Christopher Nolan says he doesn't carry a smartphone or use email, and writes his scripts on a computer that has no internet
- Christopher Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter that he writes scripts on a computer with no internet.
- The "Oppenheimer" director said he could be called a "Luddite" because he didn't have a smartphone.
Christopher Nolan says he doesn't carry a smartphone, gets his assistant to handle his emails, and writes his scripts on a computer without an internet connection.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter alongside Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Matt Damon, the "Oppenheimer" director said he preferred doing things the old-school way.
"My kids would probably say I'm a complete Luddite," Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Friday. "I would actually resist that description. I think technology and what it can provide is amazing. My personal choice is about how involved I get."
The "Oppenheimer" director said he wasn't averse to technology but found it distracting from his work.
"If I'm generating my material and writing my own scripts, being on a smartphone all day wouldn't be very useful for me," Nolan said.
Nolan said his preference for doing things the analog way even extended to the methods he used to send his scripts to actors.
Instead of using email, the 52-year-old filmmaker told The Hollywood Reporter that he would rather personally deliver scripts by hand; Nolan said he even flew to Ireland to see Murphy and waited for the actor to read the script.
"People will say, 'Why do you work in secrecy?' " Nolan said. "Well, it's not secrecy, it's privacy. It's being able to try things, to make mistakes, to be as adventurous as possible. And to be able to sit with somebody who's just read what you've written and get their take on it, see how they connect with it in a very human, face-to-face way."
This wasn't the first time the British-American director had spoken about his technological preferences.
Nolan told People magazine in December 2020 that he had "a little flip phone" that he brought with him "from time to time" because he didn't want easy access to the internet when he got bored.
In October 2014, The New York Times also reported that Nolan didn't have an email address and that his assistant handled his emails and printed the important ones for him to read.