It’s not a stretch to call Christopher Nolan one of the best filmmakers working in Hollywood today (depending on who you ask) and someone who draws in Ocsar-level talent like Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman like nerds to Batman movies. But like most movie geniuses, Christopher Nolan has a particular series of quirks and his one is especially weird because he apparently hates having chairs on his film sets.
Speaking of movies, the GOAT team dive right into the MCU on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
Appearing on Variety‘s ‘Actors On Actors’ series, old mates and Les Misérables co-stars Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman got chatting about their latest projects, what it was like making their movie-musical, and what it was like working with Christopher Nolan (which is what we’re here for, let’s be honest).
Partway through their entertaining hour-long chat, Anne brought up the fun fact that Hugh had worked with three directors who don’t allow mobile phones on set: Denis Villeneuve, Darren Aronofsky, and of course, Nolan.
This in turn led to Anne revealing that Christopher Nolan also doesn’t allow chairs on his set because his reasoning is “if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working.”
On the surface, this “no chairs on set” rule from Christopher Nolan comes off as a bit of a dick because no allowing cast and crew to sit while on set sounds unethical and borderline abusive, especially if some people can’t stand for hours at a time (which is expected on a film set) due to a medical and/or physical condition.
It could also just be an exaggerated story told as a joke by Anne to Hugh since their ‘Actors On Actors’ chat is basically press.
The question now how seriously should we take this ridiculous sounding chair-phobia anecdote about Christopher Nolan from Anne Hathaway. Everyone is fighting to work with him and those who have come out of the experience with nothing but glowing words. But then again, the same can be said of Quentin Tarantino and he’s definitely a bit of an arsehole, especially with what he did to Uma Thurman on the set of Kill Bill.
Either way, the internet had an absolute field day with Nolan’s apparent chair-hate as some made some fantastic jokes about it while others took things more seriously and criticised the director for being a bit of a knob.
I have to admit, the online discourse of Christopher Nolan and his supposed hate of chairs on his film sets is definitely not one I expected to see today. This is certainly going to change how we view his latest film, Tenet, since people are now going to keep an eye out for every scene that has a chair or an actor sitting rather than, you know, focusing on the film itself.
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