Other filmmakers on Christopher Nolan

The Oscar Nominated writer and director to whom this site is dedicated.
Post Reply
User avatar
Posts: 2306
Joined: July 2009
Location: Norway
Steven Speilberg:
"I don't make unconventional stories, I don't make non-linear stories. I like linear storytelling a lot. Chris Nolan is brilliant at non-linear storytelling, between his two great masterworks ("Memento" and "Inception"), really. That was non-linear storytelling. I appreciate non-linear storytelling and I go to a lot of movies that have that, but I don't do it. I haven't done that myself. And so I'm much more traditional in how a story should lay out, although there's no law or rule about telling a story."
Paul Greengrass:
"The Dark Knight, for instance, is a hugely successful film, and it’s also one of the best films of the last 10 years. Its themes and its darkness and its creative ambitions are absolutely huge, but of course it’s a gigantic and popular Batman movie. There are ways you can do this, but you have to engage with genre, you have to be offering a broad audience an identifiable experience that they can understand and will offer them the promise of being rewarded as a cinematic experience, then you have to give them that reward."
Roger Corman:
"And there’s another big budget film, Christopher Nolan’s film, Inception. Again, he’s using great originality."
Joseph Kosinski:
"When you look at Empire Strikes Back or The Dark Knight, sequels that were able to take the stories and characters to whole new places because you’d done all the hard work ahead of time, that’s a really exciting thing"
...
"You have films like Inception which is a completely original idea, and hopefully a film like ours where there’s a reason to go back and revisit these characters and see what’s happened since the last time we saw them"
Guillermo Del Toro:
"I love that Chris Nolan did Inception. He did it because he can, but I assure you, this was not easy to push through. Whether bold movies succeed or fail, they don’t go unnoticed"
...
"There is a horizon of hope. We talk about this geek comic book generation, but it wasn’t long ago that nobody made those movies. Look at people like Chris Nolan, or Alfonso Cuaron, these are guys equally at home doing Memento, Y tu Mama Tambien as they are with Harry Potter or Inception. There’s a generation here that is marrying independent filmmaking sensibilities with mainstream, the pop version of what Easy Riders did for the 70s. We’re not going to have another 70s, but we are finding a generation of people like Neill Blomkamp, in movies like Monsters and Buried, that are incredibly innovative pieces of entertainment that have the verve and the audacity that come from independent filmmaking. Nolan and Alfonso are the Mac Daddies of that breed, but Blomkamp, Rodrigo Cortes, they are coming up all over the world. I don’t think the aversion to risk can suffocate this."
Keep em' coming peeps. I will add more of these wonderful quotes in the future.
@sammyjankis88

User avatar
Posts: 1412
Joined: November 2011
Every director alive:
I wish I was as skilled of a director as Christopher Nolan is, I truly do. His works surpass mine by great bounds, leaving me to only look upon my own works as mere playthings compared to his.


;) :P

User avatar
Posts: 7309
Joined: June 2010
Location: London town, UK
Shaz Fard:
I remember when watching Memento when i was like 13, I knew instantly I wanted to do that -make films- I had no idea what I had to do, or what is was about, I just wanted to do it. So I guess I owe a lot to Christopher Nolan. When you look at his films, from Following to Inception (so far), the way he tells a story is very unique, its as if he has a timeline, chops it up, and gives it to us to put back together, its a puzzle. Its a form of misdirection, he shows you something, and then manipulates it and we all scratch our heads. With the Greatest directors, they always have this quality where the relationship of the image and story telling is a concomitant one, and you are finding that in Nolan's work, I'll be very interesting to see what he will do in the next 10 years.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Image

User avatar
Posts: 1412
Joined: November 2011
Z. Cobb wrote:Shaz Fard:
I remember when watching Memento when i was like 13, I knew instantly I wanted to do that -make films- I had no idea what I had to do, or what is was about, I just wanted to do it. So I guess I owe a lot to Christopher Nolan. When you look at his films, from Following to Inception (so far), the way he tells a story is very unique, its as if he has a timeline, chops it up, and gives it to us to put back together, its a puzzle. Its a form of misdirection, he shows you something, and then manipulates it and we all scratch our heads. With the Greatest directors, they always have this quality where the relationship of the image and story telling is a concomitant one, and you are finding that in Nolan's work, I'll be very interesting to see what he will do in the next 10 years.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Isn't that a guy from this forum?

Btw, Marion looks so adorable in your avi. I wish I had a gf that looked like her. :(

User avatar
Posts: 2306
Joined: July 2009
Location: Norway
Danny Boyle:
"You learn things about yourself over time. I learned that I am at my best when my project is under $20 million and I’m trying to make it look like $100 million. Chris Nolan can take $160 million and make it feel like $320 million and I love and admire him for it, but I’m not that guy."
James Cameron:
"I loved Inception, and I wish that it had gotten more, I wish Chris Nolan had gotten nominated for directing that film because I think that it’s the most astounding piece of film creation and direction of the year, hands down ... but now it’s not even in the running. So I diverge from the Academy’s taste in a lot of ways."
Rupert Wyatt:
"I do think you can entertain an audience as much as challenge them. Christopher Nolan with films like Inception is a filmmaker who's managed to accomplish that."
Joss Whedon:
"I just love the respect [Nolan has] for the character and the world,” he said. “I thought Christopher Nolan’s done an amazing job of bringing out the comic book, and I see a lot of movies [coughs “HULK”] — sorry, I had a Hulk stuck in my throat — that don’t really have the aesthetic or the pathos or really get why the comic book works."
@sammyjankis88

Posts: 18329
Joined: February 2011
Nolan is the man, man.

User avatar
Posts: 4041
Joined: April 2010
Great quotes!

User avatar
Posts: 2306
Joined: July 2009
Location: Norway
Steven Soderbergh:
"So I'm happy that [Memento, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight director] Chris Nolan and other independent-minded filmmakers are making studio films"
....
"I called Warner Bros. and said, 'I really think you should hire this guy to do (Insomnia)'; I pushed hard,". "Then, they asked if I wanted to come on board as a producer, and I said yes."
Kevin Smith:
"I mean, Chris Nolan, I would imagine will have indie credibility till the day he dies based on Memento, but he's also had substantial box office success with stuff like Batman Begins and The Prestige and Insomnia. So, you know, this dude has it both ways."
Dom Portalla:
"One of my favorite filmmakers, Christopher Nolan, made a flick a few years ago called 'The Prestige'. The first time you see that movie, you’re walking through a maze. You are just trying to get a sense of where you are and figure out where you’re going and it all leads up to an amazing 'grand reveal'. The second time you see that movie, it’s a completely different film, on every level. There’s even a line in the flick that sums it up perfectly. Borden has to show his wife the secret behind the 'bullet-catch trick' otherwise she won’t let him perform it. Once he does she responds with 'Once you know, it’s actually quite obvious'. That’s the entire movie right there perfectly defined in that one line. You watch it the second time seeing all the ways Christopher Nolan was just rubbing your face in it ('Are you watching closely?')."
Duncan Jones:
"I don’t know if I’m going to have the same career path as Chris Nolan, but I did kind of look at his career,” Jones said. “You see a film like Memento and then you see a film like Insomnia. He starts off with a little independent film that he did with a lesser known actor at the time – Guy Pierce. And then he does Insomnia where he’s working on a bigger budget with a studio, with well known actors – Robin Williams and Al Pacino. And then you kind of see how he’s showing what he’s capable of. And I wanted to try to do the same, so – “Source Code:” bigger budget, working with the studio, bigger name actors, same kind of deal."
Richard Kelly:
"And when I was editing the film around May of 2008, when Chris Nolan was putting the finishing touches on THE DARK KNIGHT, I went to his editing house, met him and his wife, and they showed me Two-Face's digital makeup to make sure that what they were doing wasn't too similar to what we were doing with Langella - which was cool. We were in completely different places, but it was still pushing into new territory in terms of digital makeup."
Check out his review of Inception on the The Golden Briefcase podcast, it's glowing. http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/tgb-ep ... ard-kelly/

M. Night Shyamalan:
"I met Chris Nolan once, and he knew I was doing this, and he just said, “Pace yourself” and it was a sweet thing for him to give me the advice. I fully understand what he’s talking about."
@sammyjankis88

User avatar
Posts: 2306
Joined: July 2009
Location: Norway
Jon Favereau:
"We are very different films, They are similar as far as the underlying material, but are different in personality. I think they reflect the tastes of the filmmakers." Favreau wrote that the success of "Dark Knight" essentially "took the spotlight off us," adding, "I would be happy to be Pepsi to their Coke for the next ten years. 'The choice of a new generation!'"
...
"Do what you can to see the IMAX film version of the Batman preview when it comes out on MI4. Trust me. #nolan #hardy"
Edgar Wright:
"Worth noting. The most anticpated film of 2012 is shot on celluloid. So when it says 'A Film By Christopher Nolan', it really is film. P.S. It was amazing."
Eli Roth:
"I just saw the most incredible #DarkNightRises footage in IMAX. Mind blown."
Damon Lindelof:
"I wish that someone would break into my dreams and give me an idea HALF as good as INCEPTION,"
Francis Ford Coppola:
"There are a lot of very talented guys here. David O. Russell has made four remarkable films in a row. Christopher Nolan, with films like Memento, is dazzling in the things he is willing to do."
Ben Affleck:
"The one benefit of having done all kinds of movies as an actor is, you learn the pros and cons of being tempted to do a really big movie because it costs a lot of money. With Superman, I think they're going to do a great version. Chris Nolan is brilliant and they've got a great director for it."
@sammyjankis88

User avatar
Posts: 2777
Joined: December 2011
Location: Brasil
Hi Robin; I'm not familiar with the works of some of these directors. Could you mention one of the films they made?
Joseph Kosinski
Shaz Fard
Joss Whedon
Rupert Wyatt
Richard Kelly
Dom Portalla
Damon Lindelof
Edgar Wright

Thanks.

Post Reply