Jonathan Nolan’s career in the entertainment industry has been almost always linked to his brother, Christopher. However, in recent years, Jonathan has stepped out of the very large shadow of his filmmaking brother and found success on TV. Starting as a creator, writer, producer on CBS’ long-running “Person of Interest,” it appears that Nolan has found his stride on his most recent series “Westworld.” And in a new AMA on Reddit, Nolan took time to share an interesting link between the popular HBO show and his famous ‘Batman’ collaborations with his brother.
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Some might say that pop songs are overused in trailers, nowadays. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even good enough to just use a song in a trailer, but instead, have to use some sort of slow, moody cover. But one filmmaker who doesn’t subscribe to either of those trends is Chris Nolan. He’s so adamant on not using recognizable songs in his films, or trailers, that he turned down a suggestion from his brother Jonathan.
You see, Jonathan Nolan thought that the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black” would fit perfectly in the trailers for one of their ‘Dark Knight’ films, which he co-wrote with his brother. As he explains, Chris just wasn’t on board with the idea (via Reddit):
“I worked in the movies for years with my brother and he was never very keen on using popular music. Which I totally get. The music he was creating for the films with Hans was so beautiful and purpose built for each moment that it didn’t need any help. But I would always have suggestions and thoughts for what music we could be using. I write listening to music (Lisa doesn’t — every writer is different) and I would have these extensive lists of things I thought would work. One example — I tried for ten years to convince Chris to do a trailer for one of our Batman films using Paint it Black. It’s an iconic song, and it’s been used before, and I understood why he wasn’t interested.”
In your head, you can clearly see a trailer for “The Dark Knight” where a version of “Paint it Black” would have been used. Sure, it would have made for a pretty fun trailer, but in retrospect, maybe Chris was right with not using the song. But still, we can probably expect a few hundred fan-made trailers popping up in the coming weeks using the song.
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All hope wasn’t lost, however, as Nolan explains how he finally got to use the song in “Westworld,” But after ten years, I knew I wanted to use that song somewhere… So Ramin [Djawadi, composer] and I started talking about how we could use it in the pilot, but adapted for our nefarious purposes.”
So there you have it, “The Dark Knight’s” loss was “Westworld’s” gain.
Here’s Ramin Djawadi’s version of “Paint it Black” from “Westworld:”