The Fountain

[modage]

he wouldnt have done Begins, he would've done Year One.  and from what i've read of the script, it seemed pretty edgy.

[Pubrick]

that lava is disgusting.

[Ghostboy]

I don't think it's lava. It's something more microscopic.

[NEON MERCURY]

bring on the trailer...i am getting pissed...although the music on the films site is cool...i want this bad...the more pictures i see and the more i find out about the story the more excited i get...ins't there something more out there....i need you guys to search.... please give me a fix...

[MacGuffin]

Clint Mansell was the lead vocalist and guitarist of the British band Pop Will Eat Itself. But now he is scoring major Hollywood movies such as Murder by Numbers, Suspect Zero and the upcoming videogame adaptation DOOM. But he is in the middle of his biggest challenge right, scoring The Fountain for his long time collaborator Darren Aronofsky. I got a chance to catch up with Mansell on the Montréal set of The Fountain.

Daniel Robert Epstein: I heard you just did some gigs again with Pop Will Eat Itself.

Clint Mansell: I did! We haven’t really spent any time together since the band broke up and I’ve been living in America since then. We’ve seen each other but we haven’t really all gotten together. About two Christmases ago we made a big arrangement to all go see The Buzzcuts who by some bizarre coincidence were playing in our hometown back in England. I was going to go home for Christmas anyway so we went out, got rip-roaring drunk and decided we could still rock. We ended up just working on some new ideas together, about half a dozen new songs. When the word got out that we did that people were asking us if we were going to play. It didn’t seem feasible because a lot of our work was done with samples and no one knew where the samples were. Lo and behold they turned up in a friend’s garden shed and suddenly it was possible to do it. We were just on the cusp because in another couple of years we physically wouldn’t have been able to do it.

We did five sold out shows and it was great. I guess the audience had ten years of foreplay for them to be as excited as they were. We really put a lot of effort into it because we looked at it as if we were still part of the band so we wanted it to be something we could be proud of. We had this fantastic lightshow because we used this giant LED curtain that is basically a computer screen we could program with graphics, logos and moving lights. For a bunch of nerds like us it was pretty exciting.

DRE: How was it being onstage again?

CM: Yeah it was great. I’m not in the best shape of my life and I’ve gotten so used to not being that person you have to be onstage. But it came back pretty quickly. I did have to spend about a week in bed after five shows. It’s too much like hard work.

DRE: Have you started composing or writing music for The Fountain yet?

CM: Well Darren [Aronofsky] probably first told me the story of this about five years ago. There have been a lot of ideas and things we’ve tried since then. I’ve written a lot of stuff some of which you may have heard if you saw that teaser but I wrote that three years ago. While the ideas might still be relevant it’s three years ago and it wasn’t written expressly for that teaser. It works pretty well but now that I’ve got images to look at, it will change.

DRE: Did you do historical research for the period part of the movie?

CM: I do a lot of research for all the stuff I do. I don’t know how I deep I go because I’ve just done a film that needed African music and I don’t consider myself a scholar of African music after doing that. I just tried to get involved with African music to apply it properly. But I try to find things that I can relate to. I’m not the sort of person who sees that it’s 15th century Spain so I decide that we can only use the lute or whatever. I don’t really feel that you have to be that picky about it because it’s about being true to the film. 15th century Spain is, of course, different from the future in outer space so you have to make that all work together. For me it’s more about bringing in elements to create our world that is about these places.

DRE: Is there a distinctive sound for each time period even though they are all related?

CM: At this stage, I don’t know would be the short and honest answer. Looking at it from the outside you would think you would have to differentiate but who knows if it will end up that way. Maybe it becomes more fractured so you can be less fractured with the music. We have a long way to go. When we did Requiem [for a Dream] we went in with all these ideas we wanted to do so we did them but the film just said no. Then we had to go rethink and do something else. You can only go in with your arsenal well stocked and once you start working with the film it tells you what you need and if you don’t get it right then you’ll know it.

DRE: This movie is very personal for Darren and your music is very personal for you. But do you feel a connection to this movie before you put your music to it?

CM: My connection to it will always be when Darren first told me about it. The script has been through various stages and for me I’m always trying to remember and capture the initial excitement of the story and what was in his mind when he told me about it.

DRE: For Requiem you worked with the Kronos Quartet, what will you be doing for The Fountain?

CM: We’ve talked about a number of different things and we’re trying many things. But until the film is done it’s tough to make those decisions. My sense is that it will need to be quite organic. I think there is room for an electronic and orchestral element but I don’t know if they will fall into the traditional areas of where those two things might apply. The things that I am excited about for this film, musically, has been music like Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Sigur Ros. Things that are very emotional but also very intense with a real human element to them that breathes. That’s what this film needs. The main character [played by Hugh Jackman] seems distant because he is dry but he has a deep emotional core to him that makes me think of electronic music like Joy Division. On the surface Joy Division may seem cold but with very emotional undertones.

DRE: Do you work up your ideas on computer before deciding what to do?

CM: Yeah I do. It’s the only way I could work because I’m not classically trained and I don’t read music. It’s just about what sits together well for me. That just might be me plinking away on instruments and building it up on the computer. I suppose it’s like a glorified tape deck but that’s just the way I put it together. It’s great now that I’ve got that element but it’s quite easy to bring a musician and have them work with me. But I haven’t orchestrated it out yet.

DRE: I’ve heard the Requiem soundtrack on a few different movie trailers like Lord of the Rings and David Cronenberg’s Spider.

CM: I didn’t even know about Spider.

DRE: What’s that like for you?

CM: I thought it was pretty cool. It’s my music but in a totally different context and it made me realize that it’s possible for me to do things like that. It’s a different arrangement and different concept but I’m a punk rocker so it’s all about The Ramones with just a bass guitar and drums with vocal lines. It’s just applying it differently which was quite an eye opener.

DRE: How involved is Darren with the score?

CM: He comes in with ideas. For instance it was his idea to use Kronos Quartet [on Requiem]. It’s very collaborative but it’s not as if he sits and looks over my shoulder. But he will bring me things he is thinking about and things he’s seen and vice versa. About four years ago we went to go see a Taiko Drum group. That became part of the research and seeing how we can use that.

DRE: What does coming to the movie set do for you?

CM: It’s sort of more in line with when I first heard the story because it’s impacting. When I walked in yesterday and I saw the tree spaceship after sitting around for four years looking at little models and drawings it became something that will stay with me. It’s like seeing a great painting or great building and saying “Christ look at that. That’s what I have to live up to.”

DRE: Do you think you have it in you to become as diverse as someone like Mark Mothersbaugh who composes music for R-rated films like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, children’s television like Rugrats and still tours with Devo?

CM: I would probably say no because I don’t think I am excited enough by all that diversity. I do like different things but you spend a long time with these things and at the end of the day it doesn’t just become about the project because I really need to like the people I’m working with and be excited by what excites them. I pretty much will take most any job that comes along right now because I need the experience. I don’t know if I will be suited to everything across the board. I’m willing to try but there will be certain areas I’m better in.

[hedwig]

mas fotos

[Pubrick]

mas fotos

menos showing up

[hedwig]

mas fotos

menos showing up

fixed

[mogwai]

those two first caps have some really odd subtitles.

[MacGuffin]

Besides the film at hand [The Constant Gardner], Weisz also spoke briefly about her upcoming work in The Fountain...


*Some Spoilers*

Next up for Weisz is The Fountain, which is Darren Aronofsky's highly anticipated follow up to Requiem for a Dream. "It was emotionally challenging because it's very, very raw and I think Darren's the kind of director that gets, if you think of Requiem, the performances in that, he gets his actors to be very exposed, emotionally exposed. I play someone who is dying of cancer. It was very emotional - I had to dig deep kind of a role…"
 
The demanding role in The Fountain required a great deal of research and preparation. "I went to many Hospices, learned a lot about the Hospice movement… I read a lot. My character had a brain tumor, so I worked very closely with some Neurobrain surgeons in Montreal who worked with a lot of young patients who had brain tumors and who were dying. I read a gazillion books about death and dying… We don't think about death… But it's a love story! It sounds really depressing. (Laughs) It's very beautiful, it's a romantic love story about love and loss and death and life and all that stuff…"

When you play a part as intense as this, it can be hard to put it all behind you at the end of the day. "Oh yeah, it's completely in your consciousness day and night for the whole time you're filming. I would think most actors would say that. It's deep… You can carry on about your life, but it's in you, with you, around you all of the time. That's not a bad thing, that's just what happens."

[squints]

is that Cool World mac?

[72teeth]

is that Cool World mac?

Please, allow me...yes.

[NEON MERCURY]

well, i got sort of news i guess.  i was flipping through an issue of EW and they had an article on wiez and they said the fountain will be ou tnext year.  which pisses me off.  but premiere's fall preview said it will be this year.  which makes me happy.  but darren said it will "definately" come out this year.  but i assume it's all up to the studio. which makes me confused.

[modage]

its almost october and theres no trailer, release date, poster, etc.  theres no way they can get it out by dec.     hopefully they wont make us wait another year to put it out like NEXT november and they'll just give it to us in march or something when it can bomb in peace.

[Recce]

I actually got a chance to see some of the SFX segments this summer (they looked awesome). The company I interned for in Montreal is doing them. They seemed to be pretty far ahead on them, and that was back in June, so I cant imagine itll be too much longer.