Christopher Nolan on the brilliance of Robin Williams: “It’s scarily real”
Never spotted wearing anything other than his signature crisp suit, constantly carrying a Thermos full of tea around on set, and maintaining a level-headed, straight-laced, and stiff-upper-lipped approach to everything from shot composition to dealing with the press, Christopher Nolan is about as stereotypically British as directors can be.
He’s always been viewed as a decidedly stoic chap, which is and isn’t true, as oxymoronic as it sounds. Sure, Nolan isn’t going to be the type of filmmaker who plays practical jokes on his cast and crew members, drops witty one-liners in interviews, or bounds around with an endless amount of exuberance and enthusiasm, but he does have a surprising fondness for some very stupid movies.
Saturday Night Live spinoff MacGruber is a personal favourite, and Anne Hathaway even revealed that a clear sign he’s having a good day’s shooting is when he starts quoting lines. The Academy Award winner also has a soft spot for Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, loves a Fast & Furious flick and named Disney’s cult classic sci-fi adventure The Black Hole as one of his guilty pleasures.
With that in mind, being in close proximity to a modern comedy icon who gained worldwide fame and renown for their stream-of-consciousness riffing, heavily improvised asides, mastery of the stand-up circuit, and innate ability to tickle the funny bones of audience members from every generation seems like it would be right up his street.
It was, to a certain extent, when Robin Williams delivered one of the best performances of his career when Nolan cast him against type in the psychological serial killer thriller Insomnia. They hit it off creatively, but as the director explained to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he was thoroughly unmoved when the star used his downtime to indulge his inner showman.
“He likes to perform,” Nolan said. “He could see I wasn’t receptive to his comedy between takes, but he was always entertaining the crew. Then I’d say ‘action’, and he’d just go right into what he was doing. I’ve seen his performance many times, and it’s scarily real. There are moments when you don’t think he was acting at all.”
The mental image of Nolan standing there completely expressionless and probably a touch irritated while Williams spirals off on a tangent to boost the crew’s morale before the next take is an undeniably hilarious one, even if the Oscar-winning actor was more than good enough to switch off his more exuberant side to dial it right back as the sinister Walter Finch in the engrossing sun-bleached story of a dogged detective battling his own demons to try and bring a murderer to justice.
His taste in comedy films might be suitably rambunctious, but clearly, Nolan isn’t quite as enthusiastic when off-the-wall antics from a natural-born entertainer are unfolding right in front of him when he’s trying to work.
