The Fountain

[MacGuffin]

Exclusive: Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky
Source: ComingSoon

Avid movie buffs have long considered filmmaker Darren Aronofsky to be a visionary, since defying genre cliches with his first movie, the black and white π (PI) in 1998. It's been six years since his jaw-dropping adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream, and his third movie The Fountain is finally seeing the light of day after years of delays to "find just the right time to release it."

Nearly two years ago, ComingSoon.net visited the Montreal set of The Fountain, where we were able to admire "Tree of Life spaceship" that's the setting for one third of Aronofsky's epic time-spanning love story. Since then, we've had a few chances to chat with Darren, first when he brought a teaser-trailer to Comic-Con in San Diego last year and then after showing the finished film to select journalists this past July.

The movie is well worth the long wait, a cerebral experience that's part Mayan quest, part modern-day medical drama and part futuristic sci-fi, all blended into a trippy mix that would make Alejandro Jodorowsky proud. All three segments feature (possibly) related characters played by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz—who since making the movie has become the director's fiancée and mother of his son, and it reteams him with the same composer (Clint Mansell) and cinematographer (Matthew Libatique) as his previous two films.

Having finally seen the movie, ComingSoon.net had a chance to conduct a "proper interview" with the mastermind behind the movie that's going to (hopefully) wake up a lot of dormant minds and get people thinking about the movies they watch again.

ComingSoon.net: I feel like a hypocrite because when I talked to you in San Diego after watching the movie, I suggested that you don't do any interviews and just let people figure out your movie for themselves. I definitely got more out of it on second viewing.
Darren Aronofsky: Well, thanks! I think the first 20 minutes often sets the audience apart, because we were trying to mirror that feeling of sci-fi or graphic novels where the first 80 pages or so, you don't know what's going on, then suddenly it starts to make sense and a whole world starts to flesh out. I think that with "The Fountain," for the first 20 minutes, people are like "What's going on?" but then it suddenly starts to make sense. If people get that far, they're in.

CS: Has the movie changed a lot since the version I saw in San Diego a few months ago?
Aronofsky: There's a slight change that I tinkled with three or four months ago. There was a line that Hugh Jackman wanted in the film that I loved, but I couldn't figure out how to cut it in, which is that line in the trailer: "Death is a disease; there's a cure, there's a cure and I'll find it." That was not in the first cut. What happened is that San Diego was the final cut, and then there was this one thing that kept us battling in the edit room for a long time, and it had to do with the order those scenes were right around that part of the film. I think we all made the right decision and a few months ago, I kind of figured out in the middle of the night. I had one of those "oh!" moments and I approached Jay, my editor, and said, "Will this work?" and we threw it together on our own to look at it, and me and Jay thought it was much better. Sometimes you just need that time. It happens to me, I look back at "Requiem"—and that's the reason I don't watch "Requiem" or "π" any more, 'cause I know I would see things and I'd be cringing—but luckily, the one good thing that came out of waiting for our release date was that we had the time to make it a little better. I think that's what did it. What's funny is that it's actually exactly how the script is now. We moved away from the script and changed it a little bit, but then I figured out a way to bring it back to the script.

CS: One of the themes of this movie is obsession, whether it be to find the Tree of Life or find a cure for death, so I'm sure a lot of people must assume that this movie was your obsession, having spent so much time trying to get it made.
Aronofsky: (laughs) I got a comment on that! For me, it's not about quantity. It's about doing the film that you believe in. Filmmaking is such a hard job, there's so many disappointments, there are so many challenges, there's so many roadblocks, especially when you're trying to do something different that's not exactly in this small box. But it's all I know how to do, and so I just believed in this material and it just rang true from my gut and I just had to get it done, so here we are.

CS: Do you think once the movie hits theatres, you can finally find some closure and leave it behind you?
Aronofsky: Absolutely. A good friend of mine, another filmmaker, once told me, "You never finish a film, you abandon a film" and I think that's true. I think it all finally settles in when I get that DVD, packaging, mass-produced, and I'm like, "Okay, this is the movie and it's all done."

CS: But these days, directors like Ridley Scott are doing massive reworkings of their movies, releasing "Director's Cuts" so would that be something you might ever do?
Aronofsky: No, I've been lucky with all my movies. My final cut has been my cut. I think at some point I'd love to do a remix of a "π." When we mixed that, there was only Dolby SR, and I'd love to discrete remix of it at some point, which is kind of like tinkering after it's all done, but it's just updating it for the latest technology and doing an HD version of it.

CS: Also, having some money to throw into it might allow you to do some things you weren't able to do originally.
Aronofsky: Well, we mixed "π" in like 5 days, which is just absurd, but I'm pretty happy with the mix. I think we did a pretty good job, and I like the way it feels and looks. I'd love to do a 10th Year Anniversary, so hopefully that will happen at some point. Ten years in '08, so we got a couple years.

CS: You just have to make sure you don't go all George Lucas and start putting in new characters using CGI.
Aronofsky: No, no, I wouldn't go that far. That's obsessive.

CS: Going back a bit, you started making this movie a number of years ago on a bigger budget with a different cast. How did you end up with Hugh Jackman after Brad Pitt dropped out and you had to start all over again?
Aronofsky: To be honest, Hugh wasn't even on my initial list, and that's because I hadn't seen him do anything except for his "X-Men" work. He's great in that and that's a very difficult thing to do, but I didn't really know his work. Then I saw him in "The Boy From Oz," the thing he won the Tony for, and even though he plays a singer-songwriter who's married to Liza Minelli, which has absolutely nothing to do with the character in "The Fountain," he had such passion and charisma and commitment and fever, that I was just like, "I have to see what this guy thinks of my script." When he read it, he just really got it, so that's how it all worked out.

CS: What was his reaction after seeing the completed film? It must be a very different experience than making the movie since there's no way to know what it will be like when edited together.
Aronofsky: What was his reaction? You'll have to ask him, but he told me it's not only the favorite film he's ever been in, but it's his favorite film. But you have to ask him, because I can't quote him. He was really happy with it, but it was really strange because the day I showed him the finished film was also the night Rachel went into labor. It was a very surreal night.

CS: Do you ever stick around to see the movie with an audience to see how they react?
Aronofsky: I think the last time I'll see this film ever will be tonight at the premiere in L.A. I think once it's done—I'll probably watch it again on DVD just as a quality check, just to make sure it's correct—but I won't ever see it again after tonight.

CS: Did you watch it in Toronto or Venice or any of the other premieres?
Aronofsky: Oh, no, no. I watched it actually in Spain at this film festival outside of Barcelona called Sitges, which is a fantasy film festival, because it was a really young, youthful crowd and the projection was beautiful and two of my best friends in the world were there, so I decided to watch it with them. You see a film so many times when you're making it, that at a certain point, you just have to stop watching it or otherwise, you can get lost in the ego conversations in your head about it. You get lost in so much stuff in your head. That's why I haven't seen "Requiem" since it came out, or "π" since that came out, so it's been a long time. Even if it comes on TV, I'll watch it for ten, fifteen seconds, smile to myself and then move on.

CS: I deliberately avoided reading the graphic novel until after seeing the movie, but I was surprised how much of the story and images were similar to the movie. Did you get any inspiration from Kent Williams' art in the graphic novel while shooting the movie?
Aronofsky: I did steal a few shots from Kent. When he breathed the ring in and it turns into the Queen, that transition I got from Kent. I think Kent definitely had his own vision, but you can just see how connected the scripts were. It wasn't that big of a difference between the two movies.

CS: When you went back to redo the movie, starting from scratch on a lower budget, what did you end up changing?
Aronofsky: Well, if you look at the battle scene, right there was $15-20 million dollars. That was a big thing, getting rid of that. Then there was the big action sequence in space, which is the thing that I probably do regret not having done, but there was that big action sequence on the outer surface of the ship that I wanted to do, but that we couldn't afford either.

CS: When I visited the Montreal set, I saw the spaceship and I saw the other Tree of Life, but were the other locations also done on the soundstage like the lab and hospital?
Aronofsky: Everything was a soundstage, except the museum sequence and Lillian's farmhouse, of course, but everything else was built. The way [the production designer] interrelated everything was very inspirational to me. Everything comes out of Tom in the space ship. All the other sets and designs come out of the same type of material, same type of colors, same type of background as what was happening on that tree ship. Things like the throne room with all those candles hanging, why did we have those candles? Well, if you stick a character in front of it, those candles go out of focus, and they look exactly like the starfield of Tom in space. The Christmas lights on the rooftop behind Rachel also go out of focus and become a starfield. You'll start to notice as you watch it again, you'll see celestial objects floating throughout all the time sequences. That was certain stuff that we did and there's a lot of that type of thing.

CS: It must have taken an insane amount of planning to cut all that together and make the transitions work. Were some of the delays of the movie done to get extra time to get all the editing and post-production done?
Aronofsky: No, I don't think so. I think we had a pretty normal timeframe of editing. The film was done in February, we've just been waiting for a release date for eight or nine months. The studio wanted to release us in the fall, so that's what it's been. We've been waiting for that, and that's why it's taken this amount of time to get here. Otherwise, the cut and the post for a visual effects movie was pretty much right on time.

CS: When I saw the movie in San Diego and again last week, watching the movie was almost like a religious experience where everyone was very quiet and respectful. I'm curious if that's been the same with other audiences.
Aronofsky: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Audiences have been very kind of silent watching the movie. I did a lot of Q 'n' A's afterwards, and it's been a similar positive reaction. I keep getting exactly what you just said. People all over the world from Tokyo to Spain to Belgium to D.C., people almost always in these Q 'n' A's afterwards come up to me and they go, "Hey, man, that wasn't a movie, that was an experience." That to me, has been just great, because to take someone, not just on a normal narrative journey but to take them somewhere else, and just thinking and feeling in a way they haven't felt before, that's a great compliment, and I've enjoyed that. I've seen a similar reaction around the planet.

CS: I was really surprised when I woke up at 4 in the morning the day after seeing the movie, thinking about something in the movie that really affected me.
Aronofsky: What's interesting is most films you leave and you've got the whole journey. When I made "π", it was a very different world. People saw a movie once, and then maybe saw it again on DVD. In fact, "π" was historically the first film downloaded, and it was also one of the early DVDs and we were playing with the menus and designing all that stuff. I think in today's world where kids are downloading sh*t to their computer, to their iPod, people are watching stuff over and over again, so we wanted to make this puzzle that gets richer and richer the more people see it. There's a lot of things in the film that people aren't going to get on a first trip. That's not completely true. There are some people who've been out there in these Q 'n' A's I've met who get it instantly, and they basically tell me exactly what it's about and they've gotten what it all means, but a lot of people I think are grasping for it the first time. But I hope that it will turn into a cult film like '"π" and "Requiem" and people will want to see it again.

CS: For this movie, you've moved from Artisan to Warner Bros. They seem to really be behind making movies as an artform rather than as a commercial venture, but they obviously must care about making their money back as well. How's that been working out?
Aronofsky: I hope there's enough commercial elements in the film that people want to see it, and I think it asks the big questions about why are we here? What is life? What is death? What is love? And those are questions people have been asking, since we crawled out of the primordial soup. I think there is a commercial end to that, and at the core of the film, it really is a love story between Hugh and Rachel. Another thing I've noticed on the road is that people keep saying that when they're there with their loved ones, they've just had an incredible experience, and I think it might be a really good date movie in the sense that the women get to see this great love story, they get to see Hugh Jackman's shirt off. The guys get a little Mayan adventure and some whacked out science fiction, and afterwards you're GUARANTEED, I promise you, a good conversation. (laughs)

CS: I wondered how you felt about American movie audiences these days and whether you think they really want to learn the answers these days? The real world seems so tough and awful that many moviegoers may just want to be entertained rather than having to think about movies.
Aronofsky: I think you're right. I think definitely people want to just have the entertainment of escape at times, but I think that people also do want to be transported to a different consciousness and have a different experience. You know, people aren't going to the movies anymore, and I think for me at least, it feels like when I go to the theatre, I see something that's pretty well advertised but I feel pretty let down as the same-old-same-old. If "The Fountain" gives you anything, it's definitely a very, very different and new experience.

CS: Where do you go from here? This time since finishing the movie, have you continued to write?
Aronofsky: Exactly. We're developing a few projects and I can't talk about them yet, but we're very, very close.

CS: In the years since "Requiem," there was a lot of talk about you playing with other people's characters like "Batman" and "Watchmen." Have you gotten over the desire to do that?
Aronofsky: That was all a bunch of hype. For the last five or six years, I've been working on "The Fountain." We've had conversations on a few... I mean, "The Watchmen" I was on for a week, literally. I was definitely interested in doing it, and then they wanted to go right away, but I was working on "The Fountain" so I couldn't do it. And "Batman" was a writing gig, a chance to work with Frank Miller, but things got blown out of proportion by the internet. I've been trying to make "The Fountain" and I'm pretty much a one-trick pony. I get my dream project and I stick with it, and now we're starting to figure out what to do next.

Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain opens everywhere next Wednesday, November 22.

[Pozer]

I really want to get ahold of the original draft now. I just went back and read Moriarty's old review of it at AICN, and it sounds fascinatingly different...

yes i want to see it again next week too.  and also was interested to see what the differences were in the original draft and the finished film.  i was going to ask aronofsky at the Q&A but remembered that the original script was made into that graphic novel so i definitely want pick that up.

i've been waiting to see it again since march and have been heavily yearning for the original draft as well.  glad to hear you two dug it.  hoping p, mac, rk and the rest here on xixax island feel this way too.

[Ghostboy]

  i was going to ask aronofsky at the Q&A but remembered that the original script was made into that graphic novel so i definitely want pick that up.

I picked it up this afternoon. It's really beautifully made, and definitely worth buying if you like the film. It's almost exactly like the movie, except for a few things that obviously would have cost another 30 million to do on screen. He talks about them in the interview above; there's the huge Mayan staircase battle that opens the movie (it looks like something out of 300, actually), and then a scene on top of the bubble ship that, to me, didn't seem all that necessary. But there's a lot of additional character and plot development in Spain that I think the movie would have beneffited from.

One other interesting thing is that all the characters in space are naked, which I think would have been fantastic for the film - much more poetic and lyrical. Although it probably would have been hard to get an R-rating with all that male nudity, and I guess the cool shot of Hugh's clothes blowing of would have had to go as well.

[MacGuffin]

Collapsing worlds
Love and life are entangled for 'The Fountain's' Darren Aronofsky and Rachel Weisz.
Source: Los Angeles Times



THIS story, as most stories do, starts out in simpler times.

In London in mid-2001, at a performance of the Neil LaBute play "The Shape of Things," director Darren Aronofsky stopped backstage afterward to meet its star, Rachel Weisz.

"It was a professional meeting," he recalls. "It's a good thing for actors to meet directors and directors to meet actors, plus her performance blew me away. So we went out to dinner. I remember it was traditional English food — jellied eels, weird stuff. The next day, we actually went on a spontaneous date ... we went down to Brighton and walked around and had an incredible day. And then we had an e-mail correspondence for a long time. I also sent her a copy of the script — 'This is what I'm working on' — and she really liked it."

The script has become Warner Bros.' epic sci-fi adventure "The Fountain," which is finally getting its release on Friday, five years later. At the time, it was budgeted at $70 million and was to star two of Hollywood's biggest: Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Aronofsky's 1998 debut, "Pi," made on a shoestring, was a cerebral, paranoid thriller grounded in "the Kabala, the stock market and mystical math" as he itemizes its ingredients, but Cuisinarted together. Its follow-up, an adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s cult novel "Requiem for a Dream," calibrated its Bowery gothic junkie milieu with a postmodern mix of fractals and beats per minute.

With "The Fountain," working on economies of scale, he would combine an interest in Maya archeology with research in primate cognition being conducted by his old Harvard roommate, Ari Handel. Handel was then getting his PhD in neuroscience at New York University and questioning the ethicality of his experiments on monkeys (which he would soon leave behind for the moral palate cleanser of the film industry).

The two took long walks around Aronofsky's native Brooklyn, where his father had been a high school science teacher, and steeled by an early viewing of "The Matrix," they resolved to reinvent science fiction as free from computer-generated imagery, which could date a film's look in a mere six months, as well as the retro-futurist high-tech fetishization that Aronofsky labels "trucks in space" — basically "Pimp My Ride" for flying saucers.

For good measure, they reconfigured the time-space continuum with a palindromic structure: Three time periods that each fold into and out of the others, like Russian dolls or Chinese boxes. In 1500, Queen Isabella sends conquistador Tomas Creo (Spanish for "I believe") off to the Maya empire in what is modern-day Guatemala to find the fabled Tree of Life from the Book of Genesis — the eponymous Fountain of Youth. In 2000, a neuroscientist, (Tommy) labors to find a cure for his wife's cancer (here named "Izzi" — a palindrome), achieving a cryogenic breakthrough using a Guatemalan compound. In the third, (Major) Tom, floating in a lotus position at the center of a glistening bubble, far above the world, transports the Tree of Life to the dying star Xibalba, the pathway to the Mayas' realm of the dead. As the characters repeat, similar imagery recurs fugue-like throughout, and everything becomes a clue.

"It was always meant to be a poem, because it's a very visual film, and it's dealing with these really huge issues," Aronofsky says. "It's asking the biggest questions that are out there — about reality and existence and consciousness, about which there are no answers. So for me, it's always been about constructing a puzzle that intellectually you're putting together in your head, but emotionally hopefully you're being affected by the character's journey."

The results, depending on your tolerance for metaphysics as a substitute for narrative logic, may either be the Mesoamerican equivalent of the last third of "2001: A Space Odyssey," with the Maya god-king Ruler II as your spirit guide, or else a mash-up of historical epic and late-sequel "Star Trek" — a kind of "Aguirre: The Wrath of Khan."

Over six years of struggle, the filmmakers were forced to wait out Blanchett's pregnancy, only to have Pitt leave the project after two years; investors pulled out (Regency eventually replaced Village Roadshow to partner with Warner Bros.); and the epic Maya battle they had envisioned to open the picture was rendered obsolete by "Lord of the Rings," "Troy" (starring Pitt) and countless others. The budget, which had ballooned from $30 million to $70 million, reverted to $30 million. Again, a palindrome.

But all of that came later.

Months after they first met, late on the evening of Sept. 10, Weisz arrived in Manhattan for the New York run of "The Shape of Things," while Aronofsky flew to Los Angeles on business, missing her by hours. The next morning, still jet-lagged, she took an early-morning jog by the World Trade Towers, making it back to her Canal Street hotel just in time to feel the impact of the first plane. It was several weeks before Aronofsky could get a flight back, and as he explains it, they've been together ever since.

"I want to go with that story, I'm feeling it, but it wasn't really like that," says Weisz, ruining a perfectly good tale. "It wasn't like he came running back into my arms. I would say that I fell in love with Darren before he fell in love with me. I assumed he would be a pretty weird, dark, intense, bizarre person, and instead he has this lightness of spirit. I would describe him as a person who was very good at life. So I would say I chased him.

"Also, the culture he comes from — this Brooklyn Russian culture — is very exotic to me. I think we're probably exotic to each other. To some English bloke, I'm pretty banal."

The offspring of a Hungarian father who invented a pneumatic respirator still in use today and an Austrian therapist mother, Weisz grew up in posh London surroundings, attending private school and modeling during her summers. She entertained early ambitions of being a private detective before earning an English degree at Cambridge, where she spent most of her time immersed in her own avant-garde theater company, a kind of two-woman Wooster Group called Talking Tongues.

Of her parents, she says, "I would say they're both dreamers. In our family, the future just comes and hits you in the forehead."

From the beginning, Weisz and Aronofsky vowed they would not work together, preferring to live their lives instead. And yet with each new hurdle in the history of the production, it was invariably Weisz who retained faith in the project. She accompanied him to Australia when he had to fire the entire crew following Pitt's departure. (Aronofsky goes to some lengths to emphasize that Pitt behaved honorably throughout.)

Another chance backstage encounter — this one with Hugh Jackman after his Broadway tour de force in "The Boy From Oz" — led to him being cast as the male lead, and it was Jackman who forced the issue, constantly asking, "What about Rachel?" and demanding that she be allowed to audition.

Weisz reports the couple lived apart during the filming, seeing each other only at work and on the weekends. Accepting the Oscar last year for her performance in "The Constant Gardener," Weisz was seven months pregnant, and in April gave birth to their first child, Henry Chance Aronofsky. "It's a magical word," says Weisz of his middle name. "I guess chance is magic, isn't it?"

Not surprisingly, Aronofsky thinks Weisz is "spectacular in the film."

"The way she looks and the way she captures that timelessness, her beauty. What I like about Rachel is her complexity. Like a diamond, there are so many different facets to her."

"For me," Weisz says, "what the whole movie is about is when Izzi says to her husband, 'Come take a walk with me,' and he says, 'I'm too busy.' The film asks the question: What if we could live forever? But the answer is that life is finite and short, and therefore must be treasured. Every moment is a miracle...

"I'm impressed that someone would have the tenacity and the passion to stand by what they believe in and make a dream come true. To make this crazy, mind-bending story come out. I'm sure I helped support him sometimes, but really it was his journey. If it had been me, I'd have given up, without a doubt. And I felt very privileged to watch that happen.

"It was a bit of a fairy tale really."

[MacGuffin]

Aronofsky: The Fountain Is SF

Writer/director Darren Aronofsky wants to make one thing clear: His upcoming epic film The Fountain is definitely science fiction, he told SCI FI Wire. "I'm glad we're talking about this," Aronofsky said in an interview. "It's a really upsetting thing, because I've met people on the road who go, 'This isn't sci-fi because there aren't ray guns.' They haven't said it that obviously, but that's their point. And the fact that science fiction in movies has been so hijacked by techno-lust and by hardware 'button sci-fi,' as we call it, where everything is, if it's not buttons, it's now holographs."

The Fountain, which stars Hugh Jackman and Aronofksy's real-life fiancee, Oscar winner Rachel Weisz, tells three parallel narratives separated by 500 years, dealing with a man's efforts to save his ailing wife. One narrative takes place in the distant future, in a bubble-shaped spacecraft. But that's not what makes it science fiction, Aronofsky (Pi) said. Unlike his fellow filmmakers, who try to downplay the science-fiction elements of their films, the avowed SF geek is proud of the film's SF heritage.

"Believe me, there were drafts of The Fountain where the guy in space had a little holograph," Aronofsky said. "But where we wanted to push our science fiction [was to] push outer space so far, and push technology so far, [to] remove all trucks from space. No more pimped-out cars in space. Return to an organic singularity, so that outer space suddenly becomes inner space. Because I think that's where technology takes you. ... You can't have those tricks. You have to simplify down to something that is absolute, that is mental and [is] no longer electronic. And I think that's where science fiction is going. And it completely is science fiction."

[hedwig]

goddamn darren, shut the hell up already.

[picolas]

i wish i loved this movie. there's so much information about it. just like how i wish i loved those crappy $5 bargain bin movies. i could save so much.

[MacGuffin]

I really want to get ahold of the original draft now. I just went back and read Moriarty's old review of it at AICN, and it sounds fascinatingly different...

yes i want to see it again next week too.  and also was interested to see what the differences were in the original draft and the finished film.  i was going to ask aronofsky at the Q&A but remembered that the original script was made into that graphic novel so i definitely want pick that up.

I picked it up this afternoon. It's really beautifully made, and definitely worth buying if you like the film.

There's also this book (out next Tues.):



Book Description
What if you could live forever? The Fountain is an odyssey about a man's thousand-year struggle to save the woman he loves. In three separate lives—Tomas the conquistador, Tommy the scientist, and Tom the explorer—Thomas is driven to discover the mysteries of life; all three stories converge into one truth as he comes to terms with life, death, love, and rebirth. The book is an extension of Aronofsky's cinematic vision, and will contain production stills of the film's stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, original script, original art, and observations from creators Ari Handel and Darren Aronofsky. Edited by Darren Aronofsky, The Fountain is not so much a tie-in or a behind-the-scenes look at the film, but rather a thoughtful meditation on the film's provocative themes of life and death and its singular visuals.

[MacGuffin]

It has been a long journey for Darren Aronofsky and his film, The Fountain. This venture has been over six years long but film fans can rejoice because The Fountain is finally being released. It is one of the most emotional and moving films (not just science fiction) I have ever seen. The Fountain is confusing at first but soon you are deeply involved in Tom [played by Hugh Jackman], the scientist/conquistador/space traveler's journey to find his what he considers his soul.

Daniel Robert Epstein: The Fountain is a movie about love and destiny which is interesting because if the original incarnation of The Fountain hadn't fallen apart you might never have met Rachel [Weisz] and had a baby.

Darren Aronofsky: It's very strange how art mirrors personal life. But to be honest my conception of the film existed before Rachel. Though it is very strange how things happen.

DRE: I know that Pi was somewhat autobiographical and now The Fountain. Do you have other things like that with Requiem?

DA: Well, after I did Requiem I got my arm cut off [laughs].

Life and art often connect in a weird way and you've just got to be open to it and just go with it. Just keep moving.

DRE: It's just interesting because life and art connect in this movie because Rachel's character is writing a book which connects to the other stories.

DA: Yeah, that as well.

DRE: The Fountain feels almost like emotional autobiography to me. How do you feel about a statement like that?

DA:It's a little too early for me. I wrote it so I imagine it's somewhat connected to me but I'd have to digest that.

DRE: It seems like hope was a big deal for this film too. What brought you to this idea of hope?

DA: I think there's always been hope in my films. Pi was a little bleak but I think Requiem, even in all of its darkness, had hope because by showing you how dark things can get it was actually signaling toward the light. I'm not sure but I think that's what I was told to write, internally.

DRE: Since the special effects that were created for the outer space scenes were somewhat new, how did you know how you were going to be able to meld them into the movie?

DA: I didn't know. There's always a risk but I was always open to going very abstract with that stuff because I just wanted to do something completely different in sci-fi. I just felt we had seen the same old, same old so many times so I really wanted to give the audience a whole different feel. I was hoping for it to be really abstract. I was pretty happy with how photo real it became but I would have been happy if it was more abstract.

DRE: When there are visions of heaven and hell in movies. People always seem to have interesting ideas for hell but then heaven is always kind of lame.

DA: Yeah.

DRE: This is your version of heaven I think.

DA: It's definitely connected to that.

DRE: How did you know that this had to be different?

DA: With all my films we've always tried to do different things because I think that's what audiences want. We see so much stuff on the internet, TV and at the movies that it's always exciting when there's something new put in front of you. It has definitely always been my goal is to keep pushing the boundaries.

DRE: Obviously people like [Fountain producer] Eric [Watson] and your crew aren't resistant of that but is it difficult to convince those who are?

DA: Yeah, I think anytime you do something out of the box with a studio that knows how to do it traditionally you have to work hard to convince them that it's going to look good. But they saw a lot of the early tests we did and they got pretty excited. So early on we were in decent shape with taking chances. But it's always difficult on every front when you try something new because you've got to find people who are adventurous enough to go for it.

DRE: This is a busy day for me. In about two hours I'm talking to Alfonso Cuaron about Children of Men.

DA: Oh dude, tell him I say hello. He's my friend.

DRE: Have you seen Children of Men yet?

DA: I did, I saw it in Venice. It's great.

DRE: It's unbelievable.

DA: A very good film.

DRE: That brings me to my point. Years ago the great cinematographer László Kovács spoke at my college. Afterwards he told me and a few of my friends how he feels bad for us as students because since Star Wars came out we're in a science fiction phase which doesn't seem to be ending any time soon.

DA: Well, I think science fiction is the great genre in literature and in film. In film it's been hijacked by techno-lust and by hardware button sci-fi but I think that what we try to do is something that will return sci-fi to an explanation of inner space as well as outer space. I think bringing in psychedelic and metaphysics have always been more interesting.

DRE: It seems to me that filmmakers like yourself, Alfonso and Guillermo Del Toro are doing things with science fiction that used to only be done in literature. Do you see science fiction as a genre that can still be taken lightly?

DA: Of course. I actually thought that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film was pretty good and very entertaining. I think sci-fi is a huge genre because you can do things that are comedic but you can also do things that can also be incredibly political. Sci-fi is the most radical genre out there because through the illusion of the future you can really comment on the present.

DRE: Last year I read the graphic novel of The Fountain before I saw the film because I interviewed Kent Williams. They're almost like bookends about the movie. Do you feel like the taking in the two of them together gives you a better understanding of what you were trying to say?

DA: I think they're different experiences and I think they have different results. I think the movie moves more towards a poem over time and I think that was more of what I wanted to do. The script that Kent worked off of was very different for me. Even though they're very related the movie is the final product because that's the thing I've offered. I think it works on its own and needs to work on its own. But I think the graphic novel can shed light on how we developed the project.

DRE: Loneliness is a big part of this. This man is lonely in all three time periods. It seems like film can convey the idea of loneliness almost better than any other medium.

DA: Separation versus connection I think, is a big theme in the film. Life and reality and love is all about separation and all the characters want is connection.

DRE: Was that something that was in your mind when you were creating The Fountain?

DA: It's never conscious like that.

DRE: I believe it was [Fountain cinematographer] Matthew Libatique that told me that these films are truly a family affair. Obviously film is much different from drawing or painting or writing a book because it has to be a collaboration. What does making these films into such a tight collaboration do for you?

DA: It's the only way I know how to do it. The reality is that with film there's no way you can make a film on your own. Well you could, but it would take you more than six years so you just need other people who are better than you at certain things. I've always described a director's job as like a conductor of an orchestra. We're just trying to get everyone to play the same theme together.

DRE: When you're asking somebody like Matthew or Clint Mansell about something that's not their job on the film, do you feel that's more of a friend's opinion or an artist opinion?

DA: I think it's both. The fact that we're all friends and also collaborators allows us to talk to each other very directly and to cut all the shit out and get to the core.

DRE: I remember when David Cronenberg worked with a different production designer on Spider than the one he'd been working with for 20 years. I was very surprised when he said it was very difficult for him.

DA: Oh I understand.

DRE: There's going to come a time when that will happen to you.

DA: Yeah as we all get older and life gets more complicated, people take other jobs. Schedules don't work out. It's always a little rough but then you just try to make the best of it. I'm always open.

DRE: When I visited the set of The Fountain you talked about you were going to try to get David Bowie to do some music for the film.

DA: Yeah, I think Bowie's health issues just didn't help in the matter. But he's coming to see the film before it opens and I'm so excited. We're having a special screening. He's coming, Lou Reed's coming.

DRE: Wow.

You explored Judaism with Pi, are there more levels you want to go to with that?

DA: No idea right now but I imagine there'll be certain things that will reemerge.

DRE: What often seems to happen to people as they get older and have children, they turn back to their religion.

DA: I don't think that's where it's coming from. I don't know what the future will bring. Right now I'm just looking to do something that's mean and street. To go back to the Pi level of filmmaking.

DRE: Not that level of a $30,000 budget!

DA: Well, maybe not that level, but close. I want to get my street back. I miss just running and gunning. It would be fun to go back to that.

DRE: I read that you're not talking about what you're doing next at all.

DA: No, not yet.

DRE: But is it another book adaptation?

DA: I actually don't know. I'm working on a couple of things and I haven't really committed to one thing.

DRE: Do you have book galleys sent to you and all that?

DA: Oh yeah, we've got a whole team here that's reading shit non-stop and looking for the next best thing.

DRE: What are you reading personally right now?

DA: Yeah I am reading something. I'm reading Bill Kalush's new biography on Houdini [The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero].

DRE: That's supposed to be really good.

DA: Yeah, it's very good. I just started that.

DRE: What about comic wise?

DA: No I'm not reading anything. I was going to start Can't Get No [by Rick Veitch].

DRE: That's really good too.

DA: I've got it on my desk right here.

DRE: For the new softcover of The Fountain graphic novel, did you pick the artists that did their interpretations at the back of the book?

DA: Yeah, me and Kent [Williams] picked them all.

DRE: There's this one guy in there that I really want to get into, Seth Fisher. I know he's passed away but I thought what he did was brilliant.

DA: Seth Fisher being gone is one of the biggest tragedies. I can't even tell you, he was such an out there guy. He was living in Japan, out of his mind, but an incredible artist. Have you seen his website?

DRE: I  have. I literally just got Green Lantern: Willworld this past week.

DA: Yeah, that's fucking great. I had wanted to collaborate with him for a long time. It's a real tragedy that he passed way ahead of his time, it's a real shame.

DRE: Yeah I mean I read a Wizard article about him and I'm like, "Who's this guy?" because I don't read many mainstream comics.

DA: He was brilliant and he just never got there. He was on the way. I picked him because I had been collecting his art for a while.

DRE: Do you want to try and keep your hand in doing graphic novels?

DA: Yeah, absolutely, I have no idea what's up next but something will come up.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jackman and Weisz on The Fountain
Source: ComingSoon

In Warner Bros. Pictures' The Fountain, Tommy Creo (Hugh Jackman) is on a one thousand year journey to save his dying wife Izzy (Rachel Weisz) from a brain tumor as a 16th century conquistador, a modern-day scientist, and a 26th century astronaut. During his adventurous quest, he discovers the secret to eternal life when he finds the Tree of Life and must decide how this encounter will not only affect his life, but his death as well.

ComingSoon.net talked to Jackman and Weisz about the Darren Aronofsky film, opening in theaters on Wednesday:

CS: When did you get involved with this project?
Hugh Jackman: I met [Aronofsky] January '04 when he came backstage at "The Boy From Oz" that I was doing in New York. And I knew about "The Fountain" and in fact my partner John Palermo said, "You should ask him about it. This is where it's at. He's looking for actors." So I said to him, and he'd really enjoyed the show - first of all, I was a little surprised that he was coming to see a musical but he's a huge musical theater fan. He sees everything. You wouldn't think so but he does and he came back and I said, "I heard about 'The Fountain' and I'd really love to read it." And he went, "Mm, no." No, he said, "I don't think so." I went, Oh. I think I've overstepped a mark here. I probably shouldn't ask him. He rang me the next day and said, "Were you serious about that or were you just saying that like actors say to directors?" I said, "I was serious." He said, "Okay, well, I'll let you read it." So I read it that night and I rang him the next morning and said, "Look, I don't want to be presumptuous. You gonna cast me?" I was so moved by it. I thought it was so beautiful, I said, "I'm in...If you can wait 'til September when my contract finishes, and you want me to do it, I'm in." And that was that. Well, it wasn't that easy. He then came and talked to me, showed me everything and then did sort of a little speech to me, which any actor would end up saying yes but I'm glad that I really listened to him because he said, "I'm going to ask more of you, Hugh, than you've ever been asked to do before on film. I'm going to take you places you maybe even thought you would never go on film. Are you ready to do that?" I said yeah. Actually, for me I was thrilled, but he absolutely worked me.

CS: You did yoga and tai chi underwater?
Jackman: Oh yeah, those three days under water. At the end of it, I dunked him though. We were all wrapped, it was great, [and] he knew. I saw him going back from the edge of the pool because he could tell something was going on. And then I got out of the pool and I pretended I had a bad knee. I said, "I've done my knee doing the lotus position." I'm looking over at him and he wasn't coming forward. He said to the nurse, "Go and check out Hugh" because he knew something was going on. So I said, "Oh, God, I'm going to have to really go on with this." Literally about 10 or 15 minutes, finally I laid down and I said, "Get the stretcher, get the stretcher." So they had to get the stretcher to lift me. At that point, he came and goes s**t and as soon as he came over, I picked him up and I ran to the pool. He was really pissed off because he knew I was going to do it.

CS: This is your most emotional role, did that not scare you?
Jackman: I had never felt up until this movie that I had had a script that warranted that. It's a little frightening. It should be a little frightening for every actor, I think. Otherwise it's not challenging. But I knew it was a kind of rawness that he wanted, that would be difficult to get to but at the same time, I felt like some of the challenges I've had even at drama school, like doing plays, were bigger than the movies that I've been getting. So I was waiting to get a role of this, or Paul's probably the only one here who's seen it, but "Erskineville Kings," the first film I ever did had an emotional intensity, a rawness to it similar to this. But in between, there were like six, seven years where nothing had really demanded that. At the same time you can't just go, "I've got to do a role where I'm really emotionally pushed." That's not a reason to do it. So finally I felt like I had a script that really had a lot of potential.

CS: How do you approach each of the three versions of the character?
Jackman: Yeah, there's an essential similarity in a way, what drives them. But physically we wanted to make them very different, not only looking. Obviously they look very different but I created a different physicality for all three. For Tommy, I made him like a question mark. We had this image of him as a question mark and Darren and I spent hours in rooms, like in rehearsal rooms. I'd walk around and around in a room just trying different things until we kind of felt it was right. But Tommy's very weighed down by the world and what he's doing. Look at the film. He's always hunched over, head sort of down like a question mark. His lab is underground. Everything is under, under, under. He's always going down steps, if you look at the design. It's brilliantly done. Then back in the past, Tomas is a conquistador. He's a warrior. So whilst he's strong physically he's ready to fight, his head is sort of down and he's very sort of like a racehorse, nothing will stop him, he's got blinders on. Then Tom in the future is worked out. He hasn't fully come to terms with who he is. He's still got some problems. He knows how to be physically at his ultimate, so he does tai chi, he does yoga, he meditates and all these things are about maintaining the physical form. So he was just more at ease. I was literally doing yoga, first of all every morning for an hour and a half, two hours. But in between every shot just to really do that. I remember this from drama school, one of the teachers said "people hold their emotions in their body. And if you don't express them, they get locked in your body. Men have very tight hips." A yoga teacher told me this. They have very tight hips which is the lotus position. That's why it's so bloody hard for me to do it. They have tight hips because that is where emotion is stored. So women are a lot, generally more emotional and they're a lot looser in their hips here. So there are certain positions like the pigeon, things like that, that were excruciating but I had to do them. And particularly on those emotional days, I would sit in that position for half an hour at a time. Man, my yoga teacher was amazing. He took me to this thing called the Hall of Air club in Montreal. It was like minus 25 degrees Celsius and we'd jump into the river. For a minute, we'd sit in there, put our head under the river and then you go into the sauna, steam room and do one yoga pose. So you do 15 minutes of one yoga pose. Maybe touching toes with your head on your knees, that kind of thing. Then you jump back in the river again. You do that eight times and after three hours, it's an experience that everyone should do. I had a bald head at the time too. It was amazing. It was like I was on fire. My head was like smoke coming out, steam coming off my head. It was amazing. It was just an incredible feeling. So doing all that yoga was amazing what it did for me.

CS: For Rachel, you are in three time periods but do you think you could approach your role more straightforwardly than Hugh's?
Rachel Weisz: We both had challenging roles. I was playing someone who accepted death which is a challenging place to get to, if you thought about it for a few minutes. It's a very hard place to be, to accept and be okay about dying. And, Hugh was playing someone who just could not accept it, but they both had their challenges.

CS: This is a character who accepts her own mortality. What is your relationship to mortality?
Weisz: The downer and the upper are the same thing because the movie is about death but, for me, what it's really about is a celebration of life. The whole movie to me is about when I go to Hugh Jackman and say "Will you take a walk with me and see the first snow" and he says "I'm too busy. Leave me alone" and I think every couple on the planet has had a little tiff with their partner about something like that, "can we go do something?" and "I'm too busy." I think that the idea is that on our death bed it's that we're going to regret. It's going to be the moments that we didn't spend with our loved ones and we didn't seize the moment, smell the roses, all those expressions and didn't live as fully and as presently and as openly and as lovingly with those around us as we could have. So for me that's what the movie really means. I have to kind of remind myself. I don't know what I think about death and the afterlife. I don't know any of that but I do know that life is definitely finite and short and so we have to try and celebrate being alive as much as we can.

CS: Hugh, what's it like to lose your hair?
Jackman: Great. I'd always wanted to do it because I'd always wanted to swim with a bald head, see what it felt like. Is it weird? But I really have no attachment to my hair at all. I've never had the same hair once. For the last 15 years, I've dyed it this color, than chopped it off. I've never been completely bald. I just can't stop laughing when I see myself. I think I look like a character out of "Lord of the Rings." I think I look ridiculous. It is feeling-wise, incredible. To have a shower with a bald head is the best way to wake up. Then I found myself doing this all day long, feeling my head.

CS: Did your family recognize you at first? Wasn't it startling?
Jackman: Oh, absolutely. My son at the time just thought it was completely odd. He didn't even want to touch me and then gradually he was like that too. He just wanted to feel it. Oh, it was great. We'd be sitting there watching Elmo or something and he's doing this to my head the whole time. It was great.

CS: Rachel, were you apprehensive to cut your hair really short?
Weisz: Darren was really clear that whoever played that part that the character had been through chemo and had lost her hair and it was growing back in an uneven way. He wanted the actress to not have a wig. Most actresses today have really long hair so he made that very clear. He thought it was an important thing for the transformation of what the character had been through. I thought it was kind of cool. I liked it. It definitely had a starkness to it but I think it told a lot of story without me having to work harder telling that part of the story. We shot the present first and then we shot the past so in the past I had a fabulous Queen's wig.

CS: For research, you went to hospices for cancer patients. How did that change your perspective?
Weisz: Hospitals are places we go where the doctors are tying to save our lives and they operate and medicate and everything else. Hospices, people go there when there's nothing medicine can do for them anymore and I think the most inspiring thing was meeting the people who work there because what they did every day. They got up and they went to work to help people die. It's just the most mind-boggling job but such an important one and such a brave one and their perspective on death, because it was just a daily occurrence and what they were trying to help happen with grace and with dignity and with nobility. They would hold people as they were dying or play music whatever these people wanted. The workers were very, very inspiring.

[JG]

that picture is really pretty. 

[MacGuffin]

RUSS' EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: DARREN ARONOFSKY (THE FOUNTAIN)
By Russ Fischer; CHUD

The Fountain is unlike any other studio film you'll see this year. For that matter, it's unlike any American film you'll see any time soon. For this third feature, Darren Aronofsky has created a subtle, potent poem about grace, resonance and death. Recently re-rated from R to PG-13, with a few small alterations, Aronofsky passed through Atlanta to interact with audiences and show off the new cut. I got to sit with him for the better part of an hour, during which he not only divulged a tidbit about his next project, but slowly elaborated on his own unique approach to making a film that eschews typical characters, plotting and cheese.

First off, what's different between the two versions of the film, the R-rated that we saw at festivals and the PG-13 that will be in theatres?

It's very slight. About 4 months ago I had been...there was a line I wanted in the movie that's in the trailer that Hugh and I wanted in the film and I couldn't figure out how to use. And I figured it out a few months ago and got it in. It's right at the beginning of the third act, it's a slight change adding one line and switching the order of two scenes. What happened is that I moved away from the script, and now it's actually how the script was. And I think what happened is, at the time, I couldn't figure it out and I think we did choose the right solution, but having time to figure it out it finally clicked. It doesn't change things much, but it makes me feel better.

There are such little things when you make a film, and I'm not sure if I'm being obsessive, or if it's almost like getting the note exactly right if you're a musician. Like tuning very slightly and getting the key exactly right. I don't think anyone else would really notice the difference, but it keeps me awake at night. Every one of my films has always had a little key that was slightly off. Probably if I looked back at Pi and Requiem now there would be a lot of things off but that's always going to happen as you move forward. But they're never quite perfect. But I think maybe that's OK. Out of that imperfection can be some good things, as long as you nail down the ones that keep you awake.

There's a big gulf in music between being a technical perfectionist and playing by feel. Is there a similar balance for you in filmmaking?

I think that the truth of a scene goes above the technical considerations or limitations. Technically, as filmmakers, you're always going to make mistakes, but if there's something emotionally resonant it'll work anyway. A perfect example is the Ellen Burstyn scene in Requiem where she's talking to Jared, saying "I'm old", giving her big speech. That scene is actually soft -- slightly out of focus. You can't see it on DVD, but you can on film. She's right on the edge of the focus line. She buzzes in and out.

It was a huge thing when we did it, because I knew it was her best performance, and the fact that it wasn't sharp killed me. I think we fired the first AC over it --- you have to, because you have to protect the actors and let them know that their performances will be captured well. But while I was doing Requiem, every night as I went to sleep I'd watch Seven Samurai. And there's a scene with Mifune that's actually slightly soft, but Kurosawa kept it. And not to say -- by any means! -- that Requiem is anything near, or could kiss the feet of Seven Samurai, but that a filmmaker like him had the same problem allowed me to live with it. And now no one notices it but me.

Are little things like the changed line in the new cut even more important in a movie that's not traditionally narrative?

I think so. I think it's important to give this audience all the right clues to point them in the right direction. The Fountain is more of a poem than it is a typical narrative film. All those narrative elements are in there, but it's just because of how we do things that end up making it more abstract. I think if you gave me a very normal, straightforward film, and me and these filmmakers were to attack it, the result would be very abstract! I don't know why that is, it's just how we do things.

Most filmmakers, answering that question, would say it's just how I do things. How much of what the audience thinks of as 'you' is actually all these people working in concert?

The writer/director often gets most of the credit, or the most shame for a film. But it's always a collaboration, and it's totally a team sport. I never forget that.

There are moments of this film that resonate back to Requiem, in terms of technique, but I got the sense that you were trying to develop a new language.

Yes, for two reasons. One is that every film has it's own grammar. It's my job to figure out what the themes are and to put the camera in the right place and inspire the lighting. The reason that Pi and Requiem are so similar, and one of the main reasons I wanted to do Requiem, was that it was very connected to Pi, also a subjective movie, but with four characters to explore instead of one. And having more money, I was very excited to do these things that I wasn't allowed to do the first time. So Requiem allowed me to complete the language we started in Pi.

Afterwards, the thinking was very specific: that's done; we've explored all those techniques, and now it's time for something different. So here we've made a very conscious effort to rely on new techniques, and not simply fall back on what we've done before.

Part of your consistent film language is practical effects. Was that a problem, going into a larger studio film?

Warner Brothers was considering how hard some things are to do, when you shake up the normal ways of doing things. But they were very open to it, and I think one of the reasons they greenlit it a second time was because of the effects footage we had shot. They got it, and realized the stuff we were working with was unlike anything they'd seen before. And it's extremely economical. But taking old techniques and reusing them, which is something I've always liked doing, while cheap, also represents a large risk, and studios don't like that at all. Whose job gets lost if it doesn't work?

You've taken three big chances. You've managed to make each of them work so far -- what are your fears with this one?

I don't think it's always about taking chances, but it's that what I think is interesting and cool and am passionate about telling tend to fall into the riskier category. No one wanted to make a black and white movie like Pi, and on paper Requiem was just another drug movie. This is a love poem to death. I imagine I'll do something easier eventually. I'd love to do a sports movie or do something straightforward. And that's why I wanted to get involved with Lost, because I was excited to just show up and get to work, just to direct. And not even worry about the writing, since the story is by the dungeon masters on site. I do enjoy just directing and working with actors, but I haven't had, or I haven't made that opportunity.

It's amazing that TV is turning into a place where people like yourself can do that.

I think it's very cool. The problem is that it still ends up taking a lot of time. It's far more than a week, the Lost episode was something like 30 days in Hawaii, and with a wife seven months pregnant that just wasn't going to work.

As you continued to work on The Fountain over the past year, did your attitude to it change after the birth of your child?

I think that Henry's birth will totally impact me on my next project, or on future projects. There's one thing we're writing right now, which I haven't announced, which is totally about birth. And it just works out that way...you're writing and suddenly you realize where it came from.

And The Fountain, as I've talked about, came from turning 30. It's a very young age, but it's the first time that a real number is on you that you can't escape. Your friends start getting cancer, and one day you'll be 50, and maybe you'll get to be 80.

You make films with central characters who aren't traditionally likable. Did you consider showing Tom before Izzy got sick, when he was less obsessed and more likable?

We talked about it, but...I've got these cheese antennas. I've never been into that. There's not a name for that scene, but we all know it, where you see a couple doing something that's just a cute little thing between them. Every movie does it. Some directors pull it off better, but I can't stand it. The bile rises up into the back of my throat, because it's such an obvious technique.

My biggest influence is probably cartoons, because I grew up on those, and I think the characters I write are very symbolic, and that's why I think the film becomes more of a fairy tale. And they don't have to be likeable. But they're very symbolic, my characters. And I always saw Hugh's character as 'Man' and Rachel's as 'Woman'. And to me the details of what makes their relationship silly or whatever, I just didn't want to go there. For me, the snowball is the furthest I went. I didn't want to go any further. And that was hard for me. Because I just hate cheese! And to me it's not about that. It's really about what's happening to them in the moment. It's interesting to me, because Izzy is so close to the end when we meet her, and to get to a place where you're able to face what's in front of you with grace, you've got to be pretty far along on your spiritual journey. And that's a very hard character to play. Because Rachel had to be 95% there and 5% terrified. So it's a hard balance, and certain people miss the terror, but it's there.

You mentioned cartoons, which leads to the fact that people in their 30's now are almost consciously infantile in the way they hold onto what they liked as children. Have you consciously evolved your childhood influences?

I think Rachel beats me up on a lot of my childhood obsessions, but I'm still...well, I'm still best friends with guys I met in nursery school. Loyalty to me is one of the most important things. I was best man at a wedding for a guy I met when we were on tricycles, and he's the godfather of my child. I have a big connection to my old neighborhood. Memories of that time are very important. And I don't know...I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I do hate when we sit around and it's all about nostalgia, because I like to be in the moment with my friends.

Perhaps it's that, while you've got a very current connection to your past, many of us don't, and so we use Star Wars fandom as a surrogate for the connections we've lost.

Right, so all those things stand in. I think the nice thing about having grown up in one place is that there's an almost root-like conduit of energy I get from there. I still go back, and I feel this energy from the earth that inspires me. That's why I brought Requiem back down there.

Is there anything that you do ritualistically as you write to tap into that energy?

It's not connected to that, specifically. I think the best thing to describe my writing is that I'm a nomadic writer. I need to go to a new space every two weeks, because otherwise I'll find things to help me procrastinate. I need to be uncomfortable when I write. Otherwise I'll lay in bed forever...if I'm comfortable I'll watch TV or surf the internet. But if I'm uncomfortable it forces me to do the work.

Which is the antithesis of what most writers say -- they want their comfortable routine.

But I'm not a writer. I'm a dilettante when it comes to writing. But there are moments. There are those times when it's great as I'm writing, but most of the time it's really painful. It's hard to sit down and to do the work. I'm much more of a collaborator. My favorite part is working with actors. That's always the best part.

How much changes as you get together with actors?

With dialogue, not much, because we did spend a lot of time on the dialogue. Because we spent five years writing, we realized that every line has real significance if we tried to lose it. There's very little dialogue in the film and if you take out some lines or changed them, it caused problems. There was one actor I had, who I won't name, who wanted to change everything. And it was very, very difficult. I tried to help him, but as soon as we started to change things I realized all the impact it had further down the line that messed up other scenes. But as far as how a line is delivered, I hope that an actor will enlighten me about how to do something.

Solaris keeps coming to mind for me, as I think about The Fountain.

The Tarkovsky one, I hope!

Both! I like the Soderbergh one a lot, actually.

You know, I didn't see either one. So I don't know. Everyone keeps bringing up the Tarkovsky version, but I was never a big Tarkovsky fan. Now I feel like I should check him out.

Few movies manage to successfully discuss death and a graceful acceptance of it, and the resonance of decisions. Solaris and The Fountain are two of them.

Someone was telling me about the water imagery, and similarities there. But I will watch it -- I should see it on film at this point.

The Soderbergh version was a quiet, ambitious film that didn't do well. Are you worried that The Fountain will be similar commercially?

I think it had an impact on us, actually, because it came out very close to us getting shut down the first time. And I wonder if there was a relationship or whisperings of a connection. Nothing was ever direct, but it's hard not to wonder. Of course I want The Fountain to do well...my only concern is that, looking at Requiem, which only made three million at the box office, now you go around and it seems like everyone has seen it. So I'm hoping that the same thing doesn't happen with The Fountain. But this is a very different type of movie and the problem is that you have to perform in the first weekend. I hope that the conversations about this movie happen quickly and drive people to see it. But Warners has been very supportive. All this studio stuff is so new to me, that I have no idea what anything really means. It's a very hard time right now.

How did you feel about the reception to the film at Toronto versus Venice?

Well, I think if anything we're getting really heated responses. That's exciting to me. And that's what happened at that fucking first screening in Venice, was there was a fight between two journalists. That to me was the story. Not that some people booed and some applauded. It's that there was a fight, that they got into it like that.

Few films inspire that sort of response.

Rarely! How often do you walk out of a movie and really have an argument about whether something was great or terrible? It happens...Dancer in the Dark was like that. Lars von Trier does that a lot to people. Lilya 4-ever, those are films that really juice me up. Great filmmakers taking chances. Why bat .150 when you can swing for the fences? I think that's what's interesting...you don't want someone to say 'he didn't connect on the bunt'! You don't want to half-ass it. Those are the ones that inspire me.

What else is inspiring you right now?

(long pause.) You know, there's very little out there that is really inspirational right now, and that's very upsetting. It seems like everyone is interested in Paris Hilton. We've got an era of superficiality. That's the focus. It's a shame that I can't name one inspiration political figure out there. Nelson Mandela? That's all we've got left. There are so few whose integrity you can buy. Music-wise, I'm still listening to Johnny Cash, who I've listened to all summer, and he's always inspirational. I think the last band that really inspired me was Sleater Kinney. I really loved their energy; they just went for it. There are filmmakers who are doing stuff...Lucas Moodysson. For me, A Hole In My Heart was just way too much, but still, he went for it! The Dardenne Brothers are fantastic. Fincher is trying to do it right. Alfonso [Cuaron] and [Alejandro González] Iñárritu are great. They're really pushing it. I think it's an interesting time; there are filmmakers who are trying to be very truthful.

Responses to movies are changing, too. Is the personalization through DVD and lack of a communal experience fragmenting it?

There is a benefit, that people can watch things over and over again. That's one of the reasons we were confident that we could fill The Fountain with so much detail. It seems like in this Lost generation, people are interested in the connections and different threads. So it's not all bad.

But I have no way to gauge these things, sometime. When I go into a screening I'm just the guy who made Requiem For A Dream, and afterwards it's something very different. And the audience for The Fountain is very different from the Requiem audience. I think there are people in that base who will like it, but...there have always been Pi fans and Requiem fans, and sometimes they overlap, but typically there are very clear camps. They'll enthuse over one and not even mention the other. But this is very different, and I think there will be a new, unique audience for it. Do you think that?

I think it might be those audience grown up, who have gone through the same milestones you have, and then hopefully expand from there.

Possibly. But the amazing thing is that Requiem is still being discovered by all these 15-year olds. All over the country I hear from them, and I think, 'you're not supposed to be watching this!' NC-17, baby!

Two part question: Will you do another studio film, and is Lone Wolf and Cub really dead?

Well, the thing we're writing that's big is a studio film. Lone Wolf, Paramount never got the rights. And we developed a script, but now the rights don't exist.

That was so exciting for a moment there.

The new thing is even more exciting, and I'll give you an exclusive. I'm not going to tell you exactly what it is, but...it's a biblical epic.

In...Aramaic?

(laughs) In English!

What led you to that?

It's something I've wanted to do for a long time. Before Pi. Probably ten years ago, I had an idea. Actually, I wrote a poem about it when I was in 7th grade. I won this award for it -- my first writing award. So it's a story from the Bible that kind of stuck with me. About ten years ago I was at a museum that featured an exhibit that reminded me of it. So we've been trying to crack it for a while, and we finally figured out a direction. But...I can't tell you any more.

There's always that moment when a filmmaker gets to do the project they've wanted to do fort a decade and...it rarely works. Are you afraid of that?

That's...I call that the fingerpaint syndrome. Remember when you were in kindergarten and you were painting, if you kept going too long it started to turn brown? So I'm always asking my crew, 'are we going brown here?'. And that was the challenge with The Fountain, and with anything you work on, and it'll be a challenge here too.

[matt35mm]

that picture is really pretty. 

That should have been the poster.  It's much better.

[nix]

It's getting ass-raped by critics. 15% cream of the crop on RT. I'm still there first thing tomorrow. Is the running time really only 95 min? Based on the premise I'd think it needs to be a touch longer.

[A Matter Of Chance]

i wish andrei tarkovsky had made this movie

[Chest Rockwell]

I wish people wouldn't say shit like that.