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Christopher Nolan - _The Odyssey_ _ The Daily Show · Mic Drop Comedy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Please welcome Christopher Nolan!
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: Welcome! Thank you.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Let me begin by saying this.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: I saw this on Sunday. Thank you very much. Your
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: people set up a lovely screening. It's a staggering work,
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: just remarkable, to the point where I feel like I
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: know a lot of the tricks. I don't know how
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: you did it. I honestly don't.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: That's all practical, right? Those are real boats. That's real water.
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: This is not- Yeah, real boats, real water. It's the Odyssey.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: I wanted to take the audience on this incredible journey.
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: And for me, I mean, we use every trick in
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: the book, certainly, but the basis of it is to
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: get the actors, get Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, everybody,
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: Rob Pattinson, get them out there in the world, find locations,
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: real locations, get a real boat. Uh, you know, get
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: out there... Get a real Cyclops. Get a real Cyclops.
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: As close as we could, yep. Yep, exactly.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: What made you decide to take on this epic work?
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: Well, coming out of, um, my last film, Oppenheimer, um,
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: had way more success than I think we had any
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: right to expect. Um, and that gives you an opportunity
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: to get something made that you might not otherwise be
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: able to get made.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: You would have had trouble, Christopher Nolan, after everything, after Interstellar,
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: after Inception, after Memento, after Batman, you would have had
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: trouble selling that had it not been for Oppenheimer?
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: I think it helped that it was very successful.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: You think the Oscar thing helped?
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: I think the Oscar thing helped. I think it all
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: helped to go to the studio and say, because being
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: the Odyssey, it needs a massive budget. it needs a
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: massive cast, it needs a lot. So you're asking a
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: lot of the studio, you're asking a lot of the
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: cast and everybody. You know, I like to say it
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: was a very hard movie, but hard for all the
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: right reasons. You know, it's the Odyssey, it should be hard.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It shows up on screen. I mean, all of it
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: shows up on screen.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: Someone was telling me that you actually completed it ahead
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: of schedule, as you have with all of your movies,
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: and under budget.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. Never happened. Never happened. I mean, it's just.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: How?
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, the reality is, you know, we went
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: in at 100 days. And by day 91, we couldn't
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: have taken another step. So we finished the right time.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: You were done.
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: We were done. Everybody was done. I mean, people were
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: just exhausted.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: They'd been through it. So, you know, it took the
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: right time to make the film. We had enough time
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: to make it. We had the resources to make it.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: There is now... I am obviously... I don't want to
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: say an expert in mythology and Greek literature. Some would say.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: LAUGHTER But some of our writers are experts.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: And so when we walked out, I walked out with
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: someone who has actually studied those texts in Greek. And
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: I was looking at him like, because for me, I
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: was utterly absorbed and transformed by the powerful storytelling and
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: the epic nature of it and all those things. But
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: this is a person that, to be frank, would probably
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: be a bit of a pain in the ass to
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: watch The Odyssey with.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Loved it.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, great. Great.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: One note.
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: OK. It's a little late.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: What time is it?
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Are you ready?
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Apparently there is a joke that Odysseus makes with Cyclops.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: Yes. Yes.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: He was very upset that that was not in the movie.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: I understand. It's a pun. Puns in translation are tough.
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: Do you do a lot of puns in your monologues
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: every night?
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: We do sometimes, but only because we write the show
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: at a fifth grade level. to slightly different.
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: There you go. It was, I tried. It was not
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: possible to work it in.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: Have you, when you do something like this, that so
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: many people feel a sense of ownership over.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Or did the experience with things like Batman already kind
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: of inure you to that experience?
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Not inure.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: It taught you what's at the base of it. You know,
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: when you take on the character of Batman, as we
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: did in the Dark Knight trilogy, you were dealing with,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: at that time, 75 years of history with a beloved
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: character who'd been worked on by these incredible writers and artists.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: And what we learned in that experience is if we
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: made the best film we possibly could, if we put
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: as strong an interpretation on the character as we could,
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: the fans felt the respect and the love for the
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: source material, even if we weren't doing exactly what they
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: would have done. That was what was important, was to
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: respect the material. And I think the same applies very
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: much to Homer.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: That is a very interesting take because I would imagine
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: it's easy to approach it with almost a sense of defensiveness,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: which I've seen in those kinds of films where they say, well,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: these people, it's a toxic fandom and they won't.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: But that's a very different mindset, which is, I want to.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: Make sure that I've honored this material in the right
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: way and that should resonate with them.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, that's what we found at every stage
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: with those movies. People have very strong feelings about the characters.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: They're interested. And that's a huge advantage for a filmmaker.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, the fact that people... have been fascinated by
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: the Odyssey for 3,000 years. The fact that people care
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: about the film coming out, that's a huge advantage. It
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: means we've got people's attention, and now we have to
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: show them something that feels worthwhile, that feels like it
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: does justice to this incredible story.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Right, and it does have that epic nature. This is
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: going to feel far afield. It felt like, in some respects,
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: the Odyssey was a sequel to Oppenheimer.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And I know that sounds incredibly dumb. So let me
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: explain why I think that. I'm incredibly dumb.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: When I think about Oppenheimer, what so stayed with me
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: in that movie was the weight that Oppenheimer must have
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: felt when he saw the reality of what he had created.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: And the Odyssey feels like a journey of a man
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: reckoning with what he had done in war and what
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: war does to men. They felt very connected to me.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Both films.
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: I was about to stop you because we don't want
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: any spoilers.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: 3,000-year-old spoilers. But no, I am very much, I feel
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: like you certainly watched the film the way I intended.
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: And I think by the end, that connection is made.
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: the interpretation of the Odyssey, what it could mean, the
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: idea of these extraordinary events of the Trojan War, the Force,
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: all of this. Yeah, we wanted to try and wrestle
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: with it in a modern sense, to try and say, okay,
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: what if these things were real? What if we were there?
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: What would it be like? What would the resonance be?
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: What would the gravity of the situation be? And in micro,
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: it's things like being on a real ship in a
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: real storm or going into the cave of the Cyclops.
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: What would that really be like? And the answer is intense.
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: And as far as the effect of everything that Odysseus
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: has been through and what part he's played in this
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: mythic conflict, the Trojan War, yeah, it felt like the
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: thing to do was to really try and take that
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: on with a certain amount of weight, a certain amount
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: of gravity. But for me, every film I do, if
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: I've done my job right, I leave it. with questions
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: and sort of interesting things that I want to keep
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: drilling down on. And coming out of Oppenheimer, yeah, I
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: definitely brought Oppenheimer into this movie with me, yeah, certainly.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: And it's also because the movies are all so well-constructed.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: I feel like you would have been a great architect
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: as well if you wanted to be. Like, there's such
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: wonderful symmetry and puzzles to unfold in there. Do you
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: approach it as a constructor?
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: I do. I mean, I do, before I write, I
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: do a lot of sort of diagramming out. I write,
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: you know, I draw a lot of pictures, not storyboards,
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: but actually diagrams of the narrative and how the structure
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: might work. And coming to this poem, I mean, Homer's
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: original is one of the great nonlinear structures, which for me,
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: you know, that's the kind of structure I enjoy in
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: cinematic storytelling. So I really try to be faithful to that.
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I do a lot of sort of visual diagramming,
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: a lot of trying to think in, trying to find
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: ways to think of the narrative in three-dimensional terms. Then
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: I sit down and write when I've done months and
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: months of that.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: And it does, you know, you said something interesting when
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: you said, you know, it's this nonlinear story. And it
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: has so many narrators, and you don't know who's reliable
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: and who is not reliable. Is that something you have
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: to decide as you go in? Do you think to yourself, well, Telemachus,
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: he's reliable, or Penelope is, or even Odysseus is?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Are there moments where you think, did this even happen
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: to him?
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Is this just his mind trying to erase the pain
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: of what he went through in Troy?
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: Well, we're going deep now.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Go deep, baby.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. I know.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: I will never get a chance to get high with
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: you in a dorm room.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: So this is it, baby.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: This is all we got.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: Because it really, I'm telling you, this is a poignant work.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: It really speaks to the moment we're in and everything.
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: No, I mean, I actually... I love the nature of
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: the question. I'm just trying to think of how to
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: answer it for people who haven't seen the movie, and
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: I don't want to, well, I never like to define
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: the experience for the audience. So for me, there are ambiguities.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: There are questions. There are layers in which things can work,
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: but The answer to the first part of your question,
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: and this has always been the case for me with
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: my work, is I have to know the answer. I
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: have to know what I believe the answer to be.
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: And then otherwise, the ambiguities won't be productive. They'll be
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: a sort of non-answer, as opposed to if you look
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: at the ending of Inception, for example, the spinning top.
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: People often will ask me, you know. Was it? Well, exactly.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And when you approach it, though, in your mind, you
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: know the answer. Yes.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: But that's not something that you put out there because
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: that changes the experience for the viewer.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: First time I ever took a film, you know, really
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: out there and did a bunch of interviews on it
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: was Memento.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: And that's a film I wrote based on a short
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: story that my brother had written. And he came with me,
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: came with us to the Venice Film Festival, which is
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: where we premiered it. And right afterwards, I was asked
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: a bunch of questions, and they asked me about the
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: ambiguity at the end. And I said, well, it's meant
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: to be up to you, but I think it's this, this, this.
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: And he took me aside, and he's like, nobody heard
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: the first part where they said it's meant to be
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: up to you. All they hear is what you say.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: Your interpretation trumps everything. You can never do that again.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: And he was right, and I never have since then. Because.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: OK, I'm just going to cross out my McConaughey in
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: the library interstellar question.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Son of a bitch!
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: Do you find yourself, because it feels like the type
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: of project that's so literally immersive, do you have to
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: complete a work before you begin to do those diagrams
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: and sketches of other work? Or do you find yourself
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: in certain phases of it beginning to plant seeds in
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: other areas that you'll revisit?
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: No, I very specifically do one thing at a time.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: Once I burrow in on a project, nothing else exists.
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, family, just about. One of the responsibilities, but
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: one of the great thrills of my job is you
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: get to sort of live in a world for a
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: couple of years. And I devote myself to that fully.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: And for me, that's never finished, really, until the film
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: goes out to the audience. The audience finishes the movie.
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: They tell us what it is that we did. And
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: so we're right now, you know, a few days away
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: and it's a terrifying time.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Is that so? Do you feel a little bit of
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the jitters from that?
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: Or do you think you've got a pretty good idea
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: of where you think it'll land for people?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Have you seen it enough with people?
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: I've seen it enough with people. We screen it as
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: we go to guinea pigs, you know.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Sure. By the way, also in the movie. Odysseus fights
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: guinea pigs.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: He's changed some things around.
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so you have an idea of how the movie's
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: playing for an audience, but the truth is there's nothing
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: like going out into the world for thousands and thousands
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: of screens all over the world over one weekend. I mean,
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: that's a very different thing, and it never gets any easier,
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: and it's absolutely terrifying.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Can I ask you one particular sequence? The Trojan horse sequence,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: which is.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: Something that I think for all of us that have
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: a familiarity with, you know, the Iliad and the Odyssey
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: and sort of our introduction to myth and Edith Hamilton and,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: you know, how that all spins off. The Trojan horse
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: had always existed as a certain methodology for how it
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: gets into Troy.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: You take a very.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Different approach that I thought landed thematically the poignancy of
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: it much better. So I guess what I'm saying is,
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: Homer ain't got shit on you. But no, what was
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: the process just going into that particular scene? Because just
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: the mechanics of it seemed so difficult, but also it just,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: it felt like such a brilliant summation thematically of the
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: weight that Odysseus felt like he was carrying.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, A lot of that thinking for me
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: comes about as a result of looking at it saying, okay,
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: how can we have this work and be credible for
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: a modern audience? We all know when we see a
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: Trojan horse that it's stuffed with Greeks. So you're starting
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: from a difficult position. It's like, how do you sell
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: that concept?
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: It's a pinata that fights back.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: It's a pinata that fights back. And I had actually,
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: 20 years ago, I was briefly attached to direct Troy.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: the film that David Benioff had written based on the Iliad.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, I read that. That was the Brad Pitt.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I had to figure out, because the horse
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: was in that script, even though it's not in the Iliad,
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: they put it in the film. And so I had
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: to sort of figure out, well, what's my approach to it?
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: And I came up with this idea of the horse
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: half buried in the sand, about to be destroyed or
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: carried away by the waves, so that as the Trojans
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: find it, the last thing, it looks like, you know,
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: there's no wheels, it doesn't look like something that... that's
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: meant to be carried into the city. And that image
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: stuck with me for decades. I really wanted to do
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: that and flesh out the whole sequence. Because to me,
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: that was the excitement. It's like, can we present this
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: to an audience in a way that they can believe in?
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: And that was the sort of mantra for everybody on
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: the film with every sequence. People want to go on
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: this journey with us. Let's give them a reason to believe.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: It's grounded in a practical realism that I think is
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: what helps it create that epic, because I'm raised in
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: the Clash of the Titans generation. It was sort of
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: like Harry Hamlin with the band and then like the
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Scylla comes into the water.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: It was all like claymation and camp.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: And that's how, I've never seen that type of movie
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: portrayed with a sort of, like you say, grounded realism, even.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: Though they're gods. Well, and this is the thing is,
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: when we looked at it, greek mythology hadn't really been
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: told in in modern cinema in that way the work
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: of ray harryhausen you're talking about clash of the titans
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: and things like that very very brilliant handmade amazing approach
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: but always on a b-movie budget never with the ability
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: to kind of put it out there big right you
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: know with with an incredible cast and you know on
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: on that sort of scale um and i think it
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: was those technical limitations like in the great era of
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: you know, sword and sandals movies of the 50s and 60s. Right.
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: You have the techniques to be able to embrace the fantastical.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: And what is the Odyssey without the fantastical? You want
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: to see the Cyclops. You want to see Scylla and
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: Charybdis and the Sirens and Circe and all of that.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Circe, boy, those scenes are just spectacular.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: And Samantha Morton, incredible actor.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Incredible.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: One I've had to work with for a long time.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: And you even had to, you know, when you were
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: talking about the technology of it, you had to sort
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: of create machinery that didn't exist because IMAX.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: It's notoriously loud.
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: Yes, cameras are, I mean, it's like a generator.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: It's a crazy thing to have to act in front of.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: So in the past, we'd always used it for the
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: action scenes. I saw IMAX first when I was about
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: 16 years old at the Museum of Science and Industry
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: in Chicago. And I wanted, right then, I was like,
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: if I could ever... At 16? Yeah, yeah, I wanted
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: to make a film entirely in IMAX. On The Dark Knight,
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: I had the opportunity to meet with IMAX and say,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: can we use your cameras and do the action scenes
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: that way? So the introduction of Heath Ledger's Joker, truck flip,
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: all that stuff. All that's IMAX. But because the cameras
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: are so loud, we couldn't do performances. We couldn't capture
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: the dialogue. And so finally with this film, I called
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: them up and I said, look, if ever there were
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: a film to do the entire film in IMAX, this
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: is the one. So can we find a way to
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: silence the cameras? And they built this blimping system. this
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: kind of high-tech box. You put the camera in, and
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: then you can act.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: So you're filming Dalek, but that IMAX has got to
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: run out. How long? What's the cartridge on an IMAX?
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: A little under three minutes.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So every three minutes?
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: Every three minutes, you're saying to the actors, just stay
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: in that mode.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Stay in the water.
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: Incredibly dramatic scene.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Take a break.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: And you came in nine days faster and under budget,
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: even with that.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: Well, I think actually sometimes the limitations give... everybody a
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: real focus. And so I went to the actors early
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: on and I said, in the middle of your most
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: intense scene, is it okay if we just stop the camera,
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: reload it, keep everybody quiet?
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Here's what I'm gonna say.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: You're a wizard, Harry. And the film is spectacular. And
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: as always, you are my favorite filmmaker. And I just
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: so appreciate.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: The intentionality that you put into it, and the craft
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: of it, and the beauty of it.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: And it's just spectacular.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: And I do hope everybody rushes out to see it
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: in the way that it was intended, because it's really
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: a remarkable piece of work.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Congratulations.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Christopher Nolan, ladies and gentlemen.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Honestly, I'm excited to work July 17th.