Having not done any blogging since my unusually political post from June 2016 on Brexit (thank goodness I managed to persuade my fellow country people to dodge THAT bullet! Think of the nonsense that might have ensued - I might even have had to find out what the **** a customs union is when it’s at home!) I was inspired to return to old habits (warning...here be spoilers for the 3 people left on Earth who are even later to the party than I was) after finally getting round to watching Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s last blockbuster but one, last week.
Yes, I was three and a half years late, and I used to pride myself on catching up with new releases as early as possible, but I felt much better about myself when I realised that this equated to a mere half hour in the first planet that features in the film (I’ve already forgotten the name of the planets in the film so I’m going to just call this one “The Slow Time Watery Planet With No Matt Damon on it”!)
In my defence, it was released just a few months after my son was born - some of our NCT buddies did go to a “Parent and Baby” showing at the local Picturehouse (which seemed determined to reserve these showings for the most child-unfriendly films imaginable, including several directed by everyone’s favourite cuddly uncle, Werner “Do you not then hear the horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence?” Herzog).
We resisted the temptation to join them on the basis that it’s damn tricky to keep up with the complexities of quantum physics, wormholes and Matthew McConaughey’s frantically overacting adam’s apple when you’re having to pop out every 15 minutes to deal with the dark matter emanating from the only black hole that will consume the lives of all new parents for the first year or so of their child’s life!
One of the benefits of a long commute is that the train ride home is a good time to catch up on films that one missed the first time round. So last week it was Interstellar’s turn - I watched it over 4 nights and being something of a sucker for all things Christopher Nolan as well as someone who has been fascinated by space and astronomy for the better part of thirty years, I found myself impressed, enthralled, and totally sucked in to this new Nolan universe just as McConaughey, Hathaway, the Statutory Sarcastic Robot and the two “Random Other Guys Who Obviously Aren’t Going To Make It To The End Credits Alive” were sucked through that convenient wormhole somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse (sorry....Saturn)!
Then I got home. And my wife asked me to explain the plot to her!
I had a crack at it, but by thunder, I struggled! Which got me to reflecting on the perils of being such a well-established filmmaker that you can get away with such nonsense, and wondering what would have happened if he was still having to jump through all the hops he would have had to deal with in the early days when he was making things like Memento (yes, even Memento feels comparatively straightforward compared to this one!) and had to get it past producers who weren’t also called Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas (aka Mrs Christopher Nolan!) and Lynda Obst (aka Christopher Nolan’s landlady’s second cousin...probably!) I can picture the pitch meeting now:
Producer: So, Chris, tell
Me your new idea!
Nolan: well, it’s about space. We start off in the mid 21st century. Earth is in a spot of bother. Nothing’s growing any more. Lots of dust everywhere. Matthew McConaughey plays a farmer. Who used to be....an astronaut! (Pauses)
Producer (cautiously): Keep going.
Nolan: He lives with his son and daughter, and John Lithgow.
Producer: Is Lithgow playing an alien?
Nolan: Not in this one. His daughter’s a bit of a genius and she’s starting to get messages. Messages sent...by Gravity! (Pauses)
Producer: Hmm, OK. What are the messages?
Nolan: A set of co-ordinates which take them...to NASA! Which is now illegal and operating in secret. The government is telling everyone the moon landings were faked.
Producer: Why would they do that?
Nolan: Unspecified. Maybe Buzz Aldrin referred to Trump as the satanic spawn of Jabba The Hutt and Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones.
Producer: Seems unnecessarily generous. (Leafs through the script) I see the head of NASA has a lot of lines. Or at least he keeps saying “Do not go gentle into this good night” over and over again. About seventeen times actually. Seems to have a bit of a hang-up about it. Although there’s a bit more variety in these early scenes. Ah, here’s his introduction: “My Name Is Mr Clever Scientist Man”. Hmmm. Who are you thinking of getting for that part? Plenty of heavyweight actors who’d be keen to work with you I expect. Who did you have in mind? Anthony Hopkins? Robert Duvall? Patrick Stewart?
Nolan: Michael Caine.
Producer: De Niro would probably do it. Or Redford.
Nolan: Michael Caine.
Producer: Christopher Plummer? Max Von Sydow? Donald Sutherland?
Nolan: MICHAEL CAINE, damn it! I don’t know who any of those other people are! Michael told me he’s the only actor over 60 in the world who’s still working! Although to be fair he did also say that not a lot of people knew that! We’re going to give him a beard so he looks a bit like he did in Educating Rita.
Producer: So NASA’s being run by a drunken English professor with a crush on Julie Walters? (shrugs) OK, well, he was pretty good in that Muppet movie so let’s move on. Leafs through a few pages). Mr Clever Scientist Man: Hold on lads, I’ve got a great idea!” (Reads on) OK this is losing me. Summarise the idea for me!
Nolan: Well it centres around a wormhole that’s just opened somewhere near Saturn.
Producer: Whoa, whoa there. The sort of audience we’re looking to attract aren’t going to understand the concept of a goddamn wormhole! How are you planning on explaining it to them?
Nolan: We’ll just do what everyone does in any film that’s about wormholes. Do the whole “fold up a piece of paper and stick a pencil through it” analogy!
Producer: OK that’ll do. So McConaughey’s going through the wormhole? NASA give the mission to some random farmer who just shows up at the right moment because he’s receiving messages from stuff that falls over in random patterns?
Nolan: I did say he used to be an astronaut.
Producer: Oh yeah. Well I guess that’s fair enough then. So what do they do when they get through the wormhole?
Nolan: Well, they’ve already sent some other scientists ahead of them to scout out possible planets in the galaxy on the other side of the wormhole that can sustain life. The first planet they go to, it’s near a black hole. So every hour on that planet is...like...seven years on earth. So they can’t stay long, but they go down anyway, and it all goes a bit “Pete Tong”, and by the time they get back 23 years have passed and McConaughey’s kids have all grown up!
Producer (whistles): Shit! So he’s missed all the moody teenage years? The tantrums, the going off the rails, the stupid haircuts, the dodgy boyfriends?
Nolan: Er, yes, I guess so.
Producer (wistfully): Lucky bastard! So what happens next?
Nolan: They go to another planet to save Matt Damon.
Producer: Damon’s got himself stranded? AGAIN? The man’s a goddamn liability. Shouldn’t be allowed to go as far as the goddamn grocery store without a minder!
Nolan: Well anyway, they find Dr Mann, played by Damon, and...
Producer: I get it. Dr Mann. So you can do a “One small step for Mann” joke.
Nolan: Sir, this is a Christopher Nolan film. I do not do “jokes”!
Producer: Yeah, I’ve noticed that. Look, I’m not asking you to put Adam Sandler in it (in fact I would never ask anyone to put Adam Sandler in any film) but would it kill you to deploy an occasional pun? I mean when you did The Dark Knight that guy got a pencil through his head and no-one even said “I think he got the point!” even though the guy who did it was literally called “The Joker”!
Nolan (through gritted teeth): THERE...WILL...BE...NO...PUNS!
Producer (sighing): OK how does it end?
Nolan: Well McConaughey’s character ends up falling into an event horizon and ends up in a tesseract, from which he can feed his daughter, who’s now all grown up, all the data he’s collected, by manipulating the second hand on the wristwatch he gave her so that it sends messages by Morse Code. That way she can save the world.
Producer: Um...is there a paper trick you can do to explain all that? Only I’m conscious that we’ll be 2 hours in at that point and people will be busting for the toilet.
Nolan: So?
Producer: So they’ll be struggling to pay attention and confused out of their tiny minds!
Nolan: Of course! But they won’t admit it, my friend! They won’t admit it!
