Yesterday, a seemingly innocuous comment made by Anne Hathaway about Christopher Nolan’s behind-the-scenes rules blew up on social media. As we wrote, it appears, from the actress’ words, that the “Interstellar” filmmaker is not a fan of chairs on his set because they somehow impede folks’ work ethic.
Of course, social media being what it is, people took that quote and used it to paint the picture of Nolan either being a Batman-like figure traumatized by a tragic event involving sitting fueled by a deep hatred of chairs both big and small, and/or as an able-ist man that doesn’t believe people who require chairs are able to work as much as people who can stand for long hours. The discussion eventually included a third, very literal, investigative group that took this drama as an opportunity to do a deep dive into the history books and see if anyone can remember seeing a chair on the set of a Nolan film. The whole thing quickly blew out of proportion and ended up being a bit bonkers.
Thankfully, we can officially say that Chair-gate 2020 is over! Good news—chairs are definitely allowed on Nolan film sets! Just don’t try to use your phone or smoke.
As seen in a new statement from an official spokesperson for Nolan (via IndieWire), chairs are frequently used (just not by the filmmaker himself), but Nolan does have his own unique rules on set:
“For the record, the only things banned from [Christopher Nolan’s] sets are cell phones (not always successfully) and smoking (very successfully). The chairs Anne was referring to are the directors chairs clustered around the video monitor, allocated on the basis of hierarchy not physical need. Chris chooses not to use his but has never banned chairs from the set. Cast and crew can sit wherever and whenever they need and frequently do.”
Sadly, there was no additional statement about whether or not I’ll be able to risk my life to watch “Tenet” in theaters in August or if there’ll be another delay. But hey, at least Nolan isn’t a complete able-ist a-hole that forbids the use of simple furniture!
So, the Internet sleuths going through set photos, documenting the use of chairs to prove that Hathaway is a victim of the evil media outlets taking her words out of context can take a deep breath and relax. (I’ll have to figure out another way to take down the vile Anne Hathaway, my most bitter rival. Your day of reckoning will come!) And those who used this as a way to prove Nolan is a pretentious, capital-A Artiste will have to use another argument instead.
Now, if you’re just someone that thrives on outrage and anger, and you need a real target, there are plenty of those types of people that are terrible and deserve outrage for you to look at.
