The one constant passion in Christoper Nolan's life has been movies. The director of Batman Begins and The Prestige began his filmmaking career as a kid with some Action Men and a cine camera. In a sense, he's never grown out of that phase.
"To me, it's never become work. It's miraculous to me that anyone would pay me to do something like this, which I love. It's something I've always done, and something I will always do, whether or not it was a job. So it's been a constant learning progression. Hopefully the films are getting better. Certainly they're better now than when I was seven!"
Nolan is a devoted cinephile, but says he tries his best to avoid being drawn into homaging other filmmakers.
"I think I'm completely influenced by other movies, but I try not to be concious about what influences me. The thing with being influenced by things is that you don't want to do things just because other people have done them... but then you also don't want to not do things just because other people have done them! I try and have a strong point of view on how I shoot something. I don't think too much about how that point of view has been informed. Thirty years from now, if I look back at my films it'll probably be painfully embarrassing how much they're influenced by other filmmakers, but I can't see that right now!"
Nicolas Roeg
"I'm fascinated by the narrative structures adopted by Nicolas Roeg. I think he's done some extraordinary experimentation with storytelling that's been very influential on me. The Prestige has the most complicated structure I've used, cos it's narratives within narratives; much more complicated for my brother and I to write, and much more complicated to edit."
Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams
"I think the 70's era of Batman, the [writer]Denny O'Neill and [artist]Neal Adams, is an amazing time in the character's development and the tone of it. I loved the way that carried through in the 80's with Frank Miller and so forth, with a maturing of the form and of the character. The emphasis of the character chnages over time, and from the 70's on there's a grit to the character, a reality that comes into things."
Ridley Scott
"I'm a huge fan of Blade Runner and Alien. With Ridley Scott, the complexity of the world he creates, the layering that goes into it, and the care that goes into the technical side are tremendous - because it creates whole worlds that you can escape into and lose yourself in."
Terence Malick
"The photography in Terence Malick movies is amazing; he has such a feel for visual storytelling. What I love about The Thin Red Line is that it could only be a movie. It's got an abstract, cinematic narative; it's a visual form of storytelling."
Patrick McGoohan
"I'm an enormous fan of The Prisoner, and I think it has great relevance today. I found it an extraordinary adventurous type of storytelling. I first caught it when they were re-running it in the states in the late 80's, inspired by the success of Twin Peaks, cos that was blowing people's minds at that time as radical TV. And then you look at The Prisoner and say, 'Well, that was really radical TV and it was made such a long time ago.' It's just a fantastic metaphor, a fantastic example of a man standing against the system. It was very bold, and it'd be bold by today's standards. I believe the story is that [creator]Patrick McGoohan had to leave the country after the last episode, because people were so upset about the way it ended, which is pretty amazing!"
Being Reclusive
"I'm not much of a consumer other than movies. I don't use the internet. I don't have a cellphone. I used to live in a flat where I had incoming calls only. Once you've lived without a telephone the idea you have to have a phone around all time is crazy! I'm getting to the point where people are gonna make me have one! But it'd be a nightmare if people could just phone me up all the time, cos when you're working you've got 10,000 questions about everyhting anyway!
Must say that i share his sentiments about the cellphone. I only really use it for emergencies.
