Producer Emma Thomas

We don't want to suggest that a producer's job is ever easy but when you're working on a Chris Nolan film you must have incredible resources behind you in both financial and human terms. How does that change the job?

Well, it's interesting because when it comes down to it you never have enough money. If somebody's giving you a budget you have to deliver the absolute best film you can for that budget.

But I'd say working on a Chris Nolan film as a producer is somewhat easier on two fronts. First, we're really lucky we're working with the best people. They're at the absolute top of their game across the board, that's an amazing thing.

The other thing that makes my job easier as the producer on a Chris Nolan film is that Chris is very responsible filmmaker. He's also a producer so he has no interest in spending too much money. He takes the long term view. He wants to make the best film he can but he also wants to keep working. He's very easy to talk to about the ways we can be resourceful.

Can you talk about a particular example?

It's difficult to talk about specifics but generally speaking when you're getting down to budgeting, building a set for example, the art department might say 'it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build this'. He'll be able to look at it and say 'well, I don't think I'm necessarily going to need to shoot this corner of it. Maybe we can just build half of it'. He's incredibly constructive.

SSN: So you combined philosophy is to do the right thing by the studio as well as the audience?

Absolutely, because ultimately doing the right thing by the studio and the audience is doing the right thing by us too.

How hands on is a producer versus the exec producer credit we see so much of?

Generally speaking in the film industry there's no real formula for what an executive producer versus a producer does. Often the line producer is credited as an executive producer and they're as hands on as it's possible to be during the shooting period. When I've been listed as an executive producer I'm way less involved on a day to day basis.

It seems like the term 'producer' can be a spectrum.

Producer can be anything. It's why the Producers Guild of America has recently started doing the PGA mark. You literally have to fill out a form and say what you did, what you had responsibility for and only the producers that had a certain number of responsibilities get the PGA mark. And they didn't just ask you as a producer, they ask the people who worked with you.

Do you occasionally get a bit disdainful of people who only have to make one phone call and they get an exec producer credit?

Sometimes, and I'm sure that all producers feel this, that it is a little galling that sometimes people have credit and don't necessarily do as much. But I will say there are different areas of the job that have different challenges, and there's a good deal to be said for difficulty of setting a project up in the first place.

If you then aren't involved in every single aspect of the production it doesn't in anyway take away from what you did at the beginning. The same thing goes for work that you may do on set, the fact that you didn't do stuff in pre-production or in post, it doesn't necessarily take away from what you did there. I've personally never worked on a film where I didn't feel like everyone who got credits didn't deserve them.

Your credits include things like production coordinator and production secretary. Is it a bit like knowing every job on the factory floor and working your way up to producer?

I was very lucky. Basically when I left college in London I did work experience (interning) at Working Title, at that point was absolutely the biggest and pretty much only film company in London.

They had a great program where they would allow people to come and work for two weeks. You didn't get paid but you learnt an enormous amount. You were basically an office runner. I kept in touch with the people who worked there and managed to get a job as a receptionist, then I took different jobs within the company as they became available. I was an assistant to Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner.

I was working in the production department as in-house production coordinator keeping track of everything that the production coordinators were doing on the films they were working on. It was a really fantastic experience and I learnt an enormous amount about the way movies are made. I'd had no experience of that other than making student films at university. None of my family worked in the business or anything and I had absolutely no frame of reference for it whatsoever.

So it was a matter of getting in on the ground floor and working your way up?

Absolutely. Then while I was working at Working Title we were shooting Chris' first feature Following on weekends. When we finished Following there was no real film festival in England the way there is here, so we felt the best way to get the work out there was to bring it over here. Chris is a dual national so LA just seemed like it was the right place to be. Very fortuitously for me, Tim and Eric agreed that I could work in their LA office.

Is something the size of Interstellar or Inception more administration or more creative?

It's both. The thing I love about my job is that I'm involved in pretty much every single aspect of making a film, from the script, development, choosing the technicians that you're going to be working with, casting, the shoot and all the way through to the marketing. We're very involved with the marketing on our movies. It's creative and administrative processes that very much merge and I love that I get to stretch both muscles.

Anything you couldn't do with the space scenes that you really wanted to for whatever reason?

There's one thing we didn't get to do. There's an amazing documentary filmmaker called Toni Myers who's absolutely incredible. We talked a lot with her and we watched a lot of her films when we were researching Interstellar. She put us in touch with an astronaut that really helped us out.

She's actually making a film right now, which sounds like an amazing project, but we talked about the idea that maybe she could shoot some shots for us in space. It didn't end up working out because of the timing of when she was able to get her cameras up there.

It didn't work out for various reasons, but that would've been really fun to have a shot actually shot in space in Interstellar. But it's not anything that takes away from the film, the fact that we don't have it doesn't diminish the impact.

Did you get any tips from the guys who worked on Gravity, or at least get ideas from watching it?

We specifically didn't watch it, we were shooting Interstellar when Gravity and then it came out in cinemas and we very specifically didn't watch it because we didn't want to be reactive in any way to another film. But we were very excited to see how well it did and how engaged and excited people.

So you still haven't seen it?

Thomas: I actually still haven't seen it. But I'm going to.

What's the secret to the appeal of Chris Nolan's films?

Thomas: The thing I love about Chris' films is there's so much going on in them. I've watched his films many, many times, over and over again. Even now with Interstellar, I can't even imagine how many times I've seen it.

But I always get something new from it. And I don't think there are many filmmakers out there who are able to pack so much into their films and have their films be exciting and enjoyable experiences to watch. They can be appreciated on many different levels. Also ha makes films that he would like to watch so he's always thinking 'how would this play for an audience?'

Things have inevitably grown since the days of Memento and Following. Is there anything you miss about doing things at that level?

Every film has challenges in its own different way. There's something really great at this point to be making these big films that have very high visibility. We don't have to fight for attention in quite the same way that you are when you're making smaller films.

But I love the intimacy of those films, the smaller scale. I don't Chris is never going to make a smaller film again. One of these days he probably will when he finds the right story and that's the correct way to tell it. The Prestige was one where we jumped back into smaller scale filmmaking in between two very large ones [Batman Begins and The Dark Knight]. It was a great way of flexing that muscle and for me that's one of my favourite Chris Nolan films.

How do you keep the roles of producer and director when you're married and obviously so close?

One of the great things about working with Chris is he has an extremely clear-cut vision. He knows very much what he wants, he knows the film he's aiming for. My job in no way merges with that. My job is a facilitator for him. I help him fulfil that vision and put it up on screen. In many ways I'm filtering things out so he doesn't have to worry about things that might distract him from the pursuit of that film. They're very clearly differentiated roles in that way, but that's not to say he doesn't listen if I have opinions creatively because he does but he's definitely driving the ship.

Could you ever think about not working together?

There's a level of trust I'd really miss if I was working with somebody else. But I often think about sitting back and twiddling my thumbs and drinking cups of tea and reading a great book while he's off working.

But there's usually a time when we're tired and it's difficult to isolate our family life from the work life where I think 'maybe Chris could direct and somebody else will produce it and maybe I'll just take a break from the next one'. But then what happens every time is he'll figure out what he wants to do next or I'll hear what he's talking about and I'll think 'that sounds really fun'.

Does it make it difficult when you're parents? There must be months where you both literally never leave work.

The work/family balance is often difficult for everyone. It goes for anybody who has to make a living. I'm sure there are people who have far tougher jobs to combine their family life with than we do. We're very lucky because when we do work together we're able to bring our kids with us, which is great.

And the lovely thing about making films, that it's all cyclical. When you're shooting it's very intense and then post-production comes along and you're able to be around your family a lot more. Then there are breaks in between the movies. It's not like we work 9 to 5 every day of the year. So whatever thing you're doing at any given moment you know it's finite. You can look forward to that, but our kids might have a different answer to that question.

Do you have your next project lined up?

No.

You wouldn't tell us even if you did.

No, we really wouldn't.