Nolan and Charlie Kaufman?

Speculation and discussion about Christopher Nolan's possible and confirmed future projects.
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I think that Charlie Kaufman's screenwriting would work well with Chris Nolan's directing. Both have stories friven by the psychologies of their leading characters, like to tell their stories out of chronological order, and have bizarre architecture or mindscapes.

However, Nolan likes to have action in his stories, and Kaufman seems to be against that.

What do you think? Would they be a good match?

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I'm pretty sure this has been discussed several times before to be honest :)

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Toucan_Thom wrote:I think that Charlie Kaufman's screenwriting would work well with Chris Nolan's directing. Both have stories friven by the psychologies of their leading characters, like to tell their stories out of chronological order, and have bizarre architecture or mindscapes.

However, Nolan likes to have action in his stories, and Kaufman seems to be against that.

What do you think? Would they be a good match?
Nolan doesn't necessarily like to have action in his stories. It's all about what movie he's making. Besides Inception and Batman movies... Memento, Prestige or Insomnia were all distant from action.

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RIFA wrote:
Toucan_Thom wrote:I think that Charlie Kaufman's screenwriting would work well with Chris Nolan's directing. Both have stories friven by the psychologies of their leading characters, like to tell their stories out of chronological order, and have bizarre architecture or mindscapes.

However, Nolan likes to have action in his stories, and Kaufman seems to be against that.

What do you think? Would they be a good match?
Nolan doesn't like to have action in his stories. Besides Inception and Batman movies... Memento, Prestige or Insomnia were all distant from action.
Well, Insomnia had some action scenes (the fog and the climax). But we don't know where Nolan's career is going to move after TDKR, whether he'll carry on making big budget action films (which I'm more than fine with) or whether he'll return to more low key films. Personally, I'd like to have a mixture.

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Yeah I would like more of a mixture as well. I think he is focusing more on the big budget films at the moment because that option is available to him at the moment.
In five years time he may lose some of that clout due to no longer making the Batman films which give him more box office numbers compared to something like Memento or The Prestige which he can make whenever.
Inception for example which is a big blockbuster film on a scale in production like Batman and isn't a property of anykind is a huge financial risk.
So I agree with the type of films he's making at the moment but I will be a little annoyed if he doesn't mix it up more after he is done with Batman, as it would be such wasted talent if he just makes blockbusters all the time as he brings so much to a film with less factors and resources from what we have seen with Memento, Following and The Prestige.

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There are a lot of better directors than Nolan for directing a script by Kaufman. Nolan is not a great director but he is very good and he keeps getting better and better with each movie.
But he is definitely a great screenwriter. I can't even name one person alive who could writes better scripts than what he writes.

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mastervirgo wrote:There are a lot of better directors than Nolan for directing a script by Kaufman. Nolan is not a great director but he is very good and he keeps getting better and better with each movie.
But he is definitely a great screenwriter. I can't even name one person alive who could writes better scripts than what he writes.

I think Rhian Johnson and Chan Wook Park are better than him when it comes to writing and directing btw. He could be better if he went back more to his Memento and Following roots which truly got him noticed as an artist, rather than a film about a man who dresses up as a bat because his parents got murdered.

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Nolan devises that most insane plots ever imagined but his dialogue and characters leaves something to be desired.It feels mechanical sometimes,like the characters are chess pieces being moved around in the service of the rules(plot).Kaufman on the other hand is excellent at character development and his dialogue is superb.
Man ,them both working together on a script would be amazing.

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Kaufman is single-handedly my favorite screenwriter and one of my top 5 people in the film industry. I've seen basically everything he's done, even the tv show episodes before he went to film.

Nolan is also one of my top 5 people in the film industry.

With that said I think the way they'd work best together is if Nolan returned to his noir roots and did something more independent or scaled down than his larger than life films as of late. I say that because Kaufman doesn't yet seem to be of the caliper of the grandiose films Nolan puts out. That's not to say he can't do it - he just hasn't demonstrated it yet. Synecdoche, New York was his largest film to date, but he needs to dream bigger, darling.

I think they can work together, but like I said it would be something more cerebral and esoteric like Memento or Following and less accessible to the large audiences he now herds in.

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