Christopher Nolan shares strict reason he doesn't own a smartphone and the hardest part of living without it
Topics: Christopher Nolan, Artificial Intelligence
Poppy Bilderbeck
Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/John Nacion
Topics: Christopher Nolan, Artificial Intelligence
The Odyssey director has revealed the clear-cut reason he doesn't own a phone but also what he's found particularly 'tricky' about not having one.
With a filmography including Interstellar, Dunkirk, Oppenheimer and now The Odyssey behind him - films set in space, the war and featuring the detonation of a nuclear weapon - you'd think Christopher Nolan would be a pretty big fan of technology facilitating him creating such vast worlds in his films.
However, it's quite the opposite, Nolan going so far as to even not own a smartphone.
He confirmed to The Telegraph he doesn't own a device, brandishing everyone else 'pod people'.
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Although, that's not to say he doesn't 'worry the world is eventually going to wear [him] down,' a particular challenging time to not own a phone taking place after the coronavirus pandemic.
The director reflected: "The return of the QR code since Covid has been particularly tricky for me.”
And there's several reasons Nolan is going to resist as much as possible to not give into a smartphone.
"Partly because I know I’d become horribly addicted to them if I had one. I’d spend all my time looking things up," he explained. "And I find I’m only able to advance my thinking on projects in those pockets of time where everybody usually jumps on their phone - waiting for a train, or in an airport, or sitting in a restaurant waiting for somebody to turn up for dinner. Those are the moments I work out whatever it is I need to do next."
Smartphones aren't the only form of technology Nolan is rallying against either, the director drawing on the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
He reflected he's 'never seen a more rapid wholesale dismissal of a supposedly foundation jump in technology' in his 'lifetime'.
Praising his four children's generation 'immediate and harsh' 'rejecting' of AI 'slop,' he noted while 'that doesn't mean that every aspect of the technology is useless or meaningless, in film-making its hitting at exactly the wrong time'.
"After years of driving towards heavily virtual environments, we’re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling," he added.
And this is something Nolan very much made sure to embody in his latest release - The Odyssey.
Despite being an adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek poem and a mythic action epic, Nolan's film steers clear of CGI as much as possible, prioritizing physical sets and practical effects, including a built Trojan horse, 60-foot Cyclops puppet and filming on literal oceans and in actual caves.
In The Odyssey, Samantha Morton plays Greek goddess Circe and Nolan reflected he even instructed the 'visual and special effects guys' to ensure 'whatever' they came up with was 'driven by performance'.
He added: "I can’t tell her to act to a piece of electrical tape’. So they came up with mechanisms that allowed her to find things through performance, and really just play with the scene."
The Odyssey is out in movie theaters today (July 17)