Christopher Nolan: The Interview

Summary

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The Daily Show: Ears Edition

Episode: Christopher Nolan: The Interview
Host: Trevor Noah
Guest: Christopher Nolan
Date: July 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Trevor Noah sits down with legendary filmmaker Christopher Nolan to discuss his ambitious new film, The Odyssey. The episode delves into Nolan’s filmmaking process, his adaptation of Homer’s epic, the challenges and philosophy behind bringing myth to life on screen, and the connective tissue between The Odyssey and Nolan’s previous work. The conversation is lively, insightful, and often humorous—shedding light on both the technical and thematic layers of Nolan’s approach.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Realism and Spectacle: Making The Odyssey

• Practical Effects and Real Locations

  • Nolan emphasizes the film's reliance on real boats, real water, and practical locations to immerse audiences in the journey.
    • “Yeah, real boats. Real water. It’s The Odyssey. I wanted to take the audience on this incredible journey.” (02:01, Christopher Nolan)
  • The cast (Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Rob Pattinson) was brought together in real environments to anchor the story in authenticity.
  • Tongue-in-cheek banter about a “real cyclops” sets the tone for the film’s commitment to tangibility.
    • “Get a real cyclops. As close as we could. Yep. Yep. Exactly.” (02:30, Christopher Nolan)

• Efficiency and Production

  • Nolan describes a grueling but efficient shoot: originally scheduled for 100 days, completed in 91, and under budget—continuing his reputation for disciplined productions.
    • “By day 91, we couldn’t have taken another step. So we finished. We finished the right side.” (03:57, Christopher Nolan)

Adaptation and Respect for Source Material

• Green-lighting the Epic

  • Nolan acknowledges that post-Oppenheimer success and Oscar wins helped convince studios to bankroll such an ambitious project.
    • “I think the Oscar thing helped. I think it will help to go to the studio and say, because being The Odyssey, it needs a massive budget.” (03:13, Christopher Nolan)

• Handling Fandom and Ownership

  • The discussion addresses fan expectations and the pressure of adapting material with deep cultural roots, drawing parallels to his Batman trilogy.
    • “If we made the best film we possibly could, if we put as strong an interpretation on the characters as we could, the fans felt the respect and the love for the source material, even if we weren’t doing exactly what they would have done.” (05:50, Christopher Nolan)
  • Respecting The Odyssey was about honoring the text while offering a new interpretation.

• On Creative Compromises and Puns

  • The episode humorously laments an omitted pun from the original Greek text, highlighting the translation challenges.
    • “It’s a pun. Puns in translation are tough.” (05:21, Christopher Nolan)
    • “We write the show at a fifth-grade level, just slightly different.” (05:27, Trevor Noah)

Thematic Parallels: From Oppenheimer to The Odyssey

• Connection Across Films

  • Trevor draws a provocative line between Oppenheimer and The Odyssey: both feature a man wrestling with the moral consequences of war and invention.
    • “The Odyssey feels like a journey of a man reckoning with what he had done in war and what war does to men... They felt very connected to me, both films.” (07:12, Trevor Noah)
    • Nolan affirms this resonance: “You certainly watched the film the way I intended, and I think by the end, that connection is made.” (08:06, Christopher Nolan)

• Interpreting Myths for Modern Audiences

  • Nolan and his team focused on the psychological weight and contemporary relevance of mythic stories, taking care to ground fantastical elements in emotional truth.

Structure, Ambiguity, and Storytelling

• Nonlinear Narrative and “Architecting” the Film

  • Nolan’s process involves extensive diagramming and visual mapping before writing, inspired by the non-linear structure of Homer’s original text.
    • “I do. Before I write, I do a lot of sort of diagramming out... Homer's original is one of the great nonlinear structures, which for me, you know, that's kind of structure I enjoy in cinematic storytelling.” (09:46, Christopher Nolan)
  • He strives to construct cinematic experiences that are both puzzles and emotional journeys.

• Ambiguity in Art

  • A hallmark of Nolan’s films is narrative ambiguity; he shares an anecdote about Memento and why he preserves interpretative space for the audience.
    • “There are ambiguities, there are questions, there are layers in which things can work. But...I have to know what I believe the answer to be... Otherwise the ambiguities won’t be productive.” (11:20, Christopher Nolan)
    • Notable quote: “He [my brother] took me aside and he's like, nobody heard the first part where they said it's meant to be up to you. All they hear is what you say. Your interpreting trumps everything. You can never do that again. And he was right. And I never have since then…” (12:01, Christopher Nolan)

Immersive Filmmaking and Technical Innovations

• Focus and Immersion

  • Nolan devotes himself single-mindedly to one project at a time, describing the creative process as all-consuming until the audience finally defines the finished product.
    • “Once I burrow in on a project, nothing else exists. I mean, family, just about, you know, it’s...” (15:44, Christopher Nolan)

• Release Jitters

  • Even after test screenings, Nolan admits that letting a movie loose on thousands of screens remains a “terrifying” experience.
    • “But the truth is, there’s nothing like going out into the world for thousands and thousands of screens all over the world, you know, over one weekend. I mean, that’s a very different thing. And it never gets any easier, and it’s absolutely terrifying.” (16:49, Christopher Nolan)

• Trojan Horse Sequence: Reinventing the Iconic

  • Trevor and Nolan dissect the film’s unique take on the Trojan Horse, emphasizing how to make myth credible to modern audiences.
    • “[The Trojan Horse is] a pinata that fights back.” (18:29, Trevor Noah)
  • Nolan shares that the image of the horse half-buried in sand came from his brief work on Troy (the 2004 film) and was finally realized here.
    • “That image stuck with me for, you know, decades. I really wanted to do that and flesh out the whole sequence because to me, that was the excitement. It's like, can we present this to an audience in a way that they can believe in? And that was the sort of mantra for everybody on the film with every sequence.” (18:44, Christopher Nolan)

• Myth on a Grand Scale

  • Nolan discusses the lack of a modern, epic treatment of Greek myth, compared to the “B movie” camp of past eras—his ambition was to deliver fantasy with gravitas.
    • “But always on a B movie budget. Never with the ability to kind of put it out there big...on that sort of scale...What is the Odyssey without the fantastical?” (19:58, Christopher Nolan)

• Casting and Performances

  • Samantha Morton’s performance as Circe is praised; Nolan notes he’d long wanted to work with her.
    • “That’s Samantha Morton, incredible actor.” (20:45, Christopher Nolan)

• IMAX Innovations

  • Nolan reveals his quest to film the entire movie in IMAX for immersive scale, which required inventing a “blimping” system to silence the famously loud cameras—enabling dialogue scenes to be captured on IMAX for the first time.

    • “So the introduction of Heath Ledger’s Joker, truck flip, all that stuff, all that's IMAX. But because the cameras are so loud, we couldn't do performances, we couldn't capture the dialogue. And so finally with this film, I called them up and I said, look, if ever there were a film to do the entire film in IMAX, this is the one. So can we find a way to silence the cameras? And they built this blimping system, this kind of high tech box you put the camera in...” (21:17, Christopher Nolan)

  • The technical constraints (like the IMAX magazine only allowing about 3 minutes of footage per load) paradoxically helped focus cast and crew, contributing to production efficiency.

    • “Actually sometimes the limitations give everybody a real focus...in the middle of your most intense scene, is it okay if we just stop the camera, reload it, keep everybody quiet?” (22:12, Christopher Nolan)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What made you decide to take on this epic work?” (02:35, Trevor Noah)
• “It should be hard. It's the Odyssey.” (03:23, Christopher Nolan)
• “We write the show at a fifth grade level, just slightly different.” (05:27, Trevor Noah)
• “If we put as strong an interpretation on the characters as we could, the fans felt the respect and the love for the source material...” (05:50, Christopher Nolan)
• “The Odyssey feels like a journey of a man reckoning with what he had done in war and what war does to men.” (07:12, Trevor Noah)
• “For me, every film I do, if I’ve done my job right, I leave it with questions and sort of interesting things that I want to keep drilling down on.” (09:20, Christopher Nolan)
• “Your interpreting trumps everything. You can never do that again.” (12:01, Christopher Nolan)
• “It's a pinata that fights back.” (18:29, Trevor Noah)
• “What is the Odyssey without the fantastical? You want to see the Cyclops, you want to see Scylla and Charybdis, and the Sirens and Circe and all of that.” (20:18, Christopher Nolan)
• “Here’s what I’m gonna say. Yeah, you’re a wizard, Harry, and the film is spectacular.” (22:27, Trevor Noah)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:01] — Nolan on practical effects & realism
• [03:57] — Completing the shoot under schedule and budget
• [05:20] — Translating humor: the missing Cyclops pun
• [05:50] — Comparing Odyssey fandom to Batman
• [07:12] — Thematic parallel: war’s psychological aftermath
• [09:46] — Diagramming and structuring nonlinear stories
• [11:20] — Productive ambiguity and audience interpretation
• [12:01] — Nolan on why he avoids defining his film’s endings
• [15:44] — Single-minded focus during production
• [16:49] — Nolan on pre-release jitters
• [18:09] — Reimagining the Trojan Horse sequence
• [19:58] — Portraying myth with epic scale and realism
• [20:45] — Casting Samantha Morton as Circe
• [21:17] — IMAX technical innovations for The Odyssey
• [22:12] — Production discipline and live-action constraints

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Final Thoughts

Trevor Noah’s conversation with Christopher Nolan is a masterclass in both filmmaking craft and adaptation philosophy. Nolan offers an uncommonly candid look into his process, revealing how technical discipline, respect for source material, and a passion for myth all come together to create a modern epic. The episode is overflowing with humor, deep insights, and love for cinema—it’s a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the boundary-pushing work of Christopher Nolan.

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Transcript

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[Trevor Noah]

You're listening to Comedy Central. Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest tonight, Oscar winning director, Oscar winning writer and producer. His new film is called the Odyssey. Please welcome Christopher Nolan. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Let me begin by saying this. Holy shit. I saw this on Sunday. Thank you very much. Your people set up a lovely screening. It's a staggering work. Just remarkable to the point where, you know, I feel like I know a lot of the tricks. I don't know how you did it. I honestly don't. That's all practical, right? Those are real boats. That's real water. This is not.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah, real boats. Real water. It's the Odyssey. I wanted to take the audience on this incredible journey. And for me, I mean, we use every trick in the book, certainly, but the basis of it is to get the actors, get Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, everybody. Rob Pattinson, get them out there in the world, find locations, real locations. Get a real boat, you know, get

[Trevor Noah]

out there, get a real cyclops.

[Christopher Nolan]

Get a real cyclops. As close as we could. Yep. Yep. Exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

What made you decide to take on this epic work?

[Christopher Nolan]

Well, coming out of my last film, Oppenheimer had way more success than I think we had any right to expect. And that gives you an opportunity to get something made that you might not otherwise be able to get made.

[Trevor Noah]

You would have had trouble. Christopher Nolan, after everything, after Interstellar, after Inception, after, After Memento, after Batman, you would have had trouble selling that had it not been for Oppenheimer.

[Christopher Nolan]

I think it helped that it was very successful.

[Trevor Noah]

You think the Oscar thing helped?

[Christopher Nolan]

I think the Oscar thing helped. I think it will help to go to the studio and say, because being the Odyssey, it needs a massive budget, it needs a massive cast. It needs a lot.

[Trevor Noah]

Right?

[Christopher Nolan]

So you're asking a lot of the studio, you're asking a lot of the cast, and everybody, you know, I like to say it was a very hard movie, but hard for all the right reasons. You know, it's the Odyssey. It should be hard.

[Trevor Noah]

It shows up on screen. I mean, all of it shows up on screen. And someone was telling me that you actually completed it ahead of schedule, as you have with all of your movies and under budget.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Never happens. It was never happens. I mean, it just. How?

[Christopher Nolan]

Well, I mean, the reality is, you know, we went in at 100 days, and by day 91, we couldn't have taken another step. So we finished. We finished the right side.

[Trevor Noah]

You were done?

[Christopher Nolan]

We were done. Everybody was done. I mean, people were just exhausted.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Christopher Nolan]

They've been through it. So, you know, it took the right time to make the film. We had enough time to make it. We had the resources to make it.

[Trevor Noah]

There is now, I am obviously, I don't want to say an expert in mythology and Greek literature, some would say, But some of our writers are experts. And so when we walked out, I walked out with someone who's actually studied those texts in Greek. And I was looking at them like. Because for me, I was utterly absorbed and transformed by the powerful storytelling and the epic nature of it and all those things. But this is a person that, to be frank, would probably be a bit of a pain in the ass to watch the Odyssey with. Loved it.

[Christopher Nolan]

Oh, great. Great.

[Trevor Noah]

One note. Okay.

[Christopher Nolan]

It's a little late. What time is it? Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

Apparently there is a joke that Odysseus makes with Cyclops.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yes, yes.

[Trevor Noah]

He was very upset that that was not in the movie.

[Christopher Nolan]

I. I understand.

[Trevor Noah]

Mm.

[Christopher Nolan]

It's a pun. Puns in translation are tough. Do you do a lot of puns in your monologues every night?

[Trevor Noah]

That, you know, we do sometimes, but only because we write the show at a fifth grade level, just slightly different.

[Christopher Nolan]

There you go. It was. I tried. It was not possible to work it in.

[Trevor Noah]

Have you. When you do something like this, that so many a sense of ownership over?

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Or did the experience with things like Batman already kind of inure you to that experience?

[Christopher Nolan]

Not. Not in you. It. It taught you what's at the base of it. You know, when you take on the character of Batman, as we did in the Dark Knight trilogy, you were dealing with at that time, 75 years of history with a beloved character who'd been worked on by these incredible writers and artists. And what we learned in that experience is if we made the best film we possibly could, if we put as strong an interpretation on the characters as we could, the fans felt the Respect and the love for the source material, even if we weren't doing exactly what they would have done, that was what was important, was to respect the material. And I think the same applies very much to Homer.

[Trevor Noah]

That is a very interesting tape because I would imagine it's easy to approach it with almost a sense of defensiveness, which I've seen in those kinds of films where they say, well, these people, it's a toxic fandom. And they won't. But that's a very different mindset, which is, I want to make sure that I've honored this material in the right way and that should resonate with them.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah, I mean, that's what we found at every stage with those movies. People have very strong feelings about the characters they're interested. And that's a huge advantage for a filmmaker. I mean, the fact that people have been fascinated by the Odyssey for 3,000 years, the fact that people, you know, care about a film coming out, you know, that's a huge advantage. It means we've got people's attention and now we have to show them something that feels worthwhile. It feels like it does justice to this incredible story.

[Trevor Noah]

Right. And it does have that epic nature. This is gonna feel far afield. It felt like, in some respects, the Odyssey was a sequel to Oppenheimer. And I know that sounds incredibly, incredibly dumb, so let me explain why I think that I'm incredibly dumb. When I think about Oppenheimer. What so stayed with me in that movie was the weight that Oppenheimer must have felt when he saw the reality of what he had created. And the Odyssey feels like a journey of a man reckoning with what he had done in war and what war does to men. And it made it. They felt very connected to me, both films.

[Christopher Nolan]

I was about to stop you because we don't want any spoilers. Oh, 3,000 year old spoilers. But no, I am very much. I feel like you certainly watched the film the way I intended, and I think by the end, that connection is made. You know, the interpretation of the Odyssey, what it could mean, the idea of these extraordinary events, of the Trojan War, the horse, all of this. Yeah. We wanted to try and wrestle with it in a modern sense, to try and say, okay, what if these things were real? What if we were there? What would it be like? What would the resonance be? What would the gravity of the situation be? And in micro, it's things like being on a real ship in a real storm or going into the cave of the Cyclops. What would that really be like? And the answer is intense. And as far as the effect of everything that Odysseus has been through and what part he's played in this mythic conflict. Trojan War. Yeah, it felt like the thing to do was to really try and take that on with a certain amount of weight, a certain amount of gravity. But for me, every film I do, if I've done my job right, I leave it with questions and sort of interesting things that I want to keep drilling down on.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Christopher Nolan]

And coming out of Oppenheimer. Yeah, I definitely brought Oppenheimer into this movie with me. Yeah, certainly.

[Trevor Noah]

And it's also because the movies are all so well constructed, I feel like you would have been a great architect as well, if you wanted to be. Like there's such wonderful symmetry and puzzles to unfold in there. Do you approach it as a constructor?

[Christopher Nolan]

I do. I mean, I do. Before I write, I do a lot of sort of diagramming out. I write, you know, I draw a lot of pictures, not storyboards, but actually diagrams of the narrative and how the structure might work and coming to this poem. I mean, Homer's original is one of the great non linear structures, which for me, you know, that's kind of structure I enjoy in cinematic storytelling. So I really try to be faithful to that. But yeah, I do a lot of sort of visual diagramming, a lot of trying to thinking, trying to find ways to. To think of the narrative in three dimensional terms. Then I sit down and write when I've done months and months of that.

[Trevor Noah]

And it does. You know, you said something interesting when you said, you know, it's this nonlinear story and it has so many narrators and you don't know who's reliable and who is not reliable. Is that something you have to decide as you go in? Do you think to yourself, well, Telemachus, he's reliable, or Penelope is, or even Odysseus. Are there moments where you think, did this even happen to him? Is this just his mind trying to erase the pain of what he went through in Troy?

[Christopher Nolan]

Are we going deep now?

[Trevor Noah]

Go deep, baby.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah, I know, I know.

[Trevor Noah]

Here's the thing I saw. I will never get a chance to get high with you in a dorm room. So this is it, baby. This is all we got. Because that it really, I'm telling you, this is a poignant work. It really speaks to the moment we're in and everything.

[Christopher Nolan]

No, I mean, I actually, I love the nature of the question. I'm just trying to think of how to answer it for people who haven't seen the movie and I don't want to. Well, I never like to define the experience.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Christopher Nolan]

For the audience. And so for me, there are ambiguities, there are. There are questions, there are layers in which things can work. But the answer to the first part of your question, and this has always been the case for me with my work, is I have to know the answer. I have to know what I believe the answer to be. And then otherwise the ambiguities won't be productive. There will be a sort of non answer as opposed to. If you look at the ending of Inception, for example, right, The Spinning Top. And, you know, people often will ask me, you know, was it? Well, exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

And when you approach it, though, in your mind, you know the answer yes. But that's not something that you put out there because that changes the experience for the viewer.

[Christopher Nolan]

The first time I ever took a film, you know, really out there, and did a bunch of interviews on it was Memento, right? And that's a film I wrote based on a short story that my brother had written. And he came with me, came with us to the Venice Film Festival. We premiered it. And right afterwards, I was asked a bunch of questions and they asked me about the ambiguity at the end, right? And I said, well, it's meant to be up to you, but I think it's this, this, this. And he took me aside and he's like, nobody heard the first part where they said it's meant to be up to you. All they hear is what you say. You're interpreting Trump's everything. You can never do that again. And he was right. And I never have since then, because.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, I'm just gonna cross out my McConaughey in the library. Interstellar question. Son of a bitch.

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[Trevor Noah]

do you find yourself because it feels like the type of project that's so literally immersive. Do you have to complete a work before you begin to do those diagrams and sketches of other work? Or do you find yourself in certain phases of it, beginning to plant seeds in other areas that you'll revisit?

[Christopher Nolan]

No, I very specifically do one thing at a time. Once I burrow in on a project, I nothing else exists. I mean, family, just about, you know, it's you. You know, one of the responsibilities. But one of the one of the great thrills of my job is you get to sort of live in a world for a couple of years, and I devote myself to that fully. And for me, that's never finished, really, until the film goes out to the audience. The audience finishes the movie, they tell us what it is that we did, and so we're right now, you know, a few days away and it's a terrifying time.

[Trevor Noah]

Is that so? Do you feel a little bit of the jitters from that, or do you think you've got a pretty good idea of where you think it'll land for people? Have you Seen it enough with people.

[Christopher Nolan]

I've seen it enough with people. We screen it as we go to guinea pigs, you know.

[Trevor Noah]

Sure. By the way, also in the movie, Odysseus fights guinea pig. He's changed some things around.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah.

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So you.

[Christopher Nolan]

You. You know, you have an idea of how the movie's playing for an audience. But the truth is, there's nothing like going out into the world for thousands and thousands of screens all over the world, you know, over one weekend. I mean, that's a very different thing. And it never gets any easier, and it's absolutely terrifying.

[Trevor Noah]

Can I ask you one particular sequence? The Trojan horse sequence.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Which is something that I think for all of us that have a familiarity with, you know, the Iliad and the Odyssey and sort of our introduction to myth and Edith Hamilton and, you know, how that all spins off. The Trojan horse had always existed as a certain methodology for how it gets in Detroit. You take a very different approach.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

That I thought landed thematically, the poignancy of it. Much better.

[Christopher Nolan]

Thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

So I guess what I'm saying is, Homer ain't got shit on you. No, I'm just kidding. But no. What was the process? Just going into that particular scene, because just the mechanics of it seemed so difficult, but also it just. It felt like such a brilliant summation thematically of the weight that Odysseus felt like he was carrying.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah. I mean, a lot of that thinking for me comes about as a result of looking at it saying, okay, how can we have this work and be credible for a modern audience?

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Christopher Nolan]

We all know when we see a Trojan horse that it's stuffed with Greeks, you know, so you're starting from a difficult position. So how do you sell that concept?

[Trevor Noah]

It's a pinata that fights back.

[Christopher Nolan]

It's a pinata that fights back. And I had, actually, 20 years ago, I was briefly attached to direct Troy, the film that David Benioff had written, based on the Iliad.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. I read that. That was the Brad Pitt. It was.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah. So I had. I had to figure out, because the horse was. Was in that script, even though it's not in the Iliad, they put it in the film. And so I had to sort of figure out what's my approach to it. And I came up with this idea of the horse half buried in the sand, about to be destroyed or carried away by the waves, so that as the Trojans find it, the last thing it looks like, you know, there's no wheels, there's no. It doesn't look like Something that's meant to be carried into the city. And that image stuck with me for, you know, decades. I really wanted to do that and flesh out the whole sequence because to me, that was the excitement. It's like, can we present this to an audience in a way that they can believe in? And that was the sort of mantra for everybody on the film with every sequence.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Christopher Nolan]

People want to go on this journey with us, let's give them a reason to believe.

[Trevor Noah]

It's grounded in a practical realism that I think is what helps it create that epic. Because I'm raised in the Clash of the Titans generation. You know, sort of Harry Hamlin with the band and then like the Scylla comes into the water. You know, it's. It was all like claymation and camp. And that's how I've never seen that type of movie portrayed. With a sort of, like you say, grounded realism. Even though they're gods.

[Christopher Nolan]

Well, and this is the thing is, you know, when we looked at it, Greek mythology hadn't really been told in modern cinema in that way. The work of Ray Harryhausen, you're talking about Clash of the Titans and things like that. Very, very brilliant. Handmade, loved, amazing approach, but always on a B movie budget. Never with the ability to kind of put it out there big.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[Christopher Nolan]

You know, with. With an incredible cast and, you know, on. On that sort of scale. And I think it was those technical limitations, like in the great era of, you know, sword and sandals movies, the 50s and 60s, right. Have the techniques to be able to embrace the fantastical and what is the Odyssey without the fantastical? You know, you want to see the Cyclops, you want to see Scylla and Charybdis and the Sirens and Cersei and all of that.

[Trevor Noah]

Cersei, boy, those scenes are just spectacular.

[Christopher Nolan]

That's Samantha Morton, incredible actor.

[Trevor Noah]

Incredible.

[Christopher Nolan]

Wanted to work with for a long time.

[Trevor Noah]

And you even had to, you know, when you were talking about the technology of it, you had to sort of create machinery that didn't exist. Because IMAX is notoriously loud.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yes. Cameras are. I mean, it's like a generator.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[Christopher Nolan]

It's crazy thing to have to act in. Of front. Front of. So in the past, we'd always used it for the action scenes. I saw IMAX first. I was about 16 years old at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. And I wanted. Right then I was like, if I could ever.

[Trevor Noah]

At 16.

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah, yeah. I wanted to make a film entirely in IMAX on the Dark Knight. I had the opportunity to Meet with IMAX and say, can we use your cameras and do the action scenes that way? So the introduction of Heath Ledger's Joker, truck flip, all that stuff, all that's imax. But because the cameras are so loud, we couldn't do performances, we couldn't capture the dialogue. And so finally with this film, I called them up and I said, look, if ever there were a film to do the entire film in imax, this is the one. So can we find a way to silence the cameras? And they built this blimping system, this kind of high tech box you put the camera in and then you can actually.

[Trevor Noah]

So you're filming dialect, but that IMAX has got to run out. How long? What's the cartridge on an imax?

[Christopher Nolan]

A little under three minutes.

[Trevor Noah]

So every three minutes?

[Christopher Nolan]

Yeah, every three minutes you're saying to the actors, just stay in that mode,

[Trevor Noah]

stay in the water.

[Christopher Nolan]

Incredibly dramatic scene.

[Trevor Noah]

And you can't bring nine days faster and under budget even with that.

[Christopher Nolan]

Well, I think actually sometimes the limitations give everybody a real focus. And so I went to the actors early on and I said, in the middle of your most intense scene, is it okay if we just stop the camera, reload it, keep everybody quiet?

[Trevor Noah]

Here's what I'm gonna say. Yeah, you're a wizard, Harry, and the film is spectacular.

[Commercial Narrator]

Thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

And as always, you are my favorite filmmaker. And I just so appreciate the intentionality that you put into it and the craft of it and the beauty of it. And it's just spectacular. And I do hope everybody rushes out to see it in the way that it was intended. Cause it's really a remarkable piece of work. Congratulations.

[Christopher Nolan]

Thank you very much.

[Trevor Noah]

Christopher Nolan, ladies and gentlemen, on the show this Saturday, July 17th. Explore More Shows from the Daily show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show. Wherever you get your podcasts, watch the Daily show weeknights at 1110 Central on

[Christopher Nolan]

Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount.

[Trevor Noah]

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[Trevor Noah]

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[Christopher Nolan]

Police are on the way.

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[Christopher Nolan]

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[Trevor Noah]

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