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These days, Christopher Nolan is busy dominating the box office and riding high off making the first blockbuster to win Best Picture in 20 years. But back in 2000, he was barely an up-and-coming director. With just one self-funded film to his name (1998's "Following"), the director finally had a modest budget from an independent film studio and set to work turning his brother Jonathan's short story idea into a film.

In Jonathan's original story, "Memento Mori," a man named Earl suffers from anterograde amnesia and uses notes and tattoos to help his future self remember key information about his life, with the ultimate goal of finding the mystery individual responsible for murdering his wife. When working on the screenplay adaptation, however, Christopher Nolan came up with the idea to tell part of the narrative in reverse, thereby ensuring his film version,...