The Big Picture

Christopher Nolan’s aversion to modern technology is reflected in his films, which emphasize practical effects over CGI. Nolan’s strict on-set rules, such as no cell phones or chairs, create a focused and disciplined atmosphere for his actors. Despite his eccentricities, Nolan’s passion for the art of filmmaking shines through, as he values the medium and demands complete dedication from his cast and crew.

Genius comes in many forms. For Christopher Nolan, his exceptional craft as a filmmaker is realized through a set of bizarre rules, even by the standards of film directors, who can be quite eccentric figures. The director of the 2023 box office and critical sensation, Oppenheimer, which was recently nominated for 13 Academy Awards including Best Director for Nolan, had made multiple beloved films of the 21st century under the guise of a strict and peculiar film set. Nolan’s films are beautifully imaginative, constantly pushing the formalism of the art form, but one visiting the set of one of his films will not find a cell phone, chair, or toilet in sight.

Oppenheimer The story of American scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. Release Date July 21, 2023 Runtime 181 Main Genre Biography

Christopher Nolan Doesn’t Own a Cell Phone
Since he rebooted Batman for the big screen in 2005 with Batman Begins, audiences routinely flock to theaters in anticipation of Nolan’s next film. Whether it’s a familiar yet riveting Batman sequel in The Dark Knight, an idiosyncratic vision of the subconscious, or an emotional odyssey into a wormhole in Inception and Interstellar, Nolan’s filmography is an identifiable brand among passionate film viewers. Seamlessly balancing commercial and auteur-minded sensibilities, Nolan’s style and thematic traits demonstrate the medium of film at its most engaging. This level of ingenuity doesn’t come easy, especially for Nolan’s actors, who must sacrifice the most fundamental conveniences to work with him.

Christopher Nolan does not own a smartphone or an email address. “I’m easily distractible so I don’t really want to have access to the internet every time when I’m bored,” Nolan said to People Magazine in 2020. Interestingly enough, Nolan’s stance as a Luddite presents itself in his films, which are famously devoid of CGI and specialize in practical effects. Rather than digitally transporting scripts to his actors via email, he meets with them in person. He flew to Ireland to hand Cillian Murphy, who would play the titular physicist, the script for Oppenheimer, and waited for him to finish reading. The director values the intimacy and privacy of the delicate process of casting. The power of face-to-face interactions empowered Robert Downey Jr. to accept the role of Lewis Strauss. Rather than the proverbial “38 phone calls,” as Downey said to The Hollywood Reporter, that usually takes place during casting, he met with Nolan in the director’s home in Los Angeles. Luckily for Nolan, he has a trusted and committed business and producing partner to handle logistical matters: his wife, Emma Thomas.

Since Nolan’s tech-free lifestyle has seemingly done well for his personal life, he implements this ordinance in his productions. When he sat down with Esquire in 2017, Nolan defended his “no cell phone” policy, stating “Phones have become a huge distraction, and people work much better without them. At first, it causes difficulty, but it really allows them to concentrate on what they’re doing.” Nolan gives more insight into his rationale, invoking the collaborative nature of filmmaking and the requirement of an attentive mindset that is separated from the outside world, and it shows that he is passionate about a subject that often inspires quarrels between parents and their teenage children.

Christopher Nolan Is Anti-Bathroom… and Sitting

If actors on a Christopher Nolan set already feel uneasy over the cell phone edict, they better not find a place to sit to vent their frustrations, because no chairs will be found under Nolan’s watch. Anne Hathaway, who participated in Variety’s virtual Actors on Actors series in 2020 with Hugh Jackman, revealed that Nolan, who she worked with in The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, “doesn’t allow chairs, and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working.” In Robert Downey Jr.’s Actors on Actors session with Mark Ruffalo, he noted the lack of chairs in the spartan set of Oppenheimer. “You kind of feel like you’re being stripped of your armor, which he does intentionally,” Downey added.

They say “You got to go when you got to go,” but Christopher Nolan may not subscribe to that theory. While speaking with Collider’s Steven Weintraub, Cillian Murphy claimed that Nolan was “not sympathetic to toilet breaks.” Along with Murphy, his co-stars, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt, confirmed that Nolan frowns upon intermissions for the restroom in a feature for Vanity Fair. Nolan, as Downey put it, despises every facet of waste, whether it pertains to time or the inevitable human nature of needing to go to the bathroom. “He is a conservationist of the highest order,” the actor described. According to Downey, Nolan has two dedicated times for bathroom breaks, 11 A.M. and 6 P.M. Suffice to say, the actor was flabbergasted by the director’s regimented bathroom schedule.

Despite being a non-actor, the Oppenheimer director is quite the character based on his view of the state of technological habits and amusing anecdotes from his cast. Life as a film director often calls for eccentric characteristics and quirky practices. This often manifests in stories involving directors requiring an innumerable number of takes for a given scene, a method of directing notoriously adopted by Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher. On the contrary, Clint Eastwood has gained recognition for his preference for shooting only one take, even to the detriment of the quality of a shot or line reading. Beyond reading their lines and hitting their marks, directors will frequently require their talent to engage in an activity or watch a batch of films to prepare for their respective roles.

Christopher Nolan’s Rules Pay Off for His Movies
Image via Universal

Christopher Nolan’s eccentricities might appear to be extraneous to the filmmaking process and only exist to serve as a nuisance. But from reading quotes and analysis from his collaborators, it’s hard to interpret Nolan’s stance against phones, chairs, and toilets as an act of megalomania. Throughout the Oppenheimer press junket, the cast relished in poking fun at Nolan’s strange demands, but at its core, there was always a sincere appreciation for the message the director was striving for. In The Hollywood Reporter feature on Nolan, Downey praised the “focused and spartan” atmosphere of the Oppenheimer set, describing it as a “monastic approach to what we’re doing.” Downey, who became numb to the daunting nature of big studio filmmaking during his time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, noted that Nolan’s style was ultimately “super loose within this controlled format.”

Related This Is the One Martin Scorsese Movie Christopher Nolan Refuses To Watch The ‘Oppenheimer’ filmmaker had a very specific reason for not watching this classic.

The austere and prodigious image of Christopher Nolan and his films, in theory, would grow upon learning of his strict policies. However, his quirks have a way of subverting the seismic gravity of his productions. As Anne Hathaway put it in her Variety interview, “He’s broken it down to its most minimal, but also his movies are just so huge and ornate.” By all accounts, Nolan is a director actors love to work with. His films often feature expansive casts of the finest actors in Hollywood, and he has developed an unofficial stock company of frequent collaborators, including Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. Between his adverse relationship to digital technology and his preference to wear suits while directing, Nolan is old-school. He’s not trying to be stubborn, but respect tradition.

It’s easy to chalk up Christopher Nolan’s bizarre on-set demands as self-indulgent, but when factoring the director’s relationship with film and audiences, it encompasses his sincere appreciation of the art form. Evoking Matt Damon’s line in Oppenheimer, for Nolan, making a movie is the most important thing to ever happen in the history of the world. Nolan’s advocacy for film, as seen with his glowing praise for the theater experience and IMAX photography, counters the notion that the medium is a disposable piece of content. He views the medium as a delicate art form and requires complete focus and dedication when crafting something as monumental as Oppenheimer. For an actor who values art, sacrificing phones and chairs to make a grand magnum opus like Nolan’s 2023 blockbuster is worth the inconvenience.

Oppenheimer is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

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