Interviewer
How good is your memory?
Christopher Nolan
It gets worse as I get older, which I have become aware of, which is kind of frustrating. It’s pretty good. I have a pretty good visual memory, but I have a tendency to remember, you know, if I see a film and I remember it. Six months later, I tend to remember it reversed, as in the left or right of the frame, which is a sort of peculiarity I’ve noticed in my memory, which is kind of where I’m very interested in the process of memory and the way it can be distorted and all the rest. And I know that guy the same as me in going through making the film. You go you. We went through an intense process of questioning our own memories and the and the way it works. And I sort of came out the other side very much less confident of the way my memory worked than before. And then the script and Leonard’s systems and the way the plot points come together relating to memory, they are just extrapolations of the way I try and help my short-term memory and myself, you know. I write phone numbers on my hand and I take notes, and you know I have souvenirs of things, and I use photography, and all these different aids. Kind of, you know, help me live life. And once you start identifying them, you start to realize that that your process of memory is not as good as you hoped. And it’s much more interpretive than you realized. And one of the things we were trying to do in the film is put people as firmly as possible into Leonard’s head. We were really trying to make the audience question their own process of memory a little bit the way we did what we were making the film.
Interviewer
It’s a movie about an investigator who doesn’t know anything. That’s a pretty interesting idea.
Christopher Nolan
Well, I thought so when my brother told it to me. It’s based on a short story that my brother Jonah was writing that’s just been published in Esquire magazine. And he told it to me about three years ago while we were driving from Chicago to Los Angeles. He said, “I’m working on this story and it’s about this guy with this condition, you know, he can’t make new memories and he’s looking for revenge. He’s looking for the guy who killed his wife”. And I just thought it was such a fantastic idea and such a way into the the film noir genre, a way to kind of reassess some of the the over familiar tropes, really. I said to him, “Well, can I take it and write a screenplay from it while you work on your story, you know, get it the way you want?” And he said yes, which was lucky because I think it actually took him as long to finish writing a story as it did for us to finish making the film. When he finished it in the end, it turned out great, but very different from the film.
Interviewer
It’s it is very different, but that’s we talked before about this a little bit and I think there’s a similar sense of desperation in both, the script or the movie, I guess, and in his story too.
Christopher Nolan
Yeah, I think there’s a similar sense of desperation. I think the story represents kind of the point of origin, kind of the back story for the film in a way. And the other thing that that Jonah and I collaborated on that that he really created was the the website for the film. Which is a otnemem.com which is memento spot backwards and he put this website together that it doesn’t really give any information about the film particularly, but it creates a narrative link between the world of his story and the world of the finished film, which I think is kind of interesting.
Interviewer
How do you end up describing the film to people who haven’t seen it? I mean, what do you say when they say they’ve heard about it?
Christopher Nolan
Well, I say it’s a psychological thriller about a guy who can’t make new memories, who’s looking for revenge. The story is told in as subjective a way as we were able to do. We really tried to put the audience into the head of the protagonist and make them experience some of his confusion and uncertainty and paranoia.
Interviewer
But it’s weird too, because it’s definitely a film with the most unreliable of unreliable narrators.
Christopher Nolan
Alright, well, I’ve always been interested in that particular story element or narrative element in that of the unreliable narrator, particularly when you are given very strongly that narrator’s point of view through the film. But to me it had always been a problem to come up with the appropriate reason for the narrator being unreliable, because to me it’s never been interesting enough if the guy is just lying or if he’s dreaming or you know, whatever. But in this idea of my brother’s, sort of perfect, jumping off point to explore that method of storytelling, that idea of seeing the world through this very distorted point of view of one particular person.
Interviewer
How do you prepare for making a movie like this? Do you see movies or film noir from the past like “Double Indemnity” or something like that just to get yourself sort of centered? What do you do?
Christopher Nolan
I try not to be too conscious in my influences, particularly when working with such a specific genre because I do think the film is a film noir. You know, people sometimes ask me if I think it’s a film noir, as if I would take objection to that, but I don’t. You know, I’m very comfortable with that, but I try not to, you know, be too conscious about what I’m being influenced by. But when I look back at the film, I see plenty and plenty of things that I’ve grown up watching. I mean, you mentioned “Double Indemnity”, that’s certainly a film that there are things from in this film. And I think the film, to a certain extent is a combination of that kind of material, those kind of tropes and story elements with some of the more experimental narrative editing rhythms of people like Nicolas Roeg or right back to Orson Welles and people like that.
Interviewer
You say Nicolas Roeg and I find myself really thinking of “Don’t Look Now” when I see this, especially the end, which makes it feel kind of like a parable in the way “Don’t Look Now” is kind of one too.
Christopher Nolan
Yeah, I think it was more with my first film “Following” where it was a nonlinear structure. People often refer to “Memento” as having a nonlinear structure, but it isn’t. It’s very linear, more so than a conventional film. You actually can’t remove a scene from the film. Because each scene depends on its relationship with the preceding scene and the one that follows, it’s totally linear. It’s just reversed essentially. So, where the element of time and the distortion of time I think comes into it, is that in really trying to put the audience into Leonard’s mindset, you sort of enter into his confusion as to the sequence of events and also as to the overall time period that the film is taking place. And it seems to be a film that’s very difficult for people to figure out what the time that’s passed over the the length of the story, what time period it is, whether it’s couple days or weeks or whatever. And to me, that was entirely appropriate, because when I looked into the the real-life condition, that is very much a feature of it in real life, when somebody loses the ability to process information in the conventional way. When they lose the ability to take the experience we’re having now and then pass that into the long term memory, they get very bad and in the end cease to be able to estimate time and estimate the time that’s passed. So, in the story that we make a big feature of the notion that he does not know how long it is since receiving his head injury, the moment he’s stopped making memories. And the point at which we’re seeing the story, that’s a very indeterminate period of time, which was always very interesting to me.
Interviewer
Sounds like kind of a dangerous thing to do too though, because if audiences are trying to keep a sense of how much time has passed while he’s working this out, it can compound the confusion potentially.
Christopher Nolan
Potentially, but I think that if you look at conventional films, it’s actually, the sense of time in conventional films is very distorted. I’m just doing it for a particular reason, so it’s drawing attention to that fact, but I think in most films, the sense of time is incredibly distorted.
Interviewer
You were talking about tropes and films, and there’s one that was a big one for maybe this is like the entire 50s, which is using an amnesia victim.
Christopher Nolan
It’s not amnesia, and that’s very important. My brother and I, when we first talked about the idea, he made it very clear to me that the reason he was excited about the idea, and I totally shared this, is that it’s not amnesia. It’s a form of amnesia, but it’s different from what we think of as amnesia. And his point was that in an amnesia movie, there are no rules. Anything can be true. I mean, absolutely anything can be true. The protagonist can be anything. He can be, you know, the killer. He can be this. He can be, you know, with no rhyme or reason. It’s too easy in a sense. There have been some good amnesia thrillers, but it is a little bit easy. This is a much more controlled space that’s blank in the guys personality and to me it’s a really interesting area because it’s the area between the person you are now and the person you once were. All the objective information that you supposedly define yourself through, your name, where you live, all this sort of stuff, your whole childhood, all that, that’s all accessible to him. But it’s the difficulty of reconciling that with his present self. And for somebody coming up on 30, it just seemed like a kind of interesting arena. It’s like, how do you define yourself as a person now, how do you sort of sit there and look at yourself and say, well, how did I get here? And who am I now? And compared with what I was 15 years ago, for example, it seems an interesting area of the the the personality to explore, really.
Interviewer
But it also means in some respect you make this character kind of a blank slate, doesn’t it? I mean, he becomes in effect the audience’s surrogate.
Christopher Nolan
Yeah, which is one very strong element of amnesia thrillers and of this type of memory loss thriller because the protagonist is an immediate figure of identification for the audience because the audience is sitting there wanting to find out what’s going on. And here is this figure wanting to find out what’s going on. And I think that was one of the things that really drew me to the idea of the film, to the story, because I was very interested in telling a story that was so firmly from the point of view of one individual.
Interviewer
And you have to find an actor who is willing to do that kind of thing, who is basically willing to walk around confused for the better part of two hours.
Christopher Nolan
Yeah, definitely. And Guy was very happy to walk around confused. When I first met him, I can’t remember his exact words, but he said that the script had sort of spoken to something paranoid in his soul or something. He is interested in that respect because he worries about his memory. He questions his memory and worries that he forgets things and all the rest. The irony being that he has a fantastic memory. I mean absolutely fantastic. And all the while he’s making this film about this guy who can’t remember anything, he remembers everything he’s done in every setup, absolutely perfectly. Which was such a help to us because we had to make the film very fast. We shot the whole thing in 25 and a half days and part of the reason we were able to do that is because Guy could repeat something he’d done exactly. So, all the insert work in, all the close-ups of writing notes and this kind of thing, he did all that himself.
Interviewer
You’ve been to film festivals with both your movies, to Slamdance with “Following”, and Sundance with “Memento”. What’s that like, taking a movie to a festival?
Christopher Nolan
It’s well, it’s terrifying. First and foremost, particularly the first couple of times you do it. But then with both of those films we were really lucky. We got a good response from the audience. And the great thing about film festivals is that you have an audience who’s really looking for something differen from the mainstream. They come to your film to enjoy what you’re doing. They’re really giving you the benefit of the doubt as an audience, which is a wonderful thing and it’s very enjoyable as a filmmaker to experience screening a film to an audience like that.
Interviewer
There can be a rarefied world, obviously, because they come as real film lovers and maybe not as skeptical of jaundice. Is that true?
Christopher Nolan
I think that is true, at least to begin with. They enter into the film with a willingness to go where you’re going to take them and not be too sort of judgmental. Having said that, if you’re screening at the end of the festival, you very often are screening for an audience of people who’ve seen 15 films in the last 10 days, and they have a very weary approach and sit there, kind of like, “OK, here we go. Is there going to be something in this?” But overall, my experience of the festivals have been wonderful. Just really interested audiences and that’s great.
Interviewer
Obviously storyboard and script, and editing are essential to this film. But walking the actors through this complex atmosphere you’ve created seems key to the film’s success, and I hear when you’re on the set working with an actor, you are working right next to the lens of the camera and not where most directors are doing these days, behind a monitor.
Christopher Nolan
My first film, I shot it myself, so seeing everything through the lens, which is actually a much clearer and sharper way of perceiving than on the monitor because we couldn’t afford any kind of video assist. So, I’m not used to working with the monitor anyway. And then when we came to shoot Memento, I was very lucky to find the director of photography Wally Fister, who’s also a fantastic camera operator. So, the purpose of looking at the monitor, really, for me is simply to check framings, because I’m not doing the camera myself. We shot this film in Cinemascope and it has a very clear image and you project it very big. I think if you’re making the film for the big screen, you see so much more in that image than you’re ever going to see on a monitor. So, it’s an appalling way of trying to gauge acting, any kind of subtleties.
Interviewer
Yet so many do that.
Christopher Nolan
Well, maybe they’re comfortable doing that. Everybody’s working method is different, but for me, I don’t like to look at the monitor because the image is not expressive enough and it’s not clear enough. You really need to be by the camera watching the performer, And I don’t like to use the headsets either because the sound is heavily compressed, and you don’t get as much of the voice as you’re going to get when you see it in the theater. So, for me, it’s just it’s simply the best way of getting an understanding of what you’re actually recording of the film.
Interviewer
Your distributor must love you because people are going to have to see this film two or three times. Did you actually think about that?
Christopher Nolan
I definitely thought about that, but not for the purpose of trying to sell more tickets. Cause I think it would be pretty stupid way of going about it. But I love films that that you can come back to a second time or even a third time and get a slightly different experience. In the case of somebody like Ridley Scott, who makes films that are cinematically incredibly dense in an audio-visual sense, so you can kind of see other things in them when you come back to them. I wanted to do it in more of a narrative way but. But I love films that kind of will hold up to that scrutiny, particularly these days because you are seeing films two or three times. You’re seeing them in the cinema, then you’re seeing them on video or cable and then you’re catching them on a plane somewhere or whatever. It’s amazing to me the number of times you are seeing, even movies you hate, you wind up seeing three times. So, if you can make a film that actually does something a little bit different the second time you see it, to me, that’s a fascinating thing. And that was very much on my mind in making this film, particularly because, with this structure, it’s a continually developing story where you’re reinterpreting everything you’ve seen throughout the movie, and then at the end. And so, it seemed essential to me that it would hold up the scrutiny second time, but also give you a different experience, sort of be about slightly different things.
Interviewer
And I guess I wonder too, because as this comes up, are there pictures that are really touchstones for you, that you brought that kind of experience, or the experience has changed you and seeing them two or three times because it’s clearly influenced the way you work.
Christopher Nolan
I think one of the ones I would mention from when I was a teenager was Angel Heart. Because that’s a movie that Alan Parker made that has this incredible twist at the end, that sort of changes everything you’ve seen. And I was pretty fascinated. I can’t remember how old I was when I first saw it at 16 or something. You could go back and watch it again and be surprised that you hadn’t noticed certain elements of the story that lead up to that ending. So it was a film that took you by surprise, but that played fair with you, you know. And if you came back to it, you had a rather different experience. But more recently, people talk a lot about The Sixth Sense of The Usual Suspects of films like this. But I think there’ve often been interesting movies where the story surprises you at the end in some way or towards the end in some way that that does make you rethink what you’ve seen. In the case of Memento, it wasn’t interested Instead of some kind of snapping twist at the end, so much as a changing relationship with central character. A character that you start to basically distrust through the story and you start to question the things they’re showing you, the things they’re telling you. That seemed to me to be kind of an interesting thing to play with.
