Jonathan Nolan
Jonathan Nolan
Jonathan "Jonah" Nolanis a British-American screenwriter, television producer, director and author. He is the creator of the crime drama series Person of Interest. He has co-written several screenplays with his elder brother, filmmaker Christopher Nolan, including The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Interstellar, and his short story "Memento Mori" was the basis for Memento...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionWriter
mind trying use
I was struck by - Einstein's a fascinating figure who didn't have any instruments that he used, he didn't use telescopes, he used his mind to try to understand the universe.
actors needs just-saying
It can be easy for an actor to go "Well I really have to do a lot" and then just saying "I don't need to do anything, I'm not bound to do anything".
thinking people taste
I don't think you can guess what people will really like. You have to come at it from a more natural place and then kind of hope that your taste is shared by enough people to keep going.
revenge memories paranoia
I've always been interested in themes of memory, paranoia, and revenge.
tvs marathon discovering
TV is, as I'm discovering now, a marathon. You have to keep going and going and going.
way matter projects
I always love it best when you have a project where there is this commingling of the subject matter and the way in which you're recording that subject matter.
character years lasts
For me, the attraction of TV is that you continue to get to tell those stories and refine those characters. The other thing is that TV, in the last years, got really, really, really good.
character television different
Television is very different than working on film. With films, you get to develop a set of characters, and then, at the end of the film, you have to throw them away.
tv-shows tvs shows
The thing about working on a TV show is that it becomes, very quickly, all consuming.
understanding instruments humans
We are the only instrument for understanding the universe. We have to ground it in human beings.
long joy what-if
When J.J. [Abrams] called Lisa [Joy] and myself, he pitched us this idea of, what if we turn the structure around and started with the hosts. For us, that gave us a way to play with everything that we're interested in, all at once. It's the ultimate playground for us because we deal with questions about artificial intelligence, which is something I've long been fascinated by, but also human intelligence, or the lack thereof, human behavior, and interactive, immersive storytelling.
dream writing order
I was definitely looking for a reason to impose rules in the story during the writing process... a set of reasons that you could graph for why it's not chaos and anarchy - for why it has to be order, and why you need architects and an architectural brain to create the world of the dream for the subject to enter.
people quality host
You'd have a quality insurance department, where they're making sure there aren't any glitches or weird things, and that the guests have a great experience and seamless experience. You'd also have security. So, we laid out the corporate structure, and then we cherry-picked from that the people who would be brought into the most conflict and the most day-to-day relationship with each other and with the hosts.
over-you trying matter
Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. You have to trust me. If this moment is repeated enough, if you keep trying — and you have to keep trying — eventually you will come across the next item on your list.