Young British director Christopher Nolan won acclaim with his first two movies, "Following" and "Memento". The atmospheric crime thriller "Insomnia", which stars Al Pacino as an LAPD detective investigating a murder in Alaska, with Robin Williams as the prime suspect, is his first mainstream Hollywood film.
"Memento" was a surprise hit. Did its success help you get the job directing "Insomnia"?
Obviously there's a lot of hype in Hollywood, a lot of jumping on bandwagons. But the truth is that we were shooting "Insomnia" before "Memento" was released in the States.
What was it like working with Al Pacino and Robin Williams?
I've grown up watching these guys on screen; they're complete legends to me. Going to meet Pacino was really rather scary. But he's very aware of all the baggage he carries. He's aware that somebody like me coming into the room for the first time is terrified of him, so he immediately puts you at ease.
Pacino, Williams and their co-star, Hilary Swank, have very different acting backgrounds. How did they work together?
Their methods are incredibly different. They all required different things: different levels of rehearsal, different numbers of takes. What I found is that with really talented actors there's a very natural, almost unconscious, ability to mesh their style of performance with the other actors. My job is just to help that along.
Robin Williams is a surprising choice for the film. How did that come about?
Robin's name came up when we'd already cast Pacino. We're sitting there saying, "OK, we've cast Pacino as a veteran cop, and that establishes a very large presence, a monolithic figure, at the centre of the movie. And yet the second half of the film is all about the tension between two characters of equal weight. How do we balance Pacino's presence with somebody who's similarly interesting as a movie star - but for completely different reasons?" When Robin's name came up I immediately thought it was a fantastic idea, but I always assumed somebody would say, "No, he’s a comedian." But no one did.
Williams' role is something of a departure for him, isn't it?
I wasn't interested in any kind of inversion of his comic persona, some kind of manic villain. What I wanted him to do, and what he was excited to do, was to play a character the likes of someone he's never played before - an unexceptional character. He's a guy who, if he was sitting next to you on the bus, you wouldn't give a second glance. Robin's never done that before. He's played bad guys before, he's done dramatic roles, but he's never played somebody utterly ordinary.
