Famously, Christopher Nolan, whose The Odyssey is currently walking all over the competition at the box office, doesn’t like cell phones. He doesn’t use one, and he bans them from his sets. It turns out that’s not the only bit of modernity that he doesn’t want on set. He apparently bans the ubiquitous boots, UGGs, from his working environment as well. He was asked about it on CBS Mornings and related why he doesn’t like actors turning up to set in the footwear. I’ll be honest, I’m with him on this, but maybe for different reasons.
Christopher Nolan’s Philosophy Is Kind Of Like Method Directing
Method acting is when an actor tries to completely disappear into a character, even when the cameras aren’t rolling. It’s a craft practiced by many of the best actors in the world, perhaps most famously used by Daniel Day-Lewis. It can be seen as mercurial and often obnoxious, but you can’t argue with success. Nolan, it turns out, brings some of that same thought process to his director’s chair and is seen acutely with the UGGs ban. He doesn’t want actors wearing them when they arrive to shoot a scene. Here’s what he said when asked why by CBS Mornings host Gayle King:
It’s a joke I had with Emily Blunt and Anne [Hathaway] before then is sometimes actors will turn up — ‘cause the footwear hurts them — so they’ll turn up in these, you know, big, fluffy, comfy slippers. And the funny thing is, you can be on a set where you’ve got a guy holding a microphone, you’ve got a giant camera, you’ve got crew everywhere. But something like that can actually weirdly take you out of reality.
It’s easy to imagine how “real” some of Nolan’s set pieces feel, given his preference to avoid CGI and rely on practical effects. Showing up to the ancient city of Troy in a pair of trendy footwear could pull everyone on set out of the “reality” of the ancient Mediterranean. Nolan added:
And, for me, I think that’s always been something where it’s like if someone’s eating a bag of chips off-camera or something. You know, there are certain things that just remind you you’re in the real world as opposed to the world we’re trying to create for the actors. I want to stay in the moment. We want the actors to stay in the moment. And so, for me, the UGG boots are a signifier of modernity, absurd, though, that is.
This kind of thing might come across as pretentious or even a little silly, but for me it’s easy to understand. While some method acting goes to the extreme, it serves a real artistic purpose, just like this type of “method directing.” Nolan wants everyone on set to be in tune to what is happening in any given scene, and I’m sure it can be easy to lose focus, if only for a moment when distracted by something so “today.” This is probably especially true in a period epic like The Odyssey, which may be part of the 2025 movie schedule, but is very much of a different era.
For me, I think the shoes are ugly, so for that reason, I’m on board with Nolan’s decision to ban them from his sets, even if he actually thinks UGGs are “great.”
