Christopher Nolan on the Story and Structure of “Memento”

An 18 minute video from 2001 including Nolan’s chalkboard diagram.

Today’s Daily Dialogue was Memento, so as I was rooting around online for some video content, I stumbled into this:

Fascinating to hear how Nolan’s mind works and the genesis of the story. He and his brother Jonah were driving from Chicago to Los Angeles, and that’s when Jonah told Chris about this idea he had for a short story. Chris wrote the story as a screenplay while Jonah went ahead and penned it as a short story. That was published in Esquire in 2001 actually after the movie came out which is why the credit reads “written by”, an original screenplay because the source material had yet to be made public.

In the video, Nolan talks about how decided he wanted to tell the story as subjectively as possible, that is narrowly focused from Leonard’s perspective. He hit on the idea of telling the story backward upfront in the process and decided he needed a way to break up those series of — what are in effect flashbacks — with moments in the present. Hence the scenes shot in color which is Leonard’s subjective experience and black-and-white scenes which are more objective in nature.

This subjective-objective duality is reflected in the voice-over narration. In the color scenes, it’s first-person reflecting Leonard’s subjective experience. In the black-and-white scenes, the perspective is more distant and objective, almost like reporting things as Leonard sees them.

One interesting decision Nolan made was these two perspectives evolve and change. As the narrative progresses toward the third act, the color scenes become less subjective, more objective; the black-and-white scenes become less objective, more subjective.

Check out the video. See how Nolan represents the story structure for Memento as a hairpin.

When you’re done, check this out:

A half-hour with Jonah Nolan discussing his short story and its relationship to the movie.

A veritable treasure trove for you Memento fans!