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Jonathan Nolan

Jonathan Nolan Biography

Television writer

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“One of my first experiences with the space program was with the memorial that was built for the Challenger. When I was in 7th grade my entire class spent the entire school year preparing to launch a spaceship all together. We all had our different jobs that we had to learn how to do, 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 that if you can take a tragedy and find the gold in it and turn it into something positive, that's great.”

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“You get to a certain moment where you realize all those humans who landed on the moon did so in between Chris [Nolan] being born and me being born and no one had gone back since, all these Super-8 films we grew up watching of rocket launches, you get to a certain age and you realize all the speeches about going back, they're speeches, there's no money there, we're not going back.”

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“We're gonna play a little bit of a game here [Person of Interest movie]. Greg and I felt like we had responsibility when we wrapped up the pilot, to have a roadmap for where the show went. When we pitched the pilot, we knew what we wanted the last episode to be, the last image, I think we even know what the last song is.”

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“When J.J. [Abrams] called Lisa [Joy] and myself, he pitched us this idea of, what if we turn the structure around and started with the hosts. For us, that gave us a way to play with everything that we're interested in, all at once. It's the ultimate playground for us because we deal with questions about artificial intelligence, which is something I've long been fascinated by, but also human intelligence, or the lack thereof, human behavior, and interactive, immersive storytelling.”

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“You'd have a quality insurance department, where they're making sure there aren't any glitches or weird things, and that the guests have a great experience and seamless experience. You'd also have security. So, we laid out the corporate structure, and then we cherry-picked from that the people who would be brought into the most conflict and the most day-to-day relationship with each other and with the hosts.”

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“Everybody is waiting for the end to come, but what if it already passed us by? What if the final joke of Judgment Day was that it had already come and gone and we were none the wiser? Apocalypse arrives quietly; the chosen are herded off to heaven, and the rest of us, the ones who failed the test, just keep on going, oblivious. Dead already, wandering around long after the gods have stopped keeping score, still optimistic about the future.”

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“You're different. You're more perfect. Time is three things for most people, but for you, for us, just one. A singularity. One moment. This moment. Like you're the center of the clock, the axis on which the hands turn. Time moves about you but never moves you. It has lost its ability to affect you. What is it they say? That time is theft? But not for you. Close your eyes and you can start all over again. Conjure up that necessary emotion, fresh as roses.”

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