Steven Soderbergh says he helped Christopher Nolan get his Insomnia gig
Steven Soderbergh loved Memento so much he helped solidify the nearly two-decade long partnership between Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros.
Aux News Steven Soderbergh
History is full of interesting little domino effects. Here’s one from the cinema side: if Steven Soderbergh never intervened, we probably wouldn’t have Insomnia. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Soderbergh says he became Christopher Nolan’s champion after seeing a screening of Memento and thinking it was “a fucking instant classic.”
Months later, Nolan’s agent Dan Aloni called Soderbergh “and he goes, ‘Look, there’s this script over at Warner, Insomnia. Chris is really interested in it, but Warner won’t take the meeting,’” Soderbergh recalled. “And I go, ‘What do you mean they won’t take the meeting?’ And he goes, ‘Well, the executive there didn’t like Memento.’ And I said, ‘Well, so what? Why won’t they take the meeting?’”
Soderbergh (who at this point had already directed Sex, Lies, And Videotape and more) called up the doubting executive and urged him to take the meeting. “And he goes, ‘But I didn’t like the movie.’ And I go, ‘Well, did you like the movie-making?’ And he goes, ‘Well, yeah, it’s brilliantly made.’ And I go, ‘Take the meeting.’ That is all I did. I knew Chris well enough to know that if he gets in the room, he’s going to get that job.”
Soderbergh may have been one of Nolan’s earliest supporters, but these days The Dark Knight filmmaker has plenty of people in his corner. After a career of hits, Oppenheimer is receiving rave reviews. Another legendary director, Paul Schrader, admitted he’s “not a Nolan groupie” but called the movie “the best, most important film of this century.”
But as far as domino effects go, Soderbergh says Nolan would’ve gotten here even if his intervention hadn’t sparked a long partnership between the filmmaker and Warner Bros.“[Let’s] be clear: one way or another, Christopher Nolan is going to emerge. If he didn’t make ‘Insomnia,’ he’d have made something else and still had the career he has,” Soderbergh told Rolling Stone. “That was just a fortunate set of circumstances where I could get on the phone and advocate for him.”
9 Comments
Sheesh, it’s all about getting credit for some people.(Kidding)
Hot take: Schizopolis > Memento
They’re not really similar, so it sort of comes down to personal taste. I prefer Memento because it sticks the landing, while Schizopolis is a bit of a mess.
Hard agree. Memento’s a great movie but Schizopolis is like watching a god at work. He’s like Jim Henson, he created life right in front of us.
Memento is indeed great, but Nolan’s Insomnia is not. No need for it to exist when people can just watch the superior original.
You know, it’s a crime that they never got Steven Soderbergh to play Dean Pelton’s successful older brother on Community.
Imagine you’re an executive at Warner Bros and you refuse (at first) to consider a director because you didn’t personally like his film even though you think his film was ‘brilliantly made.’Imagine watching Memento for the first time back in 2000. Then you find out the director of it wants to work for you and you say, “ehhh, pass.”
I just can’t look at photos of present-day Nolan and not see Benny Hill in his prime.
… if Steven Soderbergh never intervened, we probably wouldn’t have Insomnia. Yes we would. We’d still have the 1997 original starring Stellan Skarsgård which is a damn good film in its own right and I’d highly recommend both because they both end quite differently but both endings are quite good in my opinion.