Christopher Nolan says his Peloton instructor absolutely dragged him for Tenet

One of the dangers of being Christopher Nolan—at least, we have to assume—is that the planet’s over abundance of opinions on Christopher Nolan movies is even harder to cope with for you than it is for the rest of us. Case in point: A recent anecdote, , that Nolan told while picking up a best director award from the New York Film Critics Circle, revealing that he once got completely savaged in a Peloton class by an instructor with some casually dismissive remarks about his movie .

“I was on my Peloton. I’m dying,” Nolan told the crowd. “And the instructor started talking about one of my films and said, ‘Did anyone see this? That’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back again!’” And, like, fair play to the man: We don’t have to catch crap about some article we spent four hours on while we’re going grocery shopping, so we can’t imagine what hearing this sort of thing about a movie you blew up a whole entire airplane to make, mid virtual bike ride, would feel like.

Nolan, who was being honored for his work on , was telling the story to illustrate a point about the value of professional criticism, in a world where, much like the humble asshole, everyone possesses both an opinion and a platform with which to expose it. (Even moreso if they have command over a Peloton class! These are ) “When Rex Reed takes a shit on your film he doesn’t ask you to work out,” Nolan joked.

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