Christopher Nolan says he was mid-workout on Peloton bike when instructor slammed one of his films

Christopher Nolan was just trying to exercise.

The Oppenheimer director, who won best director from the New York Film Critics Circle on Wednesday, told the crowd a story about an encounter with a critic while on his Peloton.

“I was on my Peloton doing a high-interval workout, I’m dying,” he said. “The instructor started talking about one of my films and said, ‘Has anyone else seen this? Because that’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back again.’”

He continued: “When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a s*** on your film, he doesn’t ask you to work out.”

“In today’s world, where opinions are everywhere, there is a sort of idea that film criticism is being democratised, but I for one think the critical appreciation of films shouldn’t be an instinct but it should be a profession,” he added.

The video was posted to X , formerly Twitter. In it, the instructor talks about Nolan’s film, Tenet.

“This song is from a soundtrack of a movie called Tenet,” instructor Jenn Sherman said in the video.

“Anybody see this s***? Did anybody see this besides me? Because I need a manual. Someone’s got to explain this.”

Sherman later added: “Seriously, you need to be a neuroscientist to understand. And that’s two and a half hours of my life that I want back.”

As for Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the film has earned nearly $1 billion (£785 million) at the global box office since opening in July.

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