How Steven Soderbergh helped launch Christopher Nolan’s career

He liked Memento so much that he personally contacted Warner Bros to defend Nolan’s interests.

After being noticed with Following in 1999, then Memento in stride, Christopher Nolan seeks to carve out a place in Hollywood. As he prepares to realize insomniaremake of the eponymous 1997 film by Erik Skjoldbjaerg, Warner Bros would not even have wanted to meet him, because of an unfavorable opinion on Memento. bad luck because Steven Soderbergh was a huge fan of the film. The director of the saga Ocean’s then told, in a long interview with Rolling Stone, how he used his fame and contacts to put pressure on the producer. And the anecdote begins with a simple phone call…

“What happened was I got a call from Chris’s agent, Dan Aloni, who I knew because he screened Memento after he couldn’t find a distributor. He called me out of the blue and said: could you watch this movie?he explained, speaking of the thriller that, at the time, no one wanted to hear about.

Steven Soderbergh then contacted Warner Bros directly, regretting the fact that no one wanted such a brilliant script. “I saw the movie and thought it was an instant fucking classic. You need to join the reunion”, he said he insisted. We can say that he will have convinced, with an appointment finally won which will give rise to a crush, he explains with humility:

“So he (Christopher Nolan) did Insomnia and started his relationship with Warner Brothers. So the only thing I did was allow him to come into the room.”

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A friendship that Christopher Nolan could count on, although Soderbergh claimed that he would still have been successful if he had not realized insomnia. The film which stars Al Pacino in the role of a detective immersed in a game of cat and mouse with a killer (Robin Williams) in the town of Nightmute, Alaska, ultimately earned Nolan two Oscar nominations. It grossed $113 million worldwide, and marked the start of a career-defining relationship with Warner Bros. Steven Soderbergh also said he was very happy with the “massive success” ofOppenheimer as a blockbuster directed by a director from the independent world…just like 20 years ago.

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