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Nolan pitched the film in 2001 after Memento and made the Batman films first; his treatment ran 80 pages; it is one of two original stories he has told; it was influenced by The Matrix, Dark City and The 13th Floor; the hotel hallway was a rotating 100-foot corridor on eight rings driven by two motors; Pete Postlethwaite was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009 and died six months after release
In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:24:00Read transcript
- Nolan first pitched the film in 2001 right after Memento but felt he lacked the experience for a production this complex, so he made the Batman movies first and honed the script; his original treatment was eighty pages, around script length.
- An eighty-page treatment would be an eighty-minute movie, which makes sense for a convoluted story that needs explaining to producers who must price it; Nolan is also in love with his own ideas and this is one of only two original stories he has told, the rest being comics, novels or, with Dunkirk, real life. — Sean Fennessey
- A treatment is explained as a long synopsis of stage direction and plot summary, with highlighted set pieces, used to get a production company to sign on; the hosts wonder whether the pitch already included the scene where Cobb, the director figure, yells at Arthur, the producer figure, over the armed projections, a self-reflexive streak that makes one host like the film less.
- Because of when the script was written the film was influenced by late-nineties and early-aughts mindbenders like The Matrix, Dark City and The 13th Floor; for the hotel scenes the filmmakers built a fully rotatable hallway that grew from forty to a hundred feet, suspended on eight concentric rings and driven by two electric motors.
- Pete Postlewaite (as transcribed), who played the elder Fisher, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009 and died six months after the film's release while playing a character dying of cancer, which is eerie to watch later.
- Flagged early for this segment: Nolan spent almost ten years on the script after realizing the character's emotional motivations had to be central.