10 Bizarre Filmmaker Rules You Never Knew

Quite the stink has been made about Christopher Nolan's on-set rules in recent times, after Anne Hathaway claimed that he didn't allow chairs on his sets, the reasoning being, "If you have chairs, people will sit, and if they're sitting, they're not working."

This caused quite the furore online, before one of Nolan's spokespersons confirmed that his sets did indeed have chairs for the cast and crew, but that Nolan himself opted not to use one.

The PR statement did however confirm two things which are indeed banned from his sets:

"For the record, the only things banned from [Nolan’s] sets are cell phones (not always successfully) and smoking (very successfully)."

According to his Dunkirk stars Mark Rylance and Barry Keoghan, Nolan also bans the use of water bottles. Keoghan said, "They're distractions - the noise of [the bottles], they're like toys almost, playing around with toys."

Given that Nolan's movies are known for their efficient, well-oiled productions which come in on-time and under-budget, it's hard to fault his restrictions here.