Christopher Nolan Talks 'Interstellar' (with a Little Help from his Friends)

"Interstellar's" all-star cast includes Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain in the leads, with supporting roles from Michael Caine, Matt Damon, Topher Grace, John Lithgow, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley and Ellen Burstyn. But the film's biggest star is the man behind the camera.

Director Christopher Nolan is one of Hollywood's most acclaimed and enigmatic directors. His breakthrough Sundance hit "Memento" tested the boundaries of linear storytelling, and his Batman movies reinvented the superhero genre. Since the success of his Dark Knight trilogy, Nolan has been able to maintain secrecy about his films, which left audiences trying to figure out "Inception" for themselves.

His latest, as the title suggests, is a "space odyssey" about a team of astronauts and scientists (McConaughey, Hathaway and Chastain) out to save humankind through space travel. In the script, written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, Earth is dying and NASA, in something of a cosmic Hail Mary pass, sends astronauts out to search the universe for a habitable planet. However, the film is as much about what those on the mission leave behind as what they discover.

"It was very clear that at the heart of the story there was this great family relationship," Nolan said. "We found that the more you explored the cosmic scale of things, the further out into the universe you went, the more focus came down to who we are as people and what are the connections between us. We use the exploration of the universe as a lens through which to view ourselves as human beings, I suppose."

Space family values

McConaughey plays Cooper, a jet pilot-turned-farmer who leaves his teenage son and 10-year old daughter for the mission. With children himself, the actor could relate. "Let me tell you this, I'm in a fortunate position because my family gets to come with me when I head off. Or if I leave them behind, it is only for a month or so. That's a more minor situation than we have with Cooper. Let me bring it back to family real quick. If you take a snapshot of this panel, we've got some Nolan lineage up here and they all are experts of what they did on the film. Chris has a daughter, so it was apparent to me early on that this was about family, that this was about parents and children.

"I think that's obviously where the aorta of the film emotionally sits," he continued. "Even if you're not parents, you have parents and you've been in those situations where there's a certain kind of goodbye. Nothing, hopefully, as extreme as in the film, but that's what I think everyone latches onto. It is the common denominator that everyone can understand."

"Interstellar" comes at the peak of McConaughey's career renaissance. After languishing in popular but unmemorable romantic comedies, McConaughey took stock of his choices and began a career path that included the films "Mud" and "Dallas Buyers Club, "and the HBO series "True Detective." His strategy paid off: last year he won the Best Actor Oscar for "Dallas Buyers Club."

Obsessions

When approached by Nolan, he quickly saw that they shared something in common. "One thing that Chris and I talked about very early on in our approach was being obsessed," McConaughey recalled. "That the job that you're doing right now could be the last one, or you should at least approach it like it could be. That's a great way to go into everything; so I'd say with respect to what's happened to me over the last couple years, I am more obsessed over what I'm doing at this moment. It could be the last one. I hope it's not, but could be."

The film comes at a time where the real prospects of NASA remain uncertain. For the filmmakers, whether science of science fiction, space travel remains a beacon of hope.

"I think really space exploration has always represented the most hopeful and optimistic endeavor that mankind has ever really engaged with," Nolan said. "I was certainly struck when they flew the space shuttle in on the 747, when it came to the Science Center here in L.A., [wife and producer] Emma [Thomas] and I were up in Griffith Park with hundreds of people waving flags and watching this thing fly down. It was a very moving moment, and a little melancholy at the same time because you felt that great collective endeavor, with its hope and optimism, is something we're in need of again. I feel very strongly that we're at a point now where we need to start looking out again and exploring our place in the universe more."

The cast recalled their memories of the space program, which for Chastain was the tragic explosion of the Challenger shuttle in 1986. Those of us still in grade school will remember teachers putting the news on TV for us to watch.

"I remember when I was a kid, my first real confrontation I guess with space travel was when the Challenger exploded," Chastain said. "I remember how traumatic that was for me because I remember watching it on the news with all of the children in our class. I was very young, so I had never ever imagined that it was something I wanted to do. I think that we as human beings need to always conquer our fears and reach beyond our gasps. I think it's very important that we don't become complacent and stagnant. The wonderful thing about being an actress is I get to act those explorations beyond what I myself am physically capable of."

Absorbed in research

Hathaway's memories of NASA came a tad later. "One of my first experiences with the space program was with a memorial that was built for the Challenger," Hathaway said, recalling a grade school project. "When I was in 7th grade my class spent the entire school year preparing to launch a spaceship, all together and we all had our different jobs that we had to learn how to do and we learned the math that you needed. We learned the practical skills that you needed and I thought that was really cool. So I think it's great if you can take a tragedy, find the gold in it and turn it into something positive. And I'm hoping that the suspension of the space program is just that, a suspension, and that it's not the final say in the matter because I think we need it."

As a filmmaker, Nolan has pioneered the inclusion of IMAX footage in Hollywood movies. IMAX turned out to be his way into NASA research as well.

"One of our greatest resources was IMAX and their relationship with NASA," Nolan said. "Over the last 30 years, the same cameras we used to shoot the film have gone into space. They've been in low Earth orbit. They've shot the shuttle, the international space station, the repairs on the Hubble, and they have this incredible library of footage. One of the first things I did is I got the DP, the designer, visual effects supervisor. We watched as much of them as we could to immerse ourselves in the details, the feeling of it. We tried to get the appropriate textures of what this kind of spacecraft would have to be, (and locate) that weird tension between the physical intimacy of a spaceship and the fragile nature of the industrial quality of it, and then the cosmic scale of where it's going. We tried to always play that."

The actors absorbed some of the research as well. "I'm in no way an expert on it," McConaughey said. "But I can have conversations about it now that I couldn't have a year ago before getting on this film. Now I have a much more four dimensional outlook as far as where we're going and which way to look, what that new frontier is."

For the film, the cast wore space suits designed to be 40 pounds, much lighter than full NASA gear. "I made up my mind the first time I put it on that it was my favorite costume I have ever worn," Hathaway said. "Thanks to [Nolan], I've gotten to wear some pretty spectacular ones, but this one was the closest I've ever felt to feeling like a kid at Halloween if you can stretch Halloween out for several months. And I love that feeling. 40 lbs is a lot for me, so it helped that I made up my mind to I loved it because that was really the only way forward."

While not as constricting as the gear required to protect a human being in the void of space, McConaughey accepted the limitations they posed. "They did a lot of work on making it as light as possible and as easy to maneuver in," he said. "You couldn't break out into a sprint, no. You couldn't jump as high, no. And once you get the suit on, you could only express emotions directly from the neck up, sometimes only through the mask. It was physically challenging in Iceland in a spacesuit on a glacier. With the elements, absolutely. A couple of helicopters, 50 mile an hour winds. But for me, it just made sense."

"Interstellar" is now playing on IMAX screens and opens everywhere November 7.