No one wanted MEMENTO
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- Опубликовано: 22 апр 2024
- Jonathan Nolan talks about the tough road MEMENTO took to success. #happysadconfused #joshhorowitz #memento
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Steven Soderbergh: Champion of Cinema.
I loved Memento for the reason Jonathan stated, I love movies that make you think. My daughter and I watched it several times, noticed something new each time. We even went online and looked for blogs that were discussing Memento. Thanks Jonathan for a movie that makes you lean in and want to discuss.
Amen brotha
First time I watched Memento in the theater I was blown away. It was a great twist and I didn’t find it hard to follow at all. The editing makes the difference. Even if you have a great story but if it’s edited badly, it will be a disaster of a story. Kudos to the team for making the story coherent and unique!
That explains the Sodebergh credit on Insomnia - he probably gave Chris a helping hand to keep on making films. Also, Jonathan looks like a wild all American cowboy and his brother like a British aristocrat haha
MEMENTO is my favorite movie of all time ❤🎞❤
Same! So glad Soderbergh helped spread the good word.
Thank you Steven Soderbergh
for many, many things, but I guess now also for Memento
I like complicated a lot
Depressingly that attitude among executives has never gone away and has only got worse, they say they are in the business of making movies but they don’t want to take any kind of artistic risks which is what it takes to make real cinema, many are only in the business of making money and that is an unfortunate reality. I really wish there were more opportunities out there to get something made cheaply on the basis that you have a great vision and concept all packed inside a great screenplay and it can actually be made for less than 5-10 million in some cases only a few hundred thousand which for most mainstream films is the catering budget.
Its not that complicated. They're business people who are interested in increasing the profit margin on a film. High earning films have a very defined formula and deviations from that lower the odds of the filming earning a profit. Sure, there's exceptions where the indie film sticks a landing and becomes a high grossing commercial hit. But that's very rare. Maybe every decade that happens...
I’m not sure what your point is suppose to be, yes of course investors are always going to want to make mainstream movies I don’t have a problem with that I know big tentpole movies keep the business profitable but I simply can’t understand why they have to be that expensive. We were told celluloid is more expensive and that’s why digital is better because it’s cheaper, we were told practical effects are expensive and that’s why we use cgi instead because it’s cheaper, we were told film projection was expensive and so digital projection was cheaper and made almost every projectionist obsolete. We are told films have never been easier and cheaper to make and yet they couldn’t be anymore expensive to make and for most audience member (me included) can’t justify seeing them in cinemas. It’s a broken business model and something needs to change.
I actually don't think there's contempt for the audience. The filmmakers and the executives are playing a completely different game, and the psychologies are very, very different. Executives generally act out of fear. They're often not millionaires. They can lose their jobs easily. And most movies fail, at least financially. Studios make money with massive hits that cover the losses of all the failures. It's gambling. On art. It's a crazy business. Naturally, the artists, particularly established ones, are going to feel more comfortable taking chances. Artists are risk takers. They'll role the dice on their careers. Executives are often the opposite - Ivy League, academically inclined, faith in numbers. They aren't people who got their jobs by taking big risks. (Although some did.) They got there by being careful. They're non-gamblers who have no choice but to gamble, so it's going to be tough to convince them of anything.
@@jon8004 Spot on and that is the eternal problem right there that I don’t think will ever be solved, I think my perspective as an artist is that if you really want to get into the business of making money which I have no problem with then why not invest in a tech company or in stocks, real estate there are literally so many avenues these investors can put their money and make a profit so the question is why invest in movies? Surely wanting to be part of the movie business is also wanting to take part in making great movies first and any type of financial benefit is second but somehow that got flipped the other way around. Art and creatively original idea are always going to be a risk there is nothing changing that and so if these people want the benefit but none of the risk I think they are in the wrong business, if I had it my way there should be a rule that for every sequel, prequel, remake, spin-off or adaption of a pre-existing franchise there must also greenlight a movie with an original script.
@@artofsam They may be in the wrong business in a sense, but history suggests they're the right people to run the studios. The power in Hollywood filmmaking shifted to the creatives in the late '60s and '70s. It went well - for a few years. Then the creatives bankrupted one studio and started spending like crazy and put other studios in jeopardy. If there was a way to improve the system, it would have been discovered by now. Hollywood survives through a never-ending tension between art and capital. Hollywood was no different in the past than it was today. But today, Hollywood has the benefit of the Internet and social media. Polling. Better analysis of their customers. If Hollywood is making money doing something, they're going to continue to do it until the wheels fall off. Then they're figure out something else. Donna Langley at Universal Studios, years ago, tried to make their own Marvel using monster characters they had the rights to from older movies. It didn't work. So she reinvested in daring, original work, and it's been going pretty well (Oppenheimer, etc.), but these studios always walk a knife's edge.
The first Nolan film I watched and still probably the best one.
Some of the others have higher highs, some serious "wow" moments of how the f did he make that, I probably *enjoy* repeated viewings of some of them (like Tenet or Inception) more, but they're all at least a bit flawed in one way or another - interestingly I think a fair few of them (Interstellar, Prestige, Inception) have just as fascinating a premise and concept as Memento but are flawed in that they do what Jonathan says here they didn't want to do, and treat the audience as a bit stupid and kind of over-explain. I wonder if that's a compromise they decided they have to make later on to get the budgets they wanted?
Others (like TDK, TDKR, Tenet) feel like the story and characters were somewhat compromised by the commercial needs to squeeze in elaborate action set pieces, not all of which feel necessary to the story. And then there are those (Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, again The Prestige and again Interstellar) which sometimes try to go for the emotional gut punch a bit too hard, which makes them a bit sappy at times.
The only one I'd put up there with Memento as kind of a perfect movie is, funnily enough, Batman Begins. But because it's based on previously existing characters and IP and is much lower on sheer ambition and ingenuity or premise, I have to put it below Memento.
I too think that Inception is rather overexplained, but I don't blame them for doing so. You won't find too many mainstream audience members that think it was overexplained. While Tenet on the other hand, many claim doesn't make any sense despite the fact that it isn't as complicated as they make it out to be.
Yes "overexplaining" is a compromise Nolan's made because fact is that most people are quick to call something confusing or full of plot holes if you don't spell certain things out for them. I personally love movies that make you lean in and think and chew on things after the credits roll tho
@chrisjfox8715 exactly, Tenet actually is a perfect example of Nolan at his non-over-explaining best and probably my favourite of his later films for exactly that reason. But like you I'm unusual in loving walking out of a theatre not understanding what I just watched. I think ultimately though what drags that movie down a bit is Nolan falling a bit too much in love with the reverse entropy gimmick and stuffing a bit too much cool action into it at the expense of anchoring all of it in character and dialogue, or at least getting the ratio between those two things wrong. I think if audiences could connect better to any of the main 3 characters or buy the love story, they'd be a lot more forgiving of the fact "it doesn't make sense"...
Chris younger brother is cool a guy
I was blown away hearing him for the first time after hearing Chris for so many years. He sounds like some American lawyers I know(my sister is one not me) yet his brother is so British and elegant sounding due to the boarding school
The mention of soderbergh is at 3:31. Then 19 seconds later video and channel suggestions pop up 🤦♂️🤦♂️
0:27 LOLOLOLOL
The reason the execs thought the audience wouldn't get it is that THEY didn't get it. Jonathan's right - most studio execs are idiots who wouldn't know a good movie if it bit them on the ass and gave them rabies. They look for what will make money in their eyes, and that's loud and fast and simplistic. That's all they understand. Give them something intelligent and they break out in mental hives, and their only defense is to claim nobody will "get" it. (I worked in Hollywood for an exec for a while. They really are like that. Only one guy I met was actually smart, and he got out of the business after a few years because he found something better to do with his life than peddle yaya garbage.)
They aren’t idiots - or else they wouldn’t be execs. They have to make money.
@@shashank1630 AHAHAHA. I see you've never been near a Hollywood exec. Also, it's cute that you think someone can't rise to the top of a company while being a moron.
How does he not have a british accent like his brother haha
When their family moved to the US, Chris was like 16 and Jonathan was like 9, or something like that.
Anyone notice Chris has a more English accent and John has more American
Their mom is American and they are both dual U.S/British Citizens and grew up between both countries.Jonathan spent alot more time in the U.S.
If we hadn't noticed it by now it would've been pretty good confirmation of what those executives thought about us
Man, imagine TENET, at that time.
Hard to even imagine it now lol.
Imagine it with clear dialog 🤯
@@hyperreal not difficult.
Watching it at home made the dialogue issue a non-issue for us.
I thought they were brothers. Why isn't he British?
They are brothers. Jonathan has dual citizenship. When he moved to Chicago he learned to get rid of his british accent and went towards an American accent.
He's also much younger
@@Nathan-gd7xq not really, just 6 years difference
Their mom is American and they are both dual U.S/British Citizens and grew up between both countries.Jonathan spent alot more time in the U.S.
he is, and he's also American. Just like Chris. Accent doesn't determine your nationality.
I mean... yeah a lot of the audience gets it but there was a lot that *I* didn't get and need explained to me about Nolan movies. 😂
That's when I go on RUclips and watch someone explain it to me lol, even more content