Pablo Torre Finds Out - Peak Humanity: Why Darren Aronofsky's Heroes Don't Wear Capes

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

He is one of the most disturbing and unapologetic filmmakers in Hollywood, from creating "Requiem for a Dream" to choosing conquistador sci-fi over Batman. But director Darren Aronofsky's new movie �� "Caught Stealing," starring Austin Butler as a former MLB prospect — is a departure. Toward optimism; nostalgia; and Cheez. (Because, as any real New Yorker knows, you get everything you want when you no longer want it that much.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre finds out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738, Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly because today we're going to find out what this sound is. Get out of my f*** neighborhood. I'm like, this is my fucking neighborhood. I am 99% sure I've been here longer than you, motherfucker. Get on my street right after this ad. The 50 simply bet delicious.

This is the 50th anniversary shirt. It's 1970. So, wow. So I got this during the pandemic. Oh, wow. No, so I put this. Do you understand what that means to be that place? I'm not an idiot.

So I own this shirt. I wear this shirt a lot. Oh, my God. I'm not just doing this. I'm like thinking what I can trade for that shirt. We might have a deal. By the end of this episode, we might have a transaction. So, like, let me explain to you a roll.

Please, please. So should I put these on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it. So Roll and Roaster is, uh, let's see. I don't know. if I want to even hear my voice. If you don't want to, we can take it on.

It's kind of sexy. No, I'm all right. You can wear them. I don't care. That's fine. So I grew up like a bird's eye shot, I guess they call it maybe half a mile from there. The original Roll Roaster and Sheeps A Bay. We're not so fast.

Rolling Roaster. We're not so fast. Rollin' roaster. We're taking the time. Making everything just right. Waking up your appetite. We give you real roast beef. Bigger burger.

Cook the way you and roasted The not so fast Fast food restaurant That to us was like the place Like you know Two o'clock in the morning You come and you get the roast beef With the cheese on top of it

The cheese with a Z The cheese with a Z Which by the way I don't think I'll tell you Exactly what that cheese is You know what it is? So first of all Back in the day All the waitresses were like

The most beautiful women So again, I'll show you the illustration on the guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. Exactly. So they were always, they were the most beautiful women. So we'd always go in there, but we were like little geeky guys. And so, you know, we had no play. So when I was a, like, I think my freshman, right before I started freshman college at Harvard, and I'm bragging because it's part of the story.

I wanted to get a job there, cleaning tables at Rollin' Rost. And the motherfucker did turn me down. Oh, there's a couple of things. that the universe is doing to us right now. But then the other thing is, so now I live in the East Village. And when I moved in the East Village, they turned,

there was a roller roaster on across the street from the movie theater on 11th and third. And they tried to, which was a few blocks from where I live. Yeah. And it didn't work. But it was kind of amazing that I went to.

I didn't know they franchised? They tried. They tried to do it work. But that's the bomb. And I love that show. Oh, it's a special thing. Yeah, yeah. Roller roaster.

So the thing that I, so I, from Manhattan. Yeah. How did you find out of it? about it. I would go to like Cody Island and I get a car. Oh wow. And I would drive around. Oh, wow. With my friend and we get whatever. We, we, so. She just stumbled on rolling roast here. I knew of it. Oh, wow. But the reason why this place blew my mind. Yeah. It's because you look at the menu and there's the roast beef and they claim, by the way, that this is a key to like longevity.

Exactly. Really. There's a part of the menu. I don't quote the menu here because one of my favorite New York things is like the, you know, the true, like, native New York energy when it says, what a delicious way to lose weight exclamation point. And they go on to just sort of proclaim 100% trans fat free. And then you look at the menu up top. And it's like standard stuff, standard stuff, okay, like cool. I got roast beef. They're really into that. Then you can get the champagne? Oh, I don't even mess with that. The actual, actual, they have an alcoholized? There's, you can buy 5995

for wet champagne. And it's like... That's new. That's post my time. So I'm like, what is this place? My genuine reaction. It's real Brooklyn. And it's real Brooklyn. And it's delicious.

It's delicious. I mean, the buns are great. I won't give away what the cheese is because that's like a big secret. But I mean, roast beef with cheese and those fries with cheese. I mean, you know, look, it's all rumors. but there was lots of conversation growing up.

It's such a huge part of my lore. And it's funny because when I shot Caught Stealing the new movie, we do a sequence out in the water, which didn't make the movie. But we launched our platoon of boats across the street, and my crew was there. And I was like, guys, you got to go check out Rowan and Rosen. And I'm like, what's that?

And literally like two stores down, I was like, go check. And then suddenly they were like trucking it in throughout the shoot. They were totally addicted to it. It's amazing. And so it's crazy that, never got much bigger, but it really, it's in a far corner of South Brooklyn, and it's really the bomb. So I just got to jump in here to point out that I had never met Darren Aronofsky, who was one of the most provocative and surrealist and unapologetic filmmakers in all Hollywood,

until he walked into our studio. We'd reached out to Darren because for a very long time, I had been fascinated by what seemed like his thoughtfully contrarian approach to storytelling. He's the guy who cooked up Requiem for a Dream with Ellen Burstyn and The Wrestler with Nicky Rourke and Black Swan with Natalie Portman and Mother with Jennifer Lawrence. And none of those movies allowed the audience a happy ending. But speaking of predictability, it is also clear now that Darren Aronofsky had no idea that we share one brag in common. It's a joke to the point where we will put up.

days since Pablo has said he went to Harvard on the wall. You actually went? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. What year were you? I graduated 2007. Okay, so now once again, you have mentioned that you went to Harvard at the time. Darren Aronovsky made me do it.

But the other thing Darren enabled a couple weeks ago was a ticket to a screening of his aforementioned new film, caught stealing out August 29th. And I knew absolutely nothing about this movie walking into it. I had no idea that Cod Stealing's main character would be a former Major League prospect named Hank, played by Austin Butler. And also, given Darren's larger catalog, which I had ingested in advance, I did not foresee the very special kind of surprised that I wound up being.

There's a lot of surprises in it. I don't think it's, even when you know what it is a bit, it's, it gets people. I've been, we just started some screenings. We went down to Puerto Rico and did our world premiere and that was in Mexico. It was like hearing people gasp was pretty cool throughout it. Discovering bad bunnies in this. Our friend who is sat in that chair, Action Bronson, is in this. Action's the bomb.

I had no idea when I was interviewing him. Yeah. Is this good? And then I listened back and I'm like, this is, I think, the greatest conversation I've ever had, maybe. It's out of controls. We were just doing a little press with him. He's been really generous with his time because he's not the type of guy that does that. type of stuff.

No. No. He's a sweetheart. You know, they're asking on-camera a bunch of questions and they're like, okay, what's your favorite crime movie? And I think Austin says heat. Austin Butler, yes. Austin Butler, yes. And Zoe Kravitt says true romance.

And then, you know, action takes that like totally long pause way too long and then goes Schindler's list. The room just didn't know to laugh to smile or what? And he was actually kind of right as far as a crime. I mean, show me the lie. Exactly. This is a thing that is relevant to the film, but it's a baseball metaphor. It was like catching a knuckleball talking to him. I'm like, I don't know where this is going.

Am I an idiot? That's so right. Is this? That's so right. It's sort of going all over the place and then it comes right across the plate. There's so little spin that it's the most spin you've ever seen. Yeah, that's true. But I say all that to say that I didn't know this was a f*** sports movie in a real, again, not entirely, but meaningfully.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is good. There's a lot of stuff in it that only sports. fans will get. I mean, there's so many things we did that are like deep sports. Oh, yeah. I was like checking like the baseball reference page and I'm like, do this? Oh, no. We actually changed the year of the movie because we wanted the Giants to be having a better run. So it was like, I think in the book is set in 2000 and we moved it to 98 because there was the wild card. And so that was kind of an interesting backstory for the film. Are you yourself a self-identified sports fan? It's been a long time. Like I was as a kid.

I grew up in South Brooklyn, so it was like the Mets and the Jets who were both playing at Shea at the time. And also I was born in 69, so that was a victory year for those teams. And I did see Joe Namath on the field as a boy, and Tom Severe and Kingman, and so I saw some of that.

But like in the 70s then, it's like Reggie Jackson time. So it was really hard to resist and stay a Mets fan when everyone's selling out to become a Yankees fan. It's hard to peek at the year of your birth. Exactly. And then have to wait until, what was it, 86 to have another victory.

Yeah, yeah, more cocaine-y. Exactly. But follow-up championship experience. I started watching a little baseball for this movie and sort of got caught up on some of it, but I didn't get deep, you know. The thing that I experience as I'm going through this film and I'm watching Austin Butler, having watched, again, in a weirdly compressed amount of time, pie and Recruit for a Dream and The Wrestler and Black Swan and Noah and Mother, I go into this film and I'm sitting there and it ends.

And I'm like, did Darren Aronovsky just like make a romp? Is this the sort of thing where you say like, this is madcap? Caper. A caper's a term. But I'm like, this shit was not just fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was. Thank you.

There was something in it. And I don't know if you'll take offense at this when I say it. But there's a hero. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, gosh, how dare I? How furious are all of the cinephile perps who love your shit? You know, look, it's funny.

It's just something I felt. It's like there's a lot of seriousness going on in the world, and everyone's screaming at each other. And I think one thing that movies do and stories do is they kind of unite people. You know, they bring people together. I mean, the act of watching a movie, It's an exercise and empathy, and you've heard that before, but it's more meaningful than that

because basically you are forgetting about yourself. In a really good movie, hopefully, you're in someone else's shoes. Literally, you're like in their head. Because one of the great inventions of the 20th century that's overlooked is the close-up. And what the close-up allows you to do is you can look at Austin Butler up close without being self-conscious that he might look at you or he might judge you or you can just look at him deeply and you can study him and you can actually kind of really connect with him and really go through the experience with him. And I think that is like a super important thing that people are

doing less and less of when they're scrolling. You're not really separating yourself. You're usually jealous or, you know, all different types of thoughts are going through your head. But in a movie, you're going on a long, emotional journey with someone else. And that's a deeply human act. And so I think it's super important to get as many people as we can to watch these movies because I think anyone on any political spectrum, they come together and hopefully they're going to dig Hank. Because Hank is kind of just like an American hero. And I think we miss that. There's a lot of American heroes, but they're usually superheroes.

And I kind of wanted to put out an American hero out there who's just a guy that a lot of us can relate to, that a lot of us can hope for, and then just connect with him. And it doesn't matter where you're coming from. Typically, though, because you are a master of the close-up, you're invading the interiority of your protagonist. And you are showing us what it's like in there. And typically, I would say your catalog is defined by that being almost as traumatic for the audience as it is for the person that we're meeting. Yeah, yeah. And this, I like Hank. Yeah.

I was rooting for Hank. Absolutely. This is not the anti-hero antagonist. dynamic. Did you take, I took a class at Harvard as the resetting.

Yeah, exactly. The class I took was it was derided, but it was concepts of the hero in Greek civilization. Is that heroes for zeros? That's how they derided it. Exactly.

You know what? I never took heroes for zeros, but that was a huge mistake in my side because it took me another 20 years to discover Joseph Campbell and become a total addict of it. And I could have gotten it back when I could have gotten it back,

you know, I was walking out of college, because that's actually a huge tool for me in filmmaking now, the hero's journey, but it did take me a long time to find it. So finding it in terms of you learning about the hero's journey, but also you now in this film doing something that feels more classical to that point. Yeah. Was it fun? Was it more?

How do you describe your process? I always have a good time. I mean, the filmmaking process for me is never that different from pie with whatever it $20,000 to this movie and all in between. They all have their own challenges and stuff, but the process is very similar. But there was something nice about getting my crew together, and basically I've been working with a lot of the same people since the 90s, and they've all become incredible masters of their craft. And then bringing that all to make a solid genre film. Like not, because if you think I've never really done clear genre,

like pie is not really sci-fi, requiem. My biggest letdown just to talk sports was on the wrestler. Yes. ESPN would not allow me to go for the best sports film of the year because they were like wrestling is not a sport. And I was like, God, gosh, Donnie. Someone yesterday, by the way, also called Black Swan a sports movie, which I thought was interesting, too, because it is in many ways.

Golf is a sport, ballet as a sport. This is my personal take. Well, it's an athletic, absolutely. It's an athletic movie. So this is kind of the third sports film. But they're similar, except that it's like, it's very clearly a crime caper. That's what we wanted to do.

So bringing together that team of like masters that I surround myself with and be like, you know what, let's make the best genre of film we can and have a great time. In 90s, New York. In 90s, New York. Which is my childhood. Oh, very cool. Oh, so you're a teenager in that time. Yeah.

So it must have sparked a lot of. a lot of visceral memories. Frankly, it was like, oh, if I was cooler, I could have gone down to these village. Yeah, I'd be around there. I grew up, you know, in Murray Hill, which is... Yeah, it's not that far. I'm sure you guys wandered out a little bit.

My mom is discovering that I wandered out a little bit in this very conversation. Exactly. But also just, man, the nostalgia for that era, what do you miss the most about that? Well, of course, there's just so much. In many ways, it isn't that? different, but of course it's so different. And the main thing is like the social media aspect of it and just like the communication aspect. Like back in the day and you probably remember this as a 13 year old,

hey, meet me on the corner of blah, blah, blah, blah at blah, blah, blah. And you were there. And if you were late or you missed the person, you didn't talk to them until you got back to your house and had a telephone unless you had a beeper or something. So it was a whole different way of communicating and interacting with each other. And I think there's also an immediate sense. back then of being in the present, of being what's happening right now, that we've lost, because the reality is we're spending seven hours inside of our telephone and our machines at this point. We are basically these cyborgs and we're gone.

And I'm not saying, I'm not judging. I'm not going to be like Elvis, don't sway your hips type of guy because I think it's interesting. Like I'm all leaning into all the new stuff, but it's different. And that's kind of interesting. And I think there is a fomo like you just have. to even as a city boy that you wanted to get downtown yeah the 90s in new york in downtown i call it peak humanity because like the soviet union had collapsed our biggest problem was y2k

everyone was just talking about did bill clinton have sex with that woman that was that was our biggest controversy with our president scandal at that time is so funny if you watch the west wing now you're like what it was like school uniforms Like that was a real problem America was grappling with. Exactly. So it's like everything was like the temperature was a lot lower. And you know, pre-9-11, it was a very different world. Pre-9-11 is the era. And then musically it was like hip-hop was booming and going into national, which as New Yorkers was exciting. Grunge was kind of over by 98, but it was still important. Electronic music was just starting. Musically, there was just so many still new forms. There was still an underground, which is like hard to have at this. So I feel like a big part of this film is the FOMO over the 90s.

Like you want to see what it was like, like, you know, come home. Yeah. Oh my God. Like the idea of America being so optimistic that to be cynical, felt radical. Well, I had that a lot because back then I saw I'm making Requiem for a Dream and Pie and all these kind of more underground films then and finding a little love. But it was hard because Paris Hilton was queen. Letterman was cynical and that was that he had a bite.

But was distinguished by the zag That's right. He was making. Yeah, yeah. Like that's so, and Requiem, which I had, my experience with that is that high school, college, I just remember being like, why are people chanting? Ass to ass.

So what are we going to do now? As to ass. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And I then was like, oh, oh. And so I could revisit it. And I'm like, what genre do you, for people who somehow haven't seen it? Yeah. I mean, I guess I would ultimately say it's a horror film where the monster is addiction in a certain way.

It's invisible. But it's kind of horrific the film, but it doesn't really fit into a genre. Right, right. But that guy, by the way, did you catch him in the movie? Did you see him in Cud Stealing at 92 years old? No, wait, wait, wait. The Gil Hodges line. Oh, my God.

The studio begged me to cut it, by the way, because they're like, no one in the world knows who Gil Hodges is. And I'm like, you know what? Me. Yes, it's a bunch of Brooklyn boys. This podcaster knows the legend of, yes, Gil Hodges, Brooklyn Dodgers. That's right. Of course.

So, yeah, and he just wrote me recently, Stanley Herman is his name. That's like what he's known for and he gets recognized, and he might actually put on his tombstone. Ass to ass. Exactly. I was like, you know, more people will come visit you. Stanley Herman. I met him, actually. I was a film student in the early 90s in L.A.

And he came in, and I was like, hey, so I've got this one role in this little short I'm doing called The Pervert. Will you do? He's like, definitely. And so he's been the pervert in every movie pretty much, except in the new movie. He's a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I want to explain as-to-ass-ass-to-ass-ass for people. Really? Is that your audience?

Welcome to Pablo Tori, find it. Can you describe it? I don't want to summarize it. I want to know how you would explain it to someone who's never seen. Just that scene. I mean, basically when we put the movie into the world, the MPAA, which is the censorship board for Hollywood, they wanted to give us a X rating for mostly for that scene and what happens in that scene. And other things, of course, in the movie. There's a lot of drug use in it and a lot of propensity.

And it's terrible. You know, it's a pretty tough film. It is like, I want to laugh about this in the context of this movie will change you. Yeah. Because it's real in a way that is just rare in cinema. Well, it's funny. So this is the 25th anniversary and there was big screening at the Tremeca Film Festival. And they're releasing a DVD any moment type of thing that has all these things on it.

But for the Toronto Film Festival, 25th screening, I got Ellen Burson to come out on 92 as well. And she was like, I'm watching it. So I was like, you know, I haven't seen it in years. So I was like, okay, I'm going to sit next to Ellen and watch this. Because I think the last time we watched it was at the world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. How did the French react? We had an incredible reaction in France. It was insane.

It was like it had started at, we were a midnight screening because they thought it was too rough to be earlier. But the movie before us went too late. So we started at 1 a.m. And it finished at 3 a.m. And the applause went on like, you know how they talk about these applause. but it was the standing in my career i've never seen anything like it in any other film not even my own it was like it was crazy at three o'clock in the morning and it was very emotional but we still had no idea that it would be this thing people would be talking about 25 years later and the impact of that film

on young people and now young people that are are actually making films it's it's a beautiful thing and it just had just like a bunch of i guess we were like late 20 a bunch of 30 year olds just trying to do everything we could and just make as good a movie as we could. So it was a great experience. But sitting next to Ellen during the screening, I mean, she was just slapping me all the time. She's like, shame, shame.

And I was kind of shocked. I was like, wow, you know, it's definitely the film of a 30-year-old, not the film of a 56-year-old. So, you know, it's a different movie for me. Well, that brings us back to the ratings and the question of what do you, do with the scene that is still being talked about yeah yeah so at that point not having an r

rating uh there was a huge problem i think there still is like you can't advertise some newspapers and but the studio stood by me because i i was like look this this film is about what addiction can do to you and if we shave back anything we're undermining the whole purpose of the movie so the movie has to go there because it's showing you how dark it can get if you kind of allow yourself to be ruled by addiction. Yeah, it's like McGruth, the crime dog was like the standard mode of warning people about drugs are bad. I was doing a Q&A and there was a woman stood up and said, thanks for Requiem and made me sober 25 years ago. And the guy who wrote a Hubert Selby Jr., the great author who wrote Last Ex of Brooklyn famously, he was an NAAA sponsor for 30 years

and the amount of lives he saved with this and with the film and with the book, it's an amazing accomplishment. So I just got to go back to the concept of the hero's journey for just a second year, because as Darren Aronofsky said, he came to it, regrettably laid it in life. And I've been thinking about this because as much as he became critically acclaimed

for being this weird and abstract and disturbing uteur, who was bootstrapping low-budget but high-brow movies, it turns out that Darren has toyed with the idea of making a film that is not just about a hero, but a superhero.

And he's been thinking about this for a while now. Around the year 2000, Warner Brothers originally hired him to develop the movie that eventually became Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. Ten years later, he was then attached to direct Hugh Jackman in the Wolverine, and Darren dropped out of both of those projects, obviously.

But he was intrigued, and I wanted to know why. I've always been interested in that because I do think, like, there's always interesting to do with certain of those characters. I kind of had a, like, I was attached to Batman for a while and Superman and the Watchman, because I've always, I wasn't a crazy comic book fan as a kid, but I got into graphic novels when I was in college actually my roommate was an animator and he turned me on to the watchman and gosh the Frank Miller Batman we have what's it called the end of the series anyway the Dark Night the Dark Night series yeah so I read all those and they were like real literature those things so but I wasn't really a big superhero fan and then I got I you know when I got the call about Batman I was in the edit room on Requiem and it was kind of before they would take all these young directors and stick them on big franchises. So it was kind of a new idea.

And I was kind of intrigued. But I've always felt like a need to author some stuff and not necessarily just do someone else's character. So I've been very lucky that I've been able to do my originals first. So when Batman came on, I really wanted to make the fountain. And that was this kind of really big, expensive, experimental movie. And I felt like if the studio saw me as a superhero director, maybe they would like. me do this crazy thing and eventually they let me do the crazy thing instead you know and then you know chris nolan had the launch of his career off of it which is great and he did it in such a smart way

yes that i don't think i would have ever done i would have probably made it small and edgy type of version more dildos yeah not that not that dark i don't think i would have got away with that but um so and then i've been lucky because after after the fountain you know i was able to go small and do the wrestler and Black Swan and I've always been able to do the ones I want to do. So there are some interesting things in the superhero universe, but I think most of that stuff has been visited and kind of where I am now is like real human heroes that can unite people. I think that's my sweet spot and where I'm looking to like do stuff is like bring people together with stories and characters that kind of remind us of how great our lives are and like and be positive towards the future because it feels like,

It's like things are getting ripped and torn apart. It says something, and from a macro perspective, of course, you're right. If you're to trace the arc of history from, as yourself have made films about the origins of the human condition and also like humanity as a concept. If you're to trace that, things have undoubtedly gotten better over time. But in the present tense, it feels miserable to the point where to go and do the inverse of what we observed before, things are so overwhelmingly cynical that optimism feels... Punk rock. That's where I am. Exactly. And it's funny, I'm hearing that from other filmmakers too. Like, you're going to see like a lot of the kind of indie edgy guys, people are starting to lean into that. Because, you know, I've been talking about it. Like, if Hollywood can do anything right now, it's like shut up and dance.

Like, let's, let's entertain. Let's do what we do great, which is we make great movies that capture the world and remind, you know, about the human potential. And where the world can go. It's not a dystopian future. Like, where is the problem? protopian future. Where's the great future ahead of us? Or where's the great human characters that have grit that just sort of power through? Part of what I think you would have, I mean, clearly you've thought about this, what you would have hated about superhero filmmaking is being beholden to a canon that was not your own and a community of policemen who would have hated. Yeah, yeah, when you push the edge a bit. The choices and the interpretations. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and look, and it's, my thing, it's impossible to do because again Christopher Nolan

did a gothic Batman. That was incredible. But the policing of your work from people who feel like they are the actual arbiters of the content. Well, now I'm about to be policed, as you said, by people who are like, well, this isn't a real Aeronovsky

film. And that's my point. It's like you have now made this subreddit of, I mean, literal and figurative. I don't want to give too much away, but when you actually think of the content, how many people live, how many people die. I should be very clear. I'm grading on a Harvard level curve. Exactly. Exactly. The gentleman's no grade inflation. The gentleman's A of man, Darren only had this many people shot in the head. He's gone soft. Exactly. So there's so much of that, obviously. But on the scale of requiem.

Yeah, yeah. It's a different world. It's a different world. But I love it. But again, it's just like, but that's part of what I found so delightful. Yeah. And the question is, can we bring the same level of attention and filmmaking to a different kind of genre. That's been fun to breathe life into other types of stories. Yes. Speaking of life, I'm so good at Segways. Your sort of field biology, oh yeah, sort of that section of your CV. Part of what I, one of my favorite things in life that I do my show, I talk about quite a bit, is just like how the ecosystem of New York City is underrated. But you're somebody who like went abroad to yeah yeah in your teen years right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd explain what you did and just I want to sort of bring that back to where we are.

Yeah, I mean, I've always had, I'm from like the southern, southern part of Brooklyn and like two houses away from a concrete parking lot that leads to Manhattan Beach, the actual beach, like the sand and the oceans right there like real nature. And, you know, being in the southern tip of Brooklyn, you know, there were two types of people growing up in my Brooklyn, not today's Brooklyn. People wanted to get to the big city and people were never going to get the fuck out. And I was always like, I want to get to the big city. And then very young, I really wasn't to travel and, like, you know, seeing the world. The other great thing about growing up, up, down in South Brooklyn is there was the New York City Aquarium where a lot of my friends. friends would intern because if you intern there you'd get a t-shirt that would let you go on the cyclone in conny island as many times as you want we'd go on the cyclone 40 50 times a day we would just ride it

all day until like our brains were like that's insane yeah exactly we have what's cTE when is it exactly from you and the NFL have a number of things in common it turned out and while there one of my friends stumbled on this kind of brochure for this program that took kids and trained them as field biologists around the world a group called school for field studies which is still around training ecologists of the future. I'm on the board now. And so I went with them to Kenya, and I studied ungulates,

which are animals that stand on their hooves. Like giraffes. Anything, yeah, gazelle, zebra, anything. And then the next year, I went with them to Prince William Sound in Alaska and studied thermoregulation harboseals. And just like being in crazy nature when you couldn't find all that stuff on Google,

totally blew my brain and definitely you know i became a scientist you know and the way i look at the world is through the scientific method so what i am sort of connecting with you about when it comes to the optimism is like a fundamental sense of like truly like nostalgic wonder and in new york the thing that has blown my mind is whales there are whales in new york harbor i have i have not heard about this really Yeah. Because they're driven up north from the, from climate? Because it's a multivariate equation. Right.

But there's been a cleaning of the harbor. And so with humpbacks or what's in there? Wow. So like you can, dude, there are photos and these are real. Really? In which there are humpbacks breaching. No. The background is the cyclone.

Oh, really? Yes. Oh, wow. I have not seen this. Oh, my God. Oh, so that's actually out on my beach. Yes. down in South Brooklyn.

Yes. Oh, wow. You have to send me that. I actively will. Okay, good. I will spam you with my pro-wale propaganda. New York to me, right? So it went from a place of growing up, and this is the pre-social media era, obviously, pre-cell phones.

It was part of my nostalgia, I realized, oh, this is, it felt like a, like a, like a, like a small town in a way. Like now, New York is so fragmented because it's phone. have fragmented everything. And there are a zillion New Yorks for people. And there's a TikTok New York and subgenres inside of that. Interesting. When I was growing up, I just felt like,

oh, man, everyone's talking about Rudy Giuliani. Right. Everyone is sort of dealing with this. So even like a blackout to me growing up was... Amazing. Right? Amazing. I had a lot of fun on the blackouts.

Everyone's talking about the same thing. Right. You don't feel that connection in New York still? I just think that because we are seeing things through our phone. Right. There's just less of it. That might be true.

It's an interesting thing. I don't know. I mean, shooting, caught stealing in the East Village. We shot on the corner of 6th and A, where Benny's burritos used to be. I just live on 10th and C. Okay, you know exactly where I am.

But it was a freaking circus. I thought I was on Bourbon Street. I was kind of grossed out by like what the East, what the East Village. I was like, Oh, this... Alphabet City was a place by parents warned me, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Alphabet City was... Alphabet City was hardcore.

Absolutely. I don't think it's so scary anymore, but it was very, very intense. No, I moved there to the point. It was very intense. But... And it seemed like people were having a good time, though. So, like, at first, like, Friday night, I was super pissed off because I thought, I didn't realize the type of crowds we were going to have to be dealing with and people screaming, you know, people screaming, get out of my f*** neighborhood. And I'm like, this is my fucking neighborhood. I am 99% sure I've been here.

here longer than you motherfucker get on my street but then i realized people were having fun and then i did i've gone out a few times in it because i had to go check out bars and scout bars and there was a lot of life going on still new york it felt alive uh yeah real way one of my takes about new york that i feel as a true like you know you know new yorker and the question of like when do you get to claim that you have a standard for that does anyone get to claim that if they're not from here you know we all know when it's all my second question away from new york second question where you're you go to high school. And I was like, oh, we moved to Long Island when it was seven. We're like, oh, okay. Yes. Yes. We're total snobs. Total snob.

I mean, because we did pay dues. We did pay dues. And but beyond the whole like, look at what New York used to be like, what we grew up with. Which is our favorite conversation as New Yorkers. Absolutely. You're that. I was like, I could have bought that building for blah, blah, blah. That's Christ. Yeah. Yeah. The whole thing of like, I've been, I found a rent control department that I'm still, just like the whole lore of where to live, how to live, all of that. Part of what I feel walking around to what you just described is, just knowing what's been here before reduces, I think, the anxiety lots of people feel around how intimidating. Yeah.

Like, oh, this street, even like walking through, so one example. Yeah. Like walking through a busy street in like the West Village. And it's like all these very attractive people. And it's like they're all, you know, watching you and all of that. I'm like, none of you people used to be here. No. Like, you are new here.

Yeah. Like that confidence is like what to me, you have to, that's like an accumulated decades of just like not, like, fuck you. Like I'm not, you can't, you can intimidate me off of this street. But I love that New York is always changing. Like, it used to be, I used to really complain like, oh, that used to be like this. But I find it exciting that it's like a living, growing, changing city. And like on my corner where the Rollin Roaster is, I don't know what they put it up, but they took down. on everything and it's going to be something ugly.

But I'm like, okay. It's going to be a weed store, Darren. It's going to be illegal. We asked for legal weed and we got it and it sucks. Yeah. But at least that shrunk too. That was like everywhere. Now it's being.

And now it's like, now the ones that have the license seem to know what's going on a bit. But it's, yes. It's you get everything you want when you no longer want it that much. Correct. Like my friend Ari Zablotsky built his bar Zablotskys in Williamsburg. But it, you know, he built it when I was like 36. And I'm like, dude, I got a fucking baby. I'm going to bed at 10.30.

I was like, where were you in the 20s when we needed a fucking die bar that we could drink for free? You always, your friends get, at least for me, I'm always, it's always 10 years behind what I needed. I have a friend who just opened a bar. And I'm like, I am not going to hang out. I'm not going to hang out here. You will never see me there. Maybe, you know, if it's your birthday, I'll come by for her. That's literally what I did.

And I was there. and I shook his hand and I'm like, I got to go. I have a five-year-old. Exactly. But the other thing, the most authentic, like, just like feeling about New York that I have is the wonder, not merely that there are whales here suddenly. Yeah, yeah. Speaking to the changes of things, but that there are places that are just so close to me that I've never even walked into that one day I do. Yeah.

After decades of ignoring it. And I'm like, this has been here the whole time. There are always discoveries and things are always changing. It's, it's, I just went to that thing. I met this guy, his last name's digital, but he's this artist, Kevin, Kesson. I can't remember, but he built this, like, observation thing that's inside of, it's all covered in mirrors. Have you seen this thing yet? No.

It's like this new observation tower, like, around Grand Central Station. Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. The Vanderbilt, one Vanderbilt. Yeah, the observation deck. Yes, it's sick. Did you go inside? It's actually worth checking out. Can I tell you what I did?

So I bought a ticket for me and my wife. Kenzo Digital, I think it was in. I think that's right. So I bought a ticket and the line was so long that it snaked into the subway. I'm like, I'm not waiting on. I could hook you up. I met the guy. So next time you go, it's always.

It was actually cool. I was like, oh, this is, it's like an artist's interpretation of an observation deck and it's like a lot of fun. So to me, the fact that there are these like, you know, in that case, a literal almost like funhouse mirrors. scenario up in the sky. I'm like, yeah, I'm also, another one of my just beliefs is New Yorkers, real New Yorkers also should do some tourist shit sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's actually, oh, guess what? Central Park is cool. Yeah, well, Central Park's a tourist thing now? That's scary. Am I breaking the news to you that it's largely European? I haven't been above 56th Street in like 30 years. It's been a long time since I've been up there. I mean, I drive up the FDR and pass it, and I'm always like,

oh, there's people there too. I always wonder, like, who are these people, like, north of 50? I mean, there's big buildings with, like, lots of people on them and stuff. I have no idea who those people are. Nothing up there. But that's also what's great about New York City. Yes, exactly. There are countries.

There are republics inside of. It's just, like, literally it could break off, and I would not even need a passport to get in because I have no interest. And to be clear, some are luxury towers largely owned by, like, Chinese billionaires who never show up. That's the weird thing. When you're coming in from wherever, JFK or whatever, and you look at the land, I have no idea what that is. It used to be I knew every skyscraper, and I have these little thin things. And I'm like...

The thin things are, that's what's overshed. And they're confusing. There's many of them, and they're all over the place now. And it's like, what is that? I feel like we've become, at the end of this podcast, Statler and Waldorf, just complaining about skyscrapers. Oh, you're welcome to be a New Yorker. Yeah, no, it is. Should we talk about Shea Stadium?

Oh, my God. I mean, so I grew up a Yankee fan. Okay. So part of my... Have you ever been to Shea? Of course. Okay. I don't know how you...

Oh, no, no, no. I mean, how dare you? Yeah, exactly. But old Yankee Stadium, even more than Shea, but Shea as well. Yeah. What I miss, of course, is that feeling of like, you walked in, because all these places are now the equivalent of a billionaire skyscraper, Seinfeld as well as the New Yankee Stadium. Yeah, which is nice, though.

They're both... Beautiful, yeah. Nice. I haven't been to the New Yankee Stadium, which is embarrassing. I got to go see it. Cityfield is better than New Yankee Stadium, if I'm being objective. But both feel so much less, I mean, Yankee Stadium I'll speak to, because that's my experience growing up, going to the bleachers, McDonald's,

and just like yelling at outfielders. Truly, like, Raoul Mondesie, we're just like, we'd just like yell at him. He's like, on the team. We're just like, I don't know. We're just, this is what we do. It's less intimidating. Yeah. It's less.

There used to be, like, a home field advantage was actually a meaningful, competitive advantage. And now it's just less because all the things you've described about New York and its changingness, the glory of it, but also like the sanding down of those edges. Yeah, it's true. It's true. So, yeah. I remember when the Subway series, and I was like, I want tickets, whatever it's going to take. And so I had just made pie. I had a few Hollywood connections. I was like calling anyone.

I couldn't get tickets. And I was on a fifth floor walk up in Hell's Kitchen where I looked. And suddenly my door knocked. And Morgan, who lived on the third floor, she's like, you know, you want tickets to go see the games? I was like, and I forgot you worked for MLB. Like a neighbor in New York. So I had tickets.

And I was like, well, how many can I get? She's like, how many you need? I was like, I'd like 10 tickets to the bleachers. So I had 10 tickets to the bleachers of every Subway Series game. And I brought all my boys. And one of the worst experience talking about Home Advantage was being, at Shea, I guess it was. Is that still Shea?

Yeah, it was Shea. At Shea, when the Yankees won, and there were more Yankees fans had met fans. And the Yankees were booing. The fans were booing from the bats at home. Eat it. Eat it, Aronowski. It sucks up.

No, it sucked because you guys had money and you bought all our fucking tickets. I was so angry. I was so, I was like, this is so disrespectful. It comes someone's house and piss all over it. It sucked. I got destroyed. Sorry that capitalism.

Exactly. Exists. I want to quote something from you. Okay. Because I want to geolocate where you are now with regard to this. Okay. Quote, I don't give a fuck about the test scores. My films are outside the scores.

Ten men in a room trying to come up with their favorite ice cream. We're going to agree on vanilla. I'm the Rocky Road guy. Jesus. How old was I when I said that? That was yesterday. Exactly. You know, I totally tested this movie because 2014, yeah, it was a different world.

I totally tested this movie because, you know, Charlie Chaplin famously would tour his comedies around the States and he would go to bump up wherever just to see. Artstorming. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I was inspired by that because there is comedy in this and there's like violence in this and there's like shock moments. and I wanted to see how they were playing for different audiences. And I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot from it because once again, it was a different exercise. It really was about making something fun and entertaining.

And I wanted to reach people in that way. And so you learn a lot from it. You learn a lot. And you learn things unexpectedly. You get shaken up. Things shake up because you're like, okay, for some reason, something's not quite clicking. How do you get that to click? And so we did a bunch of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Different, different Darren. The whole notion of, because you're how old now? At 56. At 56, you're like, the whole thing of what people have always wanted from me, which is to listen to them. Right. There's now a point at which that's creatively interesting. Definitely, definitely.

Yeah, I think, look, my mentor, Stuart Rosenberg, this great director who did Cool, Han Luke and Pope of Greenwich Village, he'd always say he had a sign. on his desk that said, where is my audience now? And I think that's always true, and I've always believed that. Like, even when I was making films that were more weird or abstract or disturbing, I am always thinking about it because you want people to, like, understand what's happening, even if it's not the most pleasant understanding of what's going on. I don't know.

But, you know, I've done this before. The wrestler is a similar film where you have a hero that you're rooting for who just can't get out of his own way. and an awesome butler really uh was able to do that was able to take a beating down to the mat but always kind of dust himself up stood up you know licked his chops and put up his dukes and started fighting again and so it's so it was kind of fun to do that did you know that you want and forgive me if this i'll give a big spoiler alert yeah did you know that you wanted to do something with this one that you i don't recall you doing yeah which is actually give people what feels like a happy ending.

It's a mixed happy ending, to be fair. But yes, I felt, you know, it's a tough ending. It's a hard ending to land. It took us a while. And I think I wanted people to leave with a positive feeling into the world because I think the character is on an upswing. But this is the first of three books. And in many ways, it's setting up a lot of things that happen later.

I have no idea if that will happen. The film works as its own piece and has a very, very good ending. But it's a complicated ending because the character has gone through a lot. And it's like a lot to, there'll be a lot of like unpacking in the next few years of his life.

Yeah, I mean, in the last, some of the last scenes, a literal unpacking. That's a real deal. Exactly. That was fun, right? Oh my God, yes. Yeah, we'll end it there.

Thank you. But the whole thing of, I think you just, What I found out today is that Darren Aronofsky is finally. You're developing a cinematic universe. Exactly. The D-A-C-U. Dare I say.

Like Roland Roaster. You might be attempting a franchise. Exactly. Well, hopefully we'll do better in Manhattan. Man, thank you so much. I enjoyed this conversation a lot. And when did you graduate Harvard? 2007.

Oh, that's right. Click. Oh, God. Fuck you. This has been Pablo Tor. finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.