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 "Interstellar," out in U.S. theaters on Friday, has taken
Nolan into what he described as the furthest exploration of
space in film. The movie balances an intimate father-daughter
relationship within the backdrop of an intergalactic journey to
save mankind.
Nolan, 44, talked to Reuters about casting Oscar winner Matthew
McConaughey as his leading man, the challenges of constructing
"Interstellar" and the effect of "Gravity."
Q: What does Matthew McConaughey embody as Cooper?
A: He has the right stuff. Cooper, he's a pilot, and the
great thing about the American iconic figure of the pilot, the
Chuck Yeager, (is that) there's a little of the cowboy about
him. And I think Matthew embodies that wonderful, earthy sense
of an everyman who has great integrity and is extremely
competent, somebody you trust to guide you through this story
and take you through this journey.
Q: What was your biggest challenge in balancing an
intimate family story with an intergalactic journey?
A: The biggest challenge in that respect is creating a
reality on set so that the actors, who are very much the human
element of that - they're the intimate, emotional element of
that - so that they can actually connect with the larger scale
of the film, they can see it, touch it, taste it.
So we tried to build our sets not so much like sets, more like
simulators, so the actors could look out of the windows and see
the real views of what would be going on there, they could
experience the ship shaking and reacting as they flew it.
Q: Why did you choose to set 'Interstellar' in a future
that bears close resemblance to the present world?
A: I want to abandon the idea of futurism in design
because ... it requires an enormous amount of energy and design
that I felt could be better spent just achieving a recognizable
sense of reality. So we abandoned the idea of futurism in the
design and we said 'let's make everything comprehensible and
recognizable to today's audience.'
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 There are a lot of leaps we're asking the audience to make in
terms of engaging with a story which takes them places they
haven't been before, so I think rooting the basic design of the
film in the things that people know now is helpful.
Q: In "Interstellar," Earth faces a severe environmental
disaster brought on by the grounds drying up. Did you want to
address climate change?
A: Not consciously. The honest answer is we live in the same
world, my brother and I. We work on the script, we live in the same
world as everyone else so we're sort of affected by the same things,
worried about the same things, but we try not to be didactic in the
writing, we try not to give any particular message or sense of
things.
Q: What impact did Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" make on how
sci-fi films are viewed by critics and voters of film awards?
A: Obviously any time somebody succeeds in opening
people's eyes to the potential of the genre, it really helps the
people who follow to be able to capitalize on that. I did admit to
Alfonso that I'm one of the only people on the planet who actually
hasn't seen "Gravity," because it came out while I was in the middle
of making my own science fiction film so I apologized to Alfonso and
said 'I'm going to catch up with it when I'm done, but I don't want
to be confused by it.'
But I think his success with that film, it really helps people
working in the science fiction genre, because it just opens people's
eyes to its potential.
Q: How has this movie impacted your own theological or
ideological understandings of the world?
A: There's always that last question that people drop of
enormous things. I don't know yet, is the simple answer. I'm still
in it until it gets out there and becomes what it's going to be.
(Editing by Mary Milliken, Bernard Orr)
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