Christopher Nolan is one of the greatest directors of Hollywood, known for his extraordinary vision and remarkable storytelling. His recent film Oppenheimer was received well at the box office and has been critically acclaimed for its cinematography. Some of the other classics of the filmmaker include The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Inception, Memento, and The Prestige, among others. The director made his career debut with the 1998 film Following.
However, the truth behind the story is quite scary, and the director recalled in an interview about being a victim of a similar crime.
The real story behind Christopher Nolan’s noir thriller Following
The movie Following was the first directorial feature of Christopher Nolan. It was made with a shoestring budget. The film was written, produced, edited, and directed by Nolan. He also assisted in editing and production. The director once revealed that the story of the film was inspired by a real-life incident in his life.
The story of the film was about a writer, who used to stalk people to use their life stories for his work. He got the idea by just being around people. It became interesting and exciting when Nolan became a victim of a real crime.
Christopher Nolan shared with Mental Floss,
“You’d go out of your flat and you’d be surrounded by people. I became interested in the idea of looking at individuals and saying, ‘What’s that person’s story?’ Right around that time, somebody broke into the flat.”
Nolan got the inspiration for his film from the incident, he shared,
“I realized that the door was just plywood, and that was never keeping anybody out. What was keeping people out was the social protocols that we have that allow us to live together. I was interested in the certain types of people who would stop observing those protocols, and why that would be.”
The neo-noir crime thriller film was released in 1998.
Also read- Unparalleled Brilliance: Christopher Nolan’s Top 10 Films That Transcend Boundaries
Christopher Nolan was disappointed by Following’s nickname
Tenet director has put in a lot of effort for his film Following. He was just starting at the time and had to work on a modest budget for managing his finances. He shot the film in small parts for a year. He recalled in a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter,
“We would shoot every Saturday. I worked out that I could pay, out of my own money, for about 10 minutes of footage each Saturday, for a certain number of Saturdays, spread over a year. We only did one or two takes, and we would have a 70-minute film at the end.”
After completing the film, Nolan and his wife, Emma Thompson, showed their film at festivals. Nolan shared,
“In the end, we got accepted to the San Francisco Film Festival, and that was sort of the beginning of it for us. We took the film from San Francisco to Toronto to Slamdance. We got distribution through a company called Zeitgeist.”
However, he realized that the film was referred to by a unique name that he disliked,
“When I was going around the festival circuit with Following, very often people would refer to my film as a calling card film,’ and I found that very frustrating. My comment at the time was, ‘If you want to make a calling card, you go to Kinkos. You don’t spend three years of your life putting a film together.’ The act of making that film was ‘filmmaking,’ to me, and it was as valid and still is as valid as everything I do today.”
The film cast included Jeremy Theobald, John Nolan, Alex Haw, Lucy Russell, Emma Thomas, Tristan Martin, and others. It has grossed $240,495 worldwide.
Following is available for streaming on AMC+ and Tubi.
Source-The Hollywood Reporter
