Given the box office takings and critical acclaim of Interstellar, Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy, it might be difficult to imagine a time when Christopher Nolan was ever a struggling filmmaker.
But the director offered some hope to emerging creatives in London on Wednesday, explaining how his seemingly stratospheric rise to blockbuster glory wasn?t an entirely easy ride.
Speaking at a BAFTA event to launch the 2015 edition of Breakthrough Brits, the Academy?s annual initiative that celebrates and supports rising stars of the U.K.?s film, TV and gaming industries, Nolan described the difficulties that followed finishing 2000?s psychological thriller Memento, his first big-budget feature after his self-financed debut, Following.
"We organized a big distribution screening in LA the weekend all the distributors were coming to town for the Spirit Awards," he said. ?But every distributor passed [on it] in one night, nobody wanted it. Some of the distributors were really awful to us, actually, and said they?d walked out of the film. It was a really, really tough ride? pretty devastating."??
