Showbiz
Sinead Butler
Jan 05, 2024
Bang Showbiz / VideoElephant
Christopher Nolan might be an award-winning director but he's recalled the time his Peloton instructor criticised his film Tenetin the middle of a workout.
The 53-year-old shared the anecdote at the New York Film Critics Circle where he won the Best Director award for Oppenheimer,though didn't reveal what film the instructor was talking about.
“I was on my Peloton. I’m dying,” Nolan said. “And the instructor started talking about one of my films and said, ‘Did anyone see this? That’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back again!’”
Clearly, the Peloton instructor didn't have a clue that Nolan was in attendance at the virtual class, though Nolan saw the funny side to the awkward moment.
"When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a s*** on your film he doesn’t ask you to work out,” Nolan joked.
“In today’s world, where opinions are everywhere, there is a sort of idea that film criticism is being democratized, but I for one think the critical appreciation of films shouldn’t be an instinct but it should be a profession.”
Now internet sleuths have since dug up the clip of the Peloton instructor Jenn Sherman slamming Nolan's 2020 film Tenet - and appears to be more critical than Nolan recalled.
“This song is from the soundtrack of a movie called Tenet. Anybody see this s***? Did anybody see this besides me?" she asked.
"‘Cuz I need a manual… I’m not kidding, what the f*** was going on in that movie? You need to be a neuroscientist to understand. That’s two and a half hours of my life I want back.”
Now, Sherman has responded to Nolan's comment and she can't quite believe he knows who she is.
"Huge day for me when I come to find out that the one and only Christopher Nolan, one of the leading filmmakers of the 21st century knows who the hell I am," she said in a recent Instagram post.
"I was excited, and then I read the article... Listen it was 2020, it was a dark time, I'm up on the platform teaching my little class and I'm running my mouth off like I'm known to do and I make a random comment about a movie I had seen the night before."
She then asked: "What do you think the odds are that the director of said movie would take that ride some four years later? Yeah that would only happen to me."
Sherman admitted that Tenet "went right over [her] head," but added she's seen Oppenheimer twice "and that's six hours of my life I never want to give back".
The instructor then invited Nolan to come for a Peloton ride with her in California where he can critique her class. "I promise you it will be insult-free," she concluded.
We'll have to wait and see if Nolan takes up this offer.
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