Star director Steven Soderbergh
Jump-starting the career of “Oppenheimer” director Nolan
Star directors Steven Soderbergh (left) and Christopher Nolan.
© imago/APress / imago/PA Images
In an interview, Steven Soderbergh reported how he helped “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan with his career.
In addition to the mega-blockbuster “Barbie”, Christopher Nolan’s (53) atomic bomb drama “Oppenheimer” is one of the biggest hits in cinemas in 2023. Since its cinema launch on July 20, the bio-pic has grossed around 553 million dollars. in one In an interview with “Rolling Stone”, his colleague Steven Soderbergh (60, “Ocean’s Eleven”) reported how he helped today’s star director to make an unexpected career leap in 2000.
At the time, his initial help took place against the background that an executive of the film giant Warner Bros. showed no interest in negotiating with the up-and-coming talent Christopher Nolan about a possible directing contract for the planned thriller “Insomnia – Sleepless”. According to Soderbergh, this was because the studio boss didn’t like Nolan’s previously released film “Memento” – while he himself considered it a masterpiece.
Warner Bros. didn’t like Nolan’s “Memento”.
He told Rolling Stone what happened next: “What happened was I got a call from Chris’ agent Dan Aloni, who I knew because he screened ‘Memento’ for me after the film was released a year later I couldn’t find a distributor at the festivals. Dan called me out of the blue and said, ‘Can you see this film? I have a client of mine who has this film and we think it’s really good, but nobody wants him and we don’t understand why. Maybe we’re all crazy.’ I see the movie and I think it’s a bloody classic.”
“Go to the meeting!”
A few months later, he called Christopher Nolan’s agent again, who complained that Warner Bros., despite his request, would not accept an interview about possible directing work for the film adaptation of the promising screenplay for “Insomnia”. As Soderbergh reports, he immediately picked up the phone to personally take on the recalcitrant employee. “I called this manager and said, ‘Go to the meeting! You have to attend the meeting.'”
He was sure that his friend would emerge successfully from such a meeting: “I knew Chris well enough to know that if he walked into the room, he would get the job.” As film history shows, he was to be right.
“It was just a lucky constellation”
However, Soderbergh made it clear in the interview that Nolan would have had an equally impressive career without his help. “If he hadn’t done ‘Insomnia’,” says the director, “he would have done something else and still have the career that he has. It was just a lucky coincidence that I was able to call and speak up for him. “