Interstellar is the kind of movie that reminds you why you love going to the movies. It's big, bold, beautiful... and brainy. It's also a film Christopher Nolan and his younger brother Jonathan have been waiting to make for decades. It's a giant fantastical sci-fi film featuring gutsy astronauts, awesome spaceships, unique robots and inventive alien planets located in galaxies far, far away.

The funny thing about Interstellar, though, is that in some ways it's a movie the Nolan boys have already been making since they were little. When we sat down with the film's writer Jonathan Nolan, one of the things we were most interested in was growing up in the Nolan household and what that was like. Well, aside from watching a lot of movies (Empire Strikes Back was an early obsession for both brothers), they were making movies, too -- movies about far-off galaxies starring... yup, you guessed it: Star Wars characters.

"Some of my earliest memories are of Chris making stop-motion space films in our garage," Jonathan said. "I would help out to the degree a two-year-old was capable of helping out. But I remember... he'd re-create ice planets with flour and our Star Wars toys in stop-motion. The budgets have increased, but the impulse is the same."

Knowing that Christopher Nolan once directed a bunch of stop-motion Star Wars films out of his garage obviously piqued our interest. What were they about? How long were they? And... well, do they still exist?

"They do exist!" Jonathan revealed. "I still have them on a hard drive. That's the nice thing about film because it lasts a superlong time. So yeah, we still have them."

They have them, but so far they haven't shared them with the rest of us. Needless to say, with Interstellar the Nolan boys are returning to the genre that helped shape them and their love of movies all those years ago.

"It's kind of funny, I remember being on the set of Interstellar and walking up to Chris and saying, 'How did it take us this long to get back to a science fiction film?' Jonathan said. "Ya know Batman always felt a little like a science fiction film in a weird way -- the interiors of the Batmobile felt like a rocketship, or like a spaceship -- but in truth it took us a while, which is interesting."

Interstellar hits theaters on November 7. We'll have much more with Jonathan Nolan leading up to its release, so stay tuned.

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