Time really is a flat circle. Or whatever Tenet was about. I couldn’t get through it.
Neither could Peloton instructor Jenn Sherman. Four years later, she was alerted to the fact that director Christopher Nolan saw a 2020 session where she trash-talks his film Tenet.
This was revealed by Nolan on Wednesday as he accepted the Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Circle. During his speech, he spoke about the relationship between director and critic and offered a specific example of how it’s evolved.
He says he was doing a “high-interval some sh*t” on his Peloton stationary bike when the instructor asked if anyone had seen Tenet and remarked that it was “a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back.”
“When Rex Reed takes a shit on your film,” Nolan added, “he doesn’t ask you to work out with him.”
Nolan is obviously saying this in jest. But It didn’t take long for the clip from Dec. 28, 2020, clip to surface. Sherman starts by introducing the song that’s playing, Travis Scott’s “The Plan” from the Tenet soundtrack.
“Anybody see this sh*t?” she asks. “Did anybody see this besides me? Because I need a manual. Someone’s gotta explain this. Yeah, I’m not kidding. What the f*ck was going on in that movie? Do you understand? Seriously, you need to be a neuroscientist to understand. And that’s 2-and-a-half hours of my life that I want back. I want it back.”
While we just have to imagine Nolan’s reaction to hearing this in the moment, Sherman tried to make things right in her response.
“Listen, it was 2020,” she says in a video posted to Instagram. “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.”
She says that while Tenet “went right over my head,” she’s seen Oppenheimer twice, “and that’s six hours of my life that I don’t ever want to give back.”
Peloton hasn’t had a great couple of years, so maybe this is giving it a boost.
Nolan is promoting Oppenheimer on the awards circuit in the lead-up to the Oscars, but wouldn’t it be amazing if this is giving him inspiration for his next film? Say, a man discovers that by riding his Peloton backward he can be with his dead wife again.
