Christopher Nolan Says He Would Never Make One of His Most Underrated Movies Again
The British director had a long way of getting bigger budgets, starting from $6.000 and recently ending up with $250 million.
Christopher Nolan ’s name has been long associated with major big-budget blockbusters like The Dark Knight, Interstellar or Oppenheimer, but he wasn’t that lucky to kick his career off with a full piggy bank.
In fact, the director’s first ever movie released back in 1998 was quite close to not being made at all, yet it still found success with both critics and viewers, remaining the first ever demonstration of Nolan’s unique directorial vision.
However, despite all the acclaim that the film eventually received, the whole project turned out to be quite a traumatic experience for Nolan himself, which, as he once reassured everyone, he would never be eager to repeat.
Christopher Nolan Had Hard Times Filming Following
It might be difficult to imagine something like this 27 years and 2 Oscars later, but Nolan’s first ever movie, a 1998 neo-noir crime thriller titled Following, was a very, again, very low-budget flick that barely made it to being finished.
To start with, Following had a cast and crew that mostly comprised the then aspiring director’s friends and relatives, with whom he spent long days rehearsing scene by scene making sure that everyone knew their lines perfectly and he wouldn’t need to reshoot each sequence several times.
Additionally, Nolan shot Following in black and white, trying to avoid additional expenses for lighting setups that make the colours look way better when they’re carpeted by a camera.
Ultimately, the movie cost Nolan around $6.000 and received universal acclaim, which is a stunning success for a flick that almost has no budget at all; however, the entire experience of filming Following was quite a torture not only for exhausted actors, but also for Nolan himself.
“I would never try to do something like that. It was mad, really. But that’s the joy of when you’re first starting out—you don’t know the restrictions you’re putting on your actors and they just rose to it and gave these great performances”, Nolan admitted once while talking to an audience at the IFC Centre back in 2012.
Following Still Paved the Way for Christopher Nolan’s Brilliant Career
Despite being the director’s first ever experience of helming a movie, Following was a hit that predetermined Nolan’s future career as one of the best filmmakers of modern times.
With a budget of $6.000, the film grossed around $126.000 in theatres, reassuring Nolan that he had all the possible approval to move on to his next project, a psychological thriller Memento.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Following is still a certified and unfairly forgotten gem with 83% and 85% of positive reviews from critics and audiences respectively. Holding the status of a film that started it all for Nolan, Following is still one of the most underrated, yet finest movies ever helmed by the proclaimed director.