The Wrestler

[MacGuffin]

Mickey Rourke delivers tour de force as "Wrestler"
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Indie film darling Darren Aronofsky stumbled with his most recent movie, "The Fountain," but he's back on track with "The Wrestler," which had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and is seeking distribution.

Bolstered by a career-best performance from Mickey Rourke and outstanding work by Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, the film could nab audience interest, especially if Rourke's portrayal generates the awards fever that greeted Ellen Burstyn's turn in Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream."

Rourke plays a one-time wrestling star, Randy the Ram, still hustling 20 years past his prime. The strongest scenes are the opening sections that simply delineate Ram's daily routines. He continues to perform in low-rent arenas, and the film does a fine job revealing the mixture of fakery and bruising physical assaults that are part of the wrestling game. Ram can barely pay his rent, perhaps because he still spends money on his appearance -- dyeing his long locks, visiting a tanning salon and relying on steroids to stay in shape.

This sharp slice of life is not quite enough to sustain a movie, and so writer Robert Siegel has come up with a plot that hits too many predictable notes. When Ram suffers a heart attack, he tries to make changes in his life, reaching out to a tough-as-nails stripper (Tomei) and to his estranged daughter (Wood).

Although the film teeters on the brink of sentimentality, it never topples into the slush, and this is a tribute to the rigorous direction as well as the astringent performances. Still, there are mawkish moments: When Rourke and Wood visit an abandoned beachside emporium, a tear trickles down his cheek as he pleads for her love. "Wrestler" oscillates between hard-edged naturalism and stock melodrama but ends on an understated note of melancholy that seems just right.

Rourke dispenses with all vanity to plumb the depths of this well-meaning but severely damaged man. Tomei delivers one of her most arresting performances, again without any trace of vanity. Wood's part is smaller, but she captures the scalding anger of a woman neglected for most of her life. The supporting players add to the authenticity of the atmosphere. That authenticity is the hallmark of the production, with vivid cinematography and set design.

Ram might be the ultimate loser, but Rourke scores a winning tour de force.

[picolas]

fuck i hope that last sentence isn't the ultimate spoiler.

[Gamblour.]

My old Italian roommate just informed me this one the Golden Lion at Venice. I'm glad it's getting some good reviews and prestige, this had me way nervous before. Article here:

http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=festivals&jump=story&id=1061&articleid=VR1117991766&cs=1

[Stefen]

What the fuck is going on here? Why did I even doubt Aronofsky?

[squints]

[MacGuffin]

Fox Searchlight Acquires The Wrestler
Source: ComingSoon

Fox Searchlight Pictures President Peter Rice today announced that the company has acquired US rights to the riveting drama The Wrestler, which had its North American premiere last night at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Golden Lion at the 2008 Venice Film Festival. Directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by Rob Siegel, The Wrestler stars Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood. The film was produced by Scott Franklin and Darren Aronofsky thru Protozoa Pictures. Vincent Maraval, Agnes Mentre and Jennifer Roth served as executive producers and Mark Heyman co-produced. The film is scheduled to be released in December 2008.

Said Fox Searchlight Pictures President Peter Rice, "Darren Aronofsky has created an unbelievably electrifying and compelling tale with tour de force performances. We are delighted to be releasing this brilliantly executed film and thank Wild Bunch for choosing Searchlight."

Added Darren Aronofsky, "I've known Peter Rice for many, many years and am excited and honored to finally get a chance to collaborate with him and his team."

Said Vincent Maraval "We are delighted to have closed the deal with Fox Searchlight which we believe is the best distributor for this movie."

Back in the late '80s, Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) was a headlining professional wrestler. Now, twenty years later, he ekes out a living performing for handfuls of diehard wrestling fans in high school gyms and community centers around New Jersey.

Estranged from his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and unable to sustain any real relationships, Randy lives for the thrill of the show and the adoration of his fans. However, a heart attack forces him into retirement. As his sense of identity starts to slip away, he begins to evaluate the state of his life -- trying to reconnect with his daughter, and strikes up a blossoming romance with an aging stripper (Marisa Tomei). Yet all this cannot compare to the allure of the ring and passion for his art, which threatens to pull Randy "The Ram" back into his world of wrestling.

Director Darren Aronofsky presents a powerful portrait of a battered dreamer, who despite himself and the odds stacked against him, lives to be a hero once again in the only place he considers home ­ inside the ring.

[MacGuffin]

Mickey Rourke, Part 2: Actor vs. director

FROM THE TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL:

When "The Wrestler" director Darren Aronofsky decided he wanted to go ahead with the film, he remembers having a casting epiphany: The actor who'd be absolutely perfect for the part of an over-the-hill wrestler would be ... Mickey Rourke. Most directors would've immediately run to their shrink and confessed that they had a career death wish. Mickey Rourke? The famously unruly, unreliable, uncontrollable motorcycle-riding madman? Aronofsky knew what he was getting himself into.

"All my friends said, 'No way, you can't do this. You can't make a movie where the whole film depends on Mickey,' " Aronofsky told me yesterday. But the hard-headed director set up a meeting with the actor anyway. "I was very honest with him, like you'd be in a marriage. We looked each other in the eye and I said, 'This is a purely artistic venture. There's no money.' But if he would show up, if he really, really wanted the chance to be a lead in a film again, I wanted to do it with him."

Of course, Rourke remembers the encounter a bit differently. "I was sitting in a restaurant in the West Village that my friend Julian Schnabel turned me on to and this guy shows up, riding a bicycle, with this green helmet and an unbelievably dorky outfit. And I go, 'That must be him. Darren Aronofsky--smart Jewish boy from Brooklyn." Rourke unleashes a derisive snort. "Darren has got to be the worst dresser on the planet. That outfit! He told me it was Prada, but all I could think was--he looks like a UPS delivery guy."

Rourke says Aronofsky didn't waste any time getting to the point. "There were no formalities. He said 'You've been difficult.' I nodded my head. He said, 'You've thrown your career away.' I nodded my head. Whatever he said, I agreed. He tried to make me feel 2 inches tall. He raised his voice and he pointed his finger at me and said, 'You can never disrespect me. You can never [mess] around with girls at night. You can't go to Miami over the holidays because I know you'll be out partying every night. And by the way, I can't pay you because we have no money.' "

Rourke laughs. "That's how bad my career had gotten. I had to listen to all that crap and take it. I kept thinking, 'This guy must really be talented'--I'm leaving out a few choice profanities that Rourke used for emphasis--'to get away with talking to me that way.' But it was OK. I like a guy that's honest from the start. We never had a problem."

But why didn't Rourke butt heads with Aronofsky, the way he did with so many other directors?

Rourke says Aronofsky's self-confidence won him over. "That very first day we met, he said, 'I'll take you to the show. I'll get you a nomination for this part.' And after the first week of work, I believed him. He walked the walk and that got my respect. Darren is like a really demanding football coach, like Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry. He said, 'Give Rourke the ball' and I ran with it."

If Aronofsky thought Rourke needed a little extra motivation, he was not afraid to offer it. When Rourke was doing his scenes with Evan Rachel Wood, the young actress who plays his daughter in the film, Aronofsky would heap praise on her performance. "Then he'd come over to me and say, 'You really sucked. She's totally smoking you. You better bring your A-game to this scene or she's gonna wipe the floor with you,' " Rourke says. "But let me tell you, I loved working with her. She's a real pro and she's going places. She's like Rita Hayworth. I wouldn't have a problem doing a scene with her on Mars."

Rourke had to undergo a grueling training regime to play the part--he says he did all of his wrestling stunts in the film. Even though he's a boxing fan, he now has renewed respect for the physical pounding wrestlers take every night in the ring. "The first time a 260-pound guy threw me across the ring, I knew I was in for it--every tooth in my mouth, the real and the fake ones, ached for days. I went to the chiropractor twice a week. I had three MRIs in two months. That stuff is not fake."

Rourke says his trainer was a former Israeli commando and ex-cage fighter. "He never let up on me. Under no circumstances could I say, 'I don't feel like training today.' He had a key to my hotel room. So even if I had three girls in my bed, it didn't matter. I had to work out. Luckily, he's very religious, so he always took the Sabbath off. That was the only time I got a break."

The critics will be swooning over Rourke's performance in "The Wrestler" for months to come. But I couldn't help but wonder--is this that once-in-a-lifetime performance? Or can Rourke keep his act together long enough to string together enough parts to put his career back on track? If anything could possibly explain the strange sensitivity of his psyche, it's his love for his Chihuahuas. He has six of them, but the one that seems to be a dog of truly Rourkian proportions is Jaws, also known as Little Mickey.

Rourke saved the dog from being put to sleep at an animal shelter. It had been badly abused and was totally uncontrollable, always foaming at the mouth and growling at anyone that tried to come near him. So of course, Rourke tried to give him a kiss. Jaws instantly bit Rourke in the mouth. "There was blood everywhere. It looked like I'd been hit by a car. I had to go get stitches. But I kept him. He just needed to trust someone. For the first few months, he had nightmares every night. When I'd be watching football, he'd jump on my bed and walk up and down my stomach, baring his teeth like he was Predator or something."

And then suddenly one day the dog calmed down and put his head on Rourke's shoulder. Mickey acts it out, reaching out and resting his head on my shoulder in the middle of the Four Seasons lobby. "I'm not saying he was totally normal," Rourke says. "In the winter, you still couldn't put a hoodie on him. And after he growled at everyone on the set, the PAs put a nice little sign up, saying 'Be Careful of White Dog in Mickey's Trailer.' But he wasn't so crazy anymore."

One day Rourke took the dog to meet his therapist. "My therapist said, in his very soft voice, 'Well, Mickey, why do you think you took to Jaws so well?' " Rourke laughs. "I think I've finally figured out what he means."

[w/o horse]

Oh shit.

I can't wait for this fucking movie to come out.

[MacGuffin]

Mickey Rourke Explains His Preparation For 'The Wrestler': 'I Had Some Demons'
Director Darren Aronofsky also on hand to discuss buzzed-about indie film.
Source: MTV

Mickey Rourke's performance as Randy "the Ram" Robinson in "The Wrestler" is the kind of thing you can't wait to tell everybody you know about. You may have heard the first whispers about it already. Since debuting at the Venice Film Festival last week and premiering in North America at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this week, the buzz has started to build. And I'm here to tell you it's for real. If this isn't an Oscar-caliber performance, I don't know what is.

A moving and soulful portrait of a man who can find no peace outside of a wrestling ring, Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" could have been pitched as "Rocky Balboa" without the happy ending. Eschewing the stylistic flourishes he became known for with films like "Requiem for a Dream" and "The Fountain," Aronofsky's latest offering is spare and quietly mesmerizing, even when its protagonist is bleeding and battered.

MTV News caught up with Rourke and Aronofsky in Toronto only hours after the film was sold to Fox Searchlight (which will, by all accounts, release "The Wrestler" for awards consideration before the end of the year). We found an introspective and ultimately upbeat Rourke, mindful of his past mistakes and eager for the next phase of his career.

MTV: This is such a raw performance in every conceivable way. Did you know what you were getting yourself into?

Mickey Rourke: I knew 10 days into making this movie that this would be the best movie I ever made, and I knew after three days that it would be the hardest movie I ever made. I didn't have a wrestling background. People like to go, "Oh, he was an ex-professional boxer — he can do the wrestling." Wrestling and boxing is like Ping-Pong and rugby. There's no connection. These guys get really hurt. You've got guys who are 265 [pounds] throwing you across the ring. They take several years to learn how to land. I landed like a lump of sh--. Every bone in my body vibrated. Darren would go, "Let's do it again!" I was like, "Give me five f---ing minutes to relax!" Here's a guy whose only exercise he ever did was lifting his fork to his mouth, and he's going, "C'mon, Mickey, you're only giving me 50 percent!" That's part of his thing, to push my buttons.

MTV: What kind of training did you go through?

Rourke: I got a really good Israeli trainer who made me pump iron and do the cardio for four months. Then we did two hours of weight training and cardio and two hours of wrestling practice. This is months before the film. By the time we shot the movie I was like, "This is the easy part." The other stuff was murder.

MTV: I've heard that you rewrote a lot of your dialogue in the film.

Rourke: I rewrote all of my scenes and all of my dialogue. The speech at the end I wrote the night before.

MTV: That's a heartbreaking speech for this character. Where did it come from?

Rourke: I was an amateur fighter way before I was an actor. I got hurt and I quit. I had a lot of shame about that. I felt I quit because I was afraid I was going to fail. When I turned 34 I went back and [fought]. I did pretty good. I had 12 fights and six knockouts. It probably wasn't the brightest decision in my life, but I had some demons as a man. At that point, I was getting really destructive. I didn't want to act anymore. I had issues from my childhood. It was shame that turned into anger. Some really awful things happened. Boxing was almost like a healing process for me.

[Aronofsky joins.]

MTV: This sounds like a close collaboration between you two.

Rourke: The best thing that I can thank Darren for is he surrounded me with the best possible people. We had some stuff choreographed for the movie that was going to be a lot simpler than what we did. And then one of the real wrestlers would do a fancy move, and I'd say, "I want to do that!"

Darren Aronofsky: I'd be like, "You're crazy! Just do the basic moves."

Rourke: As soon as my head got in that mindset, I wanted to be the best wrestler in three months in the world.

Aronofsky: And by the end of it, a lot of his trainers said to me, "He's better than 80 percent of the WWF guys out there."

Rourke: I was more proud of that than the acting.

MTV: I've never seen a film that stayed quite literally on the back of a character for so much of the story.

Aronofsky: It's one of the connections me and Mickey have. My mentor at film school was Stuart Rosenberg who directed "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Pope of Greenwich Village" [which starred Rourke]. When I first met Mickey I tried to impress him by saying I was Stuart's friend. And Mickey told me, "Stuart taught me one thing. He taught me how to act with my back."

Rourke: There's a scene [in "The Pope of Greenwich Village"] where Daryl Hannah shoots me down. As I walk out, Stuart says to me, "You just got dumped by the love of your life. You're going to walk out of the room." Now what does a guy do then when they have to go out and face the world? [Rourke gets up and demonstrates a slow, defeated walk.] He walks out, stops a second. [Rourke stops, subtly collects himself and continues walking.] It was little things like that.

MTV: When I watched the film I couldn't help but think about your personal ups and downs, Mickey. Did you guys discuss the audience coming to this with that kind of knowledge?

Aronofsky: No, we never talked about that. For me, it was always about the talent of this man who's been playing heavies for 20 years and never showing his sympathetic side.

Rourke: For me, it was a little different. I had a career 15 years ago, and I screwed it up from my issues I couldn't deal with until I got help. When you were somebody and then you're not anybody anymore you live in a state of shame. Randy is a proud guy. He doesn't want to work at a deli counter. He wants the audience still, but his time has passed him by.

MTV: Mickey, how are you feeling today, both physically and about where your career can go at this point?

Rourke: I looked in the mirror when my boxing career was over. My equilibrium was off. I can't do intricate things with my hands because of the nerve damage. There are a few teeth missing. I don't remember things the way I used to. But I was fortunate. I got out when the doctors told me. I wasted a lot of time. I want to work with interesting directors. I'm going to do a lot of work because of the time I wasted.

[MacGuffin]

Interview: Darren Aronofsky - Part 1
Source: SlashFilm

Darren Aronofsky is the director of Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain. His latest film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and was bought by Fox Searchlight the morning after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (You can read my review here). Earlier this week, I was granted the chance to sit down with Aronofsky for a half hour interview. Below is the first part of the interview. We will be running the next part tomorrow, and the third part on Friday. Enjoy.

Peter Sciretta: There was a very long period of time between Requiem [for a Dream] and trying to get The Fountain off the ground. And now The Wrestler is being billed almost as a come back film...

Darren Aronofsky: Oh, that's silly...

Peter Sciretta: So why was there such a long break?

Darren Aronofsky: Well, as you know, I had to make the Fountain twice. The first incarnation with Brad Pitt was much publicized and then it fell apart. I had to basically rewrite it and put it back together with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. So basically it was about 6, 7 years for the whole thing from start to finish. So for me it was almost like making two different movies. We were at seven weeks out from shooting the first Fountain 1.0 when it fell apart. It was fully story-boarded and shot listed, and...

Peter Sciretta: All the sets were built?

Darren Aronofsky: They were 60 or 70 percent built. We had 120-foot tall Mayan pyramid constructed. We had 150 Mayans about to board plane to Queensland, Australia. We were 20 million dollars in, or something...

Peter Sciretta: That must have been heartbreaking.

Darren Aronofsky: Oh, it was disastrous for me, but...  I had been through heartbreak in my career before, in film school, so I was kind of prepared and I kind of just tried to take it as positively as I could. I grabbed a backpack, literally a knapsack, with one change of clothes and I went to China and India for a few weeks and cleared my head, because I was over in Australia for five months. I then spent about six to eight months trying to get something else going. I developed a few other projects and actually the beginnings of The Wrestler.

Peter Sciretta: So you developed The Wrestler?

Darren Aronofsky: The Wrestler was my idea. When I graduated film school in '92 / '93, one day I wrote a list of ten ideas for films in my diary. And one of them was called The Wrestler. When The Fountain shut down the first time I started to think about it. I knew I wanted to do a wrestling picture. I teamed up my producer on this film, Scott Franklin, who was a wrestling fan, a bigger wrestling fan than me, and he loved the idea. He's also a writer.

Peter Sciretta: You come from New York and so [wrestling] must have been all over the place?

Darren Aronofsky: I wasn't a huge fan as a kid. I went to one match at Madison Square Garden with my best friend and my dad. I remember we all lost our voices from screaming so loud. Hulk Hogan was a bad guy and I remember Tony Atlas lifting up Hulk Hogan and dropping him on his balls on the top rope. We went crazy, it was great. I think I went to a couple of other little matches at veterans halls. So it was in my head a bit, but I was never a crazy fan. It was like a small window, and it was before the Hulk-mania, so it wasn't so big. It was still kind of in the early 80's. So it wasn't quite the phenomenon that it became. And by the time Hulkmania came out, I wasn't interested in it. But I thought that the boxing movie is a genre film, and there's been thousands of boxing movies - who knows how many. But no one has ever done a serious wrestling film. No one has ever done a serious film about a wrestler.

Peter Sciretta: Every fictional film so far treats it as if it were a real sport...

Darren Aronofsky: Yeah, and all the Barton Fink jokes, which we were aware of... "Aronofsky, what are you going to do? A wrestling picture?" You know. [laughs] And some people picked up on it. In fact, at the Venice Film Festival, they asked for a director's quote, and I sent in a quote from Barton Fink. But no one had ever done a serious film and I always wondered why. I think that's because most people think wrestling is a joke. It's really looked down upon by a lot of people, but the more research I started to do into that world, the more complex, and the more tragic I found it to be. The mortality rate of these guys is just staggering. And the fact that it's not at all really examined is really curious. And the fact that it's so popular. It's like one of the most popular forms of entertainment in America and no one's studied it in any way. We realized pretty quickly when we started to work on it that me being the type of film maker I am probably trying to do something with the WWE and having creative freedom wasn't going to happen so I couldn't really do something contemporary so originally we started to think about me and Scott to do something as a period piece, be it pre-WWF because then we wouldn't have to deal with it. But then we realized this was a low-budget movie, so we figured we had to do something contemporary. We started to look at the backwoods wrestling matches that go on, all over New Jersey and everywhere in the country. They're going on and I saw a lot of these veterans there and that kind of triggered the idea of an older time guy, and...

Peter Sciretta: Well, it's also interesting that your film is the first wrestling film not to have the promoter as the villain...

Darren Aronofsky: [laughs]

Peter Sciretta: Or you know, the it's like you don't really have a villain...

Darren Aronofsky: I don't think I've ever had a villain in any of my movies. If you really think about it, or at least a traditional villain. I haven't made a film like that. I just wanted to tell a true story of a character going through this and what that lifestyle was like, the lifestyle as they call it.

Peter Sciretta: I think you pretty much nailed it. Before, when I was younger I was really into wrestling and the behind the scenes aspects really interested in and I think you've nailed that aspect of it. This is also a departure from your last project, and it was made for considerably less.

Darren Aronofsky: The Fountain was thirty million dollars and this is six, so it's a fifth - 20 percent of the budget. After I spent two years in post on all the visual effects on The Fountain, about a year and a half of post work, and a lot of it was technical work. I love that work, but for me the most exciting aspect of filmmaking is working with actors. I just was craving to work with actors so my mandate after that time spent in post was like, I just want to do a quick piece with actors. I just want to work with actors, I want to work with actors. So I looked at my list of projects and I saw The Wrestler thing and I just started to think about it. And that's kind of when I ran into Robert Siegel, who wrote the final screenplay. Rob was originally one of the first writers of the Onion, and wrote this great script which made the rounds around Hollywood. Actually he just directed it by himself independently. It was such a great script. I met with him and I just started telling him about sort of things I was working on and I told him about the script that Scott had written about The Wrester, and how he didn't nail it, and he said "Wrestling? I love wrestling!" And so then he started from scratch. And basically, about the same time is when the idea of Mickey came up, and I can't remember how the idea of Mickey came up immediately, but as soon as I met with him it was just clear that this was the man for the job.?

Peter Sciretta: But when the project was first announced, well obviously Nicholas Cage was attached, what happened?

Darren Aronofsky: There was a window where it was very very hard. Basically no one wanted to make it with Mickey Rourke. We couldn't get money to do it. Just because of how independent films get sold now is on foreign value, and Mickey just doesn't have enough for what we needed. So there was a brief flirtation with Nic Cage because Nic really liked the script. Nic was a complete gentleman, and he understood that my heart was with Mickey and he stepped aside. I have so much respect for Nic Cage as an actor and I think it really could have worked with Nic but... you know, Nic was incredibly supportive of Mickey and he is old friends with Mickey and really wanted to help with this opportunity, so he pulled himself out of the race. Then an executive producer named Jennifer Roth came on. She is great at doing independent films and she was like, "What if that's the amount of money you got, let's just figure out a way to do it." So we just did it. So we did things which actually work with the style. Instead of getting a thousand extras we worked with these different wrestling promotions and actually put on live promotions and then stuck Mickey smack in the middle of it. It added to a whole new flavor to it and we got the authenticity that came with that as well.


Interview: Darren Aronofksy - Part 2
Source: SlashFilm

Darren Aronofsky is the director of Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain. His latest film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and was bought by Fox Searchlight the morning after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (You can read my review here). Earlier this week, I was granted the chance to sit down with Aronofsky for a half hour interview. You can read the first part of the interview here. We will be running the final part tomorrow. Enjoy.

Peter Sciretta: How was your experience with the wrestling fans? I can imagine...

Darren Aronofsky: They were fantastic. They were hilarious. Look, I'll tell you a funny story. We went out to shoot that final Ayatollah match. And this was set after Mickey sliced his thumb [in the story timeline]. One time we forgot to put the tape on and someone from the audience screamed that he forgot the tape on his thumb. "You forgot the tape!" And I heard it. And I was like, "Oh shit, we've got to tape him". So the whole audience started screaming, "You fucked up!" Then Mickey came out and did that big heart-felt speech. I didn't tell the audience it was going to happen. I just sent Mickey out there, because I just wanted to see what would happen with the audience. I was into this "live thing". But the audience was shouting responses and they were stepping all over his lines. They didn't show any respect to it. So I went out there and I was like "You guys, this is a heart felt moment. This is a man at the end of his career who you love and you respect..." And then they all started screaming. "We fucked up. We fucked up." So they were great! The Ring of Honor audience was great. The CZW audience were obviously very rowdy and cursing us out. There's that YouTube video where they attack us. But they loved it. They couldn't help themselves but to be rude. And then the first match, that first match for Afa's promotion, WXW was much more controllable.

Peter Sciretta: This is the first film you didn't write? Were you involved part of the writing process?

Darren Aronofsky: me and my team at Protozoa did a lot of development, and really worked with Rob a lot. And that's why I took a producing credit, which I've never done before. The structure and the bones of it was a collaboration between us and Rob. But Rob also added the humor. He wrote the Passion of the Christ line and he wrote the great Kurt Cobain line. He brought details that were just fantastic in the project.

Peter Sciretta: Did the budget dictate the style or was that a choice you specifically made?

Darren Aronofsky: I kind of wanted to do the project, wanting to free myself from the technical work I had been doing in The Fountain. And actually I should say, for me, Pi, Requiem and The Fountain were really a trilogy. I kind of call it like my mind, body, spirit trilogy. Pi - being mind, Requiem - being body and The Fountain - being spirit.

Peter Sciretta: That's awesome...

Darren Aronofsky: And as far as a progression of style. Even though I hope they are unique of each other, there's definitely connections between them. That was for me as a filmmaker, I was growing and developing a language. But if Madonna taught us anything, it's that you've got to reinvent yourself. And I really believe that and so I kind of felt like The Fountain was everything I wanted to do, in the sense that everything in it, every frame, every sound effect on the speakers was thought about, and controlled and tweaked to what we wanted. And I just wanted to throw that out the window. That was a big part when I cast Mickey. I realized what type of actor he was. I wanted him to create an environment where he could completely roam free. So I hired Maryse Alberti to be the cinematographer. Maryse has done a lot of fiction work, but has also done a lot of documentary. So we just sort of lit up the spaces so that we could just basically let Mickey roam. We did crazy things like at that big wrestling match when I told Mickey to just "Go back stage" after their match ends. And that was not scripted. Those guys didn't know we were coming. That was the first take and the only take, and we just put the camera on our shoulder and we followed Mickey through the crowd. And they just reacted. The wrestlers were great because they are entertainers and they're used to cameras so they were just totally natural in front of the camera, and they just went for it. So we could do things like that.

Peter Sciretta: That was one of my favorite shots of the film, that and the sequence where Mickey first goes to the deli and it's almost like him walking through the backstage area while getting ready to make his entrance to the ring.

Darren Aronofsky: He did not like that scene, just so you know. Because he just felt the shame of Randy the Ram. Most of it was improvised; in fact a lot of those customers were not actors, they were real customers and we just started filming. They knew the camera was there, and we were like, "Hey! Do you mind if we shoot this?" I don't know if they knew Mickey Rourke but they were like, "OK. Fine." That woman ordering the chicken, that just happened. Really. All improvised. The supermarket was open and people were coming up to him. We didn't shut down. We didn't have the budget to shut the super market down. We were just behind the deli counter and people were shopping. We would kind of control them with PA's. One of the managers came up and said "You know, the check out people can't read Mickey's handwriting." And I was like, "What are you talking about?" Apparently some people were trying to buy some of the things that Mickey was filling out. I mean Mickey's scribbling random numbers. He doesn't know what anything is. And customers actually went home with the food that Mickey put together.

Peter Sciretta: That is funny. That is really funny.

Darren Aronofsky: Yeah.

Peter Sciretta: And I noticed that some of the people in the Deli sequence also had the last name of Aronofsky.

Darren Aronofsky: Yeah, my parents. Both of them have been in all the films, so it was great to bring them back in.

Peter Sciretta: How did Mickey's training go? There's some sequences in there where he's fighting and it looks like a real wrestling match of an older wrestler.

Darren Aronofsky: He did every single move in that film. He performed everything in that film. And he wanted to. We hired Afa. I don't know if you remember the Wild Samoans. Afa is a great wrestling teacher, now out in Allentown. He put together a team of guys who trained Mickey for three months to do it. As he got deeper and deeper into it, he wanted to do more and more and more challenging and more and more difficult things, which scared the shit out of me. As a director concerned for his safety, but as you know, he didn't want to look like a sap. One of his trainers, Tommy Rotten, came up to me last night and said, "he's better than 80 percent of the guys in the WWE right now. And there's not a wrestler in the world who will see this movie and not think Mickey is a wrestler." Yes, Mickey is athletic, we know he was a boxer. But boxing and wrestling are opposites in many ways, even though they both take place in the ring. Mickey explained to me, that in boxing you hide where you're going, you don't want people to see your moves. But wrestling is the exact opposite, you're showing them. It's complete broadness. Boxing is like a simple quick, can't see it, wrestling is all about being seen. So it actually hurt Mickey having been trained as a boxer. I had to constantly watch him and make sure he wasn't moving like a boxer in the ring because they move completely differently than wrestlers. But being a boxer and trying to play a wrestler was very difficult for that reason as well as the reason is that most boxers look down on wrestling. But I think as he met Afa and as he met all these old-timers, Greg The Hammer Valentine, that he saw that it was a real art and truly a real sport. I think he learned to really respect it and I think he's very proud.

Peter Sciretta: Did he even like the glass shot, and stuff like that?

Darren Aronofsky: No, he didn't go through the glass, but he did get hit on the back with the bucket and so he did a lot of it. There were a few things he couldn't do, you know. He climbed to the top rope. You saw that shot where he jumps on the top rope and mounts the other guy and does the spin. So he did a lot of crazy stuff.

Peter Sciretta: Can you talk a little about the music of The Wrestler. You have Slash doing guitar riffs for Clint Mansell's score, and you have Bruce Springsteen... How did you pull that one off?

Darren Aronofsky: Well, Bruce Springsteen did the film for one reason. And it had nothing do with me. In fact, to be honest, I met with Bruce, and he's heard of me, which is very flattering, but he had never seen any of my work. He did it for one reason and that was that he did it for Mickey. He's a friend of Mickey's. He's a tremendous fan of Mickey's and when he heard about this film, he felt that this was something that Mickey's been looking for for years. So he wanted to help, and that's the only reason he did it. And he did it for basically nothing.

Peter Sciretta: That's awesome.

Darren Aronofsky: Purely out of love for Mickey. And so I can't wait for him to see the movie because Asbury Park is in it and I think he'll be psyched.

Peter Sciretta: Oh, I'm surprised he hasn't seen the movie. You listen to that song and it's so dead on...

Darren Aronofsky: He actually put more effort into it. He read the screenplay which is probably harder than watching the movie. He read the screenplay, knew it and basically just pumped it out. It's a beautiful song. As Mickey says, rock stars love him, and so he got Axl [Rose] to close a deal on Sweet Child of Mine. It was really fun rediscovering all that old Hair metal and finding a place for it in the film. And then Clint did a very subtle job in this movie, as compared to what we've done in the past. The film really didn't call for a big score and what I really admire about what Clint did with the help of Slash is that they did very very very subtle work.

Peter Sciretta: Yeah, I didn't even notice it...

Darren Aronofsky: Yeah, I know, I read your video [blog].


Interview: Darren Aronofsky - Part 3
Source: SlashFilm

Darren Aronofsky is the director of Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain. His latest film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and was bought by Fox Searchlight the morning after it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (You can read my review here). Earlier this week, I was granted the chance to sit down with Aronofsky for a half hour interview. You can read the first part and the second part of the interview at the provided links. Enjoy.

Peter Sciretta: Speaking of boxing. What's going on with The Fighter?

Darren Aronofsky: We have a beautiful screenplay. It's based on, you probably know, Mickey Ward. It's a great great project. As I told you I love sports movies. Rudy and Chariots of Fire are some of my favorite films. Fighter is a great script. Scott Silver wrote it. He's the guy who wrote Eight Mile. So we have a great script, we're just trying to cast it and try and figure out how it's going to get made.

Peter Sciretta: So right now is it kind of on the back burner? Last I heard that Mark Wahlberg was training?

Darren Aronofsky: Mark is training. Mark's totally gung-ho, he just sent me text that he wants to see [the Wrestler] this week. So I guess I'll set up a screening for him in L.A. He's totally gung-ho and I think it's a great project. It's been in development so long there's a lot of money against it already. They're trying to figure that out but I'm ready to go on it.

Peter Sciretta: And when I first saw the rumors Robocop I was like "No way! This can't be rea!?"

Darren Aronofsky: Well, what I like about Robocop is that it's Hollywood is making big films right now and I've always had an interest in that. You know about my flirtations with some of those other projects, but which at some point we'll set the record straight on a lot of it because there's a lot of bullshit out there about all this stuff... But what the thing I like about Robocop is that it's not as iconic as those other titles, and I think that fans of it will be open to reinterpretation. And yet a studio will probably back it because it's got that tent pole feeling to it. I think it could be a lot of fun if we can get the script right. I've always had an interest in doing big movies, and not just doing independent films. And that's why I've tried to get them going a lot. The whole thing with The Dark Knight was that through that whole process I was always trying to make The Fountain and because I was on the Fountain for six years, they moved on. But that was my main goal and when they offered the project to me I thought it was probably the smartest thing to do since this was before Requiem for a Dream had any fan base. I figured they're never going to hire me to do something with the Fountain. I had to get them to perceive me as being a bigger director, so that's why I agreed to write it.

Peter Sciretta: So Batman: Year One was almost like a stepping stone?

Darren Aronofsky: It was, the whole step. The whole game for me was to make The Fountain. And for the last 6 or 7 years that's all I wanted to do. The Batman job was just a way of getting to see it. Watchmen... I was on Watchman for a week. I was literally on it for a week. David Hayter wrote a fuckin amazing script. I mean, he really caught it. Zack Snyder's Trailer looks fucking great. I can not wait, couldn't believe it. But literally I was on for a week. They said were you interested? I said yeah. We set it up at Paramount in a meeting. And then they said, let's hire a production designer and this was literally when Hugh Jackman had just come on and the Fountain thing was going. So I was like, "Guys, I'm about to shoot The Fountain. You know, we can hire a designer but I'm going to be shooting this movie while that's happening." Then they quickl put Paul Greengrass on it. So I had very little to do with the project. I wish they would remove my name from both of those projects because I never really got involved.

Peter Sciretta: Back to Robocop, is it going to be a sequel or is it a remake.

Darren Aronofsky: It's absolutely unrelated to the original. As Mike Medavoy already went on the record. David Self and my team have been working really hard on it. It's a completely new universe.

Peter Sciretta: Is it going to be set in the future, or is it going to be today?

Darren Aronofsky: It's going to be the future. And it's really great. We've got to nail the script then we've got to find a script that the studio wants to make. So we've got work to do...

Peter Sciretta: So tell me this, with The Fountain you did so many practical special effects, like that whole climax sequence... with Robocop would you be...

Darren Aronofsky: I have no idea. I have no idea. It's so early, but I think cyborgs are really interesting, because... I think it's so funny. I got an MRI. Here's a funny story. The last day of shooting, Mickey made me jump off the top rope. He made the whole crew jump off the top rope. I went first, and it was the last day of shooting, after a grueling shoot. It was late at night, and I was wearing boots. I wasn't even wearing sneakers and I jumped. I got over the top rope and my tip of my toe caught the top rope and I went bam! I landed on my fuckin' head and on my neck. My neck was killing me for five weeks, so I went to get MRI. I'm fine, but to take an MRI, you can't have any metal on your body because it's basically a giant magnet. So there's a check list of probably 30 things that you could have. Like an eyelid shutter, pacemakers, re-implants. I couldn't believe the different types of things that people have in their bodies. And I realized you know what? We are in a cyborg culture, we are part cyborg already. It's only a matter of time till we have the cell phones in our head and the mp3 players in our ears...

Peter Sciretta: And it's all going to get more nano too.

Darren Aronofsky: Yeah, so there are a lot of interesting themes out there that connect even more than when Verhoeven did it. A nd I have full 100 percent respect for that, but I kind of don't even want to go near that territory, except for the "bitches, leave!" line. [laughs] Otherwise I think that's the only shout out to the movie we'll have.

Peter Sciretta: That's awesome. The only other thing I wanted to ask you about is when you were in San Francisco with The Fountain, you told me about your next project, which was going to be a religious film...

Darren Aronofsky: That was Noah.

Peter Sciretta: Yes, Noah, what's happening with that?

Darren Aronofsky: We have an amazing screenplay.

Peter Sciretta: Who wrote it??

Darren Aronofsky: I wrote it. Me and Ari Handel, the guy who worked on the Fountain. It's a great script and it's HUGE. And we're starting to feel out talent. And then we'll probably try and set it up...

Peter Sciretta: So this isn't something you can make for six million dollars?

Darren Aronofsky: No, this is big. I mean, Look... It's the end of the world and it's the second most famous ship after the Titanic. So I'm not sure why any studio won't want to make it.

Peter Sciretta: [laughs]

Darren Aronofsky: [laughs]

Peter Sciretta: You would hope so.?

Darren Aronofsky: Yeah, I would hope so. It's a really cool project and I think it's really timely because it's about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what's going on on this planet. So I think it's got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He's a really interesting character. Hopefully they'll let me make it. Oh that's right I forgot I told you that whole religious thing.

[At this point a publicist came in to drag Darren away]

Darren Aronofsky: I had forgotten about San Francisco but now I totally remember. All right, man, it's been really good to see you. Thank you so much.

[Stefen]

Something about Aronofsky being a wrestling fan rubs me the wrong way. I'm a big MMA fan and unfortunately have to come in contact with pro-wrestling fans every once in awhile and I can easily say they are some of the dumbest people I have ever met. Granted, that's a brash generalization, but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.

[Gold Trumpet]

Something about Aronofsky being a wrestling fan rubs me the wrong way. I'm a big MMA fan and unfortunately have to come in contact with pro-wrestling fans every once in awhile and I can easily say they are some of the dumbest people I have ever met. Granted, that's a brash generalization, but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.

Haha, I'm a big professional wrestling fan, but that also may be proof of your point.

Anyways, he doesn't strike me as a wrestling fan. In the interviews he mentions going to one event back in the early 1980s, but his main point is that he pictured The Wrester as a boxing movie. He considers it to be its own genre, but there have been so many boxing movies that he felt the story would better suited for a different thing, so he chose professional wrestling. The idea came to him in the early 90s so it developed before MMA ever came to true prominence.

[Stefen]

GT, I think we've had this conversation off the board before. I just think WWE/pro-wrestling fans are Neanderthals.

Not all. I mean, some are intelligent like you and Aronofsky, but the majority are a bunch of redneck, white trash morons from the South. Having been an MMA fan since before it became cool, I see alot of these WWE fans flocking to the sport, and they're AWFUL. I guess it's unfair to generalize all of them, but I'm just going by the ones I've had experiences with.

I'm way stoked for the flick. I just find it odd that Aronofsky is a fan of that kind of stuff. It's like finding out PTA is a fan of Kid Rock and is going to do a biopic based on his life. It's like, "WHAT. THE. FUCK?"

[Gamblour.]

I think you're taking it too far, Stefen. He says he's not a big fan, but he can respect, which is very different being a caveman. I'm no fan, but I was when I was a kid, and my brother-in-law still likes it and we'll watch some every now and then. And it's really hilarious, dramatic stuff. The pageantry of it all is really entertaining. The fans may be awful, but that's just people for you.

[modage]

i'm seeing this at the New York Film Festival, which is cool because last year i didn't get tickets to most of the stuff i wanted to see.