Happy Sad Confused - Christopher Nolan, Vol. III

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Christopher Nolan returns for his 3rd visit (!) to HAPPY SAD CONFUSED to discuss OPPENHEIMER, his amazing cast, James Bond, and more! To watch episodes of Happy Sad Confused, subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh's youtube channel here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes of GAME NIGHT, video versions of the podcast, and more!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today on Happy, Sad, Confused, I'm Josh Horowitz, and I'm thrilled beyond belief to welcome back for the third time. He's a Glenifer punishment. He's only one of the greatest filmmakers on the planet. And again, he raises the bar with his newest film. Christopher Nolan, we're talking Oppenheimer. Welcome back to the podcast, sir. Thank you.

We have a lot to talk about. This is a rich film that we could have 25 different conversations. We'll have one or two today. First of all, what does it mean? What do you hope your name means on a film to an audience member at this point in your career? Wow, that's a tough one to answer. What do I?

I mean, I hope it means a commitment to, the technical sign of the film and to the creative side that we're trying to make the best film possible. So I suppose really, I mean, I've always said sincerity is the key thing with the filmmaker. Like if you go to see a film and if you think that the people who made that film have genuinely made the best film that they possibly can,

then I don't feel I've wasted my time no matter what the film is, no matter how it is. And so I would certainly want people to expect that and trust that from me that, you know, whatever the film's good or bad or indifferent is up for other people to say but but I want people to know that I've gone to the mat for the film and we've we've done the best we possibly can at this point in career in your career I assume you look you have your methodologies and your inner circle people that you trust I'm just curious like is it is you're producing partners

your wife like who do you show the film to when you get in the last stages are you the type of filmmaker that would ever show a film to another filmmaker you admire or is that at point in your career you kind of like you can trust your gut and have people that can call you out if there is a question that needs to be questioned I mean I think every film like has a different process and the studios try to impose a certain process a lot of filmmakers it's time-honored you know for a hundred years of doing this involving research screenings and so forth some filmmakers will show their films to other filmmakers or God forbid critics

or but I you know there's a lot of notes Christopher by the way there's a lot of different ways to skin that cat and you know everybody's different but there are

advantages and disadvantages to each way of doing those things and what I try to do is use the thing that works for me and the peculiar magic of cinema is based on its combination of

subjective experience like a novel. You can be in the first person, you can be watching a film with a very, very personal response like reading a book, but you also have this empathetic response that you share

with the rest of the audience. And that's what makes film unique. There's no other form. The theatre doesn't have that because it has the one, it has the audience, but it doesn't have that same intense subjectivity. of narrative information coming across. And so cinema combines both those things. So in terms of how I go about sort of finishing the film, checking the work, you know, you look for,

okay, how do I get that empathetic response? How do I gauge how that's working? And what Emma and I have found over the years works well for us is to, you know, start watching the film ourselves at the end of every editing week and bring in individuals, people who haven't read the script, don't know, one person at a time,

just watch the film with them. And a lot of the benefit of that isn't so much the conversation afterwards. It isn't putting people on the spot and say, what worked, what didn't work? It's that there's a magical process whereby you'll watch the film through that person's eyes very much.

And it shows you your film in a different way. And then when you talk to the person afterwards, you'd be shocked how many times, the things that that person raises are the things you thought yourself while you were watching it with them it's a really magical process and so we start from that point of view and then we will it's important to watch every important to me to watch every film with a larger group to to do test screenings but without scoring the film or submitting yourself to a sort of

intensive research process but you want to sit in the room with you know a couple hundred people and feel how the movie plays that's an important part of So I want to talk about the Mr. Robert Oppenheimer, your protagonist in this, who follows in a line of conflicted, obsessive protagonist for you. And there's no, I don't know, greater moral quandary, no greater inner conflict, I think possible to a human being than the one that this man faced. When this material was presented to you, the book, The Life, The Prospect of Dealing with It, did you immediately know what your way in was what story you wanted? to tell about Robert Oppenheimer? I mean, I think I knew a bit about Oppenheimer. The thing that had stuck the most of my mind about Oppenheimer was, you know, the moment

in the Manhattan Project where they realized with their calculations that there's this possibility that in triggering the first atomic device, that they'd set fire to the atmosphere and destroy the entire world. And I included that as analogy, really, or as example in Tenet. In Tenet, we try and use the example of Oppenheimer that notion that they might have set fire to the world in that way as analogy for the science fiction events of the story. And I think at the end of that film, you know, I was left with an interest in that particular moment. It's like, okay, what if rather than using it as science fiction analogy, what if we

actually try and take the audience into that room, you know, for that moment? You know, what, what would that be? It's interesting because we've talked before about some influences on your work and like many 2001 was an important influence. And I was watching the film and some of the early sequences of kind of in Oppenheimer's head recalled for me the Stargate sequence at the end of 2001. Does that, does that resonate at all in terms of what, I don't know, is that just an unconscious, unconscious influence at this point in your, in your work, you think? I mean, it's unconscious, conscious, it's foundational. It's like, you know, one of my, one of my earliest movie experiences, you know, one of the most inspiring early experiences as a

film goer is that Stargate sequence, is going to see 2001 on that, on the screen, and feeling that incredible tactile sense of acceleration through that imagery, through that light and sound. So I think that sort of carries with me as some idea of what are the mechanical possibilities of cinema. What can that big screen make you feel or make you experience? And when I spoke to Andrew Jackson, my visual effects supervisor, who was one of the first people I showed the script to

Because I said, can you approach, you know, looking at quantum mechanics, trying to show the energy of atoms and all the rest? Can you not do that with computer graphics? Can we apply that, showing that thought process of visualizing that energy? And then indeed, you know, taking that through to the Trinity test and the great destructive power that gets magnified into, can we portray these things without computer graphics of that animation. And I think the Stargate sequence, one of the things that, you know, a few years ago when

we did our Hoyter and myself, we collaborated in what we call our Under Restoration of 2001, where we just had, we went back to an old film element and printed the film exactly as it would have been seen by audiences at the time. The striking thing about that light show that Douglas Trumbull put together, that brilliance of it is that it's very invigorating and threatening and frightening because it's somehow real. It's somehow something that's photographed in camera. And I think that the issue with computer graphics for me is they're incredibly versatile.

So it's a very seductive form. But there's a slightly anodyne, slightly safe quality to computer graphics. It's almost too perfect. It's almost too perfect. Yeah. And I think there's also that kind of absolute realization on the part of an audience of what's animation

and what's something that's being photographed, whether or not the thing being photographed is the actual thing, whether it's a miniature representation or a more abstract representation. And so Andrew went off and immediately started looking at, okay, what are the different things, at different scales, different ways of portraying, particles, waves of energy, those kind of things.

How can we get that across? And really it was about tactility. It was really about trying to tap into that sense of abstraction. I mean, it's funny. I don't think it was that conscious of the influence of 2001, of this film in particular, but when you mention it, so, well, of course, certainly in terms of methodology, it was very much an influence because they,

you know, Trumbull and Kubrick and all the people involved, they did a lot of stuff with very, very small elements, you know, oil and water and sort of that kind of thing, in a way that they never fully explained, so we weren't able to copy it completely. It had to go our own way. But they kept the secrets very close to the chest, but it was about a confusion of scale.

It was about the macro and the micro, the absolute minute. nature to portray the cosmos. And that confusion of scale is a part of the story of Oppenheimer. It's the visualization of the energy between and amongst molecules, particles, and the magnification of that and how it, you know, in the universe, stars, black holes, things like that, how they're defined by the same rules. And then when you start to unleash that power, the cosmic size of the forces.

So there is a deliberate confusion of scale. the visualization of these things. Yeah, I think it does relate to that methodology in that film. I'd love to talk a bit about your approach to casting in this, and we'll talk about Killian, but I also want to just take a step back and look at this remarkable ensemble that you've collected that, I've seen to someone before, you know, I grew up in kind of the heyday of like Oliver Stone,

and I was think of like JFK and Nixon and how he cast every particular, like, there were movie stars, but they were great actors. And there was something delicious about that. And, I mean, I think back to, I mean, I think you talked about this when you were like Batman Begins and when you were producing Man of Steel, like the approach of what Donner did of kind of like filling every role with top-notch, A-list, amazing actors and movie stars, and that kind of elevates the entire material.

Yeah. Is that, I guess, just like, how do you cast at this point? And is that, does that, like, has that philosophy changed over the years or why, in this case, Did it suit the material to kind of cast in the way that you did? I mean, it's interesting you go back to those examples that, you know, we go back to Dick Donner, Superman, and the feeling of watching, you know, even the trailer for that, you know, I was a little kid, you know, and seeing, you know, Marlon Brando, you know,

I mean, all this incredible actors that make up that cast. Very much, that was how we tried to get a sense of importance and scale into Batman begins and someone like that. other films. But in the case of Oppenheimer, it's also, it's not just about stars. We have an incredible cast, you know, Robert Danny Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Forrest Pugh, Rami Malick, Gary Oldman, I mean, it's a long list. Yes, it is. But it's also a distinctive list. It's a list of very distinct talents of people. And a lot of small actors of people won't be so familiar with they're there and what they're helping me with is we're working from a

point of view of historical reality and I did not feel comfortable creating film with composite characters so I didn't want to take something that Louis Alvarez has done and combine that with Robert Serbo you know whatever what I wanted was you know Alex Wolfe to come on and play Alvarez and you recognize them as a great distinct talent and you know you have these people come in they We don't necessarily have a lot of screen time in the film, but you remember them, you recognize them, and you recognize their sort of contribution to the overall. And that was very important to the feel and the makeup of the ensemble. My casting director John Pappsadera, who I've worked with since Memento.

He's just one of the great casting directors who can put together an incredible cast of interesting faces and voices and really, really bring wonderful energy to to the table. I loved seeing, you know, some of the returning actors, but also some folks that you've kind of forwarded with working with in the past. Josh Hartnett, legend has it, was someone that you considered for Batman way back when. Is that true?

Did you screen test him or even offer him the role of Batman? No, it never got that far. I mean, I met with Josh, and as I recall, you know, he was somebody, he was a young actor whose work I was very interested in. And I, you know, I had an initial conversation with him, but he was more interested. He'd read my brother's script for the prestige at the time and was sort of more interested in getting involved with that. So it never

kind of went further than that. But he was a young actor who were paying a lot of attention to. And I think his work over the years in the last few years, he's done some really interesting things and really looked to stretch himself. So I was really pretty excited to get him come and play Ernest Lawrence. He shares a lot of things with Lawrence as a character and where they're from the sort of backgrounds and things and I think he does a really great job in the film. As does, again, we can go down the list, but I do want to mention Robert Downey Jr. because, I mean, he's a long time Downey fan. To see him, look, I love Iron Man. I'll watch him play Iron Man until the end of time, and I did, I feel like, but to see him kind of do something different and kind of let go of vanity

and play a really different kind of a role for him was delicious. I mean, we can never forget. At the end of the day, this guy is one of our truly brilliant actors. Yeah, very much. I mean, I thought, when Favreau had the insight to cast him, was Iron Man. I mean, that's one of the greatest casting decisions in the history of movies. And you look at what that did and where that went

with everything. And I think that was John just knowing what an incredible actor, what incredible potential it was from down here. And then the movie star charisma, that wonderful charisma comes into play. What was cool about getting to work with Danny on this project was to be able to go to him

and say, okay, put that charisma, put that movie star thing to one side for a second and just lose yourself in this real life human being who is so complex and has such an incredible part to play in Oppenheimer's story. And to watch him just sort of go back to that, that genius as an actor, just finding the truth. During the Volvo Fall Experience event,

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And I'm Paul Shear, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters. We come together to host Unspool, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, must-season, and case you missed them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Greece to the Dark Night. So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to hit the follow button. In another human being and presenting it and the things he does in the film, I think a lot of his fan base are going to be extremely surprised. It's really cool to see somebody who's achieved such greatness as a movie star that pivot completely and stretch themselves in a way that a lot of people haven't seen him do. We've talked before about kind of like your realization at some point in your career that like kind of the cross-cutting technique, especially in your, towards the end of your films you've found, one plus one equal, you know, more than two.

There was an additive quality of kind of going back and forth. And you've played with that in different ways throughout your films. I'm curious, like, do you remember what that goes back to? I think back to the end of the Godfather films where Coppola just did that to such exceptional. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think I came to the Godfather a little later than that.

I think for me, there are a few key creative things that stuck in my head with that. One of which is literary, is a book I had to read in school. It was a marvelous novel by Graham Swift called Waterland that has different timelines and cross cuts. And I was reading that, I think, the first time I ever saw Alan Parker's Pink Floyd the Wall, which has an extraordinary visual version of that mixing of timelines and cross-cutting, but then also feeding in elements from one to the other.

At the same time, I was looking a lot in the films of Nicholas Rogue and the brilliant editing of those, which is sometimes very, very impressionistic. And so I think those sorts of things were key drivers for me in terms of really wanting to look at non-chronological narratives or cross-cutting within a chronology so that you're, and the example you use of Godfather is a perfect example of, yeah, how you can jump between timelines and have that add up to more than the sum of its parts. It's also from a filmmaking point of view, it's marvelously practical because a lot of the challenge you face with making a film and a given period of time, you know, how long you have the location for, where the actors are, whatever, is the continuity and the absolute continuity of the sequence that you have to get in the can, just the number of setups from the rest. If you know that you have the ability to cross cut with other timelines, it's very freeing. You can be a little more careless about your coverage. You could think a little bit more about. about the individual moment and not worry so much about, okay, do I have the end point in, yeah, exactly, do I have the bit where he opens the door

and walks in and sits down, are we gonna know where the coffee cup came from or whatever that stuff? You get to be a bit freer with that. Yeah, I mean, in a way, like I mean, I've only seen the movie once, but like the first section of the movies feels just like extended montage and you're kind of like lost.

Yeah, and it's kind of a dreamlike quality that kind of immerses you. Yeah, we're trying to pack a lot of passage of time, a lot of thought, a lot of experience, experience and those characters caught into a very short space of time. So using montage and musical montage and that in a hopefully very focused way, that's the idea anyway. We'll try and get a lot in. And speaking of immersion, we haven't talked about the IMAX, which obviously you're a great proponent of.

And we've very rarely, if ever seen, I feel IMAX used to this kind of effect. And we've talked about the spectacle of this film and the Trinity Test, etc. But the truth is, a lot of this film is also on Killian's face, on that remarkable face. One of your greatest special effects is his eyes. But talk to me a little bit about using IMAX in the service of drama, of just great drama, classic drama. And part of you hope that others take advantage of that. I mean, you're in rarefied air where you can use it. But you'd be curious to see others use it to that effect.

I live for the day when I get to go and see some other filmmaker make something on IMAX film and actually cut those negatives and print it and, you know, the photocomical process because it's a really powerful tool for immersion. It's a really powerful tool for the emotional connection with the material. I'd love to see other filmmakers working that way. I think there's often this confusion in the way we talk about film and the language, the sales language that we invoke We talk about epic and big, all these sorts of things. But the thing about the movie screen is it's the same size for any movie, if you know what I mean.

So cinema can be anything, and it could tell any kind of story. And the particular cameras we use, the reason they're well suited to a large-scale story is because of their clarity of vision and the wonderful analogy that they have between the way the human eye sees and the way that events are recorded on film. And that applies to any kind of storytelling. Any filmmaker is going to benefit from that. So, no, I strongly encourage any filmmaker I'm talking to to try and shoot photochemically

and hopefully a large format photochemically because the imagery is beautiful and it's just fun to do and it lends itself to any kind of storytelling of any scale. You're one of a handful of filmmakers that is recognizable to a lot of the public, like just out in the wild. I'm curious, like you must get a lot of folks,

I would imagine a lot of folks want to talk about Der Steller and the Batman films, The End of Inception. What's your stock answer when someone comes up to you at Starbucks and is like, Christopher, what happened at the end of Inception? I haven't been asked that in a while, thankfully. I went through a phase, right off the film came out where I was asked it a lot. Every now and again, I would make the mistake of getting caught outside of the screening where everyone was coming out, you know.

Three hours later. Exactly. No, I think it was Emma who came. kind of pointed out the correct answer really is that the character, Leo's character the point of the shot is the character doesn't care at that point. Right.

And that's really the best answer I'll come up with. But it's, yeah, it's not a question I comfortably answer. It's nice to be in the pantheon of like, you know, that kind of like Quentin gets like the briefcase at the end of Pulp Fiction, Sophia gets when a Bill Murray whisper. There are a handful of these.

It's definitely fun to be a poet that great canon. Absolutely. I don't know if you're a gambling man, Christopher. I have a bet for you. Only professionally. $20 says you're going to direct the next Bond movie. $20? $100? What do you want to go? I'm a working man.

I couldn't possibly take a bet like that. You don't want to take my money or because I wouldn't want to define my whole career on whether or not I get to take $20 from Josh. So. I'd like to be able to keep a clear head if I'm ever asked to director Barnford.

I see. That would influence. I don't want to, yeah. I'd lose that. The guilt of taking my money. Exactly. I wouldn't want to fork over that $20. In all seriousness, it feels like this is the time.

We've talked before about this. And you've said when they need me. I was going to say last time. You've said when they need me, when the time is right, great. If not, you know, you've been very diplomatic about it. Yeah. Well, not diplomatic. I mean, honest about it.

I love those movies, the influence of those movies on my, filmography is embarrassingly apparent you know and so there's no no attempt to to shy away from from that I love the films and you know it would be an amazing privilege to do one at the same time when you take on a character like that or work like that you're working within a particular set of constraints yes and so you know you have to to have the right attitude towards that. It has to be the right moment in your creative life

where you can express what you want to express and really burrow into something within the appropriate constraints because you would never want to take on something like that and sort of do it wrong. It's the kind of responsibility I felt very much taking on Batman. Of course. And I would imagine you'd want to be involved

in casting your bond. Well, everything. I mean, you don't, you know, the thing you wouldn't want to take on a film not fully committed to what you could bring to the table creatively. So as a writer, casting, everything, that's the full package. But no, I sort of stand with the previous answer, which is that, you know, you'd have to be really needed. You'd have to be really wanted in terms of bringing the totality of what you bring to a character. Otherwise, I'm very happy to be first in line to see whatever they do. The rumor lately is one of your previous cohorts, Aaron Taylor Johnson. We'll see if he ends up being the man. Well, he's a great actor.

He's a great actor. Did you ever, I assume you caught up with Matt Reeves, the Batman, with Robert. What was it like watching that take? Did it feel like he found his own lane apart from? I'm not going to get drawn on other people's superhero movies. Okay. Fair enough.

There's too much gravity to that. And nobody talks about Oppenheimer. It's like, that's what I'm here selling. Fair enough. Fair enough. No, that's okay. But I do want to not. I will say that, you know, Rob is a terrific actor.

Matt is a great director. And then you had Barry in there too. I'm playing. Barry. Very remarkable. This is obviously for Universal. And I remember one project that I think was at Universal way back when was The Prisoner. Is there any chance you might go back to the Prisoner?

Well, I first met Donald Langley at Universal. Well, I had met her even years before. But yeah, we had developed the Prisoner and not cracked it. But so I'd been wanting to work at the Universal for a while. It's kind of fun to be there with Oppenheimer. I wouldn't want to say anything really about what I'm going to do next or what I'd do in the future because the truth is I haven't figured it out That's no I I I get asked that you know particularly as you as you come to promote the film and you're doing interviews You're often get asked by disbelieving interviews, you know

But the truth is I do one thing at a time and I borrow and on that very obsessively and for me and one of the reasons I make films for the cinema is the film's not finished until it goes to the audience It's the audience who finishes the film and they tell you what it is and until you know what the film you've made is it's a little difficult to know what you do next. Ontario, the wait is over. The gold standard of online casinos has arrived. Golden Nugget Online Casino is live.

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Are you looking for a movie review show where the critic is at the top of his or her game meticulously breaking down and explaining exactly why a film does or does not work? Well, good luck with the search. Because we're having fun here on Adam does movies. Each and every week, I hit the big blockbusters, I cover the streamers, and I even toss in some movie news for fun. Check out the show on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, and hopefully we can do movies together.

Hot. Okay, it's official. We are very much in the final sprint to election day. And face it, between debates, polling releases, even court appearances, it can feel exhumored. It can feel exhausting, even impossible to keep up with. I'm Brad Nilke. I'm the host of Start Here, the Daily Podcast from ABC News, and every morning my team and I get you caught up on the day's news

in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand with just enough context so you can listen, get it, and go on with your day. So, kickstart your morning, start smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel overwhelming. I assume by now you're pretty involved in marketing and you have much of a say there in terms of how you want your films presented to the public and what you're the story you're trying to tell. Are you fan of movie trailers generally?

I mean, I grew up just obsessed with movie trailers. I love movie trailers, yeah. No, it's a really fun thing to be involved in trailers for your own movies. I love trailers for everybody's movies. No, I love movie trailers. trailers it's a it's a it's a crazy art form of its side and these editors and I've had good fortune to work with a lot of really talented marketing executives and great editors working for them and they're able to work in this extraordinarily tiny

way where they're just changing individual frames and shifting a whole feeling you know to try and distill in the case of Oppenheim and they're trying to distill a three-hour film into you know two and a half minutes or now you know 30 seconds 15 seconds. Yes. It's a really fun thing to watch them work. Do you have a favorite trailer that you can recall on top of your head,

whether it's of your own films that someone's done or even growing up like a trailer that really I wouldn't want to talk about my own films because I'm very proud of a lot of the work that the marketing departments have done, both at Warner Brothers at Universal, Disney, the different pair of them up, the different studios I worked at.

But in terms of other people's, the original TV spot, for Ridley Scott's Alien, stuck in my head in a major way. Is that in space, no, and you're a scream? Well, that's the tagline, but it involves this crazy, they built some kind of crazy model of the egg on this landscape, that the camera's flying over, and then the egg cracks and the light comes through at the end.

And I don't remember the name of the Mokin executive responsible for that, but it's an extraordinary piece of editing and sound design. I'll never forget the teaser for Alien 3 that was made so, early in the process that they were teasing that the alien was coming to Earth. And that clearly, as anyone that has seen Alien 3, it did not come to Earth. No. Talk about marketing, getting a end of... They had a wonderful trailer that still had a shot of...

I think it was probably Charles Dant's carrying Ripley in from an exterior into the facility. And I think as that film changed and changed, and, you know, Fincher has famously talked about how unhappy he was with it and how it changed. I think it's a great movie. But I think his work on that is remarkable. But yeah, that marketing campaign went up being very out of step the film is. But the materials were extraordinary.

I mean, the trailers were fabulous. Do you think, okay, look, we have many great Christopher Nolan films to come. You were young in your career. But like, do you think of the body of work and kind of the collection of Christopher Nolan films that you're presenting to the world? Are you of the, there's obviously the extreme on the Tarantino realm where he's going to out at 10, and then there's like one of your favorites, It's like Ridley Scott, who's making a Napoleon movie in his 80s,

and George Miller who's making a Mad Max movie in his 80s. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, Quentin has his reasons. I'm sure if he sticks to it, it's a remarkable degree of kind of self-discipline and self-perception. Personally, with my work, I try not to be overly self-conscious about it. That is to say, I just work on the one project. I trust that if I put my all into it,

there'll be some sort of worth to it. More and more, you know, I mean, over the years, the writing of the films become more and more important to me. And so that limits my ability to do what Ridley Scott's done, for example, and just jump from project to project because there's just a lot more time involved. With getting the script where you want to be, either on your own or with great collaborators

have worked with. So no, I try not to be self-conscious about it. I like that there's a body of work that people seem to get something from and like to revisit. I mean, really, for me, the goal is with each film that you make a film that somebody might enjoy the first time they see it,

but then maybe years later, maybe come back to and watch it in a different way and find something else to it. You know, I spend years on each project. So we put a lot into each project. A lot of layers, a lot of things going on. And that's just by virtue of how much time and effort is put into it.

So the idea that a viewer then can revisit it, can get more out of it over time, I think is important. So that's sort of the goal. And if that's a thing that connects the films in some way, that's a fun thing as well. When I strip away kind of like the bells and whistles, and I know from talking to actors about your sets that you somehow managed to keep it very intimate,

it's often you and Hoyton, camera operator and the actor, and it's not, it doesn't feel big, despite what we end up seeing on the big screen, curious like if I went back if I was eavesdropping on the set of Memento one of the early films how different was your methodology then versus now what are the market differences and how you are on set you think I think there's no differences at all honestly in reality I think that when I was doing following and funny enough we we have a Blu-ray coming out of re-release of following and I've

just watched two of the interviews of the extras with you know casting crew and everything and it was very interesting to revisit that process because you know that was as small film as you can make the entire crew and cast and equipment would fit in the back of a London taxi would go on a weekend shoot a scene you know process the film edit during the week go back the next weekend we're all doing other jobs you know it was as far from what I do now as you could possibly get but in re-examining that process for that release look at it and I'm like it's the same process same creative process and

And that's an important thing for young filmmakers to realize when they're starting out. That films are not, each film you do, it's not some, I hate that phrase, a calling card film, I used to bandy around, you know, or that a film is a stepping stone to a bigger film or whatever, which is nonsense. If you're making a film, enjoy it and appreciate it for the filmmaker experience that it is, because it's as valid as anything you would ever get to do with a bigger budget or huge stars or whatever. And that's just the truth. You know, it really is, it's like you're looking at what's in the frame, how can this shot advance the audience's feeling and understanding what the narrative is, and then finding the next shot after that.

And that, the process really hasn't changed over the years. Is there, if I granted you the power to visit any film set in the history of film, Christopher, just to eavesdrop on how it was made, where would you want to go? I'd hate to be on anybody's set. I hate visiting sets. I feel so awkward I'm not, it's a private process, you want to respect that for the filmmaker, the filmmakers you maybe enjoy visitors

I'm not really one of them but well, to me it's a private process it gets a little self-conscious for people that are watching you direct because the directing is not the thing. The story that results is the thing and so I get very self-conscious on other people's sets and there's a demystifying thing that I'm both

fascinated by so you think what an incredible thing to be able to see but you're also you're seeing behind the curtain you're seeing there's no great odds there and I don't think with the films I love I don't think of any desire to do that and I kind of enjoy the fact that with I don't know

2001 for example there's not much behind the scenes you know there's stills and we carefully pour over any still a little bit of film that comes out you know about that but there's something that keeps the magic that film alive in that, you know, you don't have full access to what the thing is. That's why that, like, what was that, like, that 25-minute, like, behind the scenes of the shining always sticks out of me. It's like, what, like, this actually, someone, he let a camera roll.

Well, he let his daughter roll the camera on it. I think gave her a little more access than he ever would have. But in itself is a fascinating document. I mean, it's attention. It's like you want to open your Christmas presents early, but you don't really want to spoil the surprise. It's kind of that. But no, so there are a lot of sets that I would be fascinated to visit, but I know that it wouldn't benefit me enormously.

Coming full circle here, just seeing now your friend, your collaborator, the sixth go around, to see what Killian, how he holds the screen, how he holds this altogether, because it is so, as you say, subjective for a good portion of it. Does anything surprise you of what he can do or what he was able to do when you get into the edit room and you see what he's delivered here? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. It's a peculiar, it's a peculiar process because I've known for a long time. I've known for 20 years that Gillian Murphy is one of the greatest actors of his generation, or any generation. And I've had him play key supporting roles in a lot of my films. I've enjoyed that process. So I had a lot of confidence going into Altenheimer that, yeah, he's one of the greats.

This is his chance to show what he could do at the center. of a big movie like this, where the challenge is to carry the audience through the experience, see everything from his point of view. So you're looking at this great empathetic sort of version of the character that can draw you into what he's thinking and feeling. But there's a difference between having faith

that that can work, seeing great work on set every day. Yeah. But until you actually put it together in the other suite, you don't, with the performance as sophisticated as Killians, until you actually sit in the edit suite and watch it come together shot by shot you're not aware of all the things he's managed to do so editing the film was a pretty extraordinary revelation about the power of the performance and the layers he was able to put in and it's one for the ages it's an absolutely remarkable piece of

work on his behalf that I'm proud of being a part of it's the last thing a specific thing on Oppenheimer I met to ask earlier the Trinity test sequence I do want to mention because I think what you do with sound design in that and holding back and kind of like, I'm anticipating a certain... No spoilers, please. Okay, well, okay. We don't have to go specific.

Well, it's funny to talk about spoilers and a true life story and a thing that, you know, to be inevitable. But I guess was it obvious like how you were going to approach that? Because there were a lot of different ways you could do that. No, no, it wasn't obvious. The only thing that was obvious

is that it had to be a showstopper and it had to be the centerpiece of the film. It's a turning point in human history, the turning point in human history. And so a lot of effort went into the research, the mechanics, the looking at, okay, how's that going to work together? And then of course when you look at the reality and the reality of the physics, there are things that pop up that you have to just embrace and say, okay, rather than maybe what people would expect, the reality is going to be way more surprising and interesting if we can get it across. And so then you're challenging, you know, Hoytivan Hoytmer and Ruth Diyong, the designer, you know, you're looking to your department.

heads to be able to create an approach to this that people haven't seen before. And my hope is that people get to come to the film fresh without knowing everything about how we portray things. But I mean, who knows? But yes, I'm certainly an enormous amount of care and attention and a lot of long nights shooting went into that. It was a big deal.

Well, as you said at the start, I mean, you know, we feel it. We feel your soul, your mind, the time, the effort. It's almost the screen in it. It does immerse an audience, and it's a powerful piece of work, and it demands attention is going to demand my attention a few more times. I always appreciate the time, man. I love talking movies, your movies, movies in general with you.

You're one of the best. Thank you, as always, Christopher. Thank you. All right. And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person.

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