Christopher Nolan: An Overview (w/ Jean-Pierre Boudreaux)

Eli Price (00:39.849)
Hello everyone and welcome to the establishing shot. Yes. Yeah. Oh no. So it's like, it's a, I can't remember the term, but it's like a free to use, there's no licensing on it sort of thing. And yeah, I added in the movie quotes. Yeah.

JP (00:41.798)
Oh, hello. Sorry, I was just 

JP (01:03.366)
Oh, so, okay, but you added the quotes, right? Yeah, I was like, say you should, I was gonna say you should get into like cinematic lo-fi, like hip hop beats for studying, sleeping, and I don't know, whatever the rest of the, there's that one playlist everyone knows about.

Eli Price (01:13.23)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I should probably I should probably shout out this guy. He's um, uh, let me get his name, right Uh whole isna H-o-l-i-z-n-a Um, yeah, he has um, he has a large number of like creative commons um Music that are freed free to use. Um you can you can kind of check him out on those sorts of sites and then I think he has a

JP (01:38.891)
Nice.

Eli Price (01:45.961)
Patreon to where you can use even more of his stuff Yeah, but uh But yeah, I added in some quotes from some of my favorite directors. So yeah, but yeah Yeah, but yeah, we're Jumping in to this next series If this is your first time joining in the establishing shot is a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmography's

JP (01:49.235)
Yeah, y'all should do some colabs.

JP (01:57.578)
Love it, love it, it's a vibe.

Eli Price (02:15.669)
And yeah, I like to start off with kind of an overview episode because there's always when you do these sorts of uh I guess endeavors in uh in film study. There's always so much to talk about with a director like Kind of like looking at overarching themes and like techniques and then like just their background and how they got started is all Like always super interesting to me

So yeah, so I love to do these overview episodes. And yeah, I'm excited to have JP, JP Boudreaux on with me, the first three Pete guest, I believe, if I'm thinking correctly, yeah.

JP (02:57.622)
and probably many more to come. I'll do this anytime you ask me to. So my favorite thing to talk about is anything cinema related.

Eli Price (03:02.439)
Yeah.

Eli Price (03:09.469)
Yeah, I'm excited. I've introduced myself, obviously, before and JP before. So we'll skip the introductions, the Eli and JP, I guess, biographies. But we can jump into talking about our introduction to Christopher Nolan.

You know, I personally, Christopher Nolan, obviously, the topic of discussion, the man of the hour, the man of really not just the hour, but the next like how many hours of podcasts we're going to do in this series. But yeah, my introduction to Nolan was, I believe Batman Begins. I remember seeing Batman Begins when I was in high school.

is when it came out and The I mean you can you can try

JP (04:08.99)
Eli, do you want me to make you feel old? I think Batman Begins was also my start. And I was 10 years old when Batman Begins came out.

Eli Price (04:18.061)
Yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. You know, Batman is he spans generations. So, yeah, 2000. I don't I don't think I saw I don't know that I saw Batman Begins in 2005 when it was released. It might have been the same year, but I definitely didn't see it in theaters. I saw it. I saw it at home.

JP (04:26.498)
Amen.

JP (04:35.118)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (04:44.593)
I don't know on what I guess I saw it on my TV I don't know if I guy rented it or got a Got the DVD of it or what but uh, but I definitely watched it at home and um and yeah, that was um That was my Yeah, that was for sure for sure my introduction and then I remember too I remember I didn't see

JP (05:02.442)
ABC Family, Batman Only Weekends or something like that.

Eli Price (05:12.013)
Inception in theaters either but I do remember seeing that at some point I don't know if I saw it before or after the Dark Knight I might have been behind on inception but no well It seems like there were still like the cultural talk when I saw it so I might have seen it close to when it was released But I do remember in college when I was in college the Dark Knight No, I'm thinking current incorrectly

The Dark Knight came out when I was still in high school also. Um, so I remember seeing that in theaters. And then, um, when I was in college, I remember going to, um, I was working like at a summer kind of, uh, conference center, campground kind of place. And, um, both summers I worked there in college, we went to like a midnight premiere when that was still a thing. And we went to, um, a midnight premiere of the Dark Knight Rises.

JP (05:59.553)
Mm-hmm.

JP (06:11.06)
Mmm.

Eli Price (06:11.633)
And yeah, that was really fun. There were all kinds of people dressed up. And yeah, that was a really good time. But I also remember in college, I watched The Prestige for the first time with some friends in our dorm. And yeah, that was a really, I think that's the first time like...

JP (06:14.507)
Yeah.

Eli Price (06:39.065)
that Nolan really like stood out to me because it was mostly like I guess inception a little bit but like Man it feels like You know, of course you got the Batman movies or they still like they're very much Nolan movies But they are still like franchise comic book movies, which I would have seen no matter who made them sort of thing But when I remember when I saw the prestige I was just like blown away my

JP (06:58.615)
Mm-hmm.

JP (07:07.999)
Yeah.

Eli Price (07:10.337)
by the story and the way it was structured, which we'll get into later, is the way he structures his stories. But yeah, for a long time, that was like, you kind of have to pick a movie to say when people ask you what's your favorite movie. And for a long time after I saw that, that was what I would say. I would always say The Prestige, yeah.

JP (07:28.683)
Yeah.

JP (07:33.142)
Really? Wow.

Eli Price (07:37.121)
And I don't think that's the case anymore. I still absolutely love the prestige. But but I wouldn't say it's like my favorite movie anymore. But yeah, it's still one of my favorite Nolan movies. Just like. I don't know, it was just one of those kind of eye opening, like, oh, man, there's so there's something more going on here for me.

JP (08:03.011)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (08:06.173)
So really like Christopher Nolan was one of my entry points into like loving not just like movies like as a casual movie goer but like really thinking about movies and digging deeper and like the conversation around movies that you have like with friends and other people that love watching movies and you know just discussing film and so.

JP (08:15.406)
Mm-hmm.

JP (08:18.926)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (08:33.517)
Christopher Nolan means a lot to me because of that, because when I was in college, he really kind of was one of the, I guess, one of the things that propelled me to where I am now in my love of film. So just looking back on that, I'm just really appreciative of him and I'm excited to do this series.

JP (08:49.044)
Yeah.

Eli Price (09:00.093)
you know, covering him in his films because of that. So, but yeah, what was your kind of introduction to Nolan and yeah, lay it on me.

JP (09:01.251)
Mm-hmm.

JP (09:09.554)
Yeah, well, I just want to start off by making a very bold statement that in the cinema world is probably not that hot of a take, but Christopher Nolan is the greatest of all time. Okay, I'm just saying that. But I will say, I think, well, maybe, I don't know. I think among like, you know, the online film bros, maybe not as hot of a take. But I do think that in some ways, this sounds...

Eli Price (09:21.781)
I don't know, that might be a hard take.

Eli Price (09:32.75)
Sure.

JP (09:39.342)
bit odd probably but in some ways I feel like Christopher Nolan has always been there. Like his movies have always been there, you know? I mean, so it's, but I can't really remember necessarily my first experience. It was probably Batman related. I, you know, I always, I have a lot of trouble like remembering things that happened yesterday so you try to think back over the years about which movies I saw, which was...

Eli Price (09:45.909)
Hmm.

Eli Price (09:57.382)
Yeah.

JP (10:06.922)
At this point, I have seen all of Christopher Nolan's movies except for following his very first film because it's not on streaming anywhere and I just never have a chance to watch it but at least I don't know if it's on streaming anywhere but I want to say I feel like I saw The Dark Night in theaters. I definitely saw The Dark Night Rises in theaters but a lot of the other movies that which I love I would say every

Eli Price (10:12.358)
Okay.

Eli Price (10:27.583)
Mm-hmm.

JP (10:36.874)
you know, at minimum like a three and a half out of five to five out of five for me. I don't think he's made a single quote unquote bad movie. Or even as you know, and I don't really think there's many other directors I think of like that besides maybe the name of enough. But I haven't seen all of his movies either. But I've seen most of the really big popular ones. I think they're all great. So I think it's something really special for a director to make as you know.

Eli Price (10:46.225)
Yeah, I feel the same.

JP (11:07.122)
as many movies as he's made at this point, which isn't a lot by some of the heavyweight standards, but is a lot. I feel like every single one is a cultural moment. I wish I would have seen Interstellar Theaters. I wish I could have seen, I don't remember, I don't think I did. I wish I could have seen Dunkirk in theaters. I just didn't get a chance to. A lot of times movies come out that I really want to see when I just do not have going to the movies money.

Eli Price (11:20.149)
Hmm.

Eli Price (11:29.5)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (11:37.125)
Yeah, sure.

JP (11:37.851)
So I always end up missing out on that kind of stuff. I really wanted to see Dunkirk and IMAX and I'm really bummed that I didn't get to. But I do remember that movie. My friend in college had just gotten like a 70 inch 4K TV that he had in his room in the college ministry dormitory that we lived in. And he like went out of town and he was like.

hey man if you want to like use the TV to watch anything like feel free and I actually watched Dunkirk for the first time on that because that was the biggest screen that I could find and I really enjoyed it but yeah I feel like Christopher Nolan's always been there in some way and I feel like as I've gotten older much like you he's been a filmmaker that's been incredibly important to me figuring out my own taste and

as someone who aspires to be a filmmaker, you know, even though I've kind of transitioned to be more focused on like the documentary world, I still would like to make, you know, maybe movies one day as well, narrative films. And, you know, I think I used to say that, I'd love to be able to tell a story visually, like Christopher Nolan, maybe like learn how to use the camera like Akira Kurosawa and some of my other favorite directors, but I just feel like,

Eli Price (12:41.194)
Mm-hmm.

JP (12:58.998)
The way that he tells the story visually is just so inspirational. And it's funny because you mentioned the prestige because I feel like in a way, which is, I feel like that's his most Christopher Nolan-y movie until maybe Oppenheimer, but because everyone's saying it's like the movie he's been building up to this whole time. But I feel like if someone's never seen a Christopher Nolan movie, that's the movie that I say.

Eli Price (13:02.741)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (13:15.829)
Sure.

JP (13:27.978)
watch first, you know, because I feel like it just does a really good job of showing who he is as a storyteller, like his obsession with so many things we'll get into. But also it's just a great movie, which is weird because I feel like for a lot of people when I see like lists or I hear discourse about it, it's actually one of his like lower rated films, which is weird, strange to me because I think it's...

one of his best that he's ever done.

Eli Price (13:59.473)
You know that's weird that must just be like the circles you're in Because like you if you like on letterbox. It has a 4.2, which is a really good score on letterboxed You know

JP (14:04.617)
I- yeah.

JP (14:12.45)
That is crazy. I think before maybe... Because I feel like up until maybe like Interstellar, like his movies were all like, quote unquote, really, really well received. And then Interstellar was the first one where there was kind of a bit of a split between the critics and the audience. And Dunkirk kind of the same, Tenet kind of the same. Then Oppenheimer is kind of the next film where it's like, it's pretty much universally loved by critics and audiences. But...

Eli Price (14:29.655)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (14:39.186)
Yeah.

JP (14:40.246)
But I feel like maybe pre-Interstellar, I think I would look at IMDB or something like that and it was his lowest rated movie other than maybe Following, which again that was mostly out of just a lack of attention to it. And I never really understood that because I think it's one of his best. I would say outside of the Dark Knight trilogy, I'd say Interstellar, Inception, Memento,

And the prestige are all five out of five for me You know and in for a long time my favorite movie of all time was the Dark Knight it was only until the last few years that you know, I had I had other movies like the secret life Walter Mitty was my favorite movie for a long time and then Nowadays, it's probably Yeah. Yeah, that movie makes me cry every time I watch it nowadays It's probably everything everywhere all at once, but I think the Dark Knight is still

Eli Price (15:29.417)
That's funny, that's one of my wife's favorites.

JP (15:40.23)
one of the greatest movies ever made, Superhero Otherwise. And I still don't think it's been topped. I mean, The Batman was, I would say, just as good. But I would hesitate to say it's necessarily better. But yeah, anyway, so that's kind of my thing. I feel like he's always been there. I've always loved his movies. And I just think he's just such a fascinating individual. He's a fascinating storyteller.

And I think he's one of the, he's really the only director like outside of more niche circles nowadays that I think like his name alone gets butts in seats. You had like your Ari Asters, but that's really just like a horror community kind of guy or maybe David Fincher, but I feel like again, like it's just not that wide appeal. And even then-

Eli Price (16:25.086)
Mm-hmm.

JP (16:38.114)
I actually got to argue with my friends recently about if he was a household name or not because outside of people who keep up with cinema, people probably like his movies but don't necessarily know it's him who made them. I think he's just the only really director I can think of nowadays outside of more niche circles that his name alone gets people excited about what's happening.

Eli Price (17:00.605)
Yeah, yeah, and you know, it's I really do think he is like a you know, and we'll kind of talk about it as we kind of introduce just like the background but yeah, he is a like get butts in seats in theaters kind of director at this point. I mean, I, you know, I, I really like started going to the movie theater more in.

went later in college and especially like after I graduated. But yeah, like so I really wish I would have been seeing his movies, you know, earlier in theaters. But yeah, I mean, I saw Interstellar twice in theaters and, you know, I guess spoiler alert is my favorite Nolan at this point. We'll see if that we'll see if that changes in and it's funny because like

JP (17:37.442)
Hmm. Yeah, same.

JP (17:56.802)
during the series.

Eli Price (17:58.321)
Yeah, it's funny because like Interstellar is my favorite. But I think Dunkirk is like a perfect movie. It's like one of those movies like if you were to say like, what is a perfect movie? Obviously, no movies are perfect. And I don't think any director would say his movie is perfect. But I think Dunkirk is like just like. Though everything about it is just so precise and perfectly constructed that like.

JP (18:12.095)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (18:27.793)
I would say like it's just a perfect movie. But, and I don't think Interstellar is a perfect movie. I think it has flaws, but it's my favorite. I like it more, I guess. But yeah.

JP (18:35.292)
Mm-hmm.

JP (18:40.182)
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a difference like, you know, between technically perfect versus the one that impacts you the most. I mean, it's a very emotional movie. I'll be honest, I have not seen it in probably too long. I really need to watch it again. But yeah, I mean, Matthew McConaughey's before I do. Yeah, exactly. So it's perfect for.

Eli Price (18:47.633)
Yes. Yeah.

Eli Price (18:57.189)
Yeah, you can watch it along with the series.

Eli Price (19:03.825)
Yeah, yeah, and I did by the way I did look following For for both you and the listeners following is actually on to be right now so to be is a free Like a free streaming thing with ads so you'll have ads, but you can stream it for free on to be so and you know get

JP (19:22.347)
Nice, I'll have to check that out.

Eli Price (19:29.693)
This is just another plug. It's been a recommendation of mine in the past, but get a library card. Um, because I almost guarantee that your local library has a copy. A following or your branch probably has it somewhere, or you can get it in your library loan, even if it doesn't. Um, so yeah, um, that's a big recommendation of mine is utilize your library, but also like to just watch.com is a frequent.

Site I visit just watch calm you can just search the movie you want to watch and see where it's dreaming or even like Where it's where you can rent it and how much? But yeah, let's jump in to Nolan you know We were we were talking about this sort of and yeah He's he really is like one of the few directors that can walk into a studio with a completely original screenplay lay it down

JP (20:07.464)
Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (20:27.617)
Walk out with a 200 plus million dollar budget like no questions asked sort of like He just like I can't imagine a screenplay he would walk in with and not get that at this point because he

JP (20:31.662)
Mm-hmm.

JP (20:42.55)
I mean, again, you think about... No, go ahead, sorry. I mean, I was gonna say with Oppenheimer, I mean, it's a rated R three-hour biopic. And I mean, I think it was like $100 million, which is still a pretty sizable budget for a movie like that. I'm like, no one else is gonna get $100 million to make a three-hour rated R biopic about a nuclear physicist. That's just, you know.

Eli Price (20:45.586)
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Eli Price (20:53.375)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (21:00.179)
Right.

Eli Price (21:09.179)
Right.

Eli Price (21:12.561)
Yeah, and yeah, it says 100 million on the old Google machine. But yeah, he really is, and I think he's defined like the millennial, like we were kind of talking about, he's defined the millennial generation of Hollywood. Even more so, like other, when you start getting into film circles, you hear a lot of Soderbergh and Fincher.

Aronofsky like Catherine Bigelow even like the Wachowskis who have had their small share of blockbusters You know more than So like Millennial Hollywood that being like the general like the millennial generation like the movies that The millennial generation like caused their own sort of thing

JP (21:46.314)
Mm-hmm. Do you mean? What? What do you mean when you say Millennial Hollywood?

JP (22:05.339)
Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Eli Price (22:06.089)
that were like coming out as millennials were like growing up. So that is, and that's me, I'm at the tail end of the millennial generation. And like these movies were like, like I was saying, like he was pumping these out as I was like in middle school and high school and college. Like he was pumping these movies out that are like household name movies now. And so.

JP (22:10.078)
Yeah, for sure, for sure.

JP (22:16.692)
Mm-hmm.

JP (22:25.527)
Yeah.

JP (22:31.478)
I didn't know if you meant movies made by millennial directors and I was like, I don't think any of these guys are really... I think they're all Gen Xers, I'm pretty sure.

Eli Price (22:35.173)
No, he's not a millennial director No Yeah, no. No, definitely the when their movies are coming out for sure and but yeah, he's defined like you know those like Millennials like people born in the 80s and like early 90s like that's Christopher Nolan is like the director the like blockbuster director for

JP (22:45.478)
Right, no, yeah, that absolutely makes sense.

JP (23:01.506)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (23:04.989)
you know, our generation. And even more so than those very like, very prestigious names, I think. Even more like than, you know, we just did the series on Wes Anderson. He's sort of a similar, coming up in a similar like generation like of millennials are, his movies are millennial movies in that millennials are the ones in theaters watching them, which, you know, Wes has become very well known too, but not.

JP (23:07.)
Excuse me.

JP (23:12.651)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (23:33.845)
to the same degree as no one, you know?

JP (23:35.294)
Yeah, it's much more of a niche, you know, the, you know, the joke being, I think I said this during one of the Wes Anderson episodes, he's your barista's favorite director, Wes Anderson, you know, I think it's, it's a much more niche crowd. I mean, I appreciate Wes Henderson as much as the next guy, but yeah, I think Nolan is just on a, is just obviously on a different level, but also like, I mean, he's not telling the same kind of story as Wes Anderson is, you know, I mean, everybody's got their own lane, you know what I mean?

Eli Price (23:45.288)
Right.

Eli Price (24:04.613)
Yeah, yeah, and I think at the end of the day like he has become A franchise Unto his own and I think I can't remember where Who what book I was reading that was kind of um putting it that way but like kind of like george lucas james cameron stephen spillberg

JP (24:31.148)
Uh huh.

Eli Price (24:35.465)
Those are all four of those guys. You hear their name, you know, like, the sort of experience you're gonna have and you wanna go experience it. You wanna go experience a George Lucas movie. You wanna go experience a Spielberg movie. And the movie is a Spielberg movie. Before it's anything else, it's a Spielberg movie. And it's the same with Nolan at this point. You know, he only has, what, 11, 12 films now, 12?

JP (24:46.432)
Absolutely, yeah.

JP (24:54.604)
Right.

Eli Price (25:03.977)
And yeah, 12 features now and really like he is like, it's a Nolan movie, it's a Christopher Nolan movie. That's the big name on the poster, like over the actor at this point. And so.

JP (25:06.579)
Thank you. Yeah.

JP (25:20.526)
It's called quality over quantity, babes. You know?

Eli Price (25:25.361)
But yeah, and I think he's one of those guys that just loves it so much that I'm sure he's just going to keep on rolling like guys like Spielberg have. And honestly, I hope he does keep making movies at the same frequency that Spielberg does. Even as he gets older. You think of guys like...

JP (25:38.36)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (25:52.797)
James Cameron and George Lucas, they've kind of like, they slowed way down, you know, but part of that is James Cameron's like obsessiveness with the technology, I guess. But yeah.

JP (26:05.662)
Yeah, and I think, well also I think a lot of those guys have done a lot of producing as well. Like, so while they may have been slowing down directing films, they've been, they've still been very active, like behind the scenes. I mean, Spielberg's been attached to a ton of stuff. I would say, like, I also hope that he continues making movies for a long time, but I would say with the caveat of, I hope he still keeps that.

Eli Price (26:11.654)
Right. Yeah Lucas for sure

Eli Price (26:18.142)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (26:22.708)
Oh yeah.

JP (26:35.238)
I mean, I said as a joke, but quality over quantity factor, because I think a lot of people who do keep up with cinema would say that Spielberg, Cameron, a lot of these older directors that were coming up in the 70s and 80s, a lot of them, or even before that, their movies have kind of dwindled in some ways.

Eli Price (26:40.36)
Right.

JP (27:04.502)
I'll be honest, like the last, like the only recent Spielberg movie I was 100% excited for was West Side Story just because I grew up with a musical family and I love the original film. I like the musical. So I went and saw that in theaters because I wanted to go support the movie. I thought it was actually a really good modernized take on the musical. But I saw Ready Player One in theaters and I thought it was okay. But you know, it's just like I don't.

Eli Price (27:13.179)
Mm-hmm.

JP (27:35.446)
I don't want to say he's lost his spark per se, I think it's a bit harsh, but there's definitely something very magical about the 80s, 90s, early 2000s Spielberg that I don't really feel anymore. And so that's one thing I would say. I don't necessarily worry about that with Christopher Nolan because I think he's proven that he's only going to make a movie that he feels very passionate about, whereas I think some of these other directors might have.

Eli Price (27:58.718)
Mm-hmm.

JP (28:01.922)
kind of signed up to make movies that they didn't necessarily love, but contractually obligated or they just needed to get a paycheck. I don't know, but I feel like no one's kind of solidified himself that if you look at every movie he's done, it's always been a movie that he's 100% thrown himself into. And I think it also helps that, and I'm sure we'll get into this, that he does...

I mean, almost every movie he's made, I think he wrote the script as well. So he's like lives and breathes this story while he's in the process of making it, you know? Um, and so.

Eli Price (28:39.697)
Right. Yeah, and he's yeah, he's definitely had a part. He hasn't like written whole scripts for everything, but he's had a part for sure in the writing process. But yeah, he you know, I is I did want to say like as far as Spielberg goes, like honestly, like for me, West Side Story and the fabled men's were are both like there, they're both some of my favorite Spielberg movies. Like I wouldn't say like necessarily like

JP (29:01.79)
I'm not seeing failments. I really wanted to but I haven't had chip

Eli Price (29:09.897)
Top five, but he's made a lot of movies So even like movies that are kind of like top ten are like really good movies And I would put both of those in the top ten Spielberg at this point I haven't seen all of Spielberg, but yeah

JP (29:11.67)
Right. Yeah.

JP (29:20.842)
Yeah, I mean, Jaws, the Indiana Jones films. I think Spielberg's made too many like phenomenal movies that, you know, just from at-bets, it's like, I mean, yeah, you know, you got Jaws, you got the Indiana Jones films.

Eli Price (29:30.409)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (29:36.43)
Yeah. But yeah, Fable Men's is fantastic. Like, you should definitely see it. And it helps. It helps that it's very personal. It's a you can tell, like the he just like he put a lot into that movie personally, which comes out, I think. But yeah, you know, getting back to Nolan, like he really is like he's kind of like a. A duality of a man in a lot of different ways, like he's

JP (29:39.73)
Yeah. I'll get around to it. It was on my list. Right.

Eli Price (30:03.901)
He's American and British, not just because his parents, his mom is an American and his dad is British, but he has dual citizenship because the laws changed where he could keep his, he didn't have to choose before he would have had to choose. So he has a dual citizenship. He's like a director sort of split.

JP (30:19.63)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (30:29.213)
between the digital age and tradition. Like if you think about when he was coming up, obviously like he came up with a lot of analog stuff, born in 1970, through a lot of his childhood, it's all analog, but the technology is progressing. And then by the time he's coming out with, he's kind of coming out of college and putting his first movies out, like you have the explosion of the internet. And so like...

JP (30:56.526)
Hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (30:57.517)
His movies are coming out, his movies start coming out in like the digital age of the 2000s and up to now. And just like, I mean, even like the year following came out or no, the year I think Memento was released, either Memento or Insomnia was like the year that like Google launched. I think it was Memento.

JP (31:17.452)
Mm-hmm.

JP (31:24.206)
I think Memento is 2000, I think Insomnia is 2002.

Eli Price (31:27.477)
to To yeah, so it's one of those two like Google launches alongside like his first hits and Yeah, and like Wikipedia's like starting up around that time You know it just like It's just it's just like but yet like he is he's kind of like split between two worlds in that way because he's starting his

JP (31:36.546)
That's so crazy to think about that time.

Eli Price (31:57.125)
his career off with this explosion of the digital age, but he's still very much a traditionalist in many ways. And he's like, even think about his career in movies, he's pushing things forward with his insistence on that IMAX huge cinematic experience. It's really like, when he started pushing that, it was a very forward-looking thing.

JP (32:27.362)
Right.

Eli Price (32:28.293)
But at the same time, he wants to shoot on celluloid. He wants practical effects over digital effects. He wants people to go see his movies in the theaters, not watch them at home. So he's very much the definition of a duality of a man in so many different ways.

JP (32:50.871)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (32:55.933)
The internet is, like I said, rising as his career is starting, but Nolan does not have an email address and he does not carry a cell phone. You can't get in touch with Nolan on a cell phone. You have to go through his assistant. Like if he's going to talk with you, he's going to say, we'll meet here at this time and talk with you, which is just so unusual. Yeah.

JP (33:03.49)
for right. It's yeah.

JP (33:10.685)
or...

JP (33:17.452)
Right.

Since a telegram Morse code

Eli Price (33:25.285)
There's that movie Ghost Dog with Forrest Whitaker where he only sends messages through his carrier pigeons. Yeah, really great movie.

JP (33:34.382)
Hmm. I would not be surprised if I honestly, I like part of me is like, I just want to lean into the joke a little bit more like a map like imagine, you know, 10 years from now. Whenever you know he's got a movie coming out the actors are all doing, you know, press for it and they're like, yeah, you know, really weird thing. He sent a carrier pitch to my house with a note saying

Meet here at five o'clock. And to be honest, I didn't even know it was Chris. I was just so scared that I decided I needed to show up. Yeah, I could totally see something like that happening. That would be so hilarious.

Eli Price (34:04.04)
Yeah.

Eli Price (34:12.409)
Yeah. Yeah, but and it's funny because like there's you know, I'm obviously without like the It has the humor but without the pigeon there's like the story, you know he's very much known for like punctuality and but also like and discipline but also like his secrecy so like there's Michael Cain tells a story about how for Batman Begins Christopher Nolan showed up at his front door with the script and Michael Cain, I guess didn't know

JP (34:28.044)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (34:42.397)
what he looked like. I guess he was expecting a script. So he thought it was like, you know, some intern or assistant bringing him the script. And he's like, hey, you know, I'm Christopher Nolan. And he's like, oh, and he's like, I want you to read my script. Like, oh yeah, I'll read it and get back to you. And Nolan says, no, can you read it right now? And like, he basically like invites himself in and Michael Caine says he just like sat in his living room and drank tea while I read the script. And then when he,

JP (34:48.374)
Oh my god messenger

Eli Price (35:12.349)
Then when he left, he took the script with him. Which is a hilarious story, but yeah.

JP (35:17.626)
I think John David Washington... Yeah, I think I remember John David Washington saying that... It was either him or Robert Pattinson said that... when they were looking at the script for Tenet, they got locked in a room. I think it was John David Washington. He said he got locked in a room for three hours. Because he kept reading it and then flipping to the previous page, and then flipping back trying to figure it out. But they locked him in a room until he was finished reading. So...

Eli Price (35:31.733)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I believe it.

Eli Price (35:44.829)
Ha ha ha.

JP (35:45.838)
I mean, yeah, it's I mean, and I get it. I feel like that's one of the things that makes a Nolan movie so special is that because of his name recognition, he's able to like really bully the studios into marketing his films properly. Because I mean, there's nothing worse than the trailer that reveals too much, except for maybe the trailer that reveals like way too little. Like, I definitely think that can be a problem as well. But I like like, for instance, like a lot of movies nowadays, you'll have

you'll have the teaser for the teaser, and then you'll have the teaser trailer, and then you'll have the teaser that the trailer is about to drop, and then you'll have the trailer, and then you'll probably have like two or three trailers, and then the final trailer is like the big, like I remember like the most recent Fast and Furious movie, Fast X, and the final trailer was like four minutes long, shows the whole, like it shows the whole movie. And what really bothers me is when I, is like, if I see a movie says final trailer,

or if I see like a video, like I'll avoid it if it's a movie I care about. And what I hate is like, it might still be a few months before the movie comes out and I don't want to watch that trailer. And then I go to the movies and that's the trailer they play before the movie. And I'm just like, oh, great. Cool. Like I remember a Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, which is one of the most disappointing movies I've seen in my entire life. Such a let down. But.

Eli Price (36:44.422)
Uh huh. Right.

Eli Price (36:54.097)
And you see that. Yeah.

Time to go get popcorn.

Eli Price (37:06.197)
Hehehe

JP (37:08.134)
I was really excited with the talent in front of the camera, behind the camera with a guy who comes from more of like a horror background. I was expecting something a little scarier, but I remember the final trailer for that movie, I kid you not, 95% of the movie was in the trailer. There was one plot point not in the trailer and it was the stupidest plot twist in the movie that the little girl was not the daughter of the guy's daughter, but actually a c***.

clone of his daughter mixed with some dinosaur DNA or at least very heavily implied and that was the only thing not in the final trailer and oh my gosh it aggravated me so much so I think that's one of the things that makes Christopher Nolan so special that people get excited for is because he like he fights for that secrecy and people take it very seriously and I feel like that's like you know

Eli Price (37:48.009)
That's awful.

Eli Price (37:57.701)
Mm-hmm, for sure.

JP (38:03.414)
Like not only are you gonna be in for an experience, but you're gonna be in for a surprise as well. Even with Oppenheimer had a lot of marketing, but I feel like it didn't really give anything. I mean, obviously it's different because it's a biopic, it's actual real history, but a lot of the best moments from the movie, like I didn't even know we're gonna be in the movie, you know, which is really special.

Eli Price (38:07.782)
Yeah.

Eli Price (38:24.029)
Right. Yeah, and it's funny, you know, he, he in an interview I was listening to, he talked about how like proud he is of like what they come up with for his trailers. And he was like, he was almost like, uh, just like, I don't know. He was just like so proud because any, he even talked about how like it's sometimes it's like harder to make a trailer than it is like,

to edit down a trailer than it is to make the movie itself, just because he said, what you're trying to do with the trailer is just so hard to edit down and come across a bit. But yeah, it probably helps that he has his own production company that works with the distributor. Most of his movies are distributed by Warner Brothers.

JP (39:11.981)
Mmm.

Eli Price (39:19.389)
But ever since, I want to say really early on, maybe since Insomnia even, they started his own, him and his wife Emma Thomas started their own production company, which is Syncopy. Syncopy, I guess.

JP (39:35.022)
And they've also helped produce a lot of, like, with, through that, they've also helped produce a lot of really other great movies as well.

Eli Price (39:43.441)
Mm-hmm. Yeah and And really like it's funny like mentioning like his production company like you just think about one of the reasons I think his movies work so well for a wide audience is just like they're very like accessible as far as like blast blockbuster qualities, but they're also like they bring a lot of intrigue and like household conversation and like conversation among like

They're very intriguing movies and like you just think about like the logo for syncope Which is like a maze like and you just think about like you really like his movies Just think about his movies like a maze like they're really easy to get into But they're kind of hard to exit like you kind of get stuck with them for a while after you watch them And I think that is probably on purpose that his logo for his production company is that

JP (40:17.582)
Mm-hmm.

JP (40:31.886)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:40.285)
But yeah, you know, he and it is his he is fascinated with that sort of thing like mirroring and inverting Inversion and stuff like that stuff. That's very intriguing and draws you in But but I think probably the most just like to kind of in this section like the The thing that stood out and one of the things that stood out to me was, you know people

JP (40:54.95)
Erora!

Eli Price (41:06.313)
people that love his films really love his films and they'll watch them multiple and multiple times, become obsessed with them. And there was a quote in this book that I wanted to read. He's kind of talking about how like people online will be like obsessed with obsession and memento and people in interviews would like ask him about that. And this is the quote he said, quote, they're asking me to comment on that as if I thought it were weird or something.

Well, I was obsessed with it for years, genuinely obsessed with it, so it doesn't strike me as weird. We put a lot into the films. I had a lunch with a producer a few years ago, a very successful producer, not somebody I've worked with, and he was curious about my process. At some point I said, every film I do, I have to believe that I'm making the best film that's ever made. He was absolutely shocked by this. It just never occurred to him that someone would think like that. And that, to me, was truly shocking.

JP (41:40.706)
Okay.

Eli Price (42:05.533)
because films are really hard to make. I'm not going to say it's the hardest job in the world. I've never tried coal mining, but they are all consuming. Your family life, everything goes into it for a couple of years. So it had never occurred to me that there were people doing it who weren't trying to make the best film that ever was. Why would you otherwise? Even if it's not going to be the best film that's ever made, you have to believe that it could be. You pour yourself into it.

And when it affects someone that way, that is a huge thrill for me, huge thrill. I feel like I have managed to wrap them up in the way that I try to wrap myself up. And so, yeah, I feel like that's a great quote to kind of summarize both Nolan and his films and his viewers with his films. He's been obsessed with it for years. And because of that, it draws people in and they become obsessed with his movies. I mean,

You just think about the cultural conversation around Inception when that movie came out. It went on for years, really, that conversation. Yeah, I just think because of that, his movies will stand the test of time. And it all, in a sense, boils down to that obsession that he has with.

JP (43:09.643)
Mm-hmm.

JP (43:20.587)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (43:29.361)
with his films and the subject and the story and everything. But yeah, man, I guess we can hit some like biographical stuff before we start talking about, I guess, just to break down, like we'll kind of talk about some biographical stuff here in a minute, and then we'll get into like more like his filmmaking and technique and themes and stuff like that.

JP (43:30.766)
Mm-hmm.

JP (43:42.434)
Mm-hmm.

JP (43:57.972)
Yeah.

Eli Price (43:59.653)
So just going through some of his childhood stuff, he was born in Westminster, London. Like I said, his mom was from Chicago area. His dad was from Britain. His mom was a flight attendant, actually. She became an English teacher later. But yeah, she was a flight attendant. And then his dad was actually a creative director for a London-based advertising company.

JP (44:28.834)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (44:29.445)
And so he actually worked with some filmmakers. He worked with Alan Parker and Hugh Hudson, a few others. And even like he worked, he did some work for Ridley Scott's group. I don't know if he like worked really closely with Ridley Scott, but he did do some work for Ridley Scott. And so, and yeah, he's, Nolan is like the middle brother of three sons, his older brother Matthew, and then

JP (44:46.721)
Yeah.

Eli Price (44:59.233)
More people probably know his younger brother, Jonathan Nolan, who he's done a lot of collaboration with in his writing for his movies.

JP (45:06.238)
Isn't it, uh, don't they say that like Jonathan was raised like more in America? So he has like an American accent and then Christopher has the British accent, which is kind of like really funny. But, but, uh, yeah, no power do over there.

Eli Price (45:20.977)
Yeah, it's It's weird. I don't I don't know why that is because it seems like um, they both were like Living it. I don't think There was often where they were like separated. Um, so I guess it's just kind of one of those things One of those weird things that comes from that Yeah Yeah, so yeah christopher has the british accent and jonathan has the um the american accent which they

JP (45:37.378)
Jonathan just kept practicing in front of the mirror.

Eli Price (45:48.017)
Uh for his like family and friends, they call him Jonah. So whenever Nolan you hear Nolan talked about he says jon He'll say Jonah and that's jonathan um but yeah, it really like early on um in Nolan's Childhood he had um you know Film was like a big thing for him Um, I want to say he was like seven and he saw this um this movie by Alan Parker

who his dad worked with called Bugsy Malone. It's like a, I don't know any really much about the movie. I know there's like kids and it's musical in a sense and they're like gangsters or something. It's, it sounds like an interesting movie. But yeah, he, his dad, he saw the movie with his parents and loved it. And then his dad was like, oh yeah, I've worked with that guy. Like I know him, the guy that made it.

And they actually, he actually took him to Pinewood Studios where the movie was made. And Nolan remembers like seeing the pedal cars that were in the movie, like at the studio when they did the little tour. And that was an early memory for him. And then really like when the next year they were, they spent a lot of time in his early years.

you know, trying to figure out where they wanted to live, London or Chicago. And they lived in Chicago for a while. And he saw, he saw Star Wars in 77 when it released in theaters with his parents. And that he points back to that as, yeah, no. He points back to that as like one of the big things like for him just seeing like that.

JP (47:15.159)
Right.

JP (47:28.214)
Man, fatter time machine. Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (47:39.373)
on screen and just obsessing over it, as I'm sure many kids did back then and still do really.

JP (47:45.678)
I also know he's a huge fan of 2001, a space odyssey as well.

Eli Price (47:50.361)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I was gonna say that like so he sees that he loves it He's obsessing over it and then like a few weeks later His dad actually takes him to see I guess him and his brothers. They did a real lease of 2001 a space odyssey and that was the first time that was the movie that made it click for him like movie movies are

JP (48:05.698)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (48:17.861)
I can't remember exactly how he puts it, but the way it clicked for him was like, that's something I want to do. I want to make movies because they can do something. He talks about he didn't necessarily fully grasp everything that was going on in 2001 at that age, but the visuals of it were captivating to him.

And he actually, like, even at that young age, he had this, like, magazine that had an article about, like, how they made a lot of stuff in, like, 2001 or Star Wars or something. Like, so from a, like, from the get-go, when he was, like, a kid enjoying these movies, like, he was even more, like, even more so than he was interested in, like, what the movie was saying or whatever. He was interested in how did they make it.

JP (48:57.87)
Mm-hmm.

JP (49:14.028)
Right.

Eli Price (49:15.257)
And so, yeah, which is really incredible for a kid to have that insight of, I don't wanna just watch the movie, I wanna know how they made it.

JP (49:18.55)
Which you know, hey...

JP (49:25.206)
you know, no, I mean, props to little baby Chris Dolan, cause I'm 27 and still don't understand everything that happened in the movie. So much so that I've, I've actually, it's actually never been able to sit through the entirety of 2001 in space, obviously. I have tried multiple times and I just, it just gets to a point where I'm just like, my brain is mush right now. What is this movie? Another hot take for you, Stanley Kubrick, extremely overrated, but you know, we're not talking about Kubrick, so.

Eli Price (49:41.461)
Shame.

Eli Price (49:55.001)
Yeah, I think uh, I don't think I think Nolan would take issue with you on that one But but yeah, so and really like I rewatched 2001 earlier this year and Like the first time I saw it. I just didn't get it. And when I saw it this time, I was just like entranced by it and so I kind of I you know when I was reading that I was like I kind of understand where he's coming from like

JP (49:55.682)
Ha!

JP (49:59.874)
Probably. That's okay.

Eli Price (50:22.329)
And he even said, there was a quote where he said like, he thinks he probably understood more about 2001 then than he does now, because kids just have a sense of, there's a simplicity to the way like kids think about things like that, where like they're not, they're interested in it, but they're not gonna like overthink it. Like they just experience it and like, are able to experience it in a fresh, like innocent way.

JP (50:38.388)
Right.

JP (50:51.863)
Right.

Eli Price (50:52.497)
And he, so I thought that was a cool insight. Like, man, I really like understood it probably then even more than now. But yeah, so he did do like boarding school too. So his dad, I think it was when he was 11-ish, 10 or 11, his dad was like, hey, I really want my sons to go to boarding school. And so they, like he did when he was a kid. So off to boarding school, he went.

very structured and it was one of those things where like he Know him I guess just because of who he is like thrived there Um, and you know, he kind of talks about like it wasn't He knew like some kids hated it, but he really like thrived in the environment, I guess um but yeah, he uh he like really like there was some formative stuff even like in his school days and um And

JP (51:36.759)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (51:49.329)
I think it's Haleybury and Imperial Service College boarding school. Or really even Barrow Hills. So he was in Barrow Hills and then this other one that I just said. Two different boarding schools growing up there. And yeah, he, I know he talks about reading, like reading books and comics and listening to like stuff on his Walkman after lights out. Probably like he wasn't supposed to, but he did.

Eli Price (00:03.82)
Yeah, he, you know, I even think he, on his Walkman that he would listen to after lights out would be like listening to like scores, like movie scores, I guess that he got on tape. So yeah, I mean, he, yeah. But I think one of the, one of the things that like stood out during his kind of days there,

JP (00:20.138)
He just like me

Eli Price (00:32.94)
in boarding school, one of his house masters actually like let him and some others come to his house and watch basically a pirated VHS of Blade Runner at his uh at his like house, I guess um like in 30 minute increments so like Over like a course of I guess like a few visits. They watched Blade Runner And uh, and yeah, he loved

Blade Runner's like I guess was one of his favorite movies it seems like growing up and Yeah, he He actually talks about later on he saw alien and He he kind of picked up because he loved Blade Runner so much like he kind of picked up on the similarities not in like Story or production or anything like that, but in like the mood

JP (01:06.967)
Mm.

Eli Price (01:29.312)
and some really background stuff that was similar and didn't know at the time that it was both Ridley Scott. And later found out, and that was another clicking moment for him. Oh, the directors have this connective mood between their films. And that was kind of when he first was like, I think I wanna do that. I wanna be a director that like.

JP (01:39.511)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:58.168)
is the connective tissue and mood between films sort of thing, which is really cool.

JP (02:03.67)
Yeah, I just rewatched Alien and Aliens the other day. And yeah, definitely, you could kind of see the beginnings of Ridley Scott as a filmmaker. A lot of really long takes and things like that, which Blade Runner kind of has. I'm definitely really, really good at setting the mood for sure. So I agree with that.

Eli Price (02:23.703)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And, and, you know, it's

Yeah, it was just like, you know, like I said, fascinated with that, like just like how movies were made and becoming, I guess, obsessed with like that connective tissue between movies sort of thing. Um, and, uh, and even like, so yeah, you kind of have to jump back and forth with them because like, this was like time in London and boarding school, but he also like spent a lot of holidays, all of his holidays almost in, um,

in the Chicago area and he talks about the differences in the spaces there. London is very cramped and everything's old, obviously and then he's going to these wide open suburban Chicago, he's playing in the woods and his dad actually, I think when he was eight, his dad gave him a Super 8 camera to play with. So he was shooting these like.

two and a half minute silent little movies and doing like stop motion animation with them. And I think it was like one of his early shorts he called like space wars, which obviously, I think I wanna say like that Jonathan Nolan might've said he has it somewhere, but it's one of those things that's, you know, it's never been seen and might not ever be, but yeah. So he's, you know,

JP (03:51.202)
Mm-hmm.

JP (03:58.426)
And shout out shout out to dads with cameras.

Eli Price (03:59.048)
He's that's where he like all. Yes, you know, that's where he saw like Star Wars on a holiday in Chicago, and that's where he saw like, you know, a lot of early Spielberg there in Chicago and in the summers. And so, yeah, that was a really important time for him, for him, too. You know, and then like.

He even talks about like back when he's later in his boarding school days, him and Jonathan would like stay between terms and go to the movies a lot. And he talks about like seeing movies like man hunter and blue velvet and full metal jacket Akira, just like, I guess like just really growing his, I guess, cinema experience, which is probably why to this day, like he,

JP (04:52.403)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (04:53.512)
He's very adamant about like going to see movies in the theater just because of how much it meant to him. And yeah, I get it. But yeah, he goes to college eventually. He went to University College of London. He studied English literature kind of to, you know, he knew he wanted to make film, but he wanted to expand his thinking on stories and in creating stories. So English literature it was.

JP (04:58.143)
Mm-hmm.

JP (05:20.738)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (05:23.672)
and yeah, they're him and some others and including his future wife Emma Thomas instituted the what is it called the University College of London Film and Television Society So, yeah, they kind of instituted a new little club there and

And really, it kind of started when he, from what I've read, he kind of happened upon this basement that had a bunch of old filmmaking equipment in it. It is the basement of the Bloomsbury Theater, which was owned and operated by the college there. And so in the basement, he found this like,

JP (06:06.751)
Mm-hmm.

JP (06:14.126)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (06:16.656)
room that had like a 16 millimeter camera and tripods and dolly tracks some uh some celluloid film and it even had like a little steam back uh editing machine which uh which i looked up have you ever seen those one of those a steam back editing machine uh do like when you get a chance yeah look it up um and i'll keep talking because it's really it's really like cool looking um and like very like

JP (06:31.842)
I have not.

JP (06:36.654)
I'm gonna look it up right now.

Eli Price (06:46.172)
When you look at it, it's like the definition of analog editing machine. But yeah, so he found all this stuff and started this film society. And they, yeah, they talked about method and meaning in films. And they even got, were able to get screenings of 35 millimeter new releases. He talks about showing Blade Runner.

JP (06:56.903)
Oh wow, yeah.

Eli Price (07:16.072)
In the theater upstairs and even a Wayne's world When it came out on 35 millimeter film Yeah, and then yeah, he taught himself to edit on that steam back on that steam back editing machine But yeah, if you're if you're listening and you're like what in the world is he talking about? just Google steam, but steam back editing and And just look at it. It has so basically like you have

JP (07:27.342)
I love Wayne's world. Yeah.

Eli Price (07:44.584)
these three different reel sets, and one of them is for the film, and then there's two sound ones. So you can have a score or music going, and then some sound effects and stuff going on the other sound reel. And basically, it runs at a certain frame per second, and there's a monitor so you can see it and hear it as it's going through.

And then like you can stop it and like make your cuts and your edits and stuff like that. Um, all right there on the machine. It's really cool looking like, um, I looked up a YouTube video of a guy using one. Um, and that was really, I don't know, it was really interesting. And, um, but yeah, he, he taught himself how to edit. Um, and really like, I guess, you know, growing up making those super eight films and then having all this film equipment, you know, now in college, um,

You know, he started working on short films, you know, shooting on weekends, you know, editing with this editing machine. And yeah, like he really like grew in his craft in that way. You know, he talks about, you know, and we'll talk about it on the next episode with following, but he spent a lot of time a lot of weekends doing these shoots where they would like get like

Five to ten minutes of the movie shot and that was it for that weekend and you know go back to the job You know the day job and then the next weekend shoot the next like five to ten minutes of the movie They would do they were doing that with like these little shorts and It's really fun. It's really Incredible there's only two shorts you can really see of his from those early like before following days so obviously like

We know one has access I guess except for family to those things he made on that super eight But then there's another one called larceny Yeah, probably larceny was like a it was basically like a Lot of people say it's like the predecessor to following but that is It's kind of a lost film. Nobody's nobody in public has seen it it's kind of like

JP (09:50.402)
Might be for the best, or just...

Eli Price (10:11.)
I'm sure somebody has copies of it somewhere. And it showed like at a film festival, but that was the only time it was shown sort of thing. And so nobody's seen Larseny really. And it might be one of those things where Nolan's like, well, it was like a predecessor to following and I just don't want it out there sort of thing. But yeah, the other two, you can go watch one of them is called Tarantella.

JP (10:15.595)
Mm-hmm.

JP (10:25.987)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (10:40.44)
It's like this weird, almost like David Lynchian short, like two and a half, three minute short, of like a dream, almost like a dream sequence of this guy. It's really, and it's that the only two people in it, I think are Nolan and Jonathan, or Chris and Jonathan. But, and then there's another one called Doodle Bug, which is like this.

JP (11:07.65)
I think I've heard of that one.

Eli Price (11:09.712)
Yeah, it's also it also kind of feels like lynchian and it's in its vibes You know, he's like you and you can go watch both of these on YouTube, I'm pretty sure But uh, it's like this dude like that's obviously paranoid and is trying to kill this bug or rodent or something with a shoe And then like it's him like it's a tiny him and yeah, it's just

is just kind of strange and weird. But you can see in those, like, the sort of craft they were, he was like developing to be able to make a movie like following. And yeah, he did apply for film school. He tried to get into the National Film and Television School at the Royal College of Art, which was Ridley Scott's alma mater, but he didn't get in.

JP (11:51.679)
Yeah.

Eli Price (12:05.976)
And so he got a job working for an industrial film company as a cameraman. And he was mostly shooting these functional training videos for CEOs of companies and stuff. And so even that, he talks about, every time you pick up a camera, you're growing in your craft. So he saw that just as an opportunity for learning. He was having to work with like,

JP (12:20.12)
Mm-hmm.

JP (12:30.996)
Yeah.

Eli Price (12:36.08)
like bad lighting and you know stuff like that. And so he was learning how to like make do with what he had. And he saw that as like, I'm growing in my craft of using the camera. Which you've got to love that attitude, right? Yeah, and then like really like the finishing up like his early, his early like filmmaking before.

JP (12:53.662)
Yeah, no for sure. A lot of truth to that.

Eli Price (13:03.512)
You know, we'll talk more about following next week. I don't really want to get much into it. But he did have a first attempt at a feature called Larry Mahoney, which is another thing that is like never seen footage sort of thing. And apparently, it was about a student posing as other people. Who knows what that movie was. But yeah, and then shortly after that,

JP (13:29.55)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (13:34.62)
He kind of has these two ideas that kind of merge into making following. And like I was saying, they were shooting following. He was working for that industrial film company shooting training videos during the week. And on weekends, him and Emma Thomas and some of their other friends were going out and shooting following, getting it ready to go.

JP (13:57.066)
I think that's man, just I didn't really I didn't know that Emma had been there with him at the very beginning and like I just feel like this like so sweet and beautiful like they you know, I mean they're married now I don't know when they started dating and when they got married everything but it's just I don't know it's just a really sweet story that like they like kind of in some ways kind of grew up together a little bit and she was there from the very beginning of his filmmaking journey and she's been there.

Eli Price (14:05.56)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (14:10.725)
Yeah.

Eli Price (14:22.388)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (14:26.429)
Yeah.

JP (14:27.274)
ever since, you know, helping him produce all the films that he's made.

Eli Price (14:31.376)
Yeah, and we'll kind of talk about influences, inspiration. But yeah, he met her at a party in college, and they started dating. And I don't remember at what point exactly that got married. But yeah, she was there from the beginning, really, and has been part of his movies. Like the whole thing.

JP (14:59.455)
Yeah, that's really cool.

Eli Price (15:00.98)
the whole time, which is, yeah, it is really cool. Yeah. Yeah, I did want to briefly go over his career as far as awards. He really doesn't have as much prestige as far as the awards go, as you would think, at least not the big ones. So he has the one. He has.

JP (15:04.254)
Hashtag goals.

Eli Price (15:31.44)
had nominations for the Academy. Memento actually got an Academy nomination for screenplay, which is really incredible. And it deserved it, for sure. Inception had a nomination for screenplay and for Best Picture. And then Dunkirk had the nominations for directing in Best Picture. But he didn't win any of those.

And some of his movies have other category nominations for sure, but these are ones like directly related to Nolan. Yeah.

JP (16:06.114)
Yeah, I was gonna say, did the Dark Knight not have a Best Picture nomination? I mean, I know it won for Heath Ledger posting as well.

Eli Price (16:12.828)
No, it didn't So the reason the reason they expanded the number of movies being nominated for Best Picture is because Dark Knight didn't get a nomination for Best Picture

JP (16:24.406)
Well, I think they've always they've always been kind of like anti superhero movie in general, but

Eli Price (16:29.136)
Yeah, but I know that was like a big thing. So when Dark Knight didn't get the nomination for best picture, it was the year after that they expanded that category. It was a whole big thing.

JP (16:45.846)
Yeah, I mean, there is definitely something to it that like...

He is such a well-loved director, but at the same time, yeah, like Spielberg, Scorsese, even Ridley Scott, some of these people, way more of these bigger, more prestigious awards. So it is interesting that he does have such a cultural zeitgeist following, and yet by traditional standards, he's not the most

Eli Price (17:09.076)
Mm-hmm.

JP (17:22.038)
You know, allotted director.

Eli Price (17:24.54)
Right. Yeah, and I think, you know, by the, you know, rumors and murmurings like that, it's probably about to change this award season, but we'll have to wait and see. But yeah, Memento won. Yeah, I'd be surprised if it didn't win something. But yeah, Memento won some stuff. It won the, he won the AFI, which is like American Film Institute Screenwriter of the Year, for Memento.

JP (17:38.07)
I'd be very surprised if not.

Eli Price (17:54.932)
And then like for the that year for the independent spirit awards Which are you know are becoming followed a little bit more for people that you know want to support independent movies He actually like almost swept everything. He was he was nominated for four categories For the independent spirit awards for me memento and like almost swept the only he won He won best feature

Best directing and screenplay and supporting theme the supporting female one for it, which obviously is not Nolan, but um but he the only thing he didn't win for was Cinematography from Memento for that the independent spirit, which I think is really cool You know, I think early on they They really saw and there's some other like interesting stuff about Memento that we'll get into on that episode. But yeah

JP (18:50.626)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (18:52.724)
I have a huge list of inspirations and influences for him. And so I'm just gonna run through these and just stop me if you wanna talk about any of it. We've talked about some of it already, but obviously he has a lot of film influences. And these are all things he's talked about. And it's funny, because a lot of times, when you start watching press stuff with directors,

Like, um, I mean you watch like, uh, I don't know you'll be watching like the press release for like, um, I don't know fast x and the director will be talking about like They're basically like just naming movies that like are like the some of the best movies of all time And you're like this movie has nothing to do with your movie. It's not Like you can't just name these movies that like everyone loves and say it's an influence But when you when you listen to this list

JP (19:42.317)
Yeah.

JP (19:47.926)
Yeah.

Eli Price (19:48.836)
Like you can see a little bit of all of this stuff in no one's films fritz lang Um, you know early director, um, uh silent films um Metropolis. Yeah, it's like a early Yeah early sci-fi there Uh stanley cubrick, obviously No, that's um, mernau Uh fw mernau did nuts foratu. Um, yeah

JP (20:00.458)
Metropolis, I think, is his phenomenal silent film. I love that movie. Did he do Nosferatu as well?

JP (20:15.06)
I'll get in your mind.

Eli Price (20:20.284)
Ridley Scott, obviously. George Lucas and Spielberg, obviously. He talks about Malik, which, you know, he, when I've heard him talk about Malik a couple times in like interviews, he knows that he's a very different director than Malik, but also like has such a high appreciation that, you know, you can kind of see some of the visuals that you see in Malik kind of

JP (20:23.905)
Okay.

JP (20:28.046)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (20:48.06)
bleed into some of the stuff he tries to capture, I think.

JP (20:50.878)
Yeah, I haven't seen as many Terrence Malick movies, but I've heard a lot of people comparing specifically some moments in Oppenheimer to a very Malick-esque visual style. I think the only movie of his I think I've 100% know I've seen is Thin Red Line. And to be honest with you, I remember I have not seen it in a while. I think I saw it when I was in high school, like rented it from the library.

Eli Price (21:04.594)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (21:14.132)
Gotcha.

JP (21:21.062)
To be honest with you at the time I think I remember not really liking it because it's like not really like cuz I think I was expecting a war movie and it's Not really a war movie from what I remember And so I'd love to revisit that one Yeah

Eli Price (21:28.548)
Yeah. It is and it isn't. Yeah. It is a war movie, but it's not a traditional way of doing a war movie. And I always tell people, like, there's certain directors that are better treated as poetry directors than prose directors, and Malick is definitely one of those. Don't watch it looking for a narrative.

JP (21:38.934)
Ahem. Mm-hmm.

JP (21:48.91)
Hmm. Yeah, I could definitely see the Thin Red Line's influence on Dunkirk, which is also a kind of a non-traditional war film.

Eli Price (21:57.021)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (22:01.512)
Yeah And then like some other ones like obviously like you have some Michael Mann Modernism in there, especially like in the Dark Knight trilogy David Lynch is somebody he talks about that. I Don't know if I see a whole lot of Lynch Except for when I earlier today when I watched those shorts. I was like these look like strange like Lynch influences

JP (22:11.594)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (22:28.709)
Lynch influenced shorts that a college student would make, you know. And then the last one.

JP (22:30.163)
Yeah.

Well, I know Lynch is really known for... Oh, sorry. I just know Lynch is really known for his surrealism. And so maybe some influence on some parts of Inception and Interstellar, I think have some moments of surrealism. But yeah, I mean, again, Lynch is not someone I've seen a whole lot of his films, but yeah.

Eli Price (22:37.)
Go ahead.

Eli Price (22:40.528)
Right. You do have a little bit of that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's a different sort of s-

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess it's just the feeling that you get from the surrealism is different Yeah, it it's it makes you uneasy The surrealism of Lynch where whereas I don't think no one's surrealism really makes you Uneasy necessarily. It's more like captivating surrealism And so and then the last the last one I have for film is Hitchcock

JP (22:56.83)
I always- it's like a lot more horror influenced I feel like.

JP (23:15.451)
Right, right.

Eli Price (23:19.66)
And I've been watching a little bit more Hitchcock recently and like you can see it for sure. Like the way that he, the way that Nolan is so focused on like building tension is like very, like very much influenced by Hitchcock.

JP (23:21.166)
course.

JP (23:35.126)
I mean, Hitchcock's another director. I think he made so many like, like 4.5 to 5 out of 5 for me. I mean, Rear Window, one of the best movies I've ever seen. Vertigo's great. I think my favorite Hitchcock film, I mean, Psycho's great, obviously, but one of my favorites is Dial M for Murder. I don't know if you've seen that one, but you want to talk about building tension? Like, yeah.

Eli Price (23:47.256)
Yeah.

Eli Price (23:58.072)
Okay. Yeah, I haven't seen a lot of Hitchcock. Yeah, I'm working my way through.

JP (24:04.362)
With with dial in for murder, I won't I won't spoil anything for you but like if you want to talk about building tension the second half of the movie is like Like an hour straight of just trying to figure out if someone is or isn't gonna get away with something And it's like every other scene it like shifts one way or the other and it oh my gosh, it is so So so good. I mean, I know a lot of people are very like

apprehensive sometimes about watching like older films, but I'm telling you like some of Hitchcock's films like the tension that he was able to build is right up there with any modern director And that's why so many of them are inspired by someone like Hitchcock for sure. So yeah rear window is great, you know Dialing for Murder I have not seen Rope. That's the one I've really been wanting to see that I've heard is like one of his best and I haven't had a chance but

Eli Price (24:41.704)
Okay.

Eli Price (24:45.596)
Yeah.

Eli Price (24:48.884)
For sure, yeah.

Eli Price (24:57.672)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, I was recommended watching Rope also not that long ago. I mean, yeah, they're all good, I guess. But yeah, that's like film influences. He has a lot of literary influences. I'll hit some of the big ones. So like he mentions Graham Swift's 1983 novel Waterland, which I don't know anything about except that he kind of...

JP (25:00.802)
That's why I recommend it.

JP (25:05.599)
North by Northwest, that's another good one.

Eli Price (25:28.52)
counts it as his first encounter with a story along... Yeah, I don't know anything about the film, but the novel was his first... Are you talking about Waterworld?

JP (25:29.89)
It was one of the biggest flop films of all time

JP (25:40.382)
I was just a joke about Waterworld because he said Waterland, so... I like that movie.

Eli Price (25:44.816)
Yeah, I totally missed that at first. Yeah, but yeah, this no one says this novel was his first encounter with story, a story along multiple timelines, which obviously becomes a huge part of his filmmaking. And then two other I'll mention, I have more written down, but I'll I mentioned two other big literary influences. One is a guy named Raymond Chandler, who

JP (25:57.23)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Eli Price (26:13.18)
has pretty well-known books. I've heard of The Big Sleep before. And then Farewell, My Lovely is another one I saw. But yeah, I've never read them. And he's actually also credited as a screenwriter for Strangers on the Train by Hitchcock. But yeah, he's kind of counted, I saw somewhere that he's kind of counted as like the quote unquote godfather of noir.

So he was writing these noir style novels that were a big influence on Nolan. And funny enough, he actually spent his childhood going back and forth between Chicago and London, just like Nolan did, which is really coincidental. And then the other big literary influence was a guy named Jorge Luis, or Luis Borges. I'm probably butchering his name because he is Argentinian.

JP (26:54.53)
Oh wow.

JP (27:06.082)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (27:10.084)
Argentinian he's kind of like a poet philosopher and the his kind of stories and poetry is described as Meta metaphysical tales woven from dreams and memory and if that doesn't sound like a Nolan film Yeah, that doesn't sound like a Nolan film then what does so those were two like big literary influences Yeah, I have a few like

JP (27:27.118)
Where have I heard that before? Or better?

Eli Price (27:38.328)
Other sorts of influences, obviously you have guys like astrophysicist Kip Thorne that like he is very interested and influenced by because of his interest in space that probably culminates in Interstellar. Guys like MC Escher who was a Dutch artist that is famous for like those geometrically precise illusions. So like think about like the staircase that like leads to nowhere.

JP (28:03.747)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (28:07.212)
Like never any staircase like stuff like that was a big influence on no one I mean you just think about stuff he does like in step in inception and in other places where he's it's like these mathematically structured Sets that are I mean he literally does like the stairs that lead to nowhere in one of the dreams things in inception You have a couple of architects

JP (28:16.491)
Mm-hmm.

JP (28:27.675)
Right inception. Yeah

Eli Price (28:37.112)
Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Miss Van Der Rohe Probably butchering that too, but they were like very future-gazing architects that he experienced a lot of their work in Chicago And architecture was like a huge is obviously a huge part of his films, too And then the last one I wrote like kind of jumping back to earlier conversation is He talks about his now wife Emma Thomas being

Just a huge profound impact on his career Not just as like he talks about not just as like a sounding board but being You know the main person That is like a guiding force like pushing him to be able to express his ideas and his work, so So yeah, it's Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, it's really like sweet and nice hearing him

JP (29:28.062)
It's just so beautiful. That's so cool.

Eli Price (29:36.132)
talk about how important she is to him. Yeah, I love that.

JP (29:41.354)
It's kind of a, I feel like it's kind of a pretty rare thing in Hollywood, you know, like people, people when they do get married, they don't, they don't do a lot of like, you know, praising their, their spouses. So it's just, it's just nice to hear.

Eli Price (29:44.564)
It is. Yeah, it is.

Eli Price (29:52.496)
Sure. Yeah, it is for sure. But yeah, we can kind of get into like some filmmaking philosophy and technique and all that sort of stuff now. Yeah, I mean, really like we could spend hours talking about all this stuff, but people will only listen to this for so long. It's already a long podcast in general.

JP (30:19.39)
Not diving into a specific movie for sure.

Eli Price (30:21.82)
Yeah, let's run through some of this stuff. So, and these are all things that are not gonna be very surprising if you're familiar with Nolan at all. One of the things is that he's just like, just thinking about his filmmaking philosophy in general, he is very interested in like suspense as a visual language. He, you know, he talks about...

When he talks about Fritz Lang and other silent directors, just watching these silent films and just knowing that suspense is being built visually. You don't need dialogue. You don't need anything but the visuals to build suspense. And so that's something that he really tries to put in his movies. He likes to give you the protagonist's point of view. And like...

JP (31:13.932)
Yeah.

Eli Price (31:14.736)
including his flaws, he doesn't want you to like see his protagonist as like this perfect individual, but also like have you experience the world they're in through their perspective, but also like through their flawed perspective, which is really a big part of what he does. I think.

JP (31:33.246)
Right. Well, especially on that one with Oppenheimer literally being written in first person in the quote-unquote subjective scenes. And then the other thing that I love is Tenet, the John David Washington's character is literally called the protagonist. So this is great.

Eli Price (31:51.278)
Yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And even along the character line, he likes to, when he's thinking of his characters, he thinks of them as real people. And one of the things he does, so you kind of get this, it's probably a common press question of, oh, did you have so-and-so in mind when you wrote this role? And Nolan's answer is always, no, he doesn't write that way. He sees like,

trying to think of an actor for a character as limiting on his writing. And so when he's writing, he's not thinking of who's gonna play this. You can even see recent interviews of him talking about Killian Murphy. Like he said, he has the screenplay written, and he's like, okay, now I gotta figure out who's gonna do this. And he looks at the cover of the book, that's the main source material for the movie, and sees the face.

Oppenheimer and just like killing Murphy's face comes to mind as someone who could have that face But yeah, it was after like he wasn't thinking about that while he was writing it out I think that's really cool and really like Not not necessarily like unique to him, but something that like sets Can set you know a character apart? I guess because a lot of a lot of

JP (33:02.958)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (33:18.288)
Writers do think of actors while they're writing parts and like write them for actors specifically Yeah, you know he likes obviously that film noir is a big influence on him and One of the one of the main things that film noir does is you don't ever know It's hard to know who to trust in a film noir but you

JP (33:22.155)
Right.

Eli Price (33:46.98)
You define the characters by their actions, not by their words, because there's a lot of lies and a lot of deception going on in a noir. And so you have to define people by their actions, and that's something that he tries to work into all of his scripts is like not, you know, they're, they may say one thing, but he wants the audience to define the character by the actions that they actually take. Um, yeah. And then, um, yeah, like

JP (34:11.879)
Right.

Eli Price (34:16.628)
More general things like he loves to think of cinema as something that has no rules or limitations. So whatever you can think up and dream up, he said put it on the screen if you want to make a film. And that's one of the reasons he loves Kubrick is because Kubrick treated, he threw rules out the window about how you're supposed to, what makes a great film and did his own thing.

And that was inspiring to Nolan. So he tries to take the same philosophy, I guess. And along those same lines, you'll hear him say over and over in interviews, if you wanna make movies, play to your strengths. Meaning, do what you think is a good idea and what you're passionate about. And what is gonna make this movie something that only you can make?

JP (34:51.438)
Mm-hmm.

JP (35:02.676)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (35:15.696)
That's what's gonna make it distinctive and Then yeah, you know, there's a lot of stuff you can get into as far as his philosophy But yeah, we can kind of run into like some of his technique because a lot of that comes through in his techniques But yeah when so when I say like the story of a Nolan film like what do you what do you think about first?

JP (35:32.671)
Right.

JP (35:42.614)
going to be a bunch of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff man it's going to be you know it's a lot of different things happening all at the same time you know backwards forwards yeah I mean it's definitely he's definitely really become a master of the nonlinear structure for sure

Eli Price (35:46.817)
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Eli Price (35:53.737)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (36:04.812)
Yeah, yeah, and that's what I have the first thing written down under the story section in the outline nonlinear structures It's it's like any if you look up like any YouTube essay That's what it's gonna talk about is the nonlinear structure of his stories But yeah, he plans like these things out very like precisely using like Diagrams like you can see a video of him, you know drawing out the diagram for how he worked out the

you know, fitting together of the sequences and memento, which is just like it's ingenious, really, like what he did with that. But yeah, you know, that those nonlinear structures are something that he's really like put into the mainstream, I think, in his films. Other things like in his story, obviously you have like

JP (36:44.225)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (37:05.164)
You have time as like a motif in pretty much all of his stories. He's very interested in time He shows it through characters aging. He shows it through like literally showing you clocks and you know bomb timers counting down in Batman movies and you know Like you know carry a lot of characters discuss time how much time is left what happened in the past what?

JP (37:09.899)
Mm-hmm.

JP (37:24.803)
Mm-hmm.

JP (37:31.138)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (37:34.204)
what's going to happen in the future. And, you know, the time he really wants to make the time felt in his movies to kind of align you with the way that the characters are feeling it. Yeah, I think one of the things that's interesting about all of his movies is like his characters are very interested in like the philosophical implications of their actions.

JP (37:36.404)
Right.

JP (37:48.108)
Right.

JP (38:01.934)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (38:02.364)
So you get a lot of exposition on if this is what we do, then what are the implications of that? Which that's probably one of the things that his harshest critics probably don't like about his movies. But if you like thinking philosophically, like Nolan does, and I sort of do too, then it can work for you. Yeah.

JP (38:10.125)
Okay.

JP (38:26.438)
Mm-hmm. I think it also well also the other part of it too is that you know some of his movies have very big concepts and when you have a big concept you have to kind of explain the rules and it's there's a lot of it's really hard to do that without just having characters talk about it and I think I think all of his exposition is typically character motivated like it doesn't just happen out of the blue like

Eli Price (38:37.115)
Mm-hmm.

JP (38:55.634)
I think about an inception where you have Elliot Page's character asking a lot of questions, getting a lot of answers from Cobb and the team. Or, you know, and same thing with like Tenet where we follow the protagonist and he's asking this, he's asking that, and he's like having to explain to him. So, and I feel like then...

Eli Price (39:10.868)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

JP (39:21.786)
Oppenheimer is probably the most overtly philosophical, where it's like you literally have characters asking, are we sure we want to do this? We want to make this bomb like this or that? And also, Oppenheimer's kind of... I guess lack of a spine is kind of like one of the plot points too. One of the reoccurring themes of the movie is that he's being asked all these very intense philosophical questions by people and...

Eli Price (39:32.368)
Yeah.

JP (39:51.018)
He doesn't really want to give any like definitive answer, um, which I thought was really interesting.

Eli Price (39:51.771)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (40:01.156)
Yeah, yeah for sure and I think you know Part of that Yeah, I guess like the his characters are always like It's funny like because I feel like some of his movies his characters are more like ideas than they are people and Then other ones like they feel very much more like people and like very personal

and they kind of work in different ways. I don't think Nolan would describe them as that, but that's kind of like my subjective feel of his movies. But that is one thing that's a connective tissue is they are interested in like, what are the implications of what I do? And it's obviously like probably something that Nolan is interested in.

Maybe not just like personally but just like philosophically about like the way humans are Like thinking about why we do what we do sort of thing Yeah, like you get into like his production design and his cinematography It's very much like let's do the most with what we have And let's keep it as real as we can

JP (41:23.618)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (41:27.276)
So like, obviously, like he loves shooting on location whenever he can. He loves, um, practical effects. Um, you know, no CGI to like minimal CGI, you know? Um, I really feel like, um, I, I'm pretty sure I read that like there's no. CGI and Oppenheimer it's all, it's all just VFX.

JP (41:50.434)
Yeah, yeah, which, right, which I think, you know, people, I think most people, when they hear like, no CGI, they're like, oh, there's nothing digital in this movie. It's like, no, like, visual effects is different. Like, they did, they shot things practically, then use visual effects to enhance them. But the basis of everything was, was some sort of practical effect. I mean, because even something as simple as like, you know,

Eli Price (42:03.896)
Yeah, that's not that, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (42:15.54)
was practical.

JP (42:20.534)
like digital cleanup and stuff like that. I mean, there's a really, really good VFX breakdown for, I wanna say it was, Mindhunters, the David Fincher series on Netflix. There's like this reel, you can see where you can see how much they changed the environments using visual effects but they're still shooting in practical environments. But they're like, even something as simple as like deleting like a dolly track off the ground, that's a visual effect. But...

Eli Price (42:24.304)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (42:35.225)
Okay, yeah.

JP (42:49.13)
You know, so, uh, but yeah, no, he, he tries to do other things practical as possible. I mean, the infamous story about in tenant where it's, he wanted to crash the plane into the airplane hanger and he's like, it's just cheaper just to crash an actual plate into the hanger. Uh, also uses a ton of models as well. It does a lot of like model work.

Eli Price (42:49.641)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (43:03.206)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (43:08.564)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and a lot of model work instead of green screen and that's a big thing like he that he hates working with green screen You know So you think about like CGI is gonna be using a lot of green screen actors are kind of acting on a set Stage with like basically nothing but green screens and everything is added in computer generated after and

Like the opposite would be thinking about like the hallway scene in inception He actually like built a rotating model that his actors were inside of That could have easily been done like with CGI And green screening but like he chose to actually like create that Hallway in like on this like rotating like you can go watch videos of it. It's really cool But yeah, he's very much interested in

JP (44:06.324)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (44:07.248)
You know having I mean this is a man with no email and no cell phone like so like he he's interested in In shooting things for real and Yeah, so and then like a lot of that carries over with the cinematography too obviously like he loves shooting on film Which you know I don't think I think all of his films pretty much are a hundred percent shot on film

JP (44:14.994)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (44:36.916)
Meaning like not shot with like digital cameras, but shot on like actual cellular film. And yeah, he...

JP (44:45.406)
Yeah, I don't and I honestly don't know if he ever would shoot anything on digital

Eli Price (44:50.116)
Yeah, yeah, he's been one of the big like mainstays like keeping film Going I think like guys like him and Wes Anderson have been you know, we covered Wes big proponents of shooting on film Um, even as digital is like taking over Which I you know, I greatly appreciate but um But you know and uh, even I listened to an interview uh the other day with Nolan and he doesn't like

He doesn't like to ride digital filmmaking. He just, it's just, he, you know, he sees it as like a different process and just different. And, you know, he's, he doesn't like say, like if you shoot digital, like you're doing it wrong. It's just, he sees it as different and he prefers the shooting on film. Yeah, I love, one of the things that like,

JP (45:31.841)
Right.

Eli Price (45:49.092)
really like carried over starting with following was just like he had like basically no budget and so he had to figure out how to do things both practically and like circumstantially like so following they just didn't really have access to like very much lighting and so they had to use a lot of um like you watch following and there's always a character beside a window.

JP (45:56.174)
Mm-hmm.

JP (46:18.199)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (46:18.288)
Because they're using the lighting from that and you see like when they're walking in the streets and following gets a lot of like handheld camera work because and we'll talk about it more next week, but like they didn't have they couldn't get the Permits they needed to shoot in public. So they're basically like real style shooting with handheld for those street shots and like you see really a lot of that carryover like

I mean, you can go watch on YouTube videos like where kind of YouTube essay guys are breaking down this sorts of shots and following that have kind of followed throughout his career with window lighting and stuff like that, which I think is really cool. And another thing that I really thought, yeah, it's free, exactly.

JP (47:09.741)
Yeah, it's free and...

Well, in a window is an instant softbox as well. So that's usually, unless it's like direct harsh sunlight, it's like a really nice diffused light, which flatters people.

Eli Price (47:18.592)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (47:23.56)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. And, you know, he talks about like as his, obviously, budgets grew and the movies got bigger, he's still like, so like for a movie like following, you basically like have to make something that is beyond your budget because you have like basically no budget. And so like, he's tried to keep that mindset like he talks about like tenant, like obviously like he has this huge budget for tenant.

He said, but I'm still like trying to do more than what my budget allows for. Because for one thing, like just business wise, like you want to put something out there that's worth more than what's spent on it. Um, but also like, that's just his mindset of like, I want to challenge myself technically to do, to do more with what I have than I should be able to do. Um, creatively, um, which is a, you just, an awesome mindset to have. Um,

Another thing with his cinematography that I thought was really cool was he doesn't like using zoom lenses. He likes to put the camera there. So like there's a scene in Insomnia where Al Pacino is like on the phone with someone and it's a close up shot of him on the phone. And you can look up like making a footage and there's the camera is like right there in Al Pacino's face. I mean like.

JP (48:51.007)
Yeah.

Eli Price (48:52.376)
like this like hand in front of your face close to him and uh, but yeah, Nolan talks about like You know because he decided to do that instead of using a zoom lens It really gives uh, pacino like the kind of claustrophobic like someone's right there in front of his face kind of feeling Uh for the shot which was necessary for like the mood of the conversation he was having um, but also just like That's what Nolan

JP (48:57.023)
Yeah.

Eli Price (49:21.992)
felt would get the best shot instead of using a zoom. So a lot of just stuff like that isn't really typical. You don't really hear about people doing that sort of thing often.

JP (49:26.484)
Right.

JP (49:31.446)
What an-

JP (49:34.794)
And the other thing I really respect about Nolan, that people may not realize that like, you know, the beauty of working on a film is that it's a collaborative process. So there are actually directors that have made movies that don't necessarily know that much about the camera itself. Like they may not know all the technical stuff and they'll just say like, I want a shot looks like this or, but Nolan actually often, you know, he's very hands on. He often operates a camera himself.

Eli Price (49:46.919)
here.

Eli Price (49:53.362)
Right.

JP (50:03.654)
at some points. I mean, obviously he's been able to work with phenomenal cinematographers, especially most recently he's been working with Hoyt von Hoytema, which is like the fakest name I've ever heard. But you know, what a, I mean, but now that I, you know, I think I first heard his name watching some BTS about Nope, because Jordan Peele was talking about Hoyt von Hoytema and how they developed the process to make that movie. And I was like, who is this guy? And then I realized the movies, he had

Eli Price (50:06.226)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (50:17.518)
For sure.

Eli Price (50:26.628)
Mm-hmm. Uh-uh.

JP (50:33.162)
shot and I was like this is like one of my new favorite cinematographers I mean right up there with like you know Roger Deakins I think for sure.

Eli Price (50:34.868)
Hell yeah.

Eli Price (50:43.856)
Right. Yeah. And so yeah, he worked with he does have a few guys that like are kind of like regular collaborators like for all the way up until Wally fister Yeah Probably feel fister

JP (50:51.438)
I was trying to remember, was it Wally or Walter? Yeah. And then he went and made that movie Transcendence, which they tried to hype up as like the movie made by Nolan's protege and it like was not good. Hell.

Eli Price (51:07.995)
Yeah. He that was a big flop. Was that Johnny Depp was in I think. Right. Yeah.

JP (51:13.216)
You tried.

Yeah, he wasn't bad, but it just was just a really very silly movie.

Eli Price (51:22.06)
Yeah. But yeah, one of the things like I think that comes through, too, and his technique is like the editing. Like, obviously, like he's not like his early films he did edit. But obviously, as he gets going, like he's not editing his movies. But also, like when you're a director of a movie, like you still have a big part that you play in that process. And the way you shoot.

JP (51:45.869)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (51:50.044)
the way you shoot and how many takes you do has a big part to play in the editing process and how easy or difficult it is. So for instance, one of the things that I came across that was kind of like, oh, that makes sense is early on and even all throughout his filmography, he uses a lot of insert shots of objects.

Whether it be like a picture or an item that has significance narratively. So like it brings meaning when you do this like insert shot of this picture. And like early on it was a necessity to use that because it's really easy and quick to shoot. And it carries a lot, it tells a lot for the narrative by shooting that object and showing it.

JP (52:24.011)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (52:46.724)
Like when you're doing the editing like it's really quick to throw that in there and easy And so and that but that became something that like he just kept Because early on he was working

JP (52:51.283)
Yeah.

JP (52:58.364)
I really love oh, yeah. Sorry. We're saying

Eli Price (53:02.692)
Yeah, no, I was just saying like he it's one of those things he kept because um, he used it early on and it really It really worked well for him. I guess um, and it's I feel like it still does

JP (53:11.916)
Yeah.

JP (53:16.49)
Yeah, I guess I'll turn my light, because my light just died. So unprepared for this, but all right, there we go.

Yeah, I just want to say I especially love that he kind of started utilizing He's really good at using like an insert and then like That you don't really get at first and then kind of and then showing the importance of it later Like I remember I always remember in tenant like towards the beginning of the movie during like the opera heist. There's like a shot of Like the little like coin thing dangling off of that one guy's pack

Eli Price (53:41.648)
Yeah, that's, yeah, absolutely.

Eli Price (53:53.928)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

JP (53:53.942)
And then at the end of the movie, you see it again on the guy that like takes a bullet for the protagonist and you realize it's Robert Pattinson's character at some point. You know, and so that's his closed loop.

Eli Price (54:00.016)
Yeah. Well, the first thing that comes to mind as far as that goes would be like the hats and all the hats and prestige. Yeah. Uh huh.

JP (54:07.43)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, the opening shot of prestige. Yeah at first you're like Who attacked the hat factory? And then you know, you end up realizing, you know what it's from The cats too, right? There's not like a bunch of cats in the opening shot

Eli Price (54:16.926)
Yeah, right.

Eli Price (54:21.328)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Eli Price (54:26.313)
I don't remember.

JP (54:27.214)
I think I remember it being hats and cats.

Eli Price (54:30.928)
Yeah, and you have the lights too, the little light bulbs. Yeah, but yeah, so that, and then like, even like the nonlinear structure was kind of like, for editing just early on when you're having to work only on weekends and like with a very low budget and trying to put stuff together quickly, like coming up with a nonlinear structure where you don't have to spend like hours and hours, you know, putting stuff in the right place.

um, like was actually like Editing thing that has carried over even though I think he probably would have had that even without that It's kind of I guess happy Happy coincidence that sort of editing happened to be easier for him early on um but yeah, um but yeah, like and then like think about too like the way time is edited into his movies like

you know, cutting between different things in time, like in Dunkirk and Inception, different speeds of time, I guess, the way those are edited together. And then even just in the way scenes are shot. So the van falling in Inception, that was shot from, I think, between...

certain parts of it like 700 frames per second and then like other parts of it 2000 frames per second And so like you're getting so much From those shots and it slowed down so much that you're like

JP (56:05.979)
Right. Plus just the-

JP (56:12.702)
Well, as you can see, the technical and narrative aspect of the melding together of the various different levels of that too is...

Eli Price (56:18.96)
Yeah. Yeah, and it's like the technical aspects are like have narrative and like, I guess, like emotional function, which I think is important for his movies. And then like, yeah, even moving into like his music, one of the things that I really appreciate, you know, like digging into him is that he doesn't.

JP (56:21.486)
crazy.

JP (56:26.478)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (56:48.824)
Nolan never uses temp music, which is very unusual. Usually, so the way it usually works is directors will be making a movie and they'll pull music and scores from other stuff and kind of put it over their film, you know, I don't know how much people know about how films made, but like the music isn't playing while they're filming, like they do all the filming and then they add the music in.

JP (57:15.904)
Right.

Eli Price (57:18.6)
And so like in the meantime, they'll add in scores or music from other stuff To kind of like give the composer a feel for what they want And then the composer works from there. Well, Christopher Nolan sees that as limiting Because he says as soon as you take this and say I want something like this And then the composer has to take that and make something else. You're like a step away from what you actually wanted. And so

JP (57:46.506)
Right. Well, the other problematic thing with it is that gets people in trouble sometimes is the editor will edit the scene with the temp music and then if the composer comes up with something different, then it can change how the scene feels. Also, this is why you sometimes end up with movies that their score sounds very similar to...

Eli Price (57:47.716)
Yeah, which I think is really cool.

Eli Price (58:02.824)
Mm-hmm.

JP (58:14.302)
another movie because they use that movie score as their temp music and when the director was like I want something that sounds like this they like take it more literally or it's like the scene doesn't work if it doesn't have that same flow so that's why they have to make a song. So it's it definitely is a harder process but you know again just like with the cinematographers I think Nolan I mean the only other thing other than the secrecy and the

I know I'm going to be in for like a really intense narrative. The only other thing I instantly think of when I think of Christopher Nolan is the music. I mean, I think, I think you could argue that, you know, half of Christopher Nolan's notoriety is due to the genius of Hans Zimmer, who I would also say is the greatest of all time. Uh, and even, even the stuff he's been doing with, uh, Ludwig Gorson for the last, the last two films has all been phenomenal. And I think that guy,

Eli Price (58:55.592)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (59:01.832)
Yeah.

Eli Price (59:10.674)
Mm-hmm.

JP (59:12.246)
I think that guy, maybe a couple more films under his belt, I think he'll be right up there with your John Williams and your Hans Zimmer's and your Howard Shores and all these other people. But...

Eli Price (59:21.584)
Yeah, I mean, I've been humming the interstellar like All day in my head, I can't get it out of there And I haven't even I haven't even listened to it It just like i've been thinking about nolan movies and that score like is stuck in my head now um but yeah, and one of the things that's really so like You know just like wrapping that thought up of like not using the temp music. He actually like sits down with the composers

JP (59:29.602)
Cornfield Chase, man, that's my gym.

JP (59:37.976)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (59:50.032)
and goes over the screenplay, they talk about the moods and they talk about all that sort of stuff. And then when they're filming, Nolan will send stills and images and stuff like that. And then whoever's composing, whether it's Hans or Gordson or whoever it is, it's like sending back ideas. And Nolan, it's like a back and forth conversation at that point, which, you know.

To me, this is something that's similar to Wes. Wes starts the music process very early on for Wes Anderson movies, whether it's with De Pla or whoever he's working with composing. He's thinking of the music early on. So he doesn't really necessarily need tent music. And it's a similar thing, I guess, with Nolan. There's a parallel there.

JP (01:00:36.043)
Right.

Eli Price (01:00:41.636)
And both of their movies, music is such a huge part of their films and the feel of them and the way things are conveyed. And when you think about those movies, you think about the music along with the movie. And yeah, I really love that. And Nolan even says that's become such a huge part of his process is the music. That he like...

JP (01:01:06.51)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:01:08.732)
He doesn't know how to make it, but it's just something that means so much to him that like he has to be Like have his hands in that part of it So much so that I think

JP (01:01:19.214)
I mean, I think he does a really good job.

Eli Price (01:01:23.196)
I was gonna say I think like even like for Dunkirk, Hans Zimmer is like being quote like in an interview has said like Nolan might as well be like a co-composer for Dunkirk Yeah

JP (01:01:34.186)
Yeah. Yeah, I think he does a really great job of loading the bases so that way other people can shine, you know? And so like, just thinking about like how much he, because he's so involved in every level of his storytelling, like just thinking about how much care he puts into making sure that his other collaborators are set up for success as well, like sending over.

Eli Price (01:01:44.925)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:02:02.194)
images, you know coming up with ideas really be very intensely and I think that's why the scores for Some of his films are some of the most iconic film scores of all time. I mean You know inception interstellar the dark night trilogy all coming to mind just all absolutely phenomenal You know, I don't know how many other people out there like me, but you know, sometimes I'll listen to movie scores. Just just

Eli Price (01:02:04.413)
Right.

Eli Price (01:02:14.612)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:02:19.516)
Yeah.

JP (01:02:30.71)
just on a whim, you know, even during working out sometimes, you know, listen to the interstellar soundtrack or something like that, you know. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it really shows how much care he puts into his storytelling on every single level.

Eli Price (01:02:48.612)
Yeah, yeah and even like jumping out of music real quick and thinking back to like one of the things he He talks about is like he really has learned to think in three-dimensional space Instead of like two-dimensional and so like so he does like when he's on set for one like there's no like assistance like On set like he as far as like sometimes directors will like have assistance go

go like work on certain shoots for them and they're not there necessarily for like lesser stuff I guess but he's there for everything shot he's and he's beside the camera he does one of the things he doesn't use a monitor on set which is pretty unusual because he doesn't want to get in a two-dimensional mindset he wants to stay in the space right beside the camera it's something unique about him and you it comes through in his movies the way that

JP (01:03:25.966)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:03:33.314)
Right.

Eli Price (01:03:47.964)
the way that his camera moves is very three dimensional, but not disorienting. To contrast, I think about like a lot of stuff that Disney has put out, whether it's Marvel or these live action remakes recently, they're very much moving through three dimensional space, but it's so, to me, it's disorienting. Because a lot of it, for one, is like,

JP (01:03:55.276)
Right.

Eli Price (01:04:18.236)
digitally done and And to like they're not working within a real space. And so like you lose that sense of orientation in the space Where like so like two things that come to mind like the Little Mermaid You know live-action like there's the boat scene and it's so disorienting like I don't know where I am in that whole scene like it gave me a headache and then like another one is like

JP (01:04:32.46)
Right.

JP (01:04:43.679)
Yeah, what?

Eli Price (01:04:47.324)
the new sort of like, you know, and I know you like the new Guardians movie, but like the scene where they're in the hallway and the camera is just like kind of running around everywhere through this like fight that's happening. It's just like, it's very disorienting for me. It takes me out of, I can't enjoy those moments as much, maybe some people do, that's great. But for me, it's like so disorienting, but Christopher Nolan is always so grounded, even though his, like you think about,

JP (01:04:59.68)
Yeah.

JP (01:05:07.522)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:05:14.876)
the way his camera moves around stuff and within stuff in the dark night, it's incredible how grounded you still feel. And I think that stems from that philosophy that he has.

JP (01:05:24.247)
Yeah.

JP (01:05:29.206)
Well, I think a lot of it is because he does everything as practically as possible. Although as much as I did love Guardians of the Galaxy volume 3, I think what you're describing is it's an issue where when you're creating an entirely digital environment, and a lot of big blockbusters are nowadays, the issue arrives when you forget to treat the digital camera within that space.

Eli Price (01:05:33.661)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (01:05:48.369)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:05:58.19)
as a physical object. So when it's 100% CG shot, and you have the freedom to literally move the camera in whatever way you want, the disorientation arrives from them being you're very willy-nilly with it, so to speak, and forgetting to treat it as a physical object, even though it is in a digital 3D space. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:06:07.722)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:06:18.608)
Yeah. And it's not the problem. The problem isn't with the technology because it's just the way that it's used. You think, like, so, like, Avatar way of water, James Cameron does an incredible job in those underwater scenes. Like, I never felt disoriented. I always felt like I was within the space, even though I know, like, there's a lot of computer generation. And so, it's not the problem. It's the philosophy. And this is the way that...

JP (01:06:26.366)
Right, right. Right.

JP (01:06:41.537)
Right.

Exactly.

Eli Price (01:06:45.756)
that Nolan has implemented that philosophy well is by being there beside the camera, having a feel for the three-dimensional space. Cameron uses the same philosophy just with computer generation, I guess.

JP (01:06:52.651)
Right.

JP (01:07:01.109)
Right. Again, like I said, the camera that you put within the digital software, he treats it as a physical object. He doesn't move it in an unnatural way. That's when the disorientation arises, when the camera starts moving in ways you like. It's a subconscious thing, right? Your brain is watching a movie and your brain is telling you...

There's no way a human being could move the camera that way. And that's kind of where that disorientation arrives. But I do think on a very rare occasion, it does kind of work. The hallway one shot, even though it was all digitally stitched together, I really did love that scene. But I definitely get what you mean where it can be a little disorienting.

Eli Price (01:07:38.756)
Yeah, and I've heard other people that did, but it just, it wasn't for me. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:07:47.8)
I am actually let's go ahead and take a break because we're I know we're almost done with this section But let's take a break here. And then when we come back, we'll finish out like with the last few things there and techniques and think and do themes and Then we'll we can just jump right into like the movie draft and news and stuff instead of taking the break there I've got to go help the wife

JP (01:08:12.31)
Oh yeah, sounds good.

Eli Price (01:08:15.048)
get the baby back down and stuff. So I'll be back in a minute. All right.

JP (01:08:17.686)
Oh boy. Okay, sounds good.

JP (01:15:30.082)
Baby alright?

Eli Price (01:15:38.663)
Yeah. Yeah, um, it's kind of a nightly thing. She does like a...

Kind of like I think they call it like a dream feed Basically just like she's asleep you get her up kind of keeper it's asleep as you can Breast feed and then put her back down sort of thing. I Don't know. It's a baby thing. Yeah

JP (01:16:04.332)
Nice.

trying to find the charger for my light and I couldn't find it so I was gonna try and turn it back on because it works when it's plugged in but all good

Eli Price (01:16:18.012)
Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, I have I have a like a ring light now that plugs in and then this which by the way, I need to rease my I need to get a longer extension cord because this one doesn't reach well. I'm having to like prop it up weird because one of my the light I have like down below to kind of light from below has like a super short like.

JP (01:16:23.758)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:16:42.85)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:16:45.456)
I mean it's like maybe one foot if that long chord.

JP (01:16:49.556)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:16:52.7)
Maybe I just need some tape and I'll tape this thing up here. Oh well, it's not gonna work.

Oh, maybe that'll work. Don't touch it. No, failure. Oh, well, I don't really need the bottom lighting. It just helps a little bit.

JP (01:17:12.748)
Right.

Eli Price (01:17:15.784)
Let's see.

Eli Price (01:17:21.164)
Okay. I'll jump back in a second. There was the only thing that I wanted to talk about still for Technique is like the shepherd tones and how that works with both the music and the story building. But other than that, and then we can kind of jump into themes and go from there. But we'll do.

JP (01:17:45.098)
Yeah, we just kind of rapid fire those I'll let you kind of

Eli Price (01:17:48.484)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'll leave like a short break right here. It's just the easiest way for me to find where to edit is to leave the audio break so that I can see like the little short break in audio. So we'll do a short break and I'll jump back in.

Eli Price (01:18:11.096)
Yeah, as far as technique goes, I think the last thing that I really thought was super interesting is you kind of hear Nolan and And others kind of around him talk about shepherd tones, which if no one if you don't know what a shepherd tone is you It's it's hard to describe Like just by telling you at least for me. It makes more sense seeing it visually happen

But it's this thing in music where you have three tones building up an octave, up the scale, but then one drops off and the other picks up where it left off. And it's literally just playing the same rise all at the same time. It's not actually keeping on going higher.

JP (01:18:48.974)
Thank you.

JP (01:18:57.923)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:19:05.943)
Right.

Eli Price (01:19:07.836)
but it sounds like the intensity of it makes it sound like it is. And it just builds, it just has a huge intensity to it. So both in what Zimmer and who's the new composer that he's been using, yeah, Gorson,

JP (01:19:13.217)
Right.

JP (01:19:20.076)
Right.

JP (01:19:31.51)
Ludwig Gorsen

Eli Price (01:19:37.684)
Christopher works with his composers is like you kind of hear some of that sort of stuff in the scores So you're building this intensity with these shepherd tomes But no one takes that idea that like musical idea and he talks about trying to do that with the way He interweaves his stories together Which you can totally see it they like you have especially in stuff like inception and

JP (01:19:45.181)
Right.

JP (01:19:57.001)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:20:06.692)
In Inception and I think Tenet and Dunkirk is probably the places where it's most like obviously seen where you have these different things happening that are like interweaving story like timeline things that like build an intensity in their own ways and then kind of like he like braids them together in the end and I just think that's really cool how he took this like musical concept and like

JP (01:20:21.922)
bright.

Eli Price (01:20:35.856)
both uses that musical concept of building intensity within his scores, and then also tries to model a storytelling structure off of that idea of building intensity through these overlapping timelines, I guess. Yeah, I just thought that was really cool and interesting.

JP (01:20:42.656)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:20:58.527)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:21:05.96)
Yeah, and then of course like with the music you have the clock tick in the in the Christopher Nolan movie scores You can hear it in I Mean in a lot of the scores you can hear this like clock ticking element It's especially like an interstellar and Dunkirk. It's like it's very apparent but you can hear it some in inception and

JP (01:21:17.459)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

JP (01:21:34.921)
Right.

Eli Price (01:21:35.14)
Yeah, it's there. And I think the one in Dunkirk is, it's either like, it's either based on or recorded from Nolan's stopwatch. I can't remember which one, but either way, that's really cool.

JP (01:21:39.821)
Yeah, word it.

JP (01:21:53.375)
Yeah, yeah, one of the things, you know, once I get my show up and running, I want to really do a deep dive episode into Hans Zimmer because I feel like he's really like revolutionized the film scoring world on a couple different occasions. Most recently with the ticking clock motif, I feel like every single like period war film since Dunkirk, like the marketing just has the...

It's all about like it's all labeled as like time running out. You have the clock. I mean, I think about the trailers for like 1917 very similar in vibe obviously the movie itself isn't necessarily similar but um, but yeah, that's definitely something I feel like a lot of other films from like world war one or two Have i've kind of implemented into their marketing as well

Eli Price (01:22:27.816)
Yep.

Eli Price (01:22:43.152)
Right. Yeah. And that's very much like comes from his collaboration with like, I mean, like I said, hon Zimmer said That nolan might as well be credited as a co-composer for the score on dunkirk which is a testament to like You know, it's one of those things where like it's like an iron sharpens iron sort of thing. Like you have one of the best Directors filmmakers working with one of the best like composers and like they make each

JP (01:22:58.023)
Right.

Eli Price (01:23:12.516)
each other better. You know, Nolan's pushing Hans and making him better, and Hans is pushing Nolan and making him better, which is, you got to love that. But yeah, there's probably, I mean, there's not probably. There's most certainly much more we could talk about as far as his technique goes. And I'm sure we'll get into a lot of that as we go through the films. But I wanted to touch on just some

JP (01:23:15.307)
Right, absolutely.

JP (01:23:39.582)
Absolutely.

Eli Price (01:23:41.048)
some themes, you know, just to kind of like have some things on our mind as we watch through this filmography of just some common themes. And a lot of this actually we've talked about because a lot of his themes are built into both like his filmmaking philosophy and really like the way the technique he uses. And really like you could even say that

One of his underlying themes in almost all of his movies is just interested in the nature of film as a medium and storytelling as a way of conveying ideas. He's telling stories about storytelling and he's making films that are, kind of have an underlying thing about film and that as a medium. So like,

I mean, that's something that's definitely there. Time, we've talked about time, you know, I think that goes without saying. But then like things like perception, like what are you what are you what point of view do you have, you know, playing with that, you know, giving you the point of view of the, you know, the character where like you're not sure.

JP (01:25:01.185)
Right.

Eli Price (01:25:07.888)
It's kind of like the, what's the term, the narrator that you can't trust sort of thing. There's a term for that, but I just can't think of it in the moment. And then like the, yeah, the subjectivity, I think subjectivity is a big theme, which doesn't sound like a theme, but it really is. It's that idea of like what is real for you.

JP (01:25:17.768)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:25:21.162)
Yeah, me either.

Eli Price (01:25:37.432)
and what subjectively, what is real for you and what carries meaning for you. I think the subjectivity of that, and that's like kind of a common thing for humanity as a whole, I think is a theme. Like even starting with following, like there's this whole monologue about items that people keep and hold as dear, even though they're worthless. And the subjectivity of that is there from like the very beginning.

JP (01:25:38.455)
Right.

JP (01:25:51.81)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:26:04.268)
Right.

Eli Price (01:26:07.148)
and following. Yeah, there's this like, so like Nolan, a lot of that stuff is like more small scale stuff but like on a large scale there's this endeavor that it seems like Nolan has in all of his films and that his characters have where they really want to like unlock the mystery of it all. You know they're looking for this secret.

JP (01:26:33.582)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:26:37.112)
machine that is making the world work like it like it the way it does and trying to unlock that and like in doing so you know figuring out what drives the world for what you know whether it's a protagonist or an antagonist in the movie trying to do that you know they have their different motives for that but that is like a kind of a grander scale theme

JP (01:26:58.452)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:27:04.976)
that you see is like what makes the world tick, pun intended, you know, and, you know, even on a smaller scale, like what makes the human mind tick, like what drives the moral decisions that we make, what drives the, just like why we do what we do, that sort of idea.

JP (01:27:13.569)
Yeah.

JP (01:27:33.579)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:27:34.828)
And really, I really love this. There's a small little kind of almost devotional, you could say, book on Nolan's works by Elijah Davidson, who I'm hoping to have on the podcast. I have him scheduled for one of the episodes and hoping that stays on the schedule and works out. But he's done some...

some different writings on film. But he kind of breaks down in his little book on Nolan, which let me pull it up so I get the title of that right. It's just called Christopher Nolan, Transcending Time. He says that basically like most of Nolan's plots can be broken down to time being transcended, a world being transformed.

and love being sort of a savior of everything in a sense. And I really think that's a profound way of looking at Nolan films in a grand, yeah, yeah. And Interstellar, I think is the culmination of that. Those things being flagged out.

JP (01:28:42.798)
especially in Interstellar.

JP (01:28:50.866)
Love is the only thing that transcends all dimensions.

Eli Price (01:28:55.868)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and you know, it's said explicitly there but Yeah Uh, but it's there like really in a lot of his stuff. Um You know, um, but there is a there is um, just wrapping up this. Um there is like when we think about his filmography and this is something else that like, um Elijah davidson's introduction to he has like he has an introduction then like

JP (01:28:59.39)
or whatever Anne Hathaway says. Right.

Eli Price (01:29:24.572)
something on each film in that small little book. I recommend getting that. It's really cheap for Kindle. But yeah, he has this idea that he made me think about in that introduction where he talks about the trajectory of his films and how you start off with things like following and following and memento and insomnia.

And there's a lot of like, those movies are like some of his darkest movies. There's a lot of despair and cynicism, like kind of underlying things in those movies. And a lot of it is like, they're in these like crises. And there's like despair and hopelessness in that. Whereas like, and, but as you like move along the trajectory of his career, he's, he starts.

JP (01:29:59.714)
Yeah.

JP (01:30:15.34)
Right.

Eli Price (01:30:22.704)
those characters still have like, his characters always still have those crises, but instead of like, leaving them more in those crises, they're working. It's like this trajectory of moving from despair to love and from cynicism to hope. And I think that's really a profound insight into the filmography of Nolan, is as we watch these movies, that's something that we can keep in mind.

JP (01:30:50.094)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:30:53.472)
is seeing the work of a filmmaker playing out as maybe he's, and this is something that no one usually pushes back on, is he sees himself more as a craftsman than an artist. He's been quoted saying that, meaning artists usually are making things out of themselves and he sees himself as more like.

making a craft. But I think it's still there. I think the artistry still comes through. And there probably is a degree to which like Nolan himself is working through this idea of moving from cynicism to hope and from despair to love just personally. And I really do think you see that as more and more like his character, his protagonist as like flawed and

JP (01:31:28.607)
Yeah.

JP (01:31:39.309)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:31:49.988)
in crisis as they are more and more trying to Wrestle with and deal with like these moral quandaries that they find themselves in trying to figure out what's the What's the right thing to do? And how do I go about doing that? even though like I'm human and flawed and Like, you know, he kind of says the thing that

JP (01:32:02.529)
Right.

JP (01:32:13.939)
Right.

Eli Price (01:32:18.044)
that interstellar Dunkirk and Tennant all have in common is like how to find the moral strength to do good even when everything seems lost. And so it is this trajectory of like where he leaves you in things like Memento and Insomnia with, you know, they're very much less hopeful movies to like movies that are about

JP (01:32:31.575)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (01:32:45.72)
in the midst of hopelessness, still finding like the moral strength to do good and do what's right. And I just really like that idea and wanted to close the theme section with that thinking through like that overarching theme. It's something that I love finding when you're going through a filmography of a director that you can see a thread going through these movies and this one's

JP (01:32:52.151)
Right.

Eli Price (01:33:14.352)
is kind of like a trajectory of thematic elements through his movies, which, yeah, I think is really cool. And it will be interesting as we work through these to see how that sort of plays out. If, yeah.

JP (01:33:21.899)
Yeah.

JP (01:33:29.229)
What?

Yeah, sorry, but okay, so I've kind of like a before we move into the kind of the fun and the episode stuff the question I've had in my mind is It's a two-part. I'd love to hear your up to here. What do you think? What is it? What genre has Christopher Nolan not dabbled with you'd like to see him? dabble with and is there a particular franchise you'd love to see him create an entry for

Eli Price (01:33:39.453)
Yeah, yeah.

JP (01:34:01.223)
That's kind of my question.

Eli Price (01:34:01.344)
The second one, yeah, the second one is easy because it's something that he would love to do. He's like on record saying that he would love to and I think he would do incredibly well with and that's a Bond movie. Like Christopher Nolan, like if he were to pick up like the Bond franchise, I think it would just be so fun and really good. But yeah, the first one.

JP (01:34:15.746)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:34:30.328)
genre that he that he hasn't actually entirely done so I'll say I haven't seen Oppenheimer yet and I've heard that there's like kind of horror ish elements to the movie. I don't know how true that really is Or if it's just like an intensity

JP (01:34:52.178)
Yeah, there's some sequences. Yeah, I've seen it twice. I would say there are some elements, especially towards the end, that kind of do like our little like psychological horror in nature. You know, kind of as Oppenheimer is kind of starting to come to terms with what's actually like happening.

Eli Price (01:35:03.33)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:35:08.795)
Okay.

JP (01:35:18.05)
There's like one particular sequence, it's like my favorite sequence in the movie, and a lot of people have talked about it that does have a little bit of like psychological horror elements to it, but not nearly as much as some people were kind of hyping up for the in the earlier reviews.

Eli Price (01:35:30.404)
Yeah, yeah, so that I think that's probably something that I'd like to see him like have a go at is a more traditional like um, uh horror genre like a because one of the things he loves to do is like turn like Turn a genre on its head Um kind of do something different with it. So i'd love to see like his take on a horror like a horror genre film um Yeah, and I

JP (01:35:40.031)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:35:59.716)
I don't know what it would look like. I would imagine it would be like something, it would have, I think, similarities to something like Psycho for Hitchcock, which brought together that noir feel with a kind of psychological horror feel.

Kind of both in one and so you already have the noir elements that kind of run through a lot of Nolan and I would imagine if you were to make more closer to like Traditional horror genre film it would it would be similar to something like psycho obviously with his own With his own like, you know mood and own, you know touch on it but yeah

JP (01:36:27.724)
Yeah.

JP (01:36:47.252)
Right.

JP (01:36:55.979)
Yeah, okay.

Eli Price (01:36:56.592)
I can't think of anything that he hasn't done necessarily that I would like to see him do. I can't really, but I also don't have how, all the genres on my mind. I don't know, it might be fun to see.

JP (01:37:13.962)
Well, I think obviously he's like really well known for like...

JP (01:37:19.735)
Are you to say?

Eli Price (01:37:20.516)
I was just going to say it might be fun to see him do like take on a documentary. Um, I think, uh, I think he could make a really, couldn't make a really incredible documentary, um, depending on.

JP (01:37:26.734)
Okay, interesting.

JP (01:37:32.846)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:37:35.309)
If you were to decide to do a documentary, I think it would be really good is I guess what I'm saying

Eli Price (01:37:43.152)
I don't know what he would do a documentary on, but yeah.

JP (01:37:43.594)
Yeah, I-

JP (01:37:47.69)
I think he's obviously like really well known for being primarily a sci-fi director. You know, a lot of that involves like action, suspense, you know. Obviously, he's done more like thriller, neo-noir kind of stuff. You look at like insomnia, memento, and then, you know, then Abinheira being kind of a, primarily a drama.

Eli Price (01:37:58.32)
Yeah, sci fi action. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:09.746)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

JP (01:38:17.27)
But I definitely agree with you. Yeah, I definitely agree with you that I think a Christopher Nolan horror film would be really interesting. I would really love to see him do a monster movie. I think we could have a Jaws level film for a new generation if he did something like that. I don't think it's something you'd ever be interested in, but I'd also be interested to see his take on more of a fantastical.

Eli Price (01:38:18.196)
Drama biopic. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:35.547)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:38:47.594)
You know genre like, uh, like he's obviously he's done sci-fi. I'd love to see him do like a fantasy film. I think would be interesting, but again, with, yeah, that could be interesting. Um, or, or I think just like maybe a proper, you know, like crime neo noir kind of vibe film too would be really interesting as far as like.

Eli Price (01:38:51.28)
Okay, yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:55.592)
Like a fantasy adventure sort of.

Eli Price (01:39:01.588)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:39:13.578)
franchise I mean Bond obviously would be incredible I mean Tenet basically was him making the James Bond movie in a lot of ways but man I mean Star Wars comes to mind obviously I think that's like the only big franchise he said that like it's not off the table you know I don't think they would ever offer him a Star Wars movie because they probably you know cuz he yeah I don't know but I don't know man I think I think he could probably

Eli Price (01:39:19.408)
Right, right.

Eli Price (01:39:31.981)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:39:35.284)
I don't think so.

JP (01:39:42.382)
He's the only person I think could probably revitalize the term in your franchise, maybe at this point. Like, I think he'd do really interesting things with that. Um, but, uh, yeah, I don't know, man. It, that's something I like to think about sometimes is like, what, what are some, some genres or some franchises that could use a little bit of that Christopher Nolan seasoning, so to speak.

Eli Price (01:39:48.64)
Hmm, yeah.

Eli Price (01:40:06.424)
Yeah, so I think the reason Bond could work for him more than like Star Wars is because like the nature of Bond. Every time you get a new Bond, it's kind of like a reinvention in a sense. And so like, so with Star Wars, you have so much already established within the franchise and you see what happens when someone does something interesting.

and different with a Star Wars movie like Rian Johnson did is everybody hates it. But I think it could really work with a Bond movie because it would be, it's like every time there's a new Bond it's a reboot and so you know you don't know exactly everyone plays it differently a little bit. There's elements that are obviously the same but he could play with all of that. It would be a fun like playground for him.

JP (01:40:42.931)
Yeah, that's very true

JP (01:40:58.455)
Okay.

JP (01:41:02.243)
He'd probably pull off, I think he'd probably be better for Star Trek over Star Wars. I think he could definitely pull that off for sure.

Eli Price (01:41:07.256)
Yeah, yeah, maybe so. Yeah, not that I don't think he would make a I think he would make a fine Star Wars film, but I don't.

I think people would like be angry because he's doing something different with it probably. Although like, well no, he has a similar mindset as far as like, Rian Johnson likes turning genres on their heads and Nolan really does too. And that's one of the reasons people hated The Last Jedi. Yeah.

JP (01:41:37.61)
Yeah, so much so that...

JP (01:41:42.914)
Yeah, so much so that Rian Johnson made a whodunit that's not really a whodunit and everyone's like He reinvented the whodunit franchise, the whodunit genre and I'm like But it's not actually a whodunit though. I still think The First Knives Out was a good movie I didn't like the second one as much but I'm just like it's not really a whodunit guys So anyway, yeah First for Nolan, the G-O-A-T

Eli Price (01:41:48.446)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:41:57.255)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:00.785)
I love it.

Eli Price (01:42:07.832)
Yeah, I agree that the first one was great Yeah, I you know, I Think when I was like in college maybe a year or two after I might have said he was the goat I think he's the I think he's maybe the Maybe you right there with Spielberg is the blockbuster goat. They're a kind of co. Can you have co goats?

JP (01:42:35.786)
Yeah, yeah, you can have multiple.

Eli Price (01:42:37.604)
Yeah, so Spielberg Nolan co blockbuster goats, um, I think

JP (01:42:44.194)
code Blockbuster Goods. Okay, alright. I can agree to that.

Eli Price (01:42:47.084)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:52.629)
Yeah. All right. Yeah, so that's, that was a fun way to kind of wrap up that section of the podcast talking about Nolan giving, getting a good overview of his bio and career in and yeah, I hope this, you know, the goal with, with this episode is obviously to kind of like, you know,

build a good foundation moving forward so that as we're watching through these films we kind of have something to work from when we're thinking about them and talking about them. So yeah, hope that was great for you as a listener and yeah we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we'll do a quick movie news section and we will bring back the movie draft. It's been

It'll have been a couple of weeks since we've had a movie draft at this point. So after a couple of solo pods, and then I can't really draft against myself, and then a couple of weeks off. So yeah, I'm excited to get back into the movie drafting. But yeah, quick break, and we'll be right back. See you in a minute.

Eli Price (01:44:12.648)
Alright, are you ready to... Are you ready to just jump back in? I'm probably just gonna ask... For movie news, I'm just gonna ask you like what good recent movies you've seen and we're probably not gonna spend much time there. The... I probably won't talk much about mine because the last episode I did I talked about some that I've seen recently. It's... it hasn't released... it'll be released on Friday.

JP (01:44:17.583)
skin to it.

JP (01:44:27.022)
Mm-hmm. That's fine.

JP (01:44:38.495)
Yeah. Okay.

Eli Price (01:44:42.777)
And then I think I'm gonna release this one September 1st, so there'll be like a couple weeks break with no episodes just so I can build a good buffer in but Yeah, so Yeah, well, we'll do a little lull in the audio so that I can find it and then jump back in

JP (01:45:03.182)
Mm-hmm. All right.

Eli Price (01:45:11.056)
Hey, welcome back to the show. I'm Eli here with JP, and we are getting ready for some movie news. We're gonna go a little light on the movie news this week and jump into the movie draft soon. So yeah, for movie news, there's not really like a whole lot interesting coming. September really is kind of like the...

The movie dead zone in a way like you have all these like awesome summer movies Late September late September Yeah, yeah, but uh, yeah you're coming off of like summer movies You're not quite to like the fall push yet that starts picking up in October But yeah creator is gonna give us a good interesting into September. So so yeah, I

JP (01:45:42.45)
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Creator comes out in September.

JP (01:45:49.379)
That's true. That's I'm very high for that

Eli Price (01:46:09.392)
Don't worry, I'm interested in seeing what the creator, how good that is too. So, but yeah, so there's not a whole lot, yeah, there's not a whole lot going on movie new release wise right now. There's been some that would have come out when this releases that have not come out at the time of the recording. So can't really speak to those like Gran Turismo and

JP (01:46:16.27)
I like Gareth Edwards a lot, so.

Eli Price (01:46:38.825)
That should be interesting. But yeah, I was just interested.

JP (01:46:39.99)
That movie actually surprisingly looks pretty good.

Eli Price (01:46:45.956)
Well, it's no blonde camp and I really yeah, I really like his movies So I'm interested in seeing what he does with it at least Yeah

JP (01:46:46.978)
Grant Teresma.

Right.

JP (01:46:59.304)
Yeah, I've never understood the hate behind either Elysium or Chappie. I enjoy both of those movies just as much as District 9, you know?

Eli Price (01:47:09.265)
I feel the same, yeah. I think District 9 is the best, but I feel like those aren't, are like, it's not like they're like way lesser movies. I still really liked Alicia Manchapie, but people hated those movies, whatever. But I'm also like a sucker for sci-fi. So like you, it doesn't have to be like fantastic.

For me to like it if it's sci-fi, so maybe that's what it is Yeah, I was just gonna ask for this section like what are some Movies that you've seen obviously Oppenheimer you said you've seen it twice, but um but yeah other than that What are some things that you've seen and really enjoyed? Maybe recent releases, but also like if there's just something That stands out maybe a older film that you've seen recently

JP (01:47:41.343)
Right.

JP (01:48:03.382)
Yeah.

JP (01:48:09.05)
Yeah, well, I've been having to watch a lot of older movies just because I really haven't had them, you know, movie going money. But I will say, I think the movie, the newest movie that I really enjoyed was they cloned Tyrone, the Netflix film. I actually had a really, really good time with that movie. I thought it was really funny, great plot, and the cast was great.

Eli Price (01:48:17.061)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:48:30.525)
Yeah, yep.

Eli Price (01:48:34.932)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:48:38.638)
And I will also say, as far as a couple other recommendations, I watched a documentary about Hiroshima and Nagasaki called White Light, Black Rain. It's good because you get to hear the stories of the victims of the bombings that survived firsthand, but it's not necessarily the most engaging documentary ever. It feels kind of very TV-esque, but it's pretty good.

Eli Price (01:48:49.693)
Mmm.

Eli Price (01:48:58.759)
Right.

Eli Price (01:49:07.56)
Yeah.

JP (01:49:07.95)
I'm just hearing their stories and Then the only other movie I saw recently I would say that I think I'd like really was really good It's an older film and I saw it was one of the movies that inspired That's one of the movies that Christopher Nolan actually had his crew watch on like the first day of doing the dark night It's called black Sunday It's from the 70s. It sounds very silly because it's like terrorists take over a blimp and like

Eli Price (01:49:30.554)
Okay.

Eli Price (01:49:35.4)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:49:38.126)
threatened to like drop lawn darts on a football game. And like, it sounds very stupid, but it's actually like pretty intense. And like, it's like they rig it with explosives. So it's not just dropping darts. It's like the darts will go out with some intensity. There's like 80,000 people in this, you know, in this stadium. And it just, the building of the tension, especially like in the third act as like the pilot gets a little more and more like mentally agitated.

Eli Price (01:50:02.55)
Mm-hmm.

JP (01:50:09.18)
It actually was a really riveting watch. So that was another one, first time watch that I found pretty good.

Eli Price (01:50:16.444)
No, very cool. Who knew?

Eli Price (00:05.829)
Well, yeah, well, let's go ahead then and move on To the movie draft in a second, you know If any of those movies sounded interesting to you go check them out You know we can call that movie news section the JP has seen section JP was here section of the show and

So you can go see those movies and see JP's name etched, you know, on the stall wall or the tree stomp or whatever. He just watched these and yeah, you can feel like you're watching them with JP. Yeah, and now you know how awkward I can make jokes sometimes. Yeah.

JP (00:46.862)
There you go.

Eli Price (01:06.277)
I would share some of my recent watches, but I really kind of shared that on the last show. If you're interested in that, I shared some of my favorite recent releases on that last episode that came out a couple weeks ago at this point. And so yeah, go check that one out.

JP (01:15.95)
Mm.

Eli Price (01:33.545)
if you're interested in that. But yeah, let's do a movie draft. I was trying to think, man, what are we going to do for the Christopher Nolan overview?

JP (01:39.106)
I'm assuming we're doing...

Eli Price (01:44.909)
Go ahead.

JP (01:45.686)
Oh, I'm sorry. No, I didn't mean to cut you off. Go ahead, get into it.

Eli Price (01:51.573)
Yeah, I was just saying, you know, I was just thinking like, man, Christopher Nolan, we've got to kick this thing off right for a movie draft. What are we going to do? A lot of times I'll try to work in something from the movie news or a theme or something from, you know, the Nolan movie or the, you know, the movie we're covering, but we're not covering our specific movie. And so I was just thinking like, well, what's something very Nolan and

Right now like Nolan is all about the IMAX and so So I looked into it and I feel like there's enough movies And so our movie draft is gonna be movies not Shown in IMAX, but actually filmed with IMAX cameras or IMAX certified cameras So we're gonna be drafting from those movies

JP (02:26.594)
Mm-hmm.

JP (02:46.427)
Right, right, right.

Eli Price (02:49.401)
We're gonna drive five each. I think is a good number for this one because there's not a lot of these the list off compiled is Somewhere between 40 and 44 some of them. I'm not entirely like for some reason on the Wikipedia page it has Fantasia 2000 But that's digital so I don't it was shown in IMAX, but the page wasn't about showing an IMAX But it does have the like

JP (02:53.422)
Mm-hmm.

JP (03:11.158)
the animated movie.

Eli Price (03:18.809)
middle sections where like the celebrities are like introducing the shorts so i don't know if those parts were shot in imax um i don't know uh i'm not gonna draft it anyway but uh exactly i i'm not drafting it anyway but yeah

JP (03:27.25)
Yeah, that'd be overkill for that, but sure.

JP (03:34.41)
And I'm assuming we can't draft any Nolan films.

Eli Price (03:40.289)
Right. And so that's the other thing we're going to do. We're going to take Nolan Films off the board, which really, like, takes off some of the best ones on this list, to be honest. But yeah, we're so we're going to draft from this list. If you're interested in the list, I can I can put a link to the letterbox list I kind of made in the show notes so that you can find it there. But yeah, I had.

JP (03:50.892)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (04:09.141)
added some more but then took them back off again because I realized so there's these we can kind of talk a little bit about this so there's IMAX cameras which the only ones that are like true IMAX film are like the I think they're like the 9802 or something like that film cameras and that's what Nolan likes to shoot with.

JP (04:22.008)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (04:36.569)
and others have shot with those too. There's not actually any narrative feature films that are shot completely on IMAX film, like the 70 millimeter IMAX celluloid. I think Dunkirk is the one that has the highest percentage. It's like 70, 75% is shot in IMAX 70 millimeter. And we...

JP (04:47.523)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (05:04.225)
You know, Dunkirk, I mean Oppenheimer might be more, we don't really, that sort of stuff hasn't come out yet, but I do know that it's not completely an IMAX film. But it would be hard to beat the 75% that Dunkirk has with a three hour movie. So, but we'll, I'm sure we'll find out eventually. But yeah, we're not drafting Nolan films anyway.

JP (05:22.894)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Eli Price (05:31.821)
Since we're in our Nolan series, we're going to take those off the board as per usual. And so yeah, the, but yeah, the, the Nolan, you got the Nolan films. He uses the film, but there's also digital cameras that are IMAX certified. So these are cameras that IMAX has basically put the stamp on that says if you shoot in these or certifying this as it.

the digital, you can probably speak better about this than I can, because I don't have a lot of camera knowledge, but basically, I guess like the dumb camera guy terms would be like the digital camera picks up both like the aspect ratio and the amount of, I guess, just like clarity that the iMacs needs to be able to like be converted into iMacs format. Yeah, yeah.

JP (06:26.134)
Yeah, resolution. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (06:31.577)
So yeah, so there's not and there's not a lot of these sorts of cameras But I did find out so I had added some and took them back off because there's cameras like Like the aria Alexa LF and the aria Alexa mini LF are IMAX certified cameras, but there there's you can have those cameras that aren't IMAX so like

The best way I could find to figure this out is to go on the IMDB page for a film. And if you scroll to the bottom of the information, there's the technical specs and you can see exactly what cameras were used there on IMDB, which is pretty helpful if you are interested in that sort of thing. But you can see, so some movies will say, for instance, it'll say, like, Aria Alexa

JP (07:15.331)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (07:24.513)
But then one that's IMAX will say are Alexa LF IMAX. And so I don't know like exactly what differences there are in those cameras, but I took those off that don't have the IMAX next to it. Cause I was like, oh, I guess these aren't actually IMAX qualified or certified because they don't have that IMAX stamp on them. But yeah, really it's probably like.

JP (07:44.703)
Mm-hmm.

JP (07:48.351)
Right.

Eli Price (07:51.117)
This is probably like really boring to some people and really interesting to other people. And so like. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and move on because honestly, I don't know what I'm talking about other than the tiny amount of research that I did on this to figure out what movies I could put on this list for us to draft. The I don't know if you wanted to say anything at all about that.

JP (08:03.691)
Hehehe

JP (08:11.879)
Yeah, it's, it's all confusing.

JP (08:17.086)
I mean, yeah, the only thing is, oh, I think you're delayed right now, so. Yeah, that's what I think is happening. Or I'm delayed, I don't know what's happening.

Eli Price (08:17.77)
Um, but yeah, let's.

Eli Price (08:26.197)
I think we're both delayed for each other. Yeah.

JP (08:31.074)
Let's just get into the draft. I don't have anything else to say.

Eli Price (08:36.021)
Okay, cool. Okay, yeah, so, yeah, we're gonna jump into this draft. Again, Nolan Films off the table. You can see the list in the show notes if you're interested in seeing all the films. There's not a lot, like I said, right around 40. So yeah, we're gonna draft five each. I believe last time we were on together, I drafted first, so I'm gonna give you the first pick.

for this one. So yeah, whenever you're ready, go ahead and take your first pick.

JP (09:12.126)
All right, I gotta, I'm trying to hedge my bets here safely. I'm coming for the win this time. I think my first pick is gonna have to be Dune, part one from 2021. I mean, phenomenal, phenomenal film. I'm so excited for part two and just absolutely gorgeous. I think Dinev Vanov does such a good job of creating a sense of scale for like the massive ships and the sand worms. And I think the IMAX cameras really help capture that.

Eli Price (09:17.901)
Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (09:26.548)
Okay.

Eli Price (09:35.99)
Mm-hmm.

JP (09:42.776)
So that'll be my first draft pick is Dune part one.

Eli Price (09:44.307)
Yeah.

Eli Price (09:49.405)
Yeah, I yeah, I mean it's really like the visuals of it were my favorite part honestly of the whole movie um Yeah, it it's a it is a really good film. It's probably the best I've always said it's since I saw it like it's probably the best adaptation you could make of an unadaptable book um, which didn't kind of feel I read it and it

JP (09:58.136)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (10:18.141)
It's like it's pretty unadaptable But it's probably the best you could possibly do with it. So yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's a good pick Yeah There's a lot of different ways I can go here and I don't really know where exactly I'm gonna land There's films I probably like more that

are probably not gonna win me the votes that I might try to wait for later. But the highest, so the highest rated movie I have on here that I'm not saving for later, that is also not a Nolan film, I think I'm gonna go ahead and draft it. I absolutely loved it. Nope, you kind of mentioned it earlier in the podcast. Jordan Peele's Nope.

Yeah, just an incredible movie. Um, it like, to me, it felt like. Him it to me, Nope. Felt like Jordan Peele saying I can do, I can make a Spielberg movie just as good as Spielberg can. Um, and like to me, like, you know, if that's what he was saying with it, then I feel like he's right because I loved it. It was, it was a great movie, a great, like summer blockbuster.

kind of like sci-fi, thriller kind of movie. Yeah, and it was shot with, like not digital, but there were section, it's shot partly digital, partly film, and then partly IMAX film. So it was actually like the 9802 IMAX film camera that some of the scenes were shot with. And a lot of these, so none of these are like fully shot

I'm in IMAX film some of them are fully shot in IMAX digital, but none and fully in film so A lot of these you're getting like partial IMAX shots But yeah, if we did only fully then we would have a very small list so But yeah, nope, that's my first pick

JP (12:33.466)
One pick each. Yeah, Nope. Yeah, Nope was great. I think it also really revolutionized some of the technology with like the night for day stuff they did and they use like IR cameras to record light and just really, really crazy what they did with it. But alright, so my number two pick is going to be a pretty recent film that I that I love. We may have discussed it earlier, but

Eli Price (12:45.81)
Mmm, yeah.

Eli Price (12:51.296)
Uh huh.

JP (12:59.758)
I think we're gonna have to go with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. I loved this movie, I laughed, I cried, and I think James Gunn could have exited from Marvel any better. I don't understand why a lot of people are just really hating on him and thinking that he's gonna ruin what he's doing with DC. I'm nervous, but also I'm also like, y'all are acting like he hasn't given us some of the best superhero movies we've ever gotten with the Guardians trilogy.

Eli Price (13:04.895)
Okay.

JP (13:29.27)
The Suicide Squad also being phenomenal, so I don't know. But anyway, yeah, so Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, phenomenal movie. That's my number two.

Eli Price (13:34.625)
Yeah.

Yeah, you know it it's not like I mean it's not like things are gonna get worse for DC at this point um Like it's either it's either the same or better. So um Yeah Which I still haven't gotten around to seeing the flash um I definitely will because the flash is one of my favorite comic book characters Um, so I just haven't gotten around to seeing uh, seeing the movie yet. Um But yeah

JP (13:47.05)
True.

Eli Price (14:08.061)
I didn't love Guardians 3. You know, I don't really care to get into it right here in the middle of the draft, but it's one of those things that's like, I'm glad like some people loved it, but it just wasn't my favorite. But yeah. Man, this isn't the best list for me.

because there's just not a lot of movies that I really love. Yeah, there are a lot of big blockbusters on this list, which is fine, because there are, but three of probably the top four or five are Nolan films for me, and I can't draft those. So yeah, I think number two here,

JP (14:37.529)
It's a lot of big buckbusters.

JP (14:41.923)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (15:03.839)
I'm gonna go with...

Okay, well you went with your superhero movie. I'll go with my superhero and you just actually mentioned it The I'm gonna go with

Eli Price (15:20.613)
Much better James Gunn movie in my opinion in the Suicide Squad I Loved to the Suicide Squad. I thought it was funny and interesting and like kind of the opposite of not the opposite but like Took all the bad things about the original take on the Suicide Squad and like just like vastly improved upon every single bit of it, so

Yeah, that, I, you know, I've gotta take, gotta take a superhero movie because there's, you're bound to at some point with this list. And I think that's my favorite one on the list. Well, other than The Dark Knight, obviously, and, but yeah.

JP (16:08.055)
I'm gonna be honest, I did not even see that was on this list, otherwise I probably would have picked it, but that's fine. I actually don't hate the first Suicide Squad movie, I think it's still pretty fun, but I don't know, I saw some headlines recently that David Ayer said that James Gunn said that his Ayer cut should have its time to shine, which I still want to see, because I've heard it's obviously a much better version of the movie.

But that's neither here nor there. I think for my number three, I gotta go with one of my favorite film franchises of all time. I've seen every single movie. You know, the good, the bad, the ugly. I gotta go with No Time to Die. I loved this movie. I thought it was a brilliant send-off for Daniel Craig's run as Bond, who's kind of been my favorite. I mean, also, I grew up watching him as Bond.

And yeah, I mean, I just, I really, his sequels of films have a lot of ups and downs. I mean, you have Casino Royale and Skyfall are great. I don't hate Quentin with Solace. It's okay. Spectre, extremely disappointing as a follow up to Skyfall. So just for No Time to Die to then come out, I mean, just what a great, one of the best Bond movies ever made.

Eli Price (17:21.959)
Yeah.

Eli Price (17:25.261)
Mm-hmm.

JP (17:31.895)
I think the only really weak thing is the villain with Rami Malek. He's not like the most formidable, but It looks it's a beautiful looking movie great story Hans Zimmer score is great. Probably the best music any James Bond movie, but yeah So that's going to be my number three is no time to die

Eli Price (17:38.025)
Yeah, yeah, I didn't love him, but...

Eli Price (17:51.081)
Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed No Time to Die. I thought, in my opinion...

I think like, so I think Casino Royale and Skyfall are just like, I mean, tears above the rest of the movies in that, in the Craig franchise. But yeah, I didn't hate No Time to Die. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I thought it was a good, good movie with some flaws that made it not nearly as good to me.

JP (18:07.945)
Oh, for sure.

Eli Price (18:28.713)
Was a big part of that. Um, I like rami malik, but that I don't know what they were doing with them in that movie um But yeah, um so

Eli Price (18:45.706)
I know there's one movie I can save for my last pick. That's probably my favorite movie on the entire list So I'm gonna keep saving that And I'm gonna do

Eli Price (19:02.857)
Okay, I'm gonna do this and it's definitely like a pandering to the crowd pick. It's not my favorite between the two options. I'm gonna pick Star Wars The Force Awakens. So I remember, and here's the reason why. I like The Last Jedi more than The Force Awakens. I think personally The Last Jedi...

JP (19:29.471)
same.

Eli Price (19:31.329)
is the best Star Wars movie since the original trilogy. I know that some people hate it, whatever. It was a great, it was a really good movie. The Force Awakens though, the reason I'm picking it for this, I have a reason that's not just pantering to the crowd that might like Force Awakens more. And it's this, it's because me and my wife decided

when these movies started, when they announced these, we were like, let's go see these in IMAX 3D when they come out every couple of years. And so we did, for all three of the new trilogy, we went and saw them in IMAX 3D. And so the experience of going on opening night to The Force Awakens after years and years with no Star Wars,

new Star Wars. It was just like a really cool experience. You know, obviously you have Jedi's in the lobby, people dressed up and the theater was packed. Not just like, I mean, I feel like the whole theater, every screen was probably showing it. And it was just a really fun, memorable experience that me and my wife kind of got to share, go in to see.

And we went and saw it in IMAX 3D. It was the first time I had seen IMAX, but the first time I saw IMAX 3D, which is very different than the real-D 3D experience. And so yeah, I'm picking that for that memory reason. And I do like The Force Awakens. I think it's a really fun sort of twisted...

a little bit of a twist remake of, you know, their original Star Wars. So, yeah. Force Awakens.

JP (21:33.229)
Mm-hmm.

JP (21:39.21)
Oh boy, there's some movies on this list. I don't know why they shot them on IMAX cameras, but all right. Man.

Eli Price (21:48.907)
I'd do the same way.

JP (21:51.154)
There's like some movies I'm like that movie was not worth the money that it costs to shoot stuff on IMAX but Man, I think for

My number four, I really, gosh, I really feel like I gotta go with a movie that I think is still very, very misunderstood, but a movie that I really love and, you know, we talked earlier about Nolan and his philosophical, you know, mumbling, so to speak, and I think this is a movie that's very philosophical in nature.

Eli Price (22:27.15)
Mm-hmm.

JP (22:28.022)
And I got to go with BABMV Superman Dawn of Justice. I think it's a movie that is very misunderstood. I think it's maybe a borderline masterpiece, especially when you watch the ultimate version, like the director's cut, so to speak. Man, I think DC just did Zack Snyder's So Dirty, where they hire him to shape their DCEU and then don't trust him to really

Eli Price (22:48.662)
Mm-hmm.

JP (22:57.266)
make the movie that he wanted to make and yeah, I mean, I think it definitely has its issues where you know, the introduction of the full Justice League feels a little forced. I don't 100% love like the big ending with Doomsday, but I do like some of the moments that occur in that movie, but the actual like philosophical conversation where Bruce Wayne is asking himself like this guy

Eli Price (23:01.503)
Right.

Eli Price (23:11.176)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (23:16.536)
Yeah.

JP (23:24.178)
is basically a god, like who's there to stop him if he has a bad day essentially. I just found it a really fascinating movie. It's one that I like to rewatch on occasion for sure.

Eli Price (23:33.388)
Yeah.

Eli Price (23:40.189)
Yeah, I feel like sometimes I wonder if, you know, Marvel is its own thing as far as superhero movies go and what they've done. But I almost wonder if Christopher Nolan kind of ruined DC characters by making such amazing, an amazing trilogy of Batman films, because this is a very comic book movie. Like, and so like, but the people like

have such strong memory of what Nolan did with Batman that I almost wonder if like, you can't really make a very comic booky Batman movie anymore. He always has to be like dark and gritty and you can't have like fun, like campy, corny dialogue anymore. Which, you know, that's part.

JP (24:22.318)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (24:35.809)
That's kind of part of comic book language is the campiness and kind of the corny lines like the whole like Your mom was named the same as my mom like yeah, it's really corny, but it's also like kind of fun and like Yeah, I mean it is but that's okay. Like that's the thing like that's Something can be corny and still be like fun and enjoyable like those aren't like mutually exclusive

JP (24:39.327)
Yeah.

JP (24:48.298)
Oh my god, it's not corny.

Eli Price (25:03.457)
Like that's part of the fun of it is like the kind of corniness of it It but I mean That's fine If you don't think it's corny, that's fine. This is a subjective opinion. But um, but yeah I still like batman v. Superman. Um, it's it like I said, it's a very It's very comic booky And people that like have read comic books kind of

JP (25:08.946)
I don't appreciate your usage of the phrase corny.

Eli Price (25:32.301)
probably understand what I'm saying when I say that. But yeah, I don't think that's a bad pick. But yeah, people don't like that movie. They really don't. Okay, I'm going to go with so I have a

JP (25:43.76)
Hehehe

Eli Price (25:55.213)
So this is not my favorite movie of this franchise. I feel like story-wise, it's one of the weaker ones. But as far as utilizing an IMAX format to the max does an incredible job, I'm going to go with Ghost Protocol, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol.

Eli Price (26:27.149)
The the burj khalifa sequence where he's like hanging off the tallest building in the world uh climbing up with like these, uh, I don't even know what they are. They're like some sort of crazy technology Um, that's not suction cups Yeah sonic gloves, I yeah, I think that's what they call them. Um, yeah really I mean that's such an incredible

JP (26:40.65)
I feel like Sonic gloves.

Eli Price (26:54.545)
Such an incredible stunt and sequence and yeah that Mission Impossible The Tom Cruise Mission Impossible franchise is like made for like that's the sort of movie that's made for IMAX And it is kind of a shame that it didn't get a long run in IMAX because of Oppenheimer but yeah, it Is the new one rather but um, but yeah this one

Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and pick Ghost Protocol. I like the movie. The stunts are great. Yeah.

JP (27:31.362)
Yeah, that was a real bungle in the studios.

Eli Price (27:32.263)
Where you going with your last pick?

JP (27:36.818)
Yeah, well, I was gonna say it's a real bungle on the studio for releasing Dead Reckoning part one so close to Barbenheimer. You know, I don't know, they'll probably talk about that one for a while, but yeah, so my last pick, I... If my particular favorite Transformers movie was on this list, I'm surprised it's not. I would have picked that, but being the Transformers options that are here, I can't pick any of them because they're not.

Eli Price (27:45.971)
Yeah.

JP (28:05.762)
the good ones. But I do think Michael Bay utilizes the IMAX camera like really well in some of the Transformers action sequences. But from the movies on the list, since the best Transformers movie, which is Darker the Moon is not here, I think for number five I'm going to have to go with Star Trek Into Darkness. I really liked a lot of what JJ Abrams did with like the

Eli Price (28:13.589)
Yeah, sure.

JP (28:33.814)
kind of revival of Star Trek, just so people know. I grew up in a household where my dad liked Star Wars, my mom liked Star Trek, so I grew up watching both. And I've always appreciated both for different things. I like, Star Trek's always like, obviously been a lot more like hard science fiction, much more cerebral. You know, the complaint is that J.J. Abrams kind of turned Star Trek into Star Wars, which I get that. They are like very high octane, except for like the most recent one.

Eli Price (28:37.848)
Mm-hmm.

JP (29:03.594)
which I think had a good throwback. But minus the whole Benedict Cumberbatch being the character con from the movie thing, I don't really know how I feel about that. But other than that, I think I remember, it's been a while since I've seen it, but I remember really enjoying it. And the Star Trek universe is a universe with massive spaceships and stuff. And I think the IMAX format.

Eli Price (29:18.536)
Yeah.

JP (29:32.062)
really helps with that, especially you think the ending of that movie where they're like fighting like on the hull of the ship as it's like crashing like really helps give you that sense of scale, which is what IMAX is so good for.

Eli Price (29:44.761)
Mm-hmm Yeah, yeah, absolutely Yeah, I'm trying to think

Eli Price (29:56.383)
So.

Yeah, going back to Transformers, yeah, there are not good Transformers movies on this list. Absolutely. Totally agree. Yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to think. So.

Eli Price (30:23.977)
Sorry, I'm kind of lost. I'm going to have to edit this part.

Eli Price (30:34.197)
Yeah, my mind like I'm like looking at the list and like my mind got caught like on other movies and like Got lost on all these movie posters. But yeah, I'll jump back in right here Yeah Yeah, they're great uh Yeah, um Yeah into darkness I feel like um, I like the other two more. So there was the original that abram's did

JP (30:41.518)
Mm-hmm.

JP (30:45.954)
I love the random Chinese movies on this list.

Eli Price (31:03.945)
And then he did this one and then I think it was Justin Lin did Star Trek Beyond. And I think I liked Beyond a little bit more than Into Darkness, but I don't have like strong memories of these movies. Like I remember kind of what happens in them. But I haven't really revisited them since I originally saw them. But yeah, I think Abrams did fine with them. You know, it's as far as like franchise IP filmmaking goes like

JP (31:21.161)
Mm.

Eli Price (31:33.749)
You know, it's fine. It's it's fun time, you know, it's enjoyable And it has a little bit of depth and emotion to it, which is always good Yeah, I think into darkness is a fine pick My my last pick is a Movie that I'm I based on context clues from earlier in the episode

I knew you hadn't seen, so I knew I could save it for last. But it's my favorite movie on this list. And it's actually one of my favorite movies of all time. I think it's one of the best movies just ever made, both subjectively and, you know, you could probably argue objectively, too. And it's actually, you know, another just before I say the pick, it actually was shot.

Certain sequences in IMAX film, but it was actually never shown in IMAX, which is a shame I think And I feel like I Don't know. I feel like they need to Do a rerelease of it and show it in IMAX and I would try to go see it but um and But that my final pick is gonna be Terrence Malick's the tree of life

When I saw this for the first time, I was just like, entranced by it and kind of, it's a movie that I kind of like, it ended and I, like I was just thinking about it and I, trying to figure out what to do with what I just saw. It's just an incredibly beautiful film. And,

Malik like I kind of mentioned this earlier in the episode, but Malik is a director I would describe more as like Poetry director than a prose director meaning that like Narrative is like not that interesting to him. He's more interested in like showing you things he uses a lot of like voiceover and visual montage and like just these incredibly like beautiful shots

Eli Price (34:00.37)
And yeah, it speaks more as like visual poetry than visual prose. And so like, if you approach it looking for like a strong narrative and story, you're probably gonna hate it because it's just not there. That's probably why like the thin red line didn't work for you the first time. But yeah, The Tree of Life is just an incredible film about, I don't know, it's about a lot of things. But it's about...

JP (34:17.463)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (34:29.496)
creation and humanity, the flaws of humanity, but also the grace that humanity is capable of, the relationship of humanity to space and time, but yet the transcendence of humanity of space and time. But again, all of this is shown.

in a very poetic way, not necessarily spelled out for you narratively. And so, I don't know, the experience of watching The Tree of Life, you have to be in the right kind of mindset to watch something like that. But yeah, it's an incredible film. So very happy to have it on my team. But it's also one that I know not a lot of people have seen. So it isn't really going to help me.

JP (35:25.87)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (35:29.261)
necessarily in the voting. But hopefully if you're listening and you've never seen this, hopefully you'll go seek it out and with kind of my explanation in mind so that hopefully that'll help enhance your viewing of it. I just think it's one of the best films ever made personally.

JP (35:49.77)
Yeah, I even love to revisit Thin Red Line just because I was like at high school when I tried to watch it. So the JP now might appreciate it a lot more than JP then. But I've heard a lot about Tree of Life and I definitely would love to get around to seeing it one of these days for sure.

Eli Price (35:58.997)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (36:13.737)
Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, you've even got like really incredible performances by the two kind of main people, main characters are played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. And you kind of have these other scenes with Sean Penn cut in. And so, you know, they're putting on really incredible performances in a very different way.

Then you know those actors would typically you know you would think of like a great Brad Pitt or great Jessica Chastain performance. It's very different from that, but still really incredible So yeah, it's just I could go on and on about it makes me want to go watch it right now, but um But I'll probably need to go to bed instead but Yeah, yeah, I'll stop fawning over

the Tree of Life and I'll go ahead and read off our final results from our IMAX, shot in IMAX movie draft. JP ended with Dune, part one, Deneville Nooves Dune, Guardians of the Galaxy, volume three, No Time to Die, Batman vs Superman, Dawn of Justice, and Star Trek Into Darkness.

Yeah, a lot of fun movies there. I finished with Nope, Nope the Movie, not Nope, as in I didn't take anything. Nope the Movie, The Suicide Squad, Star Wars Episode, what, seven, that's right, Star Wars Episode Seven, The Force Awakens, Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol, and The Tree of Life.

Um, yeah, that was a fun draft. Uh, I wish there were more like really good movies to choose from, but, um, but you know, there's some, there are some fun things in there.

JP (38:16.031)
Yeah.

JP (38:23.399)
I'm sure the drafts will do throughout this series. It will be pretty intense, depending on the categories.

Eli Price (38:32.621)
for sure. Yeah, I mean, there was even like a few. We kind of mentioned it. There's like off, you know, off camera or whatever. We mentioned there's like a few Chinese movies in here that's like really funny to see in this in this list that like. I have like no intention of ever seeing like they're probably fine and fun films, but

JP (38:59.672)
I love watching.

JP (39:04.074)
Yeah, I love watching Chinese movies. I want to check them out

Eli Price (39:04.137)
Yeah, I mean, I love watching Chinese cinema. I love watching Chinese cinema, but I don't know, these just don't seem the sort that I would seek out necessarily. They're all like, three of them at least are like Chinese war films, which that might be interesting, but yeah.

JP (39:14.454)
Mm-hmm.

JP (39:19.639)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (39:25.133)
But yeah, that's our movie draft section. Do you have any recommendations of the week for us?

JP (39:34.806)
Other than making sure everybody goes outside and gets plenty of exercise and sun While we still can before you know, the summer is up. I did have one movie recommendation that I watched recently that Like I gave it a 3.5 out of 5 not because it's a great movie, but just because The performances are absolutely ridiculous Stars Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones And I don't know what's worse

Tommy Lee Jones doing an Irish accent, but he still sounds like Tommy Lee Jones or Jeff Bridges doing a sometimes Irish accent, but also like a Boston accent. But it's 1994's Blown Away where they're both like old friends, former. Basically Tommy Lee Jones is like a terrorist. He's like so bad, even the IRA didn't want him. Jeff Bridges is like his old friend and there was like this botch situation.

Eli Price (40:20.439)
Okay.

JP (40:32.022)
Tommy Lee Jones goes to jail and he ends up breaking out and finding out that Jepperjee's character is on the bomb squad in Boston and decides to play a game with him, so to speak. I will say there were some sequences in this movie that I thought were actually really, really good at building tension. There's like this one scene where you know Tommy Lee Jones' character can make a bomb out of anything. He's been inside this one, the home of these characters.

Eli Price (40:48.896)
Nice.

JP (41:01.546)
and they come home not knowing and they start messing with the fridge and the oven and this and that. And it's like this whole little 15 minute segment where you're waiting for any of these things to blow up. And that was a really effective scene. But yeah, definitely not a great movie, but pop some popcorn and have some fun with a little bit of ridiculousness.

Eli Price (41:27.529)
Yeah, yeah, I like a good fun movie every once in a while It's even more fun. Like I rewatched through the whole like Mission Impossible franchise getting ready for dead reckoning part one recently and it's just really great when you can have like a combination of really fun action-packed movies, but also Really good like really well made too and so yeah

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, fun recommendation. I am gonna recommend some kind of like source material that I'll be using throughout this series for my research just in case anyone wants to join in on the research with me. But I'm using two books for different reasons. One of them is it has more of like a

Coffee table book kind of feel to it, but also pretty packed with With information it's called Christopher Nolan the iconic filmmaker in his work By Ian Nathan it's kind of a It's almost like an annotated version of the other book I'm kind of recommend with a lot of you know kind of coffee table style like pictures and movie posters and

Stuff like that all throughout But uh, and you can probably hear me flipping through it on the mic But uh, but yeah, it's a really pretty well put together book. It looks nice and also has a like a lot of great like About the mood like it goes kind of movie by movie through his career And then the other one is a more dense

JP (43:01.746)
Hehehehehe

Eli Price (43:24.405)
Rec book that I'm gonna be kind of trying to read through alongside the series. It's called the Nolan variations the movies mysteries and marvels of Christopher Nolan By Tom Shawn, that's his last name is sh o and e but I think you pronounce it Sean Sean, I don't know Tom shown maybe who knows But yeah, it's a very dense book

He kind of made this moot this book alongside a lot of interviews with Nolan and so really like Nolan Feels like he's kind of a part of the book in a way in a in a way that typically like Books like this don't feel like but because there's so much like interview material It feels like Nolan is just a much like a writer of this book as the actual author But yeah so far it's really good

I've read the introduction and you know about half of the first chapter And he does kind of go come in a way chronologically through Nolan's work But it's in a very like a different way than the other book It's not as like Cut and dry now. We're talking about this film sort of thing So but yeah, it's really good a ton. It's very dense a ton of information

about Nolan and his work in there that a lot of the material that I talked about today really comes from that book. But yeah, those are my two recommendations, the Tom Shone and the Ian Nathan books on Christopher Nolan. Yeah, if you want to read through those along with me as we go through the series, that would be awesome.

If you are going to do that, reach out to me and let me know, you know, wherever you follow on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, wherever you follow, let me know. I'd love to know if anyone's taking on that endeavor with me. But yeah, that's really it. That's our recommendations. IMAX movie draft was really fun. And man, I had a great time talking about Nolan and

Eli Price (45:49.997)
getting ready for this series. So yeah, thanks, JP. A lot of fun.

JP (45:54.582)
No problem, anytime. I mean, I love nerding out about, really, you know, films in general, but especially when it's a filmmaker like Christopher Nolan, there's just so much to talk about. I'm excited to listen along to the coming episodes and kind of hearing a little bit more about the, you know, how the sausage is made, so to speak, with some of these films.

Eli Price (46:20.045)
for sure, yeah. Yeah, that's it for this episode. Next week we will be covering following Christopher Nolan's first film. And so yeah, I look forward to that. But until then, I've been Eli Price for JP. This has been The Establishing Shot. We will see you next time.