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MEMENTO

Our Nolan Void Season continues with the first of our second pairing MEMENTO (2000). Many of you might suspect we would try writing these show notes in reverse, but, as that’d be too meta for us, we’ll leave that to some other aspiring writer with memory problems we know.

Speaking of self-referential memory problems, Memento was actually the film that couldn’t find distribution that Steven Soderberg claimed could be the bellwether of the death of the 90’s indie cinema wave (see our erroneous show notes for FOLLOWING, Season 12, Episode 1).

Listen past the awesome intro song for a surprise guest giving the plot synopsis this week, dogs barking not on command, and, to the eagle-eared listener, the return of the squeaky chair.

Sir Nolan upon reflection stated there was a greater leap between his first feature Following and Memento than any between project. He had to trust another behind the camera (Wally Pfister, who’d shoot this and the next six Nolan films and win an Academy Award for INCEPTION) and had union rules and budgeted shooting schedules (losing some days when relocated from Canada to the States). Eventual Dame Emma Thomas would not be the executive producer as she was working at a different company. Memento also would star professional actors, a stellar lineup perhaps thanks to the early interest of Brad Pitt in the role of the Leonard instead played by the amazing Guy Pearce and costarring two actors hot off the success of the MATRIX: Carrie-Anne Moss and Joey Pants.

Written concurrently with his younger brother (no “Sir”) Jonathan Nolan who’d develop his premise into a short story “Memento Mori” published in Esquire, the movie Memento follows an amnesiac and heavily tattooed protagonist Leonard (the former attribute part of but latter absent from the short story) as he pursues seeking revenge on his wife’s mysterious killer, having himself somehow contracted a condition similar to Sammy Jenkins, a man who allegedly retain all of his memories up to a specific moment of trauma but afterwards could form no new memories. But is there more similarities between Jenkins and Leonard than his memory triggered by the tattoo “Remember Sammy Jenkins” allows?

To unravel this story told backwards and to find a deeper understanding as its paired with next week’s TENET, cohosts Ken and Thomas are again joined by the provisional host Ryan, who also recorded the intro/outro music.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

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Letterboxd (follow us!):
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias