Essay: Why Christopher Nolan Doesn't Miss
How to maintain a singular vision
Christopher Nolan is famous for not having a smartphone or using email.
It’s often framed as an eccentricity, but I think it’s a bit more than that.
I believe it plays a fundamental role is his creative process.
Just not for the reason he thinks it does.
“I would lose those pockets of time that I really value where you’re just thinking, just sort of looking out the window and thinking about what your next film might be”
- Christopher Nolan
Losing time isn’t the main drawback of smartphone use vis-a-vis creativity and freeing up headspace isn’t the main benefit of avoiding it.
Creativity isn’t a quantitative thing; the negative affects on it can’t be measured by something as simple as time gained or lost.
All great works of art are the result of a singular creative genius.
Unfiltered and undistorted.
The second you add more than one set of hands to the pot is the exact moment when a masterpiece becomes a little bit less than.
And the more opinions you add to the mix, the worse it gets.
It devolves and devolves and devolves, until the end result is the plague of the modern era: slop.
The problem with using the internet is that you’re constantly bombarded by other people’s opinions.
The thoughts and ideas of the lowest common denominator assault your eyes and ears and psyche, chipping away at what makes you you until you as a concept and a creative being disappear entirely.
Imagine you have an idea or opinion about something. Maybe it’s a good one, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. The key point is that it came from your mind and your mind alone.
Then you post it somewhere on social media and watch the downvotes, hateful comments, and trolls pour in.
The more original and insightful your idea is, the worse the reaction will be.
You start to doubt yourself. “How can I be right and everyone else be wrong?”
And just like that, another interesting aspect of yourself gets subsumed by the tyranny of the average, never to be pursued again (even in the confines of your own skull).
“OK,” you think. “Maybe I just won’t post anything. I’ll consume content online but keep my thoughts and ideas to myself.”
This is even worse.
Because now any time you research anything, any time you go down one of the rabbit holes that the internet is famous for, you get assaulted by the lowest common denominator without even giving yourself a chance to put up a fight.
No one is strong enough to resist the weight of the lowest common denominator.
No one.
It’s in our nature as human beings to seek acceptance from others.
It takes extreme self-control to avoid seeing what the masses think.
This is a relatively new phenomenon.
And it’s what people are referring to when they make the observation that movies, music, art, and literature was better in past generations, whether they know it or not.
A writer used to write by sitting in front of a typewriter in a room by himself.
Now he writes by sitting in front of a computer. He’s still in a room, but he’s not by himself.
Because all he has to do is open up another tab and he’s in the company of the lowest-quality crowd the world has ever seen.
The written word is no longer the undistilled essence of an individual human soul transferred onto a page. Now when you read something you’re consuming words that have been distorted and neutered to the point where there’s nothing left other than desperation and palpable terror.
You can quite literally FEEL the fear when you read anything written in the past decade or so.
The words are watered-down. Any bold statement or expression of a unique POV is qualified in an attempt to preempt the critics.
Instead of thinking “how can I say what I want to say,” writers now think “how can I say what I want to say without getting any backlash”.
Other People’s Opinions are a black hole that consume a creative work before it even has a chance to form in your mind.
“I have this idea, but I know people on social media will sa-”
Stillborn.
“Maybe I shouldn’t word it like that, people online will misinterpret -”
Stillborn.
“Let me just open up a new tab and see what people on Reddit think about -”
NUCLEAR LEVEL STILLBORN.
How many works of creative genius were killed before they even saw the light of day thanks to the internet?
Even one would be too many.
And therein lies the genius of Christopher Nolan.
He’s never exposed to any of it.
Every movie he makes is imprinted with his DNA.
You can watch a Christopher Nolan movie and know with absolute 100% certainty that it’s a Cristopher Nolan movie, even if you don’t actually know.
All the greats are like this: David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, et. al. You know for an absolute fact that you’re watching one of their movies within five seconds of the opening scene.
You can learn from this if you want to create great works of art of your own. Find a way to limit the amount of Other People’s Opinions that you consume.
Make it so that anything you create is 100% you.
Straight-up not owning a phone or email address like Christopher Nolan might not be feasible, but there are ways to limit your exposure.
Then, maybe (and that’s a BIG maybe), you’ll have a chance of becoming one of the greats.
If you enjoy my writing you can also read my novel Your Life Does Not Exist, available in both physical and ebook editions.