Movie: Insomnia

Director: Christopher Nolan 

Starring: Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Christopher Nolan is sleeping soundly these days. The director of the surprise indie phenomenon, Memento, just released his first major
studio movie, Insomnia.

Insomnia stars Al Pacino as a sleep-deprived veteran L.A. cop with a shady past.  While investigating a murder in Alaska, his partner is fatally shot. This forces Pacino's character, Will Dormer, into a compromising relationship with the main suspect. And if watching Pacino in a great role is not reason enough to see this movie, try this: Robin Williams plays a killer! Mork playing the bad guy could very well do to Williams' career what Pulp Fiction did to Travolta's. 

When we met Nolan at a downtown San Francisco hotel, he seemed prepared to talk about anything. Knowing he'd just worked with one of the greatest actors of all time, was responsible for turning Robin Williams into a villain and is the brains behind Memento, the most intellectually intriguing movie in the last few years, you can guess what was on our own pedantic, sleep-deprived minds.

The Wave: What's the longest you've gone without sleep?

Christopher Nolan: Only about two days straight, which is nothing compared to the character in the film, who was awake for six. That's when you start hallucinating. We actually had a doctor on the set to ask what behaviors an insomniac might cling to. In the film, Al Pacino's character is always chewing a lot of gum because that activity keeps your mind partially distracted from the fact that you haven't slept.

TW: Speaking of Pacino, his role seems like a really good fit. It accentuates his ability to balance anger and calmness. How much of that was already in the script?

CN: It was already there, but I wrote more of it in when Al came on. To me, it was the interior nature of the character that was interesting. And he totally got that. He came to the project very keen to express all of these interior processes. As a director, when you meet Pacino, you have to convince him to be in the film. The big question from him is always: Why me? Why not someone else? The answer, at least for this project, is you need someone who can project moral intelligence—someone who can't talk to anyone about what's going on, who can't actually express what he's doing. It's all got to be there in the eyes. He's one of the only actors who has this ability. He amazed me every single day on the set.

TW: How much direction did you give him?

CN: Not much. He doesn't need to be told how to do anything. There's no question: He's the greatest living actor. All he needs to know is what the character is thinking, how the character is part of the narrative as a whole. For me, as a filmmaker, he's very much on your side.

TW: This is a departure for Robin ''Patch Adams'' Williams. How did you feel about casting him?

CN: I was really excited. Pacino and I had been sitting around racking our brains wondering who would be a good fit for the role. We had to find someone who could balance the persona of Pacino's bad cop character with his own character as a bad guy. When [Williams] came up, we thought it was perfect. I figured, however, that someone higher up would say we couldn't cast Robin. But no one did. Everyone seemed to know he'd be great. And when I met him, he'd read the character the way I intended, which is that he's not really a bad guy, but he's totally ordinary. He's very uninteresting.

TW: Did you ever want to strangle him on the set for talking too much?

CN: He was very respectful of my process. He knows that directors have a million things going on, so I couldn't enjoy the humor that he gives the crew on a daily basis. He was actually quiet a lot because I think he knew he had to get in a more subdued frame of mind to play the
character.

TW: The original movie, though very popular in Norway, was a relatively small production. You've remade it with a big budget. With a bigger budget, what were your objectives?

CN: The original is brilliant. It's perfectly realized. It's un-improvable and complete. What I wanted to do was to expand an idea I had while watching the original, which is: if you take the same psychological situations and apply it to a large studio Hollywood movie that takes the iconic cop figure of American cinema, it will change the audience's relationship to the protagonist and use the situation for a completely different moral paradox. So, to me, it's a different film.

TW: Is working with a bigger budget constraining or liberating?

CN: It's both at the same time. It's very liberating in a technical sense—especially when you get into areas of sound mixing. Also, you can say, ''Gee, it would be great if there was a house right here next to this glacier,'' and they'll just build it. As far as being constricting, I didn't feel that on this film. I knew it was going to be made within a certain studio context—since my purpose was to see how the Hollywood form would affect the original.

TW: You added an extra dimension to this film that the original didn't have: Al Pacino's character as a bad cop with a shady history. Whose idea was this?

CN: The writer came up with it very early on. But as soon as Pacino came on board, he was instrumental in pushing it further than it had been originally written. With this added dimension, the entire film feels like the last act of a story—you feel like you're coming in two-thirds of the way through. This really fascinated me.

TW: The theme of perception runs through all three of your films. That is, in all of them, the protagonist is working from a set of perceptions that aren't exactly accurate.  Why is this an interest of yours?

CN: One of the things that fascinates me about making films is trying to convey alternate perceptions of stories. Cinema is very good at that. It takes you outside the self. So for me, it's interesting to try to make people see the world in a slightly different way.

TW: What's the biggest thing you learned, going from an independent to a studio film?

CN: People ask about making a studio film as if independents don't have the same problems. They do. There are just as many people in suits hanging around the set. Memento was a $5 million film. Nobody gives you that kind of money without making sure you're doing what you said you were going to do. It's just the nature of the story you take on may be of a slightly different angle and given the size of the perceived audience, the film doesn't have to be so universal.

TW: What do you have to say to people who, three minutes into Memento, got bored or gave up on understanding it?

CN: I was amazed by the size of the audience who responded to that film. We made the film small. We made it for a core audience, for people like myself, who are interested in that kind of complexity—something that would throw you into confusion and uncertainty. As it is, the film reached so many more people than we ever envisaged, so I can't get passionate about people who don't like it. It was always meant to be different from the mainstream and, by definition, that's bound to alienate some people.

TW: What's the most common question you're still asked about Memento?

CN: I've always been asked, ''Did he kill his wife?'' But people these days ask as if they know I'm not going to answer it, so now the question is always prefaced with, ''I know you're not going to answer this, but85''