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Christopher Nolan’s Staring Contest With A Brick Wall

By Leroy James King · June 10, 2010

Today I was working in a coffee shop in Hollywood. When I arrived, I sat down and soon realized that Christopher Nolan was sitting a few tables over from me. Being the total nerd that I am, I immediately Google-imaged him to confirm that I wasn't in some sort of Inception-like dream where he was trying to steal my creativity, whilst working on a tampon commercial treatment. Upon perusing hundreds of Nolan images, I was convinced – the dude that made Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and what's sure to be one of the biggest films of the year (Inception) was sitting right by me, and it was real. Breathing the same air. Drinking the same exact coffee. Smelling the air of my bowel movements…

 
Now, I'm rarely starstruck. Even when I met Dustin Hoffman (who I saw back his car into a pole), Cameron Diaz (who I made a fart noise in front of by accident – yes, it was a mimicked fart, not a real one), and Quentin Tarantino (I rather dedicate a whole entry to that story), I was able to keep my shit together and just say, "Hi. I'm Leroy. What's your name?"
 
So Nolan ranks as the second-most starstruck I have been since living in Los Angeles. Number one would be this guy that came by my old office who apparently fabricated the Boba Fett costume for Star Wars (back off).
 
Anyway, I did my best not to stare at him – I poured myself into the tampon commercial storyboards. After about 10 minutes I totally forgot he was there, but then I needed a cigarette, so I looked up from my computer and there he was again – he hadn't moved an inch. Literally…
 
So I lit my cigarette and coyly kept my glance on him. He really wasn't moving at all. He just stared at a brick wall about 15 feet away from him, legs crossed, arms dangling at his sides…
 
I continued on the tampon job, but couldn't help but gaze upward every 5 minutes or so to see if Nolan had even twitched. Over the course of 2 hours the guy didn't budge. He didn't even recross his legs, drink his coffee, move his head, his eyes, anything. He was like Jack Nicholson in The Shining on Thursday (if you understand that reference please email me at leroy@thescriptlab.com – we should get married and/or be best friends.)
 
But yeah. No movement, no nothing. I couldn't help but think that maybe he was deconstructing everything around us a la the Inception trailer – imagining that the building across the street were folding upward; that he was attempting to hack into the subconscious of everyone around him.
 
So then I got to wondering, "When you have the kind of success that Nolan has, and the unrivaled (at least contemporary) creativity that he does… what the fuck do you think about when you're staring at a brick wall? Especially if you're thinking of a new concept, movie idea, or whatever." Going back into nerd mode, I immediately concluded that he had to be mentally tinkering with plans for the next Batman film. But then I got selfish and thought, "Well Lee, what do you think about when you're staring at a brick wall?"
 
The brick wall, man. I've concluded that it's a metaphor for everything – possibility, writer's block, strength, weakness, obscurity, love, death, black holes, time travel, idiocy, genius – everything. When you stare into the brick wall you ruminate and visualize and find out who the fuck you really are. The brick wall is your best friend and your worst enemy. It's your friend when it lets your thoughts spill, flow, and stream forward without any obstructions or obstacles. It's your enemy when it keeps you tunnelvisioned on one thought.
 
More times than not the brick wall is the enemy for writers. For me, these are my recurring brick wall thoughts that hold me back:
 
You're a self-saboteur, Lee
You'll never get laid
That girl you liked who you wanted to sleep with, wanted to sleep with you too, until you self-deprecated one too many times
You're being taken advantage of
Your ideas don't make sense
You spread yourself too thin
Goddamnit, that girl is driving me crazy
Why do I like girls with depression problems?
You're depressed, aren't you Lee?
I think I like girls with depression problems because I'm attracted to erraticism
Am I crazy?
Does God exist?
Am I dying?
Is it too late to succeed in this business?
I need to get laid
I can't believe I slept with that one girl with the drug problem
Am I going to hell?
I emasculate myself too often
I should just tell that one girl I want to sleep with her
I don't want sex, I want love
I need to get laid anyway
I've never made love – I've only fucked
If I don't get paid soon I'll have to eat Cliff Bars for a week again
This idea is going nowhere
That's it, I'm going to be a monk
 
You get the idea. My wall has a theme: lack of confidence. Which is bullshit because I consistently book amazing work with amazing clients who think I'm amazing, and I go out with really attractive, smart girls who want to sleep with me… but then I sabotage myself by talking about how I used to be morbidly obese when I was in middle school and that I consider myself a nerd. What the fuck??
 
So yeah, that's the enemy Brick Wall. How do you turn it into the friend Brick Wall? Easy. Destroy the Enemy. It's all about your mental disposition, which is why I find it so fucking poignant that of all people for me to witness staring at a brick wall… it had to be Christopher Nolan.
 
Inception hasn't even come out yet, but the visuals of Di Caprio manipulating buildings and environments around him is the best way to imagine changing your Brick Wall. The enemy is a construction – it's concrete, one idea stacked on another, on top of another, and another, etc. One idea or apprehension nestles perfectly on top of one another. It's hard to break down… kind of.
 
The friendly Brick Wall exists when you acknowledge that your wall is something that you can manipulate – it's not so much of a wall as it is a flowing, ever-changing thing. And it's all based on relaxing – thinking positive thoughts – not dwelling on the negative or on a dead end idea.
 
I don't really have that much else to say about it because I'm just kind of coming up with this metaphor now. It's more of a formless thing right now, but I feel like it's a personal breakthrough. I can choose what I think about. There's no such thing as a demon on your shoulder unless you enable it. Blahblahblah. Maybe I'm not making sense, but I don't care.
 
So, Christopher Nolan, thank you. Yes, there's the chance that that wasn't you at the coffee shop today, but you vicariously infected me with your potent imagination if that's the case.
 
No haikus for a while. Bored with them.