Nilo Otero joins me in the Lesche to discuss his work as First Assistant Director on Christopher Nolan's 2026 film The Odyssey. 

Works mentioned

• Translations of The Odyssey by Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fagles, Peter Green, and Robert Fitzgerald.
• “Postscript," in The Odyssey. Trans. by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (1967): pp. 467-510. 

On the difficulty -- for translators and filmmakers alike -- of envisioning the axe-setup in the "Contest of the Bow" see:

• Winkler, Martin M. (2024) Classical Antiquity and the Cinematic Imagination. Cambridge. (Ch. 11 "Arrow and Axes in the Odyssey; or, The Case of the Insoluble Enigma")

About our guest

Nilo Otero is a first assistant director known for managing major Hollywood productions. Otero studied English literature, and Classics, at Cornell University, where he was also an All-American Fencer. After graduating, he entered the film industry and completed the Directors Guild of America training program. Otero served as first assistant director on films such as Seven and The Last Samurai, before becoming a frequent collaborator with Christopher Nolan on blockbusters including Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Oppenheimer and, most recently, The Odyssey. 

________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: leschepodcast@gmail.com
Suggest a book using this form