Christopher Nolan talks OPPENHEIMER, James Bond, Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr.

whether the film's good or bad or indifferent is up for other people to say but but I want people to know that I've gone to the mat for the film and we've we've done the best we possibly can prepare your ears humans happy sad confused begins now [Music] I'm sad confused I'm Josh Horowitz and I'm thrilled beyond belief to welcome back for the third time he's a glutton for punishment he's only one of the greatest filmmakers on the planet and uh again he raises the bar with his newest film Christopher Nolan we're talking Oppenheimer welcome back to the podcast sir thank you um we have a lot to talk about this is a this is a rich film that we could have 25 different conversations we'll have one or two today um first of all what does it mean what do you hope your name means on a film to an audience member at this point in your career wow that's a tough one to answer what do I I mean I hope it means a commitment to the technical side of the film to the creative side that we're trying to make the best one possible so I suppose really I mean I've always said sincerity is to keeping the filmmaker like if you go to see a film and if you if you think that the people who made that film have genuinely made the best film that they possibly can right then I don't feel I've wasted my time no matter what the film is no matter how it is and so I would certainly want people to expect that and and trust that from me that you know whatever whether the film's good or bad or indifferent is up for other people to say but but I want people to know that I've gone to the mat for the film and we've done the best we possibly can at this at this point in career in your career I I assume you look you have your methodologies and your inner circle of people that you trust I'm just curious like is it is it your producing partner is your wife like who do you show the film to when you get in the last stages are you the type of filmmaker that would ever show a film to another filmmaker you admire or is that at this point in this in your career you kind of like you can trust your gut and have people that can call you out if there is a question that needs to be questioned I mean I think every film like has a different process yeah and um the studios try to impose a certain process a lot of filmmakers that's time honored you know for a hundred years of of doing this involving research screenings and so forth um some filmmakers will show uh the films to other filmmakers or God forbid critics but I you know there's a lot of notes Christopher there's a lot of different ways to to skin that cat and and you know everybody's different um but there are advantages and disadvantages to each way of doing those things and what I try to do is use the thing that works for me and the peculiar magic of of Cinema is based on its combination of subjective experience like a novel you can be in the first person you can be you know um watching the watching a film uh with a very very personal response like reading a book but you also have this empathetic response that you share with the rest of the audience yeah and that's what makes film unique there's no other form the theater doesn't have that because it has the one it has the audience but it doesn't have that same intense subjectivity of narrative information coming across and so Cinema combines both those things so in terms of how I go about sort of finishing the film checking the work you know you you look for okay how do I get that empathetic response how do I gauge how that's working and what Emma and I have found over the years works well for us is to you know start watching the film ourselves at the end of every editing week and bring in individuals people who don't haven't read the script don't know like one person at a time really just watch the film with them and a lot of the the benefit of that isn't so much the conversation afterwards you isn't putting people on the spot and saying what work what didn't work it's that there's a magical process whereby you'll watch the film through that person's eyes yeah very much and it it shows you you're filming a different way and then when you talk to the person afterwards you'd be shocked how many times the things that that person raises are the things you thought yourself while you were watching it with them uh it's a really magical process and so we start from that point of view and then we will it's important to watch every important to me to watch every film with a larger group too to do test screenings but without scoring the film or submitting yourself to a sort of intensive research process but you want to sit in the room with you know a couple hundred people and and feel how the movie plays that's an important part of it so I want to talk about the Mr Robert Oppenheimer your protagonist in this who follows in a line of um conflicted obsessive protagonist for you and there's there's no I don't know greater moral quandary no greater inner conflicts I think possible to a human being than the one that this man faced um when this material was presented to you uh the book The Life the prospect of dealing with it did you did you immediately know what your way in was what story you wanted to tell about Robert Oppenheimer I mean I think I knew a bit about Oppenheimer uh the thing that had stuck the most in my mind about opinion but was you know the moment in the Manhattan Project where they realized with their calculations that there's this possibility that in triggering the first atomic device that they'd Set Fire to the atmosphere and destroy the entire world um and I included that as analogy really or as example antenna in tenant we try and use the example of Oppenheimer that notion that they might have Set Fire to the to the world in that way uh as analogy for the science fiction events of the story right um and I think at the end of that film you know I was left with an interest in that particular moment um was like okay what if rather than using it as science fiction analogy what if we actually try and take the audience into that room you for that that moment you know what what would that be it's interesting because we've talked before about some influences on your work and like many 2001 is it was an important influence and I was watching the film and some of the early sequences of kind of in in oppenheimer's head recalled for me the Stargate sequence at the end of 2001. that that was that resonated all in terms of what I don't know is that just an unconscious unconscious influence at this point in your in your work you think I mean it's unconscious conscious it's foundational it's like you know one of my one of my earliest movie experiences you know one of the the most inspiring early experiences as a film goer is that Stargate sequence is is going to see 2001 on that end on the screen um and feeling that incredible tactile sense of of acceleration through that uh imagery through that light and sound uh and so I think that sort of carries with me as some idea of what are the mechanical possibilities of Cinema what can that big screen make you feel and make you experience and when I spoke to Andrew Jackson my visual effects supervisor who's one of the first people I showed the script to because I said can you approach you know looking at quantum mechanics trying to show the energy of atoms and all the rest can you not do that with computer Graphics can we apply that showing their thought process of visualizing that energy and then indeed you know taking that through to the Trinity test and the great destructive power that gets magnified into can we portray these things without without computer Graphics without animation and I think the Stargate sequence one of the things that you know a few years ago when we did our uh hoytra and myself we collaborated and what we call our unrestoration of 2001 where we just had we went back to an old film element and printed the film exactly as it would have been seen by audiences at the time yeah uh the Striking thing about that light show that Douglas trummel put together that Brilliance of it is that it's very invigorating and threatening and frightening because it's somehow real it's somehow something that's photographed in camera and I think that the issue with computer graphics for me is they're incredibly versatile so it's a very seductive form but there's a there's a slightly Anodyne slightly safe quality to computer Graphics it's almost too perfect yeah and I think that's there's also that kind of absolute realization on the part of um an audience what's animation and what's something that's been photographed whether or not the thing being photographed is the actual thing or whether it's a miniature representation or a more abstract representation and so Andrew went off and immediately started looking at okay what are the different things at different scales different ways of portraying uh particles waves of energy those kind of things how can we get that across and really it was about tactility it's really about trying to tap into that um that sense of abstraction I mean it's funny I don't think I was that conscious of the influence of 2001 of this film in particular but when you mention it so well of course certainly in terms of methodology it was very much an influence because they you know Trumbull and cubic and all the people involved they did a lot of stuff with very very small elements you know oil and water and sort of that kind of thing in a way that they never fully explain so we weren't able to copy it completely it had to go our own way but they um they kept the secrets very close to the chest but it was about a confusion of scale it was about the macro and the micro the the absolute miniature to portray the cosmos and that confusion of scale is a part of the story of Oppenheimer it's the visualization of the energy between amongst the molecules particles and the magnification of that and how it you know in the universe uh Stars black holes things like that how they're defined by the same rules and then when you start to unleash that power the cosmic size of of the forces so there there is a deliberate confusion of scale in the visualization of these things uh that I yeah I think it does relate to that methodology in that film I'd love to talk a bit about um your approach to casting in this and we'll talk about Killian but I also wanted to like take a step back and look at this a remarkable Ensemble that you've uh collected that I've seen to some of someone before you know I grew up in kind of the Heyday of like alberstone and I always think of like JFK and Nixon and how like he cast every particular like there were movie stars but they were great actors and like it was something delicious about that and I mean I think back too I mean I think you talked about this when you were doing Batman Begins and when you were producing Man of Steel like the approach of what Donner did of kind of like filling every role with top-notch A-list amazing actors and movie stars and that and that kind of elevates the entire material yeah um is is that I guess just like how do you cast at this point and is that does that like has that has that philosophy changed over the years or why in this case um did it suit the material to kind of cast in the way that you did I mean it's interesting you go back to those examples that that you know we go back to dick Donna Superman and the feeling of watching you know even the trailer for that you know I was a little kid you know seeing you know Marlon Brando you know I mean all these incredible actors that make up that cast um very much that was how we tried to get a sense of importance at scale into Batman Begins some of my other films um but in the case of Oppenheimer it's also it's not just about stars uh we have an incredible cast you know Robert Downey Jr or Matt Damon Emily Blunt Florence Pugh Rami Malek Gary Oldman I mean it's a long list yes it is um but it's also a distinctive list it's a list of very distinct talents of people and a lot of smaller actors of people won't be so familiar with um they're there and what they're helping me with is we're working from a point of view of historical reality and I did not feel comfortable creating a film with composite characters so I didn't want to take something that Louis Alvarez has done and combine that with Robert server you know whatever what I wanted was you know Alex Wolf to come on and play Alvarez and and you recognize them as a as a great distinct talent and um you know you have these people coming and they don't necessarily have a lot of screen time in the film but you remember them you recognize them and you recognize their sort of contribution to the the overall and that was very important to the feel and the makeup of The Ensemble and my casting director John papadera who I've worked with since momento uh he's just one of the great casting directors who can put together an incredible cast of of interesting faces and voices and uh you know really really bring uh wonderful energy to the table I loved seeing um you know some of the returning actors but also some folks that you've kind of forwarded with working with in the past um Josh Hartnett Legend has it was someone that you considered for Batman way back when is that true Did you screen test him or even offer him the role of Batman no never never got that far Eminem I mean I met with with Josh and as I recall um you know he was somebody who he was a young actor who's whose work I was very interested in and I you know I had an initial conversation with him but he was more interested and he'd read my uh my brother's script for the prestige at the time and was sort of more interested in getting involved with with that so it never kind of went further than that um but uh he was a young actor who were paying a lot of attention to and I think his work over the years in the last few years he's done some really interesting things and really looked to stretch himself uh so you know I was really pretty excited to get him to come and play Ernest Lawrence he shares a lot of things with with Lawrence as a character and you know where they're from the sort of backgrounds and things and uh I I think he does a really great job in the film um as does again we could go down the list but I do want to mention Robert Downey Jr because I mean that's a long time Downey fan to see him look I love Iron Man I watch him play Iron Man until the end of time and I did I feel like but to see him kind of do something different and kind of let go vanity and play a really different kind of a role for him with was delicious I mean we can never forget at the end of the day this guy is one of our truly brilliant actors yeah very much I mean I thought when Favreau had the insight to cast him as Iron Man I mean that's one of the great it's one of the greatest casting decisions in the history of movies yeah and you look at what that did and where that went with with everything um and I think that was John just knowing what an incredible actor what incredible potential it was yeah uh from Downey and then the movie star Charisma that wonderful Charisma comes into play what was cool about getting to work with Danny on this project was to be able to go to him and say okay put that Charisma put that that movie style thing to one side for a second and just lose yourself in this real life human being who is so complex and has such an incredible part to play in oppenheimer's story uh and to watch him just sort of go back to that that Geniuses as an actor just finding the truth in another human being and presenting it and the things he does in the film I think a lot of his fan base is going to be extremely surprised yeah it's really cool to see somebody who's achieved such greatness as a movie star that pivot completely and stretch themselves in a way that a lot of people haven't seen him do [Music] we've talked before about kind of like your realization at some point in your career that like kind of the cross-cutting technique especially in towards the end of your films you found um one plus one equal you know more than two there was an additive quality of kind of um going back and forth and you've played with that in different ways throughout your films I'm curious like do you remember what that goes back to like I think back to like the end of The Godfather films where Coppola just did that to such an exceptional yeah definitely I mean I would I think I came to the Godfather a little later than that I think for me there are a few sort of key creative things that stuck in my head with it with that uh one of which is literary is a book I had to read in schools a marvelous novel by Graham Swift called Waterland that has different timelines and cross-cuts and I was reading that I think the first time I ever saw Alan Parker's Pink Floyd The Wall which has an extraordinary visual version of that mixing of timelines and cross-cutting but then also feeding in elements from one to the other uh at the same time I was looking a lot at the films of Nicholas Rogue and the brilliant editing of those which is sometimes very very impressionistic right and so I think those sorts of things were key drivers for me in terms of really wanting to look at non-chronological narratives or cross-cutting within a chronology so that your uh the example you use of Godfather is perfect example of yeah how you you can jump between timelines and have that add up to more than the sum of its parts it's also from a filmmaking point of view it's marvelously practical because a lot of the challenge you face with making a film at a given period of time you know how long you have the location for where the actors are whatever is the the continuity and the absolute continuity of the sequence that you have to get in the care just the number of setups for the rest if you know that you have the ability to cross-cut with other timelines it's very freeing you can be a little more careless about your coverage you could think a little bit more about the individual moment and not worry so much about okay exactly do I have the bit where he opens the door and walks in and sits down are we going to know where the coffee cup came from or whatever that stuff you get to be a bit Freer with that yeah I mean in a way like I mean I can't I've only seen the movie once but like at the first section of the movies feels just like extended montage and you're kind of like lost yeah and it's kind of like a dream like quality that kind of immerses you yeah I'm trying to pack a lot of passage of time a lot of thought a lot of experience in this character's part into um a very short space of time and so using montage and musical montage and that now hopefully very focused way that's the idea anyway you want to try and get a get a lot in and speaking of you know of immersion we haven't talked about the IMAX um which obviously you're a great proponent of and like we have very rarely if ever seen I feel I'm actually used to this kind of effect and we've talked about the spectacle of this film and The Trinity test Etc but the truth is a lot of this film is also um on Killian's face on that remarkable face the funny special effects is his eyes um but talk to me a little bit about using IMAX in the service of drama of just great drama classic drama and yeah part of you hope that others take advantage of them you're you're in rarified air where you you know you can you can you can use it but um be curious to see others use it to that effect I I live for the day when I get to go and see some other filmmaker make something on on IMAX film and actually cut those negatives and print it and yeah you know the photochemical process because it's a really powerful tool for immersion it's a really powerful tool for the the emotional connection with the material and I'd love to see uh the filmmakers other filmmakers working that way I think there's often this confusion in the way we talk about film and the language that the the sales language that we invoke we talk about epic and big you know all these sorts of things but the thing about the movie screen is the same size for any movie if you know what I mean right so Cinema can be anything and it could tell any kind of story and the particular cameras we use the reason they're well suited to a large-scale story is because of their Clarity of vision and the wonderful analogy that they have between the way the human eye sees and the way that events are recorded on film and that applies to any kind of Storytelling like any filmmaker is going to benefit from that so no I I strongly encourage any filmmaker I'm talking to to try and shoot photographically and hopefully large format for the company because the uh the imagery is beautiful and it's just fun to do and it lends itself to any kind of Storytelling of any scale you're you're one of a handful filmmakers that is recognizable to a lot of the public like just out in the wild but I'm curious like you must get a lot of folks I would imagine a lot of folks want to talk about Interstellar and the Batman films the end of Inception what's your stock answer when someone comes up to you at Starbucks and is like Christopher what happened at the end of Inception I haven't been offset in a while thankfully I went through a phase wrote a film came out where I was uh asked it a lot um every now and again I would make the mistake of getting caught outside of the screening where everyone was coming out you know uh it's three hours later exactly um no I think it was Emma who sort of pointed out the correct answer really is that the character Leo's character at the point the point of the shot is the character doesn't care at that point right and that that's really the the best answer I have come up with um but it's yeah it's not a question I I comfortably answer it's nice to be in the pantheon of like you know that kind of like Quentin gets like the briefcase at the end of Pulp Fiction Sophia gets one of Bill Murray whisper there are a handful of these it's definitely fun to be part of the the great Cannon absolutely um I don't know if you're a Gambling Man Christopher I have a bet for you early professionally twenty dollars says you're gonna direct the next Bond movie twenty dollars hundred dollars I'm a working man I this you know I I couldn't possibly uh take a bet like that if you don't take my money or because I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to Define my whole career on whether or not I get to take twenty dollars from Josh so I'd like to be able to keep a clear head if I'm ever asked to director I see that would influence the guilt of taking my money exactly I wouldn't want to Fork over that twenty dollars uh in all seriousness it feels like this is the time we've talked before about this and you've said what did I say last time you said when they need me when the time is right great if not you know you've been very diplomatic about it yeah they were not diplomatic I mean honest about it I I love those movies the the influence of those movies on my filmography is embarrassingly apparent uh you know and so there's no uh no attempt uh to to shy away from from that I love the films and um you know uh it would be an amazing privilege to do one at the same time when you take on a character like that will work like that you're working within a particular set of constraints yes and so you know you you have to have the right attitude towards that it has to be the right moment in your creative life where you can express what you want to express and really borrow into something within the appropriate constraints because you would never want to take on something like that and sort of do it wrong it's the kind of responsibility I thought very much taking off Batman of course um and I would imagine you'd want to be involved in casting your bond well everything I mean you don't you know the the thing you wouldn't want to take on a film not fully committed to what you could bring to the table creatively um so as a writer casting or you know everything that's the full package um but no I I sort of stand with the previous answer which is the you know um you'd have to be really needed you'd have to be really wanted in terms of bringing the totality of what you right you bring to a character otherwise I'm very happy to to be first in line to see whatever they do you know the room the rumor it really is one of your previous cohorts Aaron Taylor Johnson we'll see if he ends up being the man well he's a great actor he's a great actor um did you ever uh assume you caught up with Matt Reeves the Batman with Roberts um what was it like watching that take did it feel like he found his own lane apart from I'm not gonna get drawn on on other people's superhero movies okay it's uh fair enough it's there's too much gravity to that and then nobody talks about Oppenheimer it's like that's what I'm here so fair enough fair enough no that's okay but I do want to I will say that you know Rob is a terrific actor yeah Matt is a great director but and then you had Barry in there too um this is obviously for Universal and I remember one project that I think was that Universal way back when was The Prisoner is there any chance you might go back to The Prisoner will I I first met Donna Langley at Universal well I I've met her even years before but but yeah we had developed the prison um not not corrected um but so I've been wanting to work with the universe for a while so it's kind of fun to be there with Oppenheimer um I wouldn't want to say anything really about what I'm going to do next or what I've done in the future because the truth is I haven't figured it out um no I I get asked that you know particularly as you as you come to promote the film and you're doing interviews you often get asked by disbelieving interviewers you know uh but the truth is I do one thing at a time and I borrow in on that very obsessively and for me and one of the reasons I make films for the cinema is the film's not finished until it goes to the audience it's the audience who finishes the film and they tell you what it is and until you know what the film you've made is it's a little difficult to know what you do next [Music] I assume by now you're you're pretty involved in marketing and you haven't much of a say there in terms of how you want your films presented to the public and what your the story you're trying to tell um are you Fanta movie trailers generally I mean I grew up just obsessed with movie trailers I love movie trailers yeah no it's a really it's a really fun thing to be um involved in in trailers for your own movies I love trailers for everybody's movies no I I love movie trailers it's really it's a it's a crazy art form of its own and these editors and I've had good fortune to work with a lot of really talented Marketing Executives and great editors working for them and they're able to work in this extraordinarily tiny way where they're just changing individual frames and shifting a whole feeling you know to try and distill in the case of Oppenheimer they're trying to distill a three-hour film into you know two and a half minutes or now you know 30 seconds 15 seconds uh it's a really fun thing to watch them work do you have a favorite trailer that you can look off top of your head whether it's of your own films that someone's done or even growing up like a trailer that really I wouldn't want to talk about my my own films because I I'm very proud of a lot of the work that the the marketing departments have done uh both at Warner Brothers at Universal Disney the different Paramount the different studios I've worked at um but in terms of other people's eye the original uh TV spot for Ridley Scott's alien stuck in my head in a in a major way is that in space knowing your scream or well that's the tagline but it involves this crazy they built some kind of crazy model of the egg right on this landscape so the camera's flying over then the egg cracks and the light comes through at the end and I I don't remember the the name of the marketing executive responsible for that um but it's an extraordinary piece of editing and sound design I'll never forget the the teaser for Alien 3 that was made so early in the process that they were teasing that the alien was coming to Earth and that clearly as anyone that has seen Alien 3 it did not come to Earth they had a wonderful trailer that still had a shot of I think it was probably Charles Dance carrying Ripley in from an exterior into the facility and I think as that film changed and changed and you know finches famously talked about how unhappy he was with it and how it changed I think it's a great movie but I think his work on that is remarkable but yeah that marketing campaign went up being very out of state with all the film is but the materials were extraordinary I mean the trailers were fabulous do you think okay look you're you're we have many breakfast for No One films to come you were young in your career but like do you think of the body of work and kind of the collection of Christopher Nolan films that you're presenting to the world are you of the there's obviously the extreme on the Tarantino realm where he's gonna out at 10 and then there's like one of you know your favorites like Ridley Scott who's making a Napoleon Movie in his 80s and George Miller who's making a Mad Max movie in his 80s like yeah I don't know I I mean the Clinton has his Reasons I'm sure it if he sticks to it it's a remarkable degree of kind of self-discipline and self-perception um personally with my work I try not to be overly self-conscious about it that is to say I just work on the one project right uh I trust that if I put my all into it there'll be some sort of Worth to it um more and more you know I mean over the years the writing of the films become more and more important to me and so that limits my ability to do what really Scott's done for example just jump from Project to project because it's just a lot more time involved right with getting the script where you want to be either on your own or with great collaborators have worked with um so no I try not to be self-conscious about it I I like that there's a body of work that people seem to get something from and like to revisit I mean really for me the goal is with each film that you make a film that somebody might uh enjoy the first time they see it but then maybe years later maybe come back to and watch in a different way and find something else to it right uh you know I spend years on each project so we put a lot into each project a lot of layers a lot of things going on and that's just by then by virtue of how much time and effort is sort of put into it yeah so the idea that a viewer then can revisit it can get more out of it over time I think is is important so that's sort of the goal and if that's a thing that connects the films in some way uh that's a that's a fun thing as well when I strip away kind of like the bells and whistles and I know from talking to actors about your sets that like you somehow managed to keep it very intimate it's often you and hoytton Camera operator and the actor and it's not it doesn't feel yeah big despite what we see end up seeing on the big screen I'm curious like if I went back if I was eavesdropping on the set of Memento one of the early films how different was your methodology then versus now what are the market differences and how you are on set you think I think no difference is a tool honestly uh in reality I think that when I was doing following um and funnily enough we have a Blu-ray coming out of re-release of following and I've just watched some of the interviews of the extras with you know cast and crew and everything and uh it was very interesting to revisit that process because you know that was as smaller film as you can make the entire crew and cast and Equipment would fit in the back of a London taxi would go on a weekend shoot a scene you know process the film edit during the week go back the next weekend we're all doing other jobs you know it was as far from what I do now as you could possibly get right buttoning re-examining that process for that release I look at it and I'm like it's the same process same creative process and that's an important thing for young filmmakers to real starting out that films are not each film you do it's not some I hate that phrase a calling card film where I used to Bandy around you know although the film is a stepping stone to a bigger film or whatever which is nonsense if you're making a film enjoy it and appreciate it for the filmmaking experience that it is because it's as valid as anything you would ever get to do with a bigger budget or huge stars or whatever and that's that's just the truth you know it really is it's like you look at what's in the frame how can this shot Advance the audience's feeling and understanding what the narrative is and then finding the next shot after that and that the process really hasn't changed over the years is there if I granted you the power to visit any film set in the history of film Christopher just the eavesdrop and how it was made where would you want to go I'd hate to be on anybody's I hate visiting sets I you know I feel so awkward I'm not it's a private process you want to respect that for the filming The filmmakers Who maybe enjoy visitors I'm not really one of them but well to me it's a private process it gets a little self-conscious when people are watching you direct because the the directing is not the thing yes the story that results is the thing and so I get very self-conscious on other people's sets and there's a demystifying thing that I'm both fascinated by so you think what an incredible thing to be able to see but you're also you know you're you're seeing behind the curtain you're seeing right there's no great holes there and I don't think with the films I love I don't think of any desire to do that and I kind of enjoy the fact that with I don't know 2001 for example there's not much behind the scenes you know there's Stills and we carefully pour over any still a little bit of film that comes out you know about that right but there's something that keeps the magic of that film alive in that you know you don't have full access to what what the thing is that's why that like uh was like that 25 minute behind the scenes of The Shining it always sticks out at me it's like like this actually someone he let the camera roll well he let his daughter roll that's right yeah they gave her a little more access than he ever would have but in it in itself is a fascinating document I mean it's it's attention it's like you want to open your Christmas presents early but you don't really want to spoil the surprises it's kind of that um but no so there are a lot of sets that I would be fascinated to visit but but I know that it wouldn't it wouldn't benefit me you know coming full circle here just seeing now your friend your collaborator the six go around to see what Killian how he holds the screen how he holds this all together because it is so as you say subjective for a good portion of it um does anything surprise you what he can do or what he was able to do when you get into the edit room and you see what he's delivered here yeah I mean absolutely it's it's a peculiar it's not it's a peculiar process because I've known for a long time I've known for 20 years that Killian Murphy is one of the greatest actors of his generation or any generation and I've had him play key supporting roles in a lot of my films I've enjoyed that process so I had a lot of confidence going into Oppenheimer the yeah he's he's one of the greats this is his chance to show what he could do at the center of a big movie like this where the challenge is to carry the audience through the experience see everything from his point of view so you're looking for this great empathetic sort of version of the character that can can draw you into what he's thinking and feeling but there's a difference between having faith that that can work seeing great work on set every day yeah but until you actually put it together in the other Suite you don't with a performance as sophisticated as Killians until you actually sit near the suite and watch it come together shot by shot you you're not aware of all the things he's managed to do and so editing the film was a pretty extraordinary Revelation about the power of the performance and the layers he was able to put in and it's one for the ages it's an absolutely remarkable piece of work on his behalf that I'm proud to have been a part of because it's the last thing a specific thing on Oppenheimer I meant to ask earlier the Trinity test sequence I do want to mention because I think what you do with sound design in that and holding back and kind of like I'm anticipating okay well okay we don't have to go specifically well it's funny to talk about spoilers in a true life story and a thing that you know to be inevitable but um but I guess is it obvious like how you were going to approach that because there are a lot of different ways no no it wasn't obvious the only thing that was obvious is that it had to be a showstopper and it had to be the centerpiece of the film yeah it's a turning point in human history the turning point of view in history and so a lot of effort went into the research the mechanics the looking at okay how's that going to work together and then of course when you look at the reality and the reality of the physics there are things that pop up that you have to just Embrace and say okay rather than maybe what people would expect the reality is going to be way more surprising and interesting if we can get it across and so then you're challenging you know always with the young designer um you know you're looking to your department heads to be able to create an approach to this that people haven't seen before and my hope is that people get to come to the film fresh without uh without knowing everything about how we portray things but I mean you know who knows but but yes I'm certainly an enormous amount of care and attention and a lot of long nights shooting uh uh went into that it was uh yeah it was a big deal well as you said at the start I mean um you know we feel it we feel your soul your mind the time the effort it's it's on the screen and it it does immerse an audience and it's a it's a it's a powerful piece of work and it demands attention is going to demand my attention a few more times um I always appreciate the time man I love talking movies your movies movies in general with you you're one of the best um thank you as always Christopher thank you all right and so ends another edition of happy sad confused remember to review write and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts I'm a big podcast person I'm Daisy Ridley and I definitely wasn't pressure to do this by Josh foreign

Channel: Josh Horowitz

Views: 570,974

Keywords: josh horowitz, happy sad confused, interview, christopher nolan, oppenheimer, james bond, cillian murphy, robert downey jr, inception, inception ending, christopher nolan interview, christopher nolan batman, christopher nolan oppenheimer, cillian murphy oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan James Bond

Id: eWBJ-60L8Lg

Length: 39min 20sec (2360 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023