The Science of Interstellar

At last negotiations began, far, far above my pay grade. Christopher Nolan would direct only if Paramount would share the movie with Warner Bros., the studio that had made his last few movies, so a deal—an extremely complex deal—had to be struck between the two studios, normally rivals.

Finally, on December 18, 2012, Lynda e-mailed: “par and warners agreed to terms. Well chop my liver! starting in spring!!!” And from then on, with Interstellar in Christopher Nolan’s hands, so far as I could tell all was clear sailing. At last! Clear, fun, and invigorating.

Christopher knew Jonah’s screenplay well. They are brothers, after all, and had talked as Jonah wrote. They have a phenomenally successful history of collaborating on screenplays: The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises. Jonah writes the initial drafts, and then Christopher takes over and rewrites, thinking carefully about how he will film each scene as he crafts it on paper.

With Interstellar now fully in Christopher’s own hands, he combined Jonah’s script with the script from another project he’d been working on, and he injected a radically fresh perspective and a set of major new ideas—ideas that would take the movie in unexpected new directions.

In mid-January, Chris, as I soon came to call him, asked to meet me one-on-one in his office at Syncopy, his movie production company on the Warner Bros. lot.

As we talked, it became clear that Chris knew a remarkable amount of relevant science and had deep intuition about it. His intuition was occasionally off the mark, but usually right on. And he was tremendously curious. Our conversations often diverged from Interstellar to some irrelevant science issue that fascinated him.

In that first meeting, I laid on Chris my proposed science guidelines: Nothing will violate firmly established laws of physics; speculations will all spring from science. He seemed positively inclined, but told me that if I didn’t like what he did with the science, I didn’t have to defend him in public. That shook me up a bit. But with the movie now in postproduction, I’m impressed how well he followed those guidelines, while making sure they didn’t get in the way of making a great movie.

Chris worked intensely from mid-January to early May rewriting Jonah’s screenplay. From time to time he or his assistant, Andy Thompson, would phone me and ask that I come to his office or his home to talk about science issues, or come to read a new draft of his screenplay and then meet to discuss it. Our discussions were long, typically ninety minutes, sometimes followed by long phone calls a day or two later. He raised issues that made me think. As when working with Jonah, my best thinking was in the dead of night. The next morning I would write up my thoughts in a several-paged memo with diagrams and pictures, and hand carry them to Chris. (Chris worried about our ideas leaking out and spoiling his fans’ mounting anticipation. He’s one of the most secretive filmmakers in Hollywood.)

Chris’s ideas occasionally seemed to violate my guidelines but, amazingly, I almost always found a way to make them work, scientifically. Only once did I fail miserably. In response, after several discussions over a two-week period, Chris backed off and took that bit of the film in another direction.

So in the end I have no qualms about defending what Chris did with the science. On the contrary, I’m enthusiastic! He turned into reality Lynda’s and my dream of a blockbuster movie with foundations of real science, and with real science woven throughout its fabric.

In the hands of Jonah and Chris, Interstellar’s story changed enormously. It resembles Lynda’s and my treatment only in broadest brushstrokes. It is so much better! And as for the science ideas: they are not all mine by any means. Chris brought remarkable science ideas of his own to the film, ideas that my physicist colleagues will assume were mine, ideas that I said to myself, when I saw them, Why didn’t I think of that? And remarkable ideas arose from my discussions with Chris, with Jonah, and with Lynda.

^{Fig. 1.2. Kip and Christopher Nolan talking on set in the Endurance’s control module.}

One April evening, Carolee and I threw a big party for Stephen Hawking at our home in Pasadena, with a diverse crowd of a hundred people: scientists, artists, writers, photographers, filmmakers, historians, schoolteachers, community organizers, labor organizers, business entrepreneurs, architects, and more. Chris and Emma came, as well as Jonah Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy, and of course Lynda. In the late evening, we stood together for a long time on a balcony, under the stars, far from the party noise, talking quietly—my first opportunity to get to know Chris as a man, rather than a filmmaker. It was so enjoyable!