film making is very important 33:45 to me. I'm very protective of it, but I 33:48 can get my power from spending less and 33:50 moving faster. Not giving anybody a 33:53 reason to come and visit me and 33:55 interfere or complain. I made that 33:58 decision very early in my career. If I 34:00 can work a little bit faster than people 34:01 expect, if I can work a little bit 34:03 cheaper than people expect, then they'll 34:05 let me do my thing. Again, constraints 34:07 breed resourcefulness. Resourcefulness 34:09 helps him maintain control. And so, it's 34:12 these experiences that he just realizes 34:13 that big studios, they have this way of 34:14 just working that encourages waste and 34:16 doesn't give Nolan the control and 34:18 involvement that he desires. And he 34:20 says, you're encouraged in a big movie 34:22 to very rapidly hire an enormous number 34:23 of people, artists, concept guys, and 34:25 all this stuff. Then you have to feed 34:27 that beast. And so you're in a situation 34:28 where you go, I need a robot for this 34:30 science fiction film. Figure me out a 34:31 robot. And then you go away while they 34:33 do whatever they feel like and come back 34:35 with a robot. This is the most important 34:36 part of this section. Which didn't suit 34:38 my way of working at all. He wants to be 34:40 involved. They will spend literally, and 34:43 he's talking about the big studios. They 34:44 will spend literally millions of dollars 34:46 on films that don't happen. Meanwhile, 34:49 Nolan's working out of his garage at 34:51 home trying to do as much work in 34:53 pre-production before spending any 34:55 money. It's the opposite of spending 34:56 millions of dollars on a movie that 34:58 never comes to fruition. Another thing 35:00 that's surprising about Nolan that's a 35:02 little different from a lot of people 35:03 you and I talk about, a lot of you 35:04 people you and I talk about have this 35:05 like delusional self-confidence, this 35:07 this self-belief, this like reality 35:08 distortion field. He's a pessimist and 35:11 it's not what I would say is the way the 35:13 reason this is an interesting tool for 35:14 him is he's imagining failure constantly 35:17 and then doing everything he can to 35:19 avoid it. I am very much a pessimist. I 35:21 always plan for the worst. And then I 35:23 thought it was really interesting when 35:24 the book went into a 20-year creative 35:25 partnership between that Christopher 35:27 Nolan has uh with Hans Zimmer. He says 35:29 that's why Hans and I have worked so 35:30 successfully together because I like to 35:32 say that he's a minimalist composer with 35:34 maximalist production values. It is a 35:36 very big sound but the ideas behind it 35:38 are incredibly minimalist very very 35:41 simple and that gives me space to work 35:43 as a filmmaker between the notes. What 35:46 I've done with film scores over the 35:48 years is to try and totally reverse the 35:50 process and start with the emotion. 35:52 Start with the basic heart of the story 35:55 and then build the mechanics after that. 35:58 Nolan's description of Han Zimmer, a 36:00 minimalist with maximalist production 36:02 values, does double duty as a 36:04 description of Nolan himself and hints 36:06 at why the two men could forge such a 36:09 close creative partnership in the years 36:11 to come. And so this is another thing 36:13 that he does I think is really 36:14 interesting. this idea that you need to 36:16 start with the heart and work backwards. 36:18 So before shooting, Nolan actually types 36:21 up a one-page summary of the film's 36:22 vision and then we'll return to it 36:24 repeatedly so he never loses the heart 36:27 of the movie in the chaos of the film 36:29 production. I thought that was really 36:30 interesting that you start with the 36:32 heart and then you work backwards. Go 36:34 back again. I told you he's got a 36:35 handful of these ideas that he applies 36:38 year after year, movie after movie. 36:39 We're in many years in the future since 36:41 the last time I told you this different 36:42 movie. But he says, "You never expect 36:44 success." I'm a very negative, super 36:47 superstitious, pessimistic person. 36:49 Again, he's assuming it's going to be a 36:52 failure and then working to to do 36:53 everything that he can to prevent that. 36:56 Uh oh, and it also goes back to making 36:58 things that you're actually really proud 37:00 of because he's had so many examples 37:02 where they're like, "Oh, like uh his 37:04 film got bad uh review. It's going to 37:06 flop at the box office." he kind of 37:08 tries to buy he kind of temporarily buys 37:09 into what the outside world's uh saying 37:12 and then winds up getting on when it's 37:14 released goes to like number one gets 37:16 great reviews. So this is what he 37:18 learned about that. What I learned was 37:19 it's really important uh to me that I 37:20 knew the film was good that I knew that 37:22 I liked what I had done. I felt very 37:24 good about that and you realize when the 37:26 chips are down and everyone turns around 37:27 and tells you that it's crap that is all 37:29 you have. So if you don't believe in it 37:31 in the first place you're taking a risk 37:33 you're taking a terrible risk. This has 37:36 already been mentioned several times, 37:37 but the fact that Nolan loves operating 37:39 within constraints. He's making this 37:42 movie, has a very tight budget of just 37:43 40 million. And it says, "This tight 37:45 budget enforces Nolan's favorite 37:48 conditions. Improvisation within a set 37:51 of restrictions." Few pages later, it 37:53 goes back to this idea that I've 37:54 repeated a few times. I make films that 37:56 are huge endorsements of the idea that 37:58 there's more to our world than meets the 38:01 eye. He goes back to this idea that he 38:04 desires to live and to work in an analog 38:08 world. Nolan's antagonism with regard to 38:11 new technologies is farreaching. An 38:13 absolute believer in the difference 38:14 between photographic and 38:16 computerenerated imagery, he prefers the 38:17 grain and texture of celluloid to the 38:20 flatness of digital location shootings 38:22 to sets and physical sets to 38:24 computerenerated backdrops. The appeal 38:26 of his films in some ways rests on the 38:29 same principle behind the popularity of 38:31 boutique hotels, low-fi recording uh 38:34 methods, glitch music, and Etsy. That in 38:38 the information age, more value, not 38:41 less, will acrue to precisely those 38:43 elements that cannot be cut and pasted. 38:47 Goes back to this idea that there's more 38:49 uh to the world than meets the eye 38:51 again. and also the fact that he thinks 38:53 we're being duped by technology which he 38:55 repeats over and over again. The idea 38:56 that you think all this information like 38:58 all the all the human knowledge is 39:00 online. And so he he has like this 39:03 interesting thought experiment not even 39:04 thought experiment an actual experiment 39:05 to see if that's true. So he says an 39:07 interesting experiment would be to walk 39:08 into a library, go to a book, open the 39:10 book to a random page, find a fact or 39:12 piece of information, write it down, do 39:14 that 10 times, and then go online and 39:16 see how many of those 10 you can find. 39:18 Our feeling is that 90% of the 39:20 information is online. I have a 39:22 suspicion that the real answer is.9%. 39:26 So the author of the book actually does 39:27 this and he has 10 facts and he only 39:29 found one of them uh online. So not.9% 39:33 but way less than 90%. Uh so then we go 39:36 back to again this is the year 2006 and 39:38 he goes back to the fact that he's going 39:39 to find the best way that he wants to 39:41 work and he's going to do that 39:42 regardless of what the rest of his 39:44 industry is doing. So it says we live 39:46 and work in an analog world. The 39:48 Prestige, which is the movie that came 39:49 out in 2006, was the first film where we 39:51 were expected by the studio to digitize 39:53 the negative and edit electronically. To 39:56 this day, we've never converted to the 39:58 other workflow used by most of the 40:00 industry. We've continued to shoot on 40:02 film, edit electronically, then take the 40:04 frame numbers and cut the film by hand, 40:07 and that's what goes out. The Prestige 40:09 was very much the point at which we 40:11 separated from the rest of the industry, 40:13 or rather they separated from us. And so 40:17 a few pages later, you can kind of 40:18 expound on that. You can easily sum up 40:20 Nolan's entire ethos as a filmmaker. He 40:22 takes the rules of genre and he flips 40:25 them. Another thing that he says, he'll 40:27 use the word strip away, reduce, 40:29 minimalist, cut. So he says, I think, 40:32 and he talks about the older he gets, 40:34 the more experience he gets, the more 40:35 confidence he has, the more he can 40:36 actually cut. I think a lot of that is 40:37 about confidence because it takes more 40:39 confidence to strip things away. And so 40:41 when he's working on the Batman series, 40:43 there's this line by the Joker that 40:44 again sounds like it would come out of 40:46 not the Joker's mouth, but Christopher 40:47 Nolan's mouth. The only sensible way to 40:48 live in this world is without rules. And 40:51 so there's this really he talked about 40:53 the turning point of momentum being, you 40:56 know, critically acclaimed. I think it 40:58 won uh two Oscars. Uh winds up, I think, 41:01 returning like something like 5x or 10x 41:03 it its budget. And then he was able to 41:06 like just take have this like near 41:07 vertical ascent. But then one of his 41:09 movies makes a billion dollars. The Dark 41:11 Knight makes over a billion dollars at 41:12 the box box office. And this momentum 41:14 changes his entire career. And then the 41:16 way he thinks about the changes that he 41:18 experienced during this time of career I 41:19 thought was really interesting. So it 41:21 says suddenly his position at Warner 41:22 Brothers went from solid to unassalable. 41:24 The immediately thing that this did was 41:27 extraordinary and allowed me to do 41:28 whatever I wanted to as the next film. 41:30 Creatively speaking, they were going to 41:32 let me do whatever I wanted to do. 41:33 Everything up to that moment had been a 41:35 fight or a struggle one way or another. 41:37 And then he said, "Suddenly realizing 41:38 this, I said,"Oh, okay. I'm going to get 41:40 the last word word." It was very 41:43 liberating in a lot of ways, but it was 41:44 also scary because you know that every 41:46 filmmaker would give their teeth for 41:48 that. So finally, you've got it and what 41:51 are you going to do with it? For the 41:53 first time, I was able to step back and 41:54 go, "Okay, what do I want to do now?" 41:57 And then he figured out, remember I said 41:59 that these ideas can be dormant or 42:01 ruminate for decades. And so he says, 42:03 "What I've always wanted to do was to do 42:05 inception." So throughout the book, he's 42:07 always talking about these influences 42:08 that he has. He'll use the world as this 42:10 giant classroom, take those influences 42:12 and apply it to his work. But he makes a 42:14 really interesting point here. He's a 42:16 big fan of the short stories and the 42:17 writing of Jorge Luis Boures. And his 42:20 point on the influence that he has like 42:22 you you have to have something else 42:23 going on in your life. Like you can't 42:24 somebody can't just give you a story and 42:25 then what are you going to do with it? 42:26 You have to have something to hang it 42:28 on. So he says with those short stories, 42:29 you have to have something rattling 42:31 inside you already that then connects 42:33 with that. But if you're not already 42:34 predisposed to that, it just comes to 42:36 you as a story and it doesn't 42:37 necessarily spark anything. So he took 42:39 one idea from the short story uh that 42:42 Borhees wrote and it's actually one of 42:44 the main ideas in Inception. And that 42:47 was important because he had taken 42:48 multiple shots up until this point to 42:50 try to finish writing Inception. He 42:52 says, "I managed to get about 80 pages 42:53 in. I got into the beginning of the 42:55 third act and then got stuck and I 42:57 stayed stuck for years and years. 43:01 Inception was thus the work of half a 43:03 lifetime. An idea first conceived by 43:05 Nolan when he was 16, nursed at 43:07 university, elaborated upon when he came 43:09 to Hollywood, and finally executed in 43:10 the wake of the Dark Knight's success. 43:12 Inception took input from its maker at 43:15 every major point of his life. The 43:18 school boy, the university student, the 43:20 Hollywood neopight, the success story, 43:22 the father. What a paragraph. I love 43:24 that. And again, there's a crazy line a 43:27 few pages later. 23 years after first 43:30 conceiving of the idea, Nolan commenced 43:32 principal photography on inception on 43:35 June 19th, 2009. I would encourage you 43:38 to buy this book, read this book, but 43:39 you should look at the pictures because 43:40 then you see how he like maps everything 43:42 out. And so this is one of the most 43:43 interesting ideas, this idea that first 43:45 flip it. Okay? So, and you can see how 43:48 he like writes out the plots and 43:49 everything. So it says when the director 43:50 first hears or has an idea, his first 43:53 instinct is to flip it, turning it 43:55 almost into a three-dimensional object 43:57 that he can hold in his hands or walk 44:00 around. Storytelling thus becomes a 44:03 three-dimensional exercise like 44:05 sculpture. And then he talks about as 44:07 your career continues, you have this 44:08 like confluence of events you can't and 44:10 influences you can't even almost like 44:12 they operate like a subconscious level. 44:13 I think this is why Steve Jobs said that 44:15 the older he gets, the more important 44:16 that he thinks intuition was. And that 44:18 intuition played a much larger role in 44:20 his career than than intellect did. And 44:22 so Nolan says, "What I've accepted over 44:23 the years is that the job of a director 44:25 is one in which a lot of what you do is 44:27 instinctive and unconscious." I actually 44:29 uh was with a friend the other day. He's 44:32 one of the greatest investors uh 44:33 basically no one has ever heard of. And 44:36 and he likes it that way. And what he 44:38 told me was very interesting. He says, 44:39 "The the more I understand about 44:40 investing, the better I get at it." He 44:42 says something like uh the less I think 44:43 I should actually have a team that it 44:45 was something like the performance could 44:47 be like inversely correlated to the 44:49 amount of people on his team and part of 44:50 it was because he's like had this 44:52 intuition or instinct that we should be 44:53 doing something and you try to give it 44:55 give it to somebody else on the team to 44:56 do or explain it to them and it they 44:59 don't because they don't have whatever 45:00 is like that intuition you have in you 45:02 that the subconscious that's driving 45:03 you. They don't understand how important 45:04 it is. They basically kind of like take 45:06 an idea that if he just ran with it 45:08 would have been a lot more successful 45:10 and they kind of just [ __ ] it up. But I 45:11 love that idea. What I've accepted over 45:12 the years that the job director, 45:14 entrepreneur, whatever case is is one in 45:16 which a lot of what you do is 45:17 instinctive and unconscious. And so in 45:20 any endeavor you're going to get stuck. 45:22 And in Inception you get stuck in almost 45:24 all these movies you get stuck. But on 45:26 Inception is very fascinating because 45:28 then he talks about what you do when you 45:29 get unstuck. And this is going to remind 45:30 me of Rick Rubin. uh somewhere a few 45:33 weeks into the cut where normally you 45:34 begin to gain a little bit of confidence 45:35 that it's coming together. We just hit a 45:37 wall. We got stuck for a long time. I 45:40 couldn't get to sleep for a couple days. 45:42 It was just awful. I was like, "Oh my 45:44 god, we've just taken $200 million and 45:46 burned it in a bonfire." As you make a 45:49 film, most things tend to work along 45:51 this sliding scale of like, "Yeah, 45:53 that's got to that's going to get 45:54 better. We need to tweak that." And you 45:56 just adjust it. It's like tightening 45:57 with lug nuts on a tire. You do this one 45:59 and then you do that one a little bit 46:00 and you do that one a little bit and you 46:02 keep the rotation. But every now and 46:04 again you get somewhere where it just 46:06 doesn't and you're like this will never 46:08 work. This we will never get past. So 46:11 what do we do? The solution was a 46:14 ruthless cut. So Rick Rubin talked about 46:17 this and it's again think about what 46:19 Steve Jobs did when we talked about 46:20 Steve Jobs in exile. Comes back to to 46:22 Apple and says you have you know 300 46:27 products. We're going to do four. We're 46:28 going to do this ruthless cut. This 46:30 ruthless edit. So, the ruthless cut in 46:32 this book, what Nolan's talking about is 46:34 called The Ruthless Edit by Rick Rubin. 46:35 Let's say they're stuck. We need 10 46:38 songs on an album and I'm working with 46:39 this band that's really important. You 46:40 know, we have 15 that we kind of like or 46:42 20 that we kind of like. Let's not try 46:44 to cut that 20 down to 10. Let's cut 46:45 that 20 down to three. There's what are 46:48 the three we cannot live without and 46:50 then let's try to add each one back. So, 46:53 number four, what is one that absolutely 46:55 has to be number four? and you know if 46:57 you got it or not, there's not one that 46:58 actually has to record. That means you 46:59 you made now you made 17 that of the 20 47:02 that you're not going to use. So then 47:03 you might have to make another 20, 30, 47:04 40, 50 songs. But again, when you're 47:06 stuck, just ruthlessly cut, ruthlessly 47:09 edit. Uh absolutely love that idea. I 47:10 think it's a really interesting idea. 47:12 Goes back to his desire to live in an 47:15 analog world. I think this is just a 47:16 really great metaphor. The idea that you 47:18 do not want to encourage dependency and 47:20 you want to be able to find your way. 47:22 Before I read this to you, something 47:23 else popped in my mind just now where he 47:25 talks about, you know, like his kids at 47:26 the time. Now, can you imagine what you 47:28 would do with like chachi BT uh but his 47:30 kids at the time like if they wanted to 47:32 look up information, they just Google 47:33 and they get it immediately. He's like, 47:35 well, when I was younger, I had to like 47:36 go through like the Dewey decimal system 47:38 in the library or something or like I 47:39 have to hunt for that information. And 47:42 that activity of hunting, of working, of 47:46 it being laborious to get what you want, 47:49 he says that activity, even if you don't 47:51 get take away what you got after the 47:53 activity, that activity of putting in 47:56 the work and the effort is valuable in 47:57 and of itself. And so he's trying to get 48:00 his kids, you know, away from just 48:02 overly like being dependent and over 48:04 relying, essentially outsourcing their 48:06 thinking. So he says you have to be 48:08 really careful on how much information 48:09 you're given. There's a danger when we 48:10 start to rely on particular technologies 48:12 or on corporations that manage our 48:13 information and track our movements. 48:14 They're encouraging dependency. One of 48:17 the things I try to teach my kids is 48:18 when we go to a new city, I like to 48:19 wander around and get lost and then 48:20 explain to them how I've managed to find 48:22 my way without a phone, without a map. I 48:24 just embrace that. I said, "Look, we'll 48:26 get lost, but we'll find our way." It's 48:28 something that applies to film making 48:30 very, very directly because you look at 48:33 the plan of the set that you're 48:34 building. You're always reconciling 48:37 two-dimensional imagery with 48:39 three-dimensional space. But again, you 48:41 don't want to encourage dependency. You 48:42 want to be able to find your way. I 48:44 think that's just a great metaphor for 48:46 life. So, moving ahead, he likes 48:48 constraints. He doesn't like rules. And 48:50 so, he says what you don't want as a 48:51 filmmaker is to feel restrictive. So, 48:54 one of his favorite movies is 2001, a 48:57 space odyssey. It was actually produced 48:58 in 1968. Created in 1968 by Stanley 49:00 Kubri. And he's just got a great line 49:03 about this. He says, "That's why I say 49:04 2001 is the punk rock of movies. It's 49:06 not that it breaks all the rules. It's a 49:08 film that doesn't acknowledge that there 49:11 are any rules." And so, go back to that 49:14 line from the Joker from earlier. The 49:15 only sensible way to live in this world 49:17 is without rules. One of Nolan's 49:20 favorite movies. This is his 49:21 description. One of his favorite movies. 49:23 It's not that it breaks all the rules. 49:24 It's a film that doesn't acknowledge 49:26 that there are any rules. And you see, 49:28 Nolan does exactly this. So, he talks 49:30 about how he built Dunkirk. Dunkirk is a 49:33 war movie. That is a well-worn, 49:36 well-known genre, right? And so he's 49:38 describing what he wanted to do. Pure 49:40 present tense, pure climax. There would 49:42 be no shots of generals pushing boats 49:44 across a map, no Churchill, no politics. 49:46 From its very first sequence, we are 49:48 given the film's starkly uklitian moral 49:51 calculus. Survive or die. What I 49:54 stripped away on Dunkirk was the 49:56 backstory. If you think about what he's 49:57 doing here, he's describing this is a 49:59 product that is defined by what it 50:01 doesn't have. He's not he's rejecting 50:03 that there are rules for a war film. He 50:06 keeps going. We made a war film in which 50:09 we don't use any of the visually chaotic 50:11 devices. Lots of quick cuts, lots of 50:13 activity, lots of smoke, lots of fire, 50:15 bits and bobs flying everywhere that 50:18 usually sell the idea of war to an 50:20 audience. Dunkirk is entirely about the 50:23 absence of those things. And then 50:26 finally, the last idea I want to tell 50:27 you about is this combination of 50:29 discipline and obsession. It's the fact 50:31 that I keep going no matter what, and I 50:33 make sure that my team knows it. I'm 50:36 known in the film business for having 50:37 good luck with weather. That's 50:38 inaccurate. I often have terrible luck 50:40 with weather, but my philosophy is to 50:42 shoot no matter what the weather is. 50:45 Always shooting no matter what weather. 50:47 Just keep going. Just keep going. 50:50 Letting everybody on the crew and cast 50:52 know that we're really serious about 50:54 doing that. No matter what the 50:56 conditions are, shoot in any weather. 51:01 And that is where I'll leave it. That is 51:03 426 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll 51:07 talk to you again soon.