Christopher Nolan

The movie of the year? The filmmaker of our time? Yes, Christopher Nolan is back on Happy Sad Confused talking about the challenges and influences on his massive work, THE ODYSSEY. Plus, in a never before seen 2020 interview with the director, Josh chats with him about TENET, James Bond, creating the Joker and Bane, and why TOKYO DRIFT is his favorite FAST & THE FURIOUS movie! SUPPORT THE SHOW BY SUPPORTING OUR SPONSORS! Rula -- Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.rula.com/happy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ #rulapod Quince -- Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Quince.com/HAPPYSAD ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for free shipping and 365-day returns. Limited Time Offer–Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code happy15 at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://huel.com/happy15.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 0:59Speaker 02

  Give the audience a reason to believe. People want to come with you on this journey. But you've got to put the work in. You've got to give them a reason to believe. And this idea of the horse as a sort of failing monument, you know, that they have to drag, you know, into their city, that's stuck with me for, you know, 20 years or so.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, Sad, Confused begins.

• 1:22Josh Horowitz?

  Hey guys, it's Josh. Welcome to Happy, Sad, Confused. It is time to talk about the movie event of the summer, maybe the year. We are talking Chris Nolan's Odyssey and we've got the man himself back on the podcast. This is a good one. Hey guys, thanks as always for checking out Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already on YouTube, on Spotify, however you're doing it, you know what to do. Yes, it is time finally to dig into the Odyssey. Everybody's talking about this one. I have seen the film. It is a meal of a movie. It is a movie I will be seeing several more times. It's just remarkable. It's a remarkable achievement. And yeah, the reviews are correct. This is, this is a special one, needless to say.

• 2:06Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, every Chris Nolan movie is special. But this one, as you probably know by now, is a passion project for him, something he's been dreaming of doing forever. Dreaming of doing an IMAX film, fully IMAX forever, and it's happened. I got a chance to see this in IMAX, 70mm. Very privileged to do that. See it if you can, but in any format, this is gonna look and feel remarkable. So anyway, this is the main event today. I'll get to that in just a second. More on the Odyssey and Chris Nolan, but first, a couple quick mentions. First, I'm gonna be in San Diego Comic Con. Of course, I'm gonna be in San Diego Comic Con. I go every single year. Been going for many, many years, many, many years, and I've been privileged enough to moderate many memorable panels, especially

• 2:47Josh Horowitz?

  in Hall H, the fabled main 6,000, 7,000 seat theater there. And I'll be back. I'm moderating two big panels in Hall H. I'm so excited to do these. I can now say that on Friday of Comic Con, I will be moderating the Blade Runner 2099 panel. It's gonna feature Michelle Yeoh, Hunter Schafer, and more. Nobody's seen anything from this show yet. I'm very excited to share this one, share this panel. Talk about Blade Runner, one of my favorite franchises. Those two films iconic, and I have high hopes for this one. So that's gonna be on Friday. And then Saturday, this is just a giant one. Apple TV is pulling out all the stops for a bunch of films and TV shows. I'm gonna be moderating it all,

• 3:32Josh Horowitz?

  and there are tons of great actors and all of these casts that are coming on out. We've got Widows Bay, we've got Silo, we've got Dark Matter, we've got Mayday, which is the new Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh movie, we've got Matchbox, the movie with John Cena, and more. Lots of footage, lots of great movie stars, TV stars, two hours of Apple madness moderated by yours truly. So I hope to see some of you guys there on Saturday of Comic Con. Yeah, it's always a privilege to be in Hall H, to get to moderate the big stuff. So really excited about this. I'll remind you guys, if you haven't checked out our Patreon, I always feel like I have to because it does make us, help us make more stuff over here at patreon.com/happy/sadconfused. You get the early access to every single

• 4:16Josh Horowitz?

  episode of the podcast. You get bonus materials, you get merch, you can ask a question of our guests. So much cool stuff over there. Check it out, patreon.com/happy/sadconfused. Okay, so today's episode is a little bit unusual. So this is, this is about Chris Nolan. This is about The Odyssey. Here's what happened, though. Um, Chris Nolan didn't want to do a long form conversation just now, right now. And this was not just for me. This is, I believe, basically the, the, the approach to this leg of the campaign. Did a lot of short form stuff, did the junket thing. I usually never do junkets anymore. I honestly, I just, I just don't. I, I, I did my junket days, my short form interviews. I did more than enough. Um, so I tried to avoid it at all costs.

• 5:01Josh Horowitz?

  For The Odyssey, I made an exception. I had to be there. I had to talk to him. Um, so what we're gonna do is, I was privileged enough to get about 10 minutes with Chris, which is actually a lot for a junket. Uh, so I spent 10 minutes with Chris Nolan. And then what I discovered, what I realized is we have never shared the video of my Tenet interview with Christopher Nolan. This was recorded during the pandemic and this was over Zoom. And this was before we were running video. Um, this is a great conversation. This is our second, his second time on the podcast, second of three times. And, um, there is a ton in this conversation. This is about a 40 minute conversation that no one's ever seen.

• 5:44Josh Horowitz?

  So I'm really, really excited that this episode leads off with a 10 minute conversation about The Odyssey. Don't really, no, no spoilers. It's The Odyssey. What are you gonna spoil? Um, but there is some really cool stuff about the influences on this film, about the horror aspects of this film and more. We packed a lot into 10 minutes. So I'm really thrilled about that, but I'm also really thrilled to share this conversation, take a few years back, that no one's ever seen, where we talk a lot about James Bond, because obviously that really influenced, uh, Tenet in particular. Um, this has the famous, uh, thing that was talked about a lot for the years to come, about him talking about Tokyo Drift and how that's his favorite Fast and the Furious movie. You'll finally be able to see that. Um, there's really a lot of cool stuff here. When I discovered that, when I realized this had never been shared, I was like, oh, this is perfect.

• 6:28Josh Horowitz?

  So that's what we're gonna get today. First up, a 10 minute, uh, conversation with Christopher Nolan about The Odyssey, followed right thereafter with a Older conversation about Tenet, about James Bond, about many things with the one and only Christopher Nolan. So I'm so thrilled to share both of those conversations with you today. And we have more coming up with Matt Damon in just a few days, so don't worry. Lots of Odyssey stuff to come and there's more percolating. It's gonna be a long road and I should say, my hope is and my belief is that Christopher Nolan will come back on the podcast later on this year. Hopefully this will get an awards run. Of course, it's gonna get an awards run. And I think that will be the time and place hopefully for us to catch up in a in a longer form.

• 7:08Josh Horowitz?

  But for now, more than enough Christopher Nolan for your eyes and ears. I hope you guys enjoy this and check out the Odyssey. Get your tickets. If you haven't already, you better get them because they're gonna, probably all the IMAX 70 millimeters are sold out. So, you know, see it in the best format possible. It's gonna look amazing, sound amazing wherever you are, but this is truly a special one. So, without any further ado, here is my most recent conversation with Christopher Nolan, followed by a blast from the past. Enjoy. Christopher, it's good to see you.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Good to see you.

• 7:40Josh Horowitz?

  Congratulations. I just wish you would get ambitious with your films one of these days. Really, just push yourself.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Stop shirking and dive in.

• 7:49Josh Horowitz?

  Always going to safe route. Really, you know, the only place you can go from here is to go Fast and the Furious and do it in outer space, to actually shoot.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I think they already did that.

• 7:58Josh Horowitz?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 8:01Josh Horowitz?

  I'd like to start, we've talked a lot over the years about like references for your films and filmmakers that have influenced you. I want to bring up two. And doing my math, at 11 years old, maybe you see Clash of the Titans. I don't know if you saw it when it came out.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 8:13Josh Horowitz?

  Big movie for me.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:14Josh Horowitz?

  Ray Harryhausen, obviously a huge creative force there. And then we've talked about Blade Runner, which obviously doesn't have like direct parallels here, but the world building of Ridley Scott.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  No, the world building, actually Blade Runner was, well, both of those films, but Blade Runner in particular was one that I actually looked at with various crew members in this. Because there is an approach to world building. There's an immersive quality to the audio and the way the music interacts with the sound effects in particular. I actually had Ludwig Gorenson watch that with me to talk about that because there's various aspects of the way in which the score helps define the materiality of the world. And, you know, I wanted him to fully embrace that, which, which he did.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  As far as Ray Harryhausen goes, I mean, I had the privilege many years ago of getting to see a lecture that he did at the National Film Theatre in London, where he brought some of the models from Clash of the Titans, brought the croc and things like that. And yeah, I mean, what a magical genius and so inspiring for so many filmmakers like Peter Jackson.

• 9:20Josh Horowitz?

  Of course.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  But yeah, I have such fond memories of those films. And I think, looking at them again, you know, Jason, the Argonauts, things like that, they really connect with kids today as well. When you show people those movies, there's a magic to the handmade quality of them, the imagination there.

• 9:40Josh Horowitz?

  That mechanical owl, Boobo, or whatever, in Clash of the Titans will haunt me to this day. It made an impact.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:47Josh Horowitz?

  You've talked a little bit about the road that wasn't traveled for this one, and I'm always fascinated by the alternate routes. There's a world where the Dark Knight trilogy doesn't happen, and you make Troy 20 plus years ago. How far into Troy did you get? Like, were you writing your own? Because there was a Benioff script they eventually made. Like, were you working with that? Or did you have your own kind of treatment of what you were gonna do?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  No, I was working with David. He wrote a great script.

• 10:10Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  And that was what attracted me to the project. And, you know, I spent a couple of months figuring out how I would do it. And one of the things I actually wrestled with was the Trojan Horse, because David had included, even though it's based on the Iliad, he had included it in that story. So I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I came up with this idea, you know, that much like the Statue of Liberty at the end of the first Planet of the Apes or something, that the horse would be sort of sinking into the sand, a kind of monumental quality to it.

• 10:43Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  That would allow you to believe that they could find this thing and not sit sitting there on a roller skate with notes saying, please take inside, you know. You want to believe.

• 10:54Josh Horowitz?

  Make a reason to believe.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Make a reason to believe. And that's really the mantra for everything in the film and all the fantasy elements as well. It's like, give the audience a reason to believe. People want to come with you on this journey.

• 11:03Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  But you've got to put the work in, you've got to give them a reason to believe. And this idea of the horse as a sort of failing monument, you know, that they have to drag, you know, into their city, that's stuck with me for, you know, 20 years or so.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  So yeah, there was a lot of productive things that came out of that.

• 11:20Josh Horowitz?

  I don't know if your colleague, friend Guillermo del Toro has seen this film, but I think he's gonna get a kick out of seeing some sequences in this film in particular.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have shown it to Guillermo and I was nervous and excited to show it to him. And you know, I said to him in all honesty, anytime you're dealing with fantasy, with creatures, Guillermo, what Guillermo has taught all of us is a monster is never just a monster.

• 11:43Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  And that for a monster to be interesting even, or credible, there has to be an individuality, there has to be substance to that. And that's something that I've so appreciated in his work that I, you know, really took on board and like, okay, we have to, we have to, we have to look at this from the ground up. And in the case of Cyclops, for example.

• 12:03Josh Horowitz?

  Yes.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  You know, one of my first calls was to my friend Bill Irwin, who brought Tars and Case to life for me on set with Interstellar. I mean, a lot of people, they narrated The Voice for Tars. They don't know that he actually puppeteered the robot all around the world, including in the water in Iceland. You know, he just did an amazing job. And I knew that he was the guy to help figure out how to make the Cyclops not just a technical exercise.

• 12:30Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Because obviously, there's a lot of technique and a lot of different techniques that go into that. But to have substance, to have an individual, you know, behind that creature.

• 12:40Josh Horowitz?

  It's funny, because I don't necessarily think of you as a horror filmmaker, but like outside maybe you're like Batman Begins, like the Scarecrow nightmare sequence, that, there's that. But like, there are two sequences in this, you referenced one. Have you ever considered doing a full-on horror film? Because you have the chops to do that.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  No, no, I've always been interested in that world. But I think the, yeah, I mean, the thing with horror is you have to have just the right concept. You have to have an amazing conceptual basis for a horror movie to really work. And that's something I never really connected with, I haven't found the right thing. But when you look at The Odyssey, when you look at the poem, you look at, you know, horror is a key ingredient in the appeal of that story. You know, and why it's lasted, you know, it's the darkness that gives you the light kind of thing. So we really wanted to jump in fully. I mean, the thing that's interesting about horror is it's the most visceral of.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Film genres, and so it's the one that requires the most cinematic technique, the very direct effect that you're trying to have on the audience.

• 13:45Josh Horowitz?

  Right. The, um, you stick the landing in this again at the end. I mean, you, you, you know, we've talked about your endings before. They, it's, uh, it's remarkable. I'm curious, like, do you have a favorite ending or two in film history? Do you like an ambiguous ending? Do you like, you know, the thing 2001? Or do you like kind of like the certainty of like a draw, you know, a mic drop moment like seven? Like, where do you come at?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  I mean, I think endings are everything in movies.

• 14:09Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  But I think there's so many different great ways to end. I mean, you've mentioned some of the, some of the greats. I think ambiguity, if it's a productive ambiguity. But sadly, I think it's hard to get beyond Citizen Kane. I mean, it's pretty hard to come up with an ending that's, you know, it's the one that kind of hangs over all of us when we're writing. It's like, you know, uh, to, to bring it home in the way that, that Orson Welles and Mankiewicz did at the end of that. That's pretty hard to compete with.

• 14:39Josh Horowitz?

  And at that age, I mean, say, um, you went into this, look, the ambition was huge, obviously, and I'm, you know, I'm glad, I'm sure, I'm, I assume you're glad you're making this at this juncture as opposed to 20 plus years ago, too.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  I was only thinking about the ending of Citizen Kane, the ending of the Odyssey, and realizing, realizing, I'm trying to, yeah, anyway.

• 14:59Josh Horowitz?

  You're chasing, you're chasing.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  I know, exactly. You're always, always chasing that, but you know, you gotta, you gotta aim high, I suppose.

• 15:05Josh Horowitz?

  Always, always, again, outer space. Is there anything that, looking at this production, that you're kind of, like, what was the biggest question mark for you? Like, how you were going to accomplish that? Whether from a technical perspective with Hoyt or thematically?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  I think there were, I mean, on a technical level, there were a couple of very, very different challenges. One was in shooting the whole thing on IMAX, which, you know, I've been working with IMAX since The Dark Knight. Wanted to do a whole film on IMAX since I was a kid. But the noise of the cameras always prevented us doing the intimate dialogue scenes that way.

• 15:37Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  We did not know if that would be possible. IMAX produced this high-tech blimp for us, this kind of boxy put the camera in. But it's still a massive encumber, it's a 300-pound camera with two and a half to three-minute loads. So we'd have to stop a dramatic scene in the middle and reload, you know? We didn't know whether we'd be able to pull that off. And that was a huge challenge, hanging over us till about halfway through the film, which is when we did the most intense intimate scenes. And once we realized that everybody was up for it, the actors were up for it, you know, the crew was up for it and found a way to make that work, then we knew we'd do the whole film that way.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  On the other end of the spectrum, we've got the fantasy elements. And for me, we're setting ourselves a high bar because we want the tone of the film. We always wanted the tone of the film to be as grounded as possible. It's an earthy tale. It's a, you know, the poem is very, it's all about how people eat and all the rest is how they live. You want a, you want a grubby, earthy world that you're really immersed in. And that gives you this kind of real textured tone. And then the question is, how do you address the fantasy elements? How do you make that tone consistent?

• 16:49Speaker 02

  And that was a challenge and that was something we were concerned about and put a lot of time and attention into planning and coming up with ways that we could maintain the tone of the film even through the fantastical elements.

• 17:01Josh Horowitz?

  Mission accomplished. Excited to see what Denis has in store for us with Bond. I guess I lost the bet that you refused to make with last time.

• 17:09Josh Horowitz?

  It'll be exciting to see what he does.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely.

• 17:11Josh Horowitz?

  Right? Good to see you. I appreciate you as always, sir.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  We'll be right back with more Happy Sad Confused.

• 17:22Speaker 00

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• 18:25Josh Horowitz?

  Christopher Nolan, welcome back to the podcast. You're officially a regular, sir.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Well, it's great to be back. Thank you.

• 18:33Josh Horowitz?

  Um, I have to say, uh, your films, your work is often on my mind. About a year ago, you were especially on my mind. I had a, I had a series where I was taking filmmakers back to locations where they shot, um, iconic scenes. And there I was on South Flower Street with Michael Mann for The Shootout.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 18:52Josh Horowitz?

  And all I could think of was the only person that might appreciate this more than me is Mr. Christopher Nolan.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  I think I might have. That sounds very, very special. I, uh, I don't know if you ever saw, cause I'm pretty sure they put it on YouTube, but I had the honor of doing an anniversary panel with, with Michael Mann and the cast of, of Heat a few years back. Uh, it's, it's such a great film. He's such a great filmmaker and I was so honored to be, be part of that.

• 19:16Josh Horowitz?

  I have to say, the moment that, that geeked me out the most is when he took out his schematic, um, uh, and it just said World War III at the top. That's what he titled that sequence.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Wow. Wow. I always a huge admirer of the sound of that sequence. Um, if you listen to the sound of the, the machine guns, it echoes around the, the buildings in a way that, you know, movie guns never do. There's some really great live recordings that are really special.

• 19:42Josh Horowitz?

  What's it like for you to go from a fan of someone's work to a, a friend and collaborator? Obviously you've talked at length about, uh, The Dark Knight and being inspired by a lot of what Michael did, especially in that film. Um, that must be just an amazing, unexpected perk of a career to find someone like Michael Mann to call up here now.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  It's, it's incredible. I mean, first time I met Michael, I went to, uh, fancy Beverly Hills restaurant and there was this incredible Ferrari parked outside and I pulled up in my 87 Honda Civic and went in and had lunch with Michael and then realized in the course of the conversation that the amazing, uh, I think it was a Ferrari actually outside was, was his, uh, and Just had a tremendous meeting of minds immediately. I mean, he's such an idol of mine, but such an incredible guy to talk to. And we've had a lot of great, great encounters over the years, but it's, you know, every time I see him, it's like, yeah, it's Michael Mann. He's just one of my heroes.

• 20:40Josh Horowitz?

  Crazy. And this will not be an entire Michael Mann podcast, I insist, but I do, but I'm curious, did you ever show him Dark Knight before it came out? Like, did you wanna, you must have been endlessly curious of what he thought of?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  No, to, to, to just sort of give you the, the name dropping story, as it were, is I was walking across the Warner Brothers lot and ran into him and he came up to me and the first thing he said is, he said, how did you get a PG 13 on that movie? And I said, well, I, you know, a lot of, a lot of tiny little cuts back and forth of the MPA, but no, it was, he was, he was complimented by the merciless pillaging of his, of his movies. I think, I think he, like, like all filmmakers, and now that I've been working longer, I'm sort of on the receiving end of some of this, you know, as long as somebody acknowledges the theft, then, you know, then it becomes homage.

• 21:34Josh Horowitz?

  Exactly. Homage, not stealing. That's the key.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  As with, as with Tenet, just to bring it to Tenet and why we're here talking or whatever. It's, it's like, you know, I've talked a lot about the Bond films and how merciless they've been, been stealing from them. Because I think as long as you acknowledge the theft, it's, it's kind of.

• 21:50Josh Horowitz?

  Well, congratulations on Tenet. This is, I'm glad we're finally getting a chance to, to dig into what's an impressive piece of work and then obviously an audacious piece of filmmaking, as it always is for you. I mean, I remember, you know, the last time we sat down and chatted, we talked about Dunkirk. And I remember we were talking about, you know, stripping away backstory for an audience and, and kind of testing the limits of sort of what, you know, pushing the audience into, into realms they're not used to. All I can think of is in the back of your mind, you must have been thinking, you ain't seen nothing yet, because I have Tenet, I have Tenet on my brain.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Well, it was, it was, it was sort of slow growing, but you do, you carry on one set of, of questions from one film into the next or one set of ideas. And that idea that the audience accepts the world that you present to them from the first frame to the last. And you can dictate those terms to a degree. And people may analyze, you know, critics or whoever may analyze, go on and say, why has he done this? Why doesn't the protagonist have a name or all the rest of why do we know anything about it? But I think if you really Dive into the terms of the story the way the audience does as opposed to people being paid to analyze it.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  Film does tend to, film itself tends to dictate that the terms of the story are what you're seeing there on on screen and those kind of expectations, they're of the moment, they're they're about other films that people have seen right before they've seen that film. Uh, but when you sit in the theater and the lights go down and images start to come up on that screen, your brain builds that world as it's shown to you by the filmmaker. And so the films can be enormous, they can be small, they can have all kinds of off, off, off-screen backstories that then get talked about, uh, you know, or they could not have that. And uh, that's kind of the fun of being able to set, set your own terms. And once you start analyzing those things, you start looking back at different eras in film.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  You start to see different levels of reverence or importance assigned to things that we view as absolute needs in a film right now. Uh, and that to me is, is fascinating because we're, we're so imprisoned in the, in the grammar of films that, that we grow up in and that we're, we're working in. And so it's a conversation I have a lot about acting because I love silent film. And people are always making fun of the acting in silent film. And I'm, I try to explain to them that it's a set of conventions of expression that they were using then, and we have, all of our acting conventions are just as stylized and mannered, we just can't quite see it.

• 24:26Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  So, you know, I was pointing out to my kids the other day, we were watching TV and somebody coughed and I said, oh, they're gonna die. Because our acting is so stylized, if somebody can't even cough, you cough in a movie, a regular movie? You're gonna die, that character's gone, you know, gone. Doesn't matter if it's a tiny little cough, big cough, you know, whatever.

• 24:44Josh Horowitz?

  If they pull that handkerchief with a little blood, you know.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Well, then, that's, that's a whole other level. But I, but it's, it's literally a cough, you know, you can't even do something as, as human as having a cough, it has to mean something. And that's because, and that's not a criticism of, uh, you know, I'm not talking about cliche or anything like that. I'm talking about the way, the stylization of the presentation of information and narrative is so stripped down that anything that's different, anything that might appear to be wasted. Is meaningful, has to have narrative component. Unless the terms of the film right from the first frame, you're in, for example, a Ken Loach film or something where naturalism is there. And so all of the, you know, interesting little, little diversions of people and the way they move through a scene or gesture at things, you know, if those are immediately

• 25:31Speaker 02

  part of the, uh, the tone and the language of the film, then it's a different matter. And then you can cough and you might not die. But, you know, uh, and the rest of it, it's, it's, everything is so stylized that everything has narrative meaning, although, you know, the old story about, you know, if you pull a gun out in the first act, it's got to go off in the third. Uh, it's very, very true of our films today, just as it was true of the silent era.

• 25:52Josh Horowitz?

  It's also interesting to note, I mean, as I'm watching this and I'm reading all the, the discussion about it, um, you know, the notion of, of plot and how important the particulars of a plot are, the, the first blush, because here's, here's, here's my argument. Um, I, I think back to James Bond movies, I don't actually remember the particulars, the specifics of a plot. I remember the feel, the, the, the, the, the, the journey I was on. I can't, and I don't know if I could tell you what the MacGuffin was, what they were after in this particular film. Now you have all that in there and it really rewards itself. I've seen it twice already to, to sustain viewings and to really parse it out. But frankly, the first time around, it's more experiential.

• 26:33Josh Horowitz?

  It's less about like, could, could I tell somebody exactly what happened in every aspect? Maybe not, but I felt the journey of those characters. I felt the story. Is that something you're conscious of? I mean, or do we make almost too much about the particulars of plot? And maybe it is more about feeling it as one of your characters say, say in the, in this film.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Well, I think that, that one of the, the things that happens in, in film, uh, in Hollywood films sometimes is the confusion between plot and premise. And so when plot and premise are fused, you get something kind of strong. When they're, they're separated too much and say, okay, the premise of the film, you know, uh,

• 27:16Speaker 02

  You know, time traveling, secret agent, you know, whatever is a premise that has nothing to do with the plot and those things are separated.

• 27:21Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  There's an inherent weakness and quite often, there was a period when I first stood up in Hollywood in the early 2000s where you were seeing movies that felt like the sequel to a movie you'd never seen. So it was almost as if the premise was in the trailer and then they then construct a plot that functioned independent of the premise in the movie. And I think what you're really always trying to do is construct a premise, with premise and plot with the same, the story and the concept are fused. Now, the particulars of the story, I mean, it tends to strike people, any film, it tends to strike people in different ways. And this goes back to, you know, Raymond Chandler and his novels and so forth. It's like, how much you want to engage on the level of the specifics, or what are the broad strokes that you're getting that are telling you where they are. One of the great misconceptions

• 28:06Speaker 02

  of the Bond films, not to, not to dispute you, but if you look at the earliest ones, they had some of the most incredible plots. So if you look at Thunderball and you look at the plot behind that film, which is maybe why it was the subject of litigation for so many years, because the original screenplay that was, the treatment that was put together between Fleming and Kevin MacClory, that then eventually the rights, you know, became an issue.

• 28:30Josh Horowitz?

  Never Say Never Again.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Fleming wrote it as a novel, which is where Never Say Never Again comes from. However, they came up with that plot, that's one of the great plots in movies and in books. And I think that with something like the Bond franchise, at a certain point, it was driven plot wise in the early days and then there's so much investment from the audience in the character, the situation, the episodic idea of it, that yeah, you get yourself a lot of freedom in terms of plot. But those, the classic Bonds, the early Bonds particularly, the plots were amazing, really, really tight and really original.

• 29:05Josh Horowitz?

  What's your favorite Bond actor and what's your favorite Bond film?

• 29:11Speaker 02

  My favorite Bond film is on Her Majesty's Secret Service. As anyone who's seen Inception can probably figure out. My favorite Bond actor is Timothy Dalton. And I think-

• 29:22Josh Horowitz?

  Living Daylights, I think, is one of the-

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Living Daylights is very, very good. Very, very good. A little bit let down by the climax a bit in technical terms, I think. But it's a, it's very, very good, a lot of the way through. He's fantastic. And even License to Kill, which is aging better than I expected in some ways. But, but I think he's closest to the character in the book. You know, and it would have been interesting to see him do, him do more. Yeah.

• 29:46Josh Horowitz?

  Did you get all of your Bond ideas out of your system on this one? I mean, I remember when we last spoke, you said, when, when the time is right, who knows? Like, if they need me, maybe that's the right time. Well, Christopher, they need a new Bond. Maybe it's time for, for you.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  I think it would be, it would be strange to follow up Tenet with a Bond film.

• 30:08Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Did I get it out of my system? I mean, yes and no. I thought I had after Inception. But I, I think whenever you think about big action movies, your brain is always going back to the things you grew up with. So for me, that's Star Wars, that's Bond, that's Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know, which in some ways is Bond with a hat and a whip, you know. But I think you inevitably are drawn back to the things that, that took you into different realms, you know, as a kid. And yeah, so for me, they'll always be the Bond films.

• 30:41Josh Horowitz?

  I, I've seen a healthy amount of, of action films in my day. And I don't know about you, but I don't know, about 10, 15 years ago, I started to just, it started not to work on me, whether it was the, I'd seen too much or they were getting lazy in terms of the filmmaking. I mean, outside of Keanu Reeves inventively killing people, I could watch that all day long. And I think they do a hell of a job in those films. It's, it's few and far between, frankly, to see innovative and emotional and powerful action. Clearly you are pushing it in this. Is that one of the, the reasons, one of the exciting aspects of this is like, I am going to try to find a new way into action and present it to you in a unique way that you've never seen before.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Very much. I mean, Tenet, the driving force of Tenet is to reimagine or re-present.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Some of those action tropes, a car chase, a plane crash, fistfight. We're trying to turn them on their heads and look at it in a very unique way. And it's partly because, yeah, you become, you become immune to that drug. You sort of become, it's like, okay, how do I get that same fix of adrenaline that I used to get when I was younger, watching something I hadn't seen before? And I think filmmakers really, they have to find ways. And you, you know, you're referring to John Wick. And of course, the breakthrough there was in the particular approach to fight choreography and the integration of handguns into the particular violence and the way that was done, which it built on what had come before, but it also had a new, it had a new wrinkle to it, it had a new thing to it.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  In the case of Tenet, the science fiction component of the story, of the premise, one of my interests in that and excitement about that is that you can then take a car chase and you can look at it forwards, you can look at it backwards, you can have it running both directions at the same time. And, and suddenly, using a lot of the same filmmaking techniques have been developing over years, but you're looking at it differently. It's having a different impact and you're looking at it in a different way. And that was really the fun of making this film and hopefully it'll be the fun of watching the film for people.

• 32:46Josh Horowitz?

  More Happy Say Confused coming up.

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• 33:56Josh Horowitz?

  Your films are dissected, as you well know, as few other filmmakers' works are. Is it fruitful for you? Is it exciting for you? Is it interesting for you at all to go down that rabbit hole, to go on the Reddit thread, to read the different articles? Is that the way we're up Madness Lies for you, Christopher?

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Well, that's very much the way Madness Lies. I mean, if you work, as I did for 10 years, you start working on something as beloved as Batman, it's something people feel so protective on proprietary. You know, you very rapidly learn you can never look online, you know. You're not going to be happy with what you see. So you have to just, you have to trust that if you make a sincere attempt to make things the best way you can, and really put your heart into it, that people will respect that even if they don't like it, you know, they don't like your interpretation of Batman or what have you. And so, so no, you can't really, you can't really dabble with the, the, the online world too much with, with

• 34:58Speaker 02

  the work you put out there. Or you'd get, you'd just get too self-conscious in, in truth. You've got to feel free to, to do things. You can't be, you don't want to be reactive in your filmmaking. You know, and, and then the truth is, when you put out large-scale films and they go out to the entire world, one way or another, you can't even insulate yourself from people's reactions anyway. You certainly don't need to go looking for them.

• 35:22Josh Horowitz?

  A couple of things I will bring up in case you haven't stumbled across them. And I don't want to get into spoiler stuff, but I'll just mention there's, there's a theory about Rob's character in this. Are you aware of, of that, at least, of who that person might be? And do you want to talk about that at all?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  I, you know, I don't delve into the world of interpretations of my movies. I love that people, you know, think it's worth putting the time and attention into. I think if I were looking at any particular interpretation of something I had done, the only thing I would caution or ask people to look at is...

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Is it indicated in the text? You know, because the truth is, a lot of the things that

• 36:07Speaker 02

  people at casual glance view as ambiguities in my work are not ambiguities. They are actually things that are pretty, pretty specified. If you drill down and if you, if you look at what the text is, what the film, what's actually in the movie. And to me, those are always going to be the most valid interpretations. Things beyond that, that's for the audience to decide, you know?

• 36:30Josh Horowitz?

  It's been said, it's been cited that at least two of your characters, including Rob's character in this film and Leonardo's character in Inception somewhat resemble you, Christopher, in style, in look. Is that, is this just a grand coincidence? Are they, are they looking at their director and saying, hmm, maybe there's, there's a model for me there? Is this something that you're aware of?

• 36:51Speaker 02

  I, you know, I, I've been teased about it in the past. Funnily enough, I think there are, you know, whether you're looking at, you know, Carl McLaughlin with David Lynch in Blue Velvet, what he does is, you know, collar up whatever. I think there is a slightly mischievous tendency on the part of actors to see in the, in the filmmakers, see, see where as a writer, particularly with writer-directors, where they put a bit of themselves into something and then build on, on that. I mean, Tom Hardy maintains that Bane is somehow based on, yeah, I've never seen that one much.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  But in Tom's mind.

• 37:29Josh Horowitz?

  Wow, that's a wrap.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, in Tom's mind, there's some very complex interweaving of impulses and influences that somehow I have a voice in, but I think it's certainly not, not conscious on my part. And I think Rob with Neil, we talked a lot about a lot of different influences on that character, none of which were me, so we'll see.

• 37:54Josh Horowitz?

  Rob, as you well know, was cast as Batman right when you started shooting, I believe.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:59Josh Horowitz?

  Since then, we've seen a glimpse of it. I assume you've seen the trailer from Matt Reeves. What do you make of it? What do you, I mean, are you, I mean, now you're a spectator. Is it fascinating to see someone else's slightly different take? Do you see similarities, differences? What excites you about what they're doing with their Batman?

• 38:16Speaker 02

  I mean, first of all, a couple of things really exciting. I mean, Matt Reeves is a great filmmaker, that right there. But Rob, I mean, having worked with Rob, I mean, this guy, he can do anything. He's just, just one of the greats. And so for him putting his talent to that, I think that's something fans should really be looking forward to. Yeah, I mean, the first conversation I ever had with Paul Levitt, who's the head of DC Comics at the time. We flew out to New York and we knew we were going to do Batman, myself and David Goyer. And we, we sat with him and, and, you know, talk about what we, what, what were the parameters? What could we do? What couldn't we do? You know, we were sort of feeling it out with him. And one of the things he said is he said Batman, of all of the characters, more so than Superman.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Batman is the one who really benefits from different interpretations and different interpretations that change over time, both in the comics and indeed then in the movies. And I think the success of our movies, the previous, the prior success of Tim Burton's movies. I mean, I think you see that very, very clearly and then moving on to Zack Snyder's interpretation. And now there'll be, you know, Rob's version. And it's, I think it's really true that Batman is, is, you know, owned and interpreted differently by different generations. And it's one of the things that's kept that character alive and vital over the years. And I think we'll continue to do.

• 39:37Josh Horowitz?

  You've had a great track record of eliciting some fantastic villainous performances in your career. And Kenneth Branagh continues that tradition. This is, this is a character that almost could have belonged in a Bond film in a way. I'm curious, I mean, sorry, a Batman film, I meant a Bond film as well.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  But I think more a Batman film than a Bond film.

• 39:57Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, perhaps, right?

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Well, he's so thuggish, and it was something I talked to Ken a lot about. It's not, there's a, there's a difference with the Bond villains. And I'm very familiar with the Bond villains and the attraction of that, that they tend to be philosophers. They tend to be eloquent in a way that didn't want Saito to be. I wanted him to be this kind of. You know, the the kind of extreme of kind of, you know, white middle aged entitled thuggery. And Ken is such a lovely human being. I think for him, he kept finding, trying to find the poetry in it a little bit.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Before we started shooting and I kept really just saying to him, no, this is just as Heath in The Dark Knight was was a force of sheer chaos. With no more thought behind it than than chaos. And he tapped into that. It's a primal thing. For Ken, it was a similarly primal thing. He had to be a thug, just had to be, you know, a monstrous thug. And that's very difficult for somebody like him to play, but he really found it. I think he's terrifying in the film.

• 41:03Josh Horowitz?

  The I told you before, my obsession with Tom Hardy's depiction of Bane. I'm not alone in this. I know. What he did in that, what Heath obviously did as Joker, I think is also fascinating because these are audacious kind of choices. These gentlemen made. I mean, this is, this is, there's no.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  There's no safety net for any of these guys. And Tom, you mentioned Tom Hardy, we talked about him a minute ago. I mean, what he did with that character has yet to be fully appreciated. It's an extraordinary performance. And truly without a safety net. I mean, the voice, the relationship between the just seeing the eyes and the brow, you know, all these discussions about the mask. And what it would reveal, what it wouldn't reveal. And he, you know, one of the things I remember him saying to me is he sort of put his finger up to his temple. His eyebrows said, can you give me this to play with? Let me let people see this. And sure enough, there in the film, there's this kind of Brando-esque sort of brow. Expressing all kinds of just just monstrous things. I mean, it's it's it's really quite a performance.

• 42:05Josh Horowitz?

  Do you remember the moment when for Heath and or Tom, you saw them early on that gave you confidence that the choices they were making were going to pay off?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  In both cases, it was it was the same. And probably when I came to Dark Knight Rises, I was remembering that and pushed towards it. It was the the hair and makeup test we did. And. For The Dark Knight, you know, I had Wally Fister just get a handheld camera thirty five mil, put a light up on the stage, Heath would come in with one particular type of wardrobe, one particular type of makeup, move around, no sound recording, so not self-conscious, just moving, trying different weapons, different pairs of shoes, and we all sort of got to watch this sort of magical, magical kind of transformation and watch him find, not that he was finding it in that moment, but he was just gradually unveiling the things he'd been working on

• 42:56Speaker 02

  for months and months and months. And then he'd throw in a line or two, even though there was no dialogue, but you just hear him letting it out, letting the laugh out into the room to echo around and just experimenting with it. And yeah, the tests were incredible looking. And when we came to do Dark Knight Rises, I think probably with that in the back of my mind, I kind of waited till we really had the mask figured out, had endless discussions with Tom, he'd done all this kind of work in advance, but then to see him kind of walk into the harsh top light, kind of walk out there and, you know, assume that character. And I think in both cases, interestingly, the key stills of those characters, the one of Heath is a very

• 43:39Speaker 02

  big close-up of Heath with just his eyes and his mouth visible, it was very defining, it was the first image we put out, that was taken during the hair and makeup test, not during the principal. Similarly with Tom, there's a great shot of him sort of from behind, looking across his back with his head sort of turned to the left that we put out right at the beginning, that was also from his hair and makeup test. So yeah, it's kind of been the way those things have come together, but that's the interesting thing with this generation of actors, of which, you know, Heath, obviously a phenomenal leader in that, and Tom, you know, just one of the finest of his generation, they fuse the sort of psychological realism, the internal, method-based

• 44:20Speaker 02

  acting of the seventies onwards, well, fifties onwards really, but they also combine it with this. Older, more external, you know, call it Olivier Charles Lawton, you know, that prior generation of, you know, sort of give me the hat and the walking stick and let me sort of find that and see how the walk informs the character. They're coming at it from both ends. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing such fantastic work, you know, from actors like that, who they stand on the shoulders of prior generations who've gone this way or that way. Everything's been external or everything's been internal. And these actors, they're approaching it from, from both places.

• 45:00Josh Horowitz?

  One of the things I truly always appreciate about your films is the way you, you know how to stick a landing. You know how to end a film. And that's obviously, as you well know, very important. That's the first thing people are going to be talking about when they leave the theater. Did they, did this filmmaker disappoint me or leave me wondering about further stories? I mean, to a man, almost all of your films ask questions of the audience that are great to talk to with whoever you've just seen the movie with.

• 45:26Josh Horowitz?

  Do you often start with the ending of a film? This film obviously is so symmetrical, it has to, it all probably comes at once in a way. It has to work.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Well, somewhat, but you have, you have the storyline, you have the chronology of the events. And then you have the story as the audience is going to see it. I don't necessarily start with the ending, but I would never, I would never go too far with a project without knowing the ending. I would not sit down to write the script without knowing the ending. The ending is everything. And it's absurd. You're going to have a three hour film, and you know, two hours and forty five minutes of it can be terrific. And if the ending doesn't work, it doesn't matter. The other way around can just about work, you know, but the ending is everything, which it sounds absurd, but at the same time, in

• 46:15Speaker 02

  a way, you know, it's like if somebody tells a long anecdote that's, you know, if it doesn't have a punchline, it's, it's not.

• 46:23Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, they just trail off and you're like.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  We've all had that experience. And, but it's a, it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating thing. It's the relationship between time and narrative, because you can hear the longest story. And if it has a great ending, you don't feel you've wasted your time. If the ending doesn't work, you immediately retroactively.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Are bored and you retroactively have a bad time listening to that story. And you know, that's very much what movies are, you know, you it you need the ending. You need to know where it's going and it it it has to land somehow. So you you got to have that to to my mind, you got to have that before you get too far with a project.

• 47:01Josh Horowitz?

  One of the things I appreciate about you that maybe some people don't realize is you you enjoy all manner of filmmaking. I remember when you came by my office, we were chit chatting about our mutual love of Dirty Rodden Scoundrels. You love two thousand and one, but you also apparently love Kingpin and the Fast and the Furious movies I've heard.

• 47:21Josh Horowitz?

  Are you a are you a Tokyo Drift guy, a Fast Five guy? What do you like about Fast and Furious?

• 47:26Speaker 02

  I I'm sort of original recipe. I mean, the Fast and Furious, Robkern original, but I I've got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift, actually. And then the skill as you know, Justin Lin's iterations, you know, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger. They became something else, but something else kind of fun. You know, it it. The fun thing about those movies is even as they've gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, as sequels have to do. Everyone always complains that sequels get bigger, but we are the people making sequels get bigger. We do want them bigger. You don't want them smaller. It's the Alien three lesson that the venture letter, it's like you, you know, you can do it, but it's not going to make anybody happy. Even though personally, I love that film a lot more than he does, I think, but.

• 48:07Josh Horowitz?

  We could talk about, I love Alien three as well, and he refuses. You mentioned that to him and it sent him to a dark place.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  I've never dared to mention it to him. I I think, you know, he's very aware of the flaws and he's very aware of the appalling experience he had making it. You know, and and how put upon he was, and I can only imagine, I mean, I truly can only imagine. But his talent shines through in that movie. I came out of that film and had a conversation with a guy I was working with right away. I said, I've just seen the new Ridley Scott. I know who the new Ridley Scott is and it's David Fincher, and I wasn't wrong. It's there in the movie, whether he whether he knows it's there or not.

• 48:40Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  But it is talent is absolutely there.

• 48:44Josh Horowitz?

  Were you prior to Batman, were you in the mix? Were you talking about franchises? Were you looking for another for a kind of an opportunity to flex your muscles in that way and kind of a franchise? Were there?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  No, not at all. No, it my agent actually.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Just sort of called out of the blue with this thing of, well, Warner Brothers, they want to do something about it, but they don't really know what. They have a couple of ideas, but not, not really. It's sort of in limbo. They hadn't made a film in seven years. People hadn't liked the last one. And so they, they really kind of didn't know what to do. And this, it really was in the days before these sort of crown jewel properties were kind of put on a ticking clock schedule where it's like, we've got to find somebody to do something with this. Every asset must be exploited, that kind of thing. They hadn't really quite got into that rhythm yet. And so it was really this incredible opportunity to just go in and pitch, you know, really what I wanted to do and, and, you know, freely. But no, I had actually spent that, that year writing a script about Howard Hughes.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  That, an adaptation that I labored over for a very long time and, you know, couldn't crack it, couldn't crack it. And I finally cracked it just as they went into production on The Aviators. But, you know, that's Hollywood, right?

• 50:00Josh Horowitz?

  Look, it's been a few years now, obviously, since that. And now it's been a few years since Warren Beatty's. Are you, have you looked at that script in the last year or two? Are you ready to consider going back to that one?

• 50:10Speaker 02

  I haven't, I haven't dusted that one off lately. I, I tend to go back to it every few years and have a read, but it's, it's tricky because, you know, I'm passionate about the reinterpretation of the character, but, you know, having had, you know, a significant movie like, you know, Scorsese and DiCaprio's interpretation, you know, you, it's, it's a tricky proposition. So I'll probably take a look at it again sometime soon and see if it still speaks to me. But I was, I was very happy with the script when I wrote it. That was kind of the, kind of the most fun, not the most fun, but the, the best writing experience I think I've had.

• 50:46Josh Horowitz?

  Do you have other screenplays in the, in the drawer that you would or could go back to? Is that the only one that really jumps out as something that's in a state where you could seriously consider going back to?

• 50:57Speaker 02

  That's, that's the only finished one that, that, you know, I was ready to go kind of thing. And then I have, I have a few that I wound up using for other things. So when I took over Interstellar from, Spielberg was originally meant to do it. My brother had been writing the script along with, you know, Kip Thorne and Linda Hopps. They developed the film for Spielberg. And when he decided he didn't want to do it. I went to Jonah and I said, can I take this and put it together with a couple other ideas, a couple of other scripts I'd written that hadn't quite come together for me, but I had, you know, big, big chunks of things. I want to take those things and integrate them into, into what you're doing. And, uh, you know, fortunately, he, he signed off on that and said,

• 51:42Speaker 02

  yeah, go, go for it. And so, um, so yeah, I, I managed to, um, uh, make that into something that, that, uh, I was extremely invested in, in terms of, you know, ideas about time and loss and so forth, that, that been trying to explore in other ways. And his amazing script, you know, that, that he had written, it just gave me this vehicle to kind of channel these things into.

• 52:06Josh Horowitz?

  I'm curious, I want to end a couple of quick things. Like one I'm interested in is the necessity being the mother of invention. When you look back at following and memento, you know, there are limited budget resources that spawn creativity, I'm sure. Now you're working on this ginormous canvas where you have a large budget and you, you're able to do a hell of a lot. Are there still limits when you, when you endeavor on something like Tenet? Are there things that you can't accomplish for whatever reason, budget, time, whatever it is?

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the limits are never not there. You never have enough time, you never have enough money if you're doing your job right, because your job is to try and get the most on the screen possible. So as the films got bigger, as the budgets get bigger, you try and keep the films a little bit bigger than the budgets have got, if you know what I mean. So you try and get, uh, value for money. And certainly Tenet, you know, I'm, I'm very proud of the things we managed to get on screen, uh, with the resources, with the resources we had, even though the resources were, um, the envy of, of, you know, any filmmaker. Um, but that's the responsibility you feel. We were in a position where we could command a large budget from a studio. So we felt a huge responsibility to get as much as possible

• 53:18Speaker 02

  on screen for that, that money. So you're, interestingly, you're sort of back where you started with not enough time, not enough money, even though you're traveling the world and you've got all these people and you've got, you know, you're buying a seven four seven and crashing into a building and all that stuff. But, um, you're still bumping up against limitations and the limitations, as you say, necessity is the mother of invention. That's when some of your more interesting ideas come before.

• 53:41Josh Horowitz?

  Where's your head at today as we speak about the future of theatrical? I mean, no one has been more at the forefront about advocating for this. We are facing an existential threat thanks to some insane circumstances this past year. Do you still have optimism that we're going to be back to where we were? Is there, is, can we put the genie back in the bottle after audiences are used to seeing Dune at home? And these large scale films at home? What's your, what's your thought?

• 54:07Speaker 02

  Well, Dune hasn't happened yet. It's a long way off and I think there are a lot of, lot of, there'll be a lot of water under the bridge before we can look at that as a fait accompli. I think the short answer is, of course, people are going to go back to, to movies when they can. With Tenor, we were fortunate to be able to release the film. The studio was able to release the film in 65 different countries around the world where they had a, you know, a good approach to managing the virus. They were able to safely reopen their theaters with limited capacity. And the movie did great all of those places, all of those places. We saw appetite to come back to the movies.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  The U S, we didn't really get to release the film because we couldn't do L A and New York and San Francisco and Detroit and so forth. And, you know, we did what we could where it was safe to do so, but, but we were unable to. But where it was possible, the appetite was, was back there immediately. What everybody forgets when they look at this issue is that, you know, Wall Street, whoever it is, there's a narrative that is constantly being put out there that cinema attendance is declining. And it's not, 2019 was the biggest year for movies in box office terms. It was a very healthy year for attendance. You know, they always trot out this, oh, the average ticket price is pushed up and the offsets declines. It's not true.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  The average ticket price of a movie in 2019 was $8.40 and 1977 it was $9.10. You know, I mean, it's just, these things aren't true.

• 55:37Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Very, very healthy movie going culture in the world and in America in particular. But it's dependent on the movies. So when, like in 2019, when you have some really anticipated movies coming out. That are absolutely huge and overperform, then you see growth and all looks great. When you have a year when maybe the movies, you know, aren't quite as rewarding for people, then it goes down like, you know, I mean, that's the nature of the business. So long term, I mean, I think everybody in the business understands that long term, people are going to want to go back to movie theaters. The question is how you get there. You know, all I hear these days is, you know, can exhibition survive these awful circumstances?

• 56:20Speaker 02

  And I'm beginning to feel like the question isn't can exhibition survive? It's can the studio survive? Because it really is about trying to manage corporate expectations and Wall Street expectations of how you move into the future without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Right? And I'm not seeing a huge amount of leadership or skill in terms of parsing that out. And I'm speaking as somebody who has earned most of the money that I've ever earned in my career has been in home video and been with respect to streaming DVD Blu-ray, back to VHS. And, you know, I've spent years of my life in intense discussions with the people who

• 57:05Speaker 02

  manage home video and how to best do that and how to best make that work in concert with the theatrical release, how to draft off, you know? Always hearing that the wide window, for example, between the theatrical campaign and the home video release is a problem. We've always fought for the widest possible window, not because we were doing that as any kind of favor to exhibition, but because our home video made more money that way.

• 57:30Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  And that's, you know, I have the kids going through college to prove it. That's, you know, that's the way we made our money. And we looked at it straight economics. You know, you have to create a sense of anticipation. As with every other industry, you control the supply, you control supply and demand. You don't throw everything out to everybody at once and say, you wanted it here, you got it. Every other industry, every other marketing department in the world, they understand that it's all about supply and demand and controlling that. Not that everybody has to be as, you know, ruthless about it as De Beers with diamonds, for example, but whether it's car companies with a new model every year, whatever it is, people do control the release of it. You put out the hardback edition and then you wait before you put out the paperback

• 58:16Speaker 02

  edition, et cetera, et cetera. It's basic economics and. The only thing that's really stopped that being apparent to Hollywood is that the theaters wouldn't necessarily let them do it.

• 58:27Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  Now that the theaters don't have the leverage because they've had to close for the pandemic, as so many other businesses are suffering.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  I'm not proud that my industry is then holding a gun to their heads and saying, you know, now we'll take what we want. But that equation, you know, the gun that's to exhibition's head is going to be put back in the drawer sometime next year and then everything will change again.

• 58:53Josh Horowitz?

  I like ending on, and at least somewhat hopeful note, you'll be happy to know your cohort and friend Stephen Soderbergh I was on with today and had similar, similar thoughts. So yes, here's to a hopeful future for exhibition and getting back into movie theaters. Christopher, thanks again, as always, for the time. I'm so pleased you came back on the podcast.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  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. I'm Daisy Ridley and I definitely wasn't pressured to do this by Josh.

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