Think of Christopher Nolan as a man trying to write a novel while the neighbors -- in this case, the rest of the world's population -- won't keep the noise down. The filmmaker doesn't own a cellphone, has no e-mail account and, in recent weeks, he's been hiding out at the Paradise Cove trailer park in Malibu to focus on a new script while growing a Hollywood hermit's beard.
Christopher Nolan: all his altered states
In Christopher Nolan's fertile mind, dreams and CGI merge with reality and complex live action. The result: 'Inception.'
For Nolan, sci-fi tales are more interesting when they focus on humans rather… (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles…)
"I don't really look at the Internet," the 40-year-old said with an old-soul sigh, "because if I don't, it gives me more time to think."
The deep thoughts of writer-director-producer Christopher Nolan have become massive business for Hollywood with his billion-dollar Batman film, "The Dark Knight," in 2008, and this year's "Inception," the ambitious, reality-bending heist film that trails only "Toy Story 3" and "Alice in Wonderland" in worldwide box office for 2010 releases. Now comes the Oscar season, which will begin to show whether this Hitchcock of contemporary genre movies (Nolan's last four films have been superhero or sci-fi fare) will have better luck with academy voters than the real Hitchcock, whose esteemed and crowd-pleasing output never won him an Oscar in the director category.
Nolan's grim and epic Gotham City movie did not make the final five in the Academy Awards' 2009 race for best picture and, in the eyes of many industry observers, that snub led directly to the expansion of the marquee category to 10 nominees for the award show this past March. That "Dark Knight Rule," as it has been called by some pundits, was intended to widen the field so some well-regarded blockbusters can squeeze in with the traditional art-house fare, and perhaps ease the numbing effect on the Oscars' television ratings.
With its box-office brawn, strong reviews and elite cast (there were seven former Oscar winners or nominees in the ensemble), "Inception" seems precisely the sort of film that the Oscars leadership would love to see in the best picture mix. And Nolan, too, has become one of the most intriguing filmmakers on the scene, in part because he's the rare silent type and stately thinker in an industry of much squawk and bluster. With the formal diction of his British boarding-school youth, Nolan also seems to make people around him stand up straighter. "Inception" star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for instance, still can't quite refer to the filmmaker with first-name casualness.
"Mr. Nolan doesn't cater to the executives at some big company, he really does what he wants to with a film," Gordon-Levitt said. "He manages to do it within the current big system because he's that good and he can, but 'Inception' and his films aren't developed by committee. And it wasn't him saying, 'How am I going to make a big summer hit?' 'Inception' was about him following his own fascinations."
Nolan burst onto the scene in 2000 with the twisty cinematic riddles of "Memento" — which earned an Oscar nomination for screenplay for the filmmaker and his brother, Jonathan. The sibling team is together again and working by the sea on the third Batman film, "The Dark Knight Rises." All of Nolan's movies are produced by his wife, Emma Thomas, and they will be expanding their cape ventures with a new Superman film for Warner Bros., although Nolan's role on that high-profile project is as producer and Zack Snyder ("300" and the upcoming "Sucker Punch") will be directing.
"Inception" was Nolan's seventh feature film and perhaps his most personal piece — he wrote the script as the latest version of a tale he first put to paper more than 15 years ago. The psychological thriller with sci-fi underpinnings and a globetrotting sweep stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dominic Cobb, a corporate espionage specialist who might be considered a dream thief. Cobb and his team, which includes newcomer Ariadne ( Ellen Page), steal secrets by connecting their dreams with their tycoon targets. Cobb, however, is also slipping into a personal nightmare and losing his hold on reality.
"The nature of reality and dream, of illusion, those have been topics for fascination for centuries and for me, growing up, dreams were something I thought about a lot," Nolan said. "The clash of objective reality with our subjective view of the world, that's pretty interesting stuff. This is something I thought about doing for a very long time. I've been thinking about it off and on since I was about 16. It was the approach I wanted to take to an almost alternate reality — approaching the dream life as another state of reality. And one that in certain circumstances can be manipulated."
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