The Big Picture - Darren Aronofsky on Pushing the Envelope | The Big Picture (Ep. 28)

Episode Date: October 11, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with filmmaker Darren Aronofsky to discuss his polarizing film, ‘Mother!,’ and the art of putting both his characters and the audience under duress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by White Famous. White Famous is a new Showtime original comedy series about trying to make it in Hollywood starring SNL vet Jay Pharoah as Floyd Mooney, a comedian whose career is about to blow up, but he's not sure he's ready for all that yet. Can he make it without losing his soul? White Famous is executively produced by Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx and the creator of Californication, Tom Kapanos. The show is based on Jamie Foxx's real-life experiences

and also stars Michael Rapaport, Jacob Ming Trent, and more. The two-episode series premieres this Sunday, October 15th at 10 p.m., only on Showtime. You can also watch the hilarious series premiere right now for free on YouTube. Download the Showtime app now to start your free trial. You're saying, does that feel real? Is that too much blood? Is that the right amount of blood? Are we going to make it really gross or just a little bit gross? It's all about making those decisions in the moment and usually comes back to what is real. I'm Sean Fennessey and here's the big picture. Today we have a special guest, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky.

Three weeks ago, I spent an entire episode of this show dissecting his latest film, Mother. It's Darren's sixth and most controversial film to date, and this is the guy who made Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain. Darren joins me today to talk about the movie and the aftermath of its release. So what is Mother? Is it a horror movie? A black comedy? A psychological thriller?

The answer is yes. Here's what we know for sure, though. It stars Jennifer Lawrence as a caretaker in a stand-in for Mother Earth, Javier Bardem as a godlike creator figure, and Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer as Adam and Eve, essentially. And it's been divisive, to say the least, splitting critics, drawing a rare F-cinema score from audiences, and struggling to come close to the box office success of Aronofsky's last two films, Black Swan and Noah. But the film has its defenders, too, including some high-profile filmmakers. Earlier this week, in an op-ed for The Hollywood Reporter, Martin Scorsese wrote, quote, only a true passionate filmmaker could have made this

picture, which I'm still experiencing weeks after I saw it. I've also been thinking about the movie quite a bit since seeing it, specifically why and how Aronofsky made it. So Darren and I discussed the making of and reaction of Mother and the more extreme aspects of his work in this conversation. So without further ado, here's Darren Aronofsky. I'm very happy to be joined by Darren Aronofsky. Darren, thanks for coming in today. Thanks for having me. Darren, it's been almost a month since the world first got a look at Mother and there's been a lot of reaction to it. I'm curious if you've learned anything about the movie since people have started talking to you about it. We always knew we were doing something provocative, and we always knew there would be very

strong reactions to the film. I don't think you could ever predict how a film is going to do or what it's going to mean. My job as a filmmaker is to plant the seeds, present all these different ideas, and hopefully the audience will want to harvest it and talk about it and think about it. For me, the best part of this experience has been people not reacting right away. It's been really difficult doing Q&As on this film because you walk into a room and people are pummeled. But I'll get emails or texts three days later, a week later, people saying, you know, my husband is still talking about it. You know, it's every conversation. So for me, that's always been a big goal. So it's a thrill that it's happening on this film.

What's more important to you? Is it being provocative and getting people talking about something or is it doing something that is purely entertaining for people? I think it's a combination of both. I think the first and foremost thing is entertainment. I think the biggest crime is to bore an audience. So I always try to make experiences that are very intense. This is an interesting film because it's not a type of film you walk out and you go, oh, I really liked it or I really didn't like it. It's provoking much stronger reactions and that's because it's a very intense ride. But we start by trying to keep an audience constantly engaged. So I think that's rule number one.

This film happens to be more provocative than most of them. I guess all of them have certain things that are provocative. But this one is just probably because of the subject matter. But the reason I'm sort of attracted to those things is probably it's just a taste thing. I've always been interested in things that are edgier and a little bit different. How I got into filmmaking was I had never seen independent film and I went to the one mall in Brooklyn to see a movie and it was sold out and She's Got to Have It was playing and there was one seat left and I sat in the theater and I had never seen anything like it. And my taste immediately went to that kind of alternative look on things.

How do you feel having people fling theories at you about something that you've worked hard on? I'm curious about that. I love it. They're all sort of around the same area. Has there been a wild one that you've gotten? There's one that's really interesting where they see sort of – they interpret the baby, the child, as a creative piece of work. And that how audiences devour it is somehow talking about the artist's journey. And that's something I don't think was necessarily thought about in the script,

but it completely makes sense to me. And I think that's, you know, we knew we were doing something that was allegorical. And I think the strength of a good story like that is that there's lots of different interpretations. I want to talk a little bit about the making of the movie, but the allegory in particular has obviously been a big talking point. When you're on a set or when you're preparing and you're working on a script, are you explaining a lot of the notes to the cast and the crew for a movie like this? Yeah, they know everything. And they're in on the conversation the whole time, all the different symbols and meanings and everything we're doing.

And a lot of the different symbols come from crew members. So a good example is the whole octagon shape. That came not on a script phase. That came from scouting. When we were scouting, we first looked for an actual location to work with because working with a real house, it could just sort of save you a lot of things. It gives you a reality to base everything off of. You've talked about having a long rehearsal process for the movie before you started filming. You filmed the rehearsal. Was this all happening inside that house?

No. The house was built up in Montreal. And we actually did the rehearsals in a warehouse in Brooklyn. We knew the design of the house, so we were able to tape the house out on the floor. We would basically sit at a table, me, Jennifer, and Javier, and work on the script. And then we would get up on our feet and move through and respect all the taped lines as if they were walls. But it would have been amazing to work in the house. But unfortunately, they were building the house while that was happening. Is that rehearsal process something you do in all your films? Well, I've always been attracted to that idea. I don't think it's really feasible a lot in movies because you normally get actors for a very, very short window.

But this one, because I wrote the script really quickly and it had this kind of strangeness to it, I really wanted to ground it with the performances. And I was very inspired by Mike Lee, who has these incredibly long rehearsal periods. And I've always fantasized about having that opportunity. With this one, it kind of just worked out, both Jennifer and Javier. Javier even says the reason he decided to do the project was to go through that process. So I think actually actors enjoy it. You just have to find the actors at the right time in their lives when they're not so busy. What else did you find in that process? Did you change anything significantly in the story you were telling?

It was interesting because the script was written really quickly. And then we spent a lot of time trying to kind of decode it and to pull it apart and figure out what was making it work. And every time we sort of pulled on it, it kind of fell away into pixie dust. So there was something we kept going back to in the energy of that first draft that was like, hey, can we take the energy, the emotion that's in this draft and figure out how to make a two-hour long entertainment out of it? having Javier and Jennifer trying to interpret all these symbols into real human beings led to a lot of sort of breakthroughs about stuff. But I think if you probably look at that first draft and compare it to what was finally there, the energy and the emotion is still the same. There's definitely certain scenes that have been changed and transformed.

Did either of the sort of twin allegories one get more pitched up than the other? Were they always meant to be sort of working in tandem? Peter Van Doren Are there twin allegories? Trevor Burrus Well, I'll give you my read and we can do them. I'm sure you've been eating this all month. But let's say the more biblical aspects of the story, the more ecological aspects of the story. Peter Van Doren Well, the biblical stuff, I kind of use that for structural reasons. I don't know. There wasn't an allegory about those.

It was just how to structure the history of humanity. And so going back to those ancient stories was sort of my – was my crutch. And using the Bible to sort of structure the film kind of was the big breakthrough that allowed me to write it so quickly. The other allegory was definitely the impetus and where the passion came to tell the story. And then I think there was a third kind of stream that was in the film, which was just a very personal story about a creator and a caregiver and their marriage starting to fall apart. And all three of those were sort of operating all together all the time. Yeah, definitely. The structure just held up the whole thing.

But for me, the actors constantly knew who they were playing in the allegory and who they were playing as a real human being. And then they kind of built a tightrope between those two posts and were able to sort of shuffle back and forth and play it in different pitches. So I think it was a useful tool because the actors could – the actors all had backstories and real human stories to their characters but they also had this kind of symbolic meaning as well. And I think that allowed them to move back and forth in sort of levels of intensity.

There's something notable about the fact that your last film is Noah. I wonder if all that time spent thinking about the Old Testament and being ensconced in that universe drove you in this direction. Well, yeah. I think those stories are stories that belong to everyone. I don't really get into the whole fight of did it really happen or not. I think there's more power when you accept them as stories. I'm a storyteller, so I like all types of stories and all creation myths are interesting to me. So I think you can take those stories

and really apply them to the 21st century and make comments about life right now. Indulge me a little bit about this. You've talked about the artistic pursuit of telling the story, doing the rehearsal process. The thing that struck me when I saw the movie after thinking about some of the ideas in it is, how did you convince people to make this movie?

How do you get a studio to say, great idea? You make it for the right number. And I think with those actors, you sort of can – if you have a responsible number, you can make it happen. And that's what we did on this one. We made it for cheap enough that no one felt they would lose their shirt. Everyone knew it was definitely pushing the edge and weird, but that's kind of where things happen, you know, at least where I've had things happen, you know, making a film about a wrestler. No one thought it was a sport or anything and everyone was, how can you make a feature-length

film with Mickey Rourke? No one wants to see that, you know, at the time. But I found the right people to take that risk because it was the right price. And then Black Swan was even harder to make. Everyone was like, ballet people don't want to see horror films and horror people don't want to see ballet. And so we couldn't find anyone to make it. But eventually, we got the price for the right number and figured out a way. This one was also at a reasonable price and it was Jen Lawrence and Javier Bardem. And I think that's why we got it made. What comes first for you? Is it the challenge of telling a provocative, difficult story? Or is it these are the stories that come to you, and then you're forced to kind of sell them into the world? Yeah, I wish I wish my taste

was sort of somewhere else. I just watched the Spielberg documentary and they talk a lot about that, how he's an artist, but his taste lined up with mainstream audiences. These are the stories that come to me that I'm passionate. I don't ever go, oh, wow, this is really messed up. In fact, I usually am pretty naive and I'm like, it's not that messed up. It makes sense for the story, so I'm just going to follow it and pursue it. Even on this one, you were like, I'm just telling a story. I think so. I imagine there must have been like when it was coming out of me, I was like, oh, that's intense. But I don't think it was about being provocative. I don't think that's where the intention comes from.

I think there's a truth to it. And for all the darkness that's in the film, it's kind of representing something that's true. Requiem for a Dream, you know, when the MPAA gave us an NC-17 score or whatever you call rating, they wanted us to trim back some of the intense stuff that happens at the end of the film. But the whole purpose of that movie was to sort of show how far people go to feed their addictions. And so to cut back on that was to undermine the exact message of the film. In Mother, we were trying to kind of represent what it's like to be alive in 2015, 2017. And if you read any newspaper of record and you actually look past the words on the page, any of those, any kind of read through the A section is going to be more intense than what happens in this film. We live in this incredibly turmoil with just, it's just a very intense time. And I wanted to

be truthful and represent that. I think also my tastes are – one of my big pet peeves is violence in movies being fetishized almost. There's a glamour to violence and I think it's extremely irresponsible. And so when I represent violence in films, I just try to be truthful to the violence. So your last two films, despite some of their intense or unusual subject matter, were very financially successful. I wonder if that dictates somehow some of the choices you make or did that change the way that you thought about making films in any way? No. I guess it gave me more latitude to make what I wanted to make. You know, I never thought Noah would be possible. And then I think the success of Black Swan made Noah possible.

And the success of Noah at Paramount made this film possible. So I just use it, I think, to sort of help me to get to the next step. I was reading that it's – I think next month is the 20-year anniversary of when you started shooting Pi. Is that true? Yeah. Who wrote about that? I was just doing some research. There wasn't a piece or anything.

But I was wondering kind of what your mind state was back then and if you thought you would be finding yourself making films like this at studios no less. Yeah. I remember there was – when I was in film school at AFI, all these people came over to me and started congratulating me. And there was some rumor that I had a three-picture deal with Warner Brothers, which at the time I was like, wow, that's never going to happen. I don't think I ever looked that far in advance. The funny thing that you say is 20 years because the one thing I did look in advance is I was always inspired by Jim Jarmusch, who always gets his films back.

And we actually get Pi back at the 20-year mark, which I think is pretty soon. Do you ever go back and watch your old films? Never. I think it's, you know, akin to masturbation. How often – how many times have you seen – Not that I don't masturbate. How many times have you seen Mother since it was locked? You know, you're watching these films hundreds of times and scenes over and over again.

And you watch every reel so many times that by the time it's finished, it's just sort of taking care, it's kind of sanding down edges. I don't think you need to sort of experience as a whole. As far as like taking the film in as a whole experience that you sit through for two hours, I guess you probably do that, you know,

it's gotta be 30, 40 times. How many times with an audience? Before it's released? be 30, 40 times. How many times with an audience? Before it's released? Anytime. Not many. I mean, this one was great. You know, we didn't have to test it. That would have been an interesting round of testing. It would have been a disaster. Yeah. You know. Was that something that you have to say ahead of time? Like, I do not want this tested in any way? I don't, I think everyone kind of assumed, I mean, my films never test well. It's not kind of what I do. Black Swan tested awfully.

You just get random people that have no conditioning about what they're about to see and you put very intense stuff in front of them. It's not the right way to present the material. You got to kind of have to give a little bit of prologue to what it is. It does make me wonder about the sort of marketing campaign around Mother, which was very secretive. You didn't want too much out in the world. What specifically were you thinking there? Why did you choose to – and I know that this is a group decision made by many people. But from your perspective, was it better to have as little information out in the world

as possible about the movie? I think it's a really hard film to sell because it doesn't fit directly into a genre. And when Paramount leaned into the horror kind of pitch, I thought it was as good a pitch as anything. You mentioned that there are some notable scenes in Requiem for a Dream that really push the envelope. Obviously, there are many in this movie. Do you ever get second thoughts when you're doing something like this? Do you ever think like, I just went too far? No, I think we sit there and we talk about it in the edit room.

There's definitely ways I could have gone a lot further in this movie. Do tell. And there were things we trimmed back and it's just – it's a question of taste. I think it's always a hard line to sort of understand. I mean the danger is that you just peel things back so far that they just become acceptable to everyone because then I think you just lose sort of any impact that a film has. What about having someone like Jennifer do these things, a world-famous movie star, incredibly notable person? There's a lot of risk involved in the performance. Was there ever a time where she was trepidatious about this?

Was there ever a time where you felt trepidatious for her to do something that you wanted her to do? Well, showing real emotion and showing intense emotion is kind of why actors start doing what they want to do. I think a lot of times movie stars lose that memory that that's what's important is to act. And Jennifer is definitely in a place where she's fearless and wants to sort of explore all those different types of things. I look for actors that are open to sharing all of their emotions to the world. I don't really look to work with actors that don't want to do that. I've noticed a theme in your work. Here's the theme. Okay.

You want to put people in intense emotional and physical duress and then see how they respond to it. People being the audience or characters? Well, that's another way of thinking of it too. I think particularly the characters and the actors. Is that something that occurs to you? I think if you think about it, that's what every movie is in a lot of ways. I actually thought about this, and that's not totally true, I think.

But in particular, I think there's a high-pitched version of it in your films. Definitely. Definitely. I turn up the pitch a lot and I look for characters that are probably more on the edge than characters you normally see in films. Just once again, that's what I've always been interested in because I think- Why do you think that is? Why do you think that persists? It's actually more truthful. Like nothing I did with all the violence in The Wrestler was anything near the type of stuff that you go and you can see at some of those wrestling events that we want to see. Yet when you stick it and you put it onto a movie star, it becomes very, very intense for audiences. So I don't know. I think it's about testing characters.

I think the problem is my films are often kind of more tragic and tragedies. So they're kind of inverted and the intensity of what those characters go through is a lot more. And sometimes there's not really the uplifting end that we become very, very used to. How do you make that visceral feeling? I was rewatching some of your films this weekend and I saw there's a moment in the Black Swan where Natalie's character realizes she has a cracked toenail and it's arguably the most revolting moment in a movie that is trying to revolt you at times. And yeah, I really felt it. I really felt that pain of the cracked toenail. I know that pain. How do you put that image on screen? How do you make that work? You know? You show the spinning foot and then you sort of see the pain of the foot and then you cut to the actor's face and you see their painful reaction.

And then you slowly uncover it and it's very much like a jump scare where you take your time getting to the payoff. When you look at the prosthetics, you're saying, does that feel real? Is that too much blood? Is that the right amount of blood? If we're going to add more blood, why are we doing that? Are we going to add less blood? Why are we doing that? Are we going to make it really gross or just a little bit gross?

And it's all about making those decisions in the moment and usually comes back to what is real because I think for all the kind of unreal places that the movies go, they're all grounded in realism. So in Mother, during the fever dream sequence, that 30-minute crazy sequence when the house is kind of unleashed and starts falling apart and Jennifer is going – is having contractions. Everything we tried to make was real. So all the physics were real in the space, how people attacked the house, how they attacked each other, just bringing as much truth to that so that even though it was a crazy situation, it felt real. The honesty of practical pain. Yeah.

Yeah. Definitely. So you've had dalliances with things that are not necessarily as real in the past and not necessarily pursued those who were involved maybe in a Batman movie, a Wolverine movie, obviously the movie. It's funny because my pitch on both of those was to ground them. Right. So that's what I wanted to ask you is, could you see yourself going forward doing something that is in that realm, given how far you've been able to push it with these other films? Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah. I don't know.

I'm always interested in creating worlds and universes that are different and I could totally see myself doing that. I'm a big, big fan of those films and of the characters. I just have been lucky enough to have the freedom to sort of make these films that realistically I'm the only one who would make them. So I've just sort of followed that path on each film. But I would be open to any opportunity. It's just I know I like those films and I think I could potentially do them. I just haven't had the time to do it. Let me wrap with this. Do you think that now with every film you do, you have to top yourself in some way? No, I don't think so.

So how do you figure out what to do next? You know, I was flipping through the channels today and Barton Fink came on and I got inspired. I was like, oh, yes. So that's what happens is eventually I'll bump into enough films in a row that are really inspiring. I think on this one, I saw this Ukrainian film called The Tribe. Did you ever see that? I did. That was incredibly inspiring. Just films you see that just like it reminds you what the power of cinema is and trying to add to that conversation. When I see those films, I sort of really hold on to the feeling I have of them

and just get inspired to sort of be in that conversation. Well, Mother has stuck with me. Taren, thanks so much for chatting today. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's episode. Please join us next week where I'll be interviewing one of my favorite filmmakers, Noah Baumbach, who's got a great new movie on Netflix called The Meyerowitz Stories, New and Collected. So tune in next week.