Nolan on Memento - Episode structure within the black-and-white scenes.

Transcript:
Yeah, the black and white stuff is all derived from a forward running sequence. So if you take these individual black and white scenes, they run forwards, if you stick them together, they actually overlap in the same way that the backwards scenes overlap. It's not quite so obvious when you're watching the movie, but it begins with him shaving his thigh and answering the phone and everything, and in fact these actions overlap. So there is a suggestion that in fact, and it is the case, that you can stick all these things together and achieve one sort of long scene effectively. And that episodic structure was one that I wanted to employ because the overlapping flashbacks of the color sequences, it's a very complex structure. The black and white stuff is actually pretty simple to follow because it follows the basic episodic structure we're all very familiar with, I mean, from watching TV. You know, it's like you break something up with TV commercials, you know, what have you. But it's very easy to just keep following a very simple forward progression. In this case, it's him on his own in a room speaking on a telephone. So it's a very simple sequence of forward progression.

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