Director Christopher Nolan didn’t want to hold anything back when adapting Homer’s The Odyssey for the big screen.

Talking to CBS News‘ Scott Pelley for a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night, Nolan was asked what he believes the “essential elements” of his films are

“I always try to have a point of view on the story that’s from inside the film,” he said. “So I’m not looking at the characters from 30,000 feet; I’m trying to be in the race, in the maze with them. Because I want to try and give the audience a sense of what a place would smell like, what it would feel like. But you’re also trying to make the most involving, the most extreme version of a story possible.”

He told Pelley that he always approaches each film as if it were his last.

“I feel a real responsibility to try and get as much on screen for the audience as possible to give the audience the fullest flavor, the fullest set of images and events that we can give them for a given story,” Nolan said.

Nolan also wrote the script, adapting it from the epic poem that scholars believe Homer wrote sometime between 725 and 675 B.C.E. The director shared some insight into his writing process.

“When I’m writing, I’m visualizing the film as an audience member, as somebody experiencing the story,” he said. “Then, when I direct the story, I’m trying to take the audience there. So, in the case of The Odyssey, I’m trying to put the audience into that horse. I’m trying to put them on the deck of Odysseus’s ship.”

Nolan also said that this was one of the hardest films he’s ever made. “The harder the better right to the point of The Odyssey, and I think we pushed pretty hard on this one and maybe found some limits,” he said.

For this film, Nolan says he shot 2 million feet of IMAX film.  

“I think what separates him from other directors is the stories he wants to tell are incredibly ambitious,” Damon told 60 Minutes. “And the way he wants to tell them is incredibly ambitious. In this case he wanted to do it 100 percent in IMAX, which had never been done.”

60 Minutes airs Sundays on CBS. The Odyssey hits theaters July 17.