Zack Snyder and Chris Nolan Have a Common Nemesis: Chairs
What does Zack Snyder have against chairs?
We covered a similar story almost a year ago, so this may feel like deja vu. It turns out, Zack Snyder has taken a page from the Chris Nolan handbook and banned chairs from his set.
Snyder appeared on The Playlist’s Fourth Wall podcast and said, “There’s no sitting down, like, I banned chairs from the set. But the nice thing is, it’s really intimate. I can just talk to the actors right there, I’m not back in a monitor across the room. It was definitely the most purely engaged I’ve been making a movie.”
I like that this is a strategy that seems to make sense for him as a director, and while no one pressed him on who was allowed to sit, this did seem more self-imposed than anything.
So it looks like Snyder is keeping the chairs away. He wants to keep his energy up and walk and talk with the cast and also not to be too far away. That makes sense in theory. As long as workers and people on break are allowed to rest, and actors have somewhere to go between setups, I doubt it's a big deal.
We have heard similar stories from the Nolan camp. In an interview with Variety, Anne Hathaway said of Nolan, "His reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working. I mean, he has these incredible movies in terms of scope and ambition and technical prowess and emotion. It always arrives at the end under schedule and under budget. I think he’s onto something with the chair thing."
For what it's worth, Nolan's PR person put out a statement clarifying that the only chairs banned were the ones around the video monitors, because he didn't like people crowding around them. I would assume Snyder's PR person may do the same. His tone in that podcast was jovial, so I think the banning of chairs might be a bit of an exaggeration.
If you were on the set of either a Nolan or Snyder movie and have info, please let us know!
And sound off about chairs in the comments.