Darren Aronofsky

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Darren Aronofsky is almost forty but easily looks ten years younger. Still sporting a noticeable Brooklyn accent, he comes across not so much as a critically-acclaimed director but more like the old friend who would always get drunk with you -- the friend you'd high-five when you found out he's engaged to Rachel Weisz.

The press surrounding his new movie The Wrestler has focused on Mickey Rourke's revelatory comeback performance, but the film is a major comeback for Aronofsky as well, who for a few years seemed to be stuck, with no escape, in Hollywood's development hell.

After 2000's critically acclaimed Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky was the next big thing in Hollywood. For a time, he was rumored to direct the revival of the Batman franchise, but that job eventually went to another indie wunderkind, Memento's Christopher Nolan. So Aronofsky went to work on an original script called The Fountain, an ambitious sci-fi epic. He quickly landed Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as his leads.

But then Brad Pitt dropped out. Without a viable leading man to replace him, time ran out and Blanchett's deal expired. The project was left for dead by everyone except Aronofsky himself, who, perhaps stubbornly, went back to the drawing board, came out with a much shorter, more budget-conscious script, and was able to make the film with Hugh Jackman and Weisz.

Thanks to the amount of time it took to finish the special effects, though, the film didn't end up coming out until 2006 -- a full six years after Requiem's release. And it flopped.

"I'd love to work Woody Allen's speed, one movie a year," Aronofsky says with a wry smile. "When you work with visual effects it just slows you down. It takes years to get them right."

The six-year-long torture of The Fountain, and its eventual unhappy ending, is what made Aronofsky want to do something completely different in the first place. Enter The Wrestler, a low-budget human drama.

"I felt like it was time for a change," he says. "I wanted to re-invent myself, so I got a whole brand-new team. New DP, new designer, new editor, everyone was new except Clint Mansell, the composer. It was just about trying something different. I think it's important as a creative person to just keep taking chances -- I mean, everyone was like, 'What are you doing' You're doing a wrestling picture with Mickey Rourke' You're out of your mind!' But it just made sense."

At the very least, the film was a success on the scheduling level. "We only finished shooting in March and it's been a kind of roller coaster ride since then." He smiles. "I like that speed."

Some old habits still die hard, though. Surprisingly, The Wrestler contains a lot of digital effects. Nothing on the level of The Fountain's orb-shaped spaceship, though. "There are a lot of visual effects in this film, they're just much smaller," Aronofsky acknowledges. "Like, all those tattoos on Mickey's body are Mickey's tattoos, except, we removed a bunch of Mickey's tattoos, too. And we didn't really think about body makeup and wrestling. If you look at it, the canvas was kind of covered with body makeup after the matches because he's been sweating and rolling around so much. So we had to go in and erase what was left. There's a lot of that type of work throughout the film."

Though the screenplay of The Wrestler is credited to Bob Siegel, Aronofsky was the one who originally created the concept. "I think it was an early observation that no one had ever done it," he says. "No one had made a wrestling picture. I think that's because most people hear it's fake, and they think it's a joke, and they write it off. But the more research I did into it, the more drama I found in it. If you jump off a rope, and you're 250 pounds, you're going to feel it the next day no matter who you are. And then when we started to meet these guys who'd sold out Madison Square Garden and the L.A. Forum, and now they're working for 250 bucks a night for twenty to fifty people' It's just tough. Good drama."

Aronofsky wasn't a huge fan of pro wrestling, but he does remember being interested in it as a kid. "A lot of guys my age had a similar thing, like an eight month stint with it where you were a fan," he says. "I was pre-Hulk-a-mania. When I watched, I think Hulk Hogan was a bad guy. It was just that small window. But there's no way to escape it, it's just such a big part of our culture. I don't know the statistics, but it's crazy how popular it was, and is."

Given that each pro-wrestling match is pre-planned, however, meant that the tried-and-true sports movie formula wouldn't work. "It's kind of a sports movie and it's kind of a drama, kind of two things at once, but one of the big challenges was, how do you make that final scene in a sports movie when it's not a competition' In Breaking Away or Chariots of Fire, it's all about, will he go into the game, will he win' But this, how do you do it when it doesn't matter who wins' I was really excited when Bob overcame that and figured out how to make it dramatic."

It was Aronofsky who came up with the idea of Rourke for the title role. "The actual lightbulb moment is lost. I've been going through my old e-mails trying to find it. I know I was circling him in '05, I wanted to meet him, but I wasn't sure, because he had a reputation. And to be honest, I didn't know if he had the physicality. He's like 190 in real life. But he put on thirty-five pounds of muscle over six months for the role."

Rourke presented a problem for the film's financing, though: with his offbeat, difficult, past-his-prime reputation, it was hard finding anyone to fund the film. But couldn't it have also been the potentially unviable subject matter'

Aronofsky shakes his head. "It wasn't the idea. It was Mickey. That's it. No one could believe Mickey could be sympathetic. Every financier in the business, everyone, said no."

At a certain point, Aronofsky had to face the facts: he'd have to find a more famous leading man. For a brief period, Nicolas Cage was in negotiations to star. But finally, Aronofsky got a stroke of luck.

"Leave it to the French to come through," he says. "They've kind of stayed fans of Mickey's, and the head of a company called Wild Bunch really understood what we were trying to do. Still, he didn't give me enough money to make it in the proper way. We still had to redesign it to make it fit the money that we had."

Fast-forward to the present, and the film is sweeping up awards -- most recently Golden Globes for Best Song and, yes, Mickey Rourke for Best Actor. For some people it could be a big "I told you so" moment, but Aronofsky seems content to sit in the background, knowing he was right all along, and let Rourke bask in the attention he deserves.

"As soon as I met him I knew," he says. "I could just see that he still had it. He still had all that passion bubbling in him. There was all this armor, but if you look into his eyes he's just this soft little guy."

The film is doing well in limited release, and the awards attention it's getting would seem to position it very nicely for a wide release. At least, that's what Aronofsky's hoping. So far, everyone has responded to the film well -- even pro wrestlers, whom Aronofsky wasn't sure would appreciate the film's bleak and revealing portrayal of their careers.

"So far it's been good," he says. "Just a few nights ago, we did a screening and Rowdy Roddy Piper was there. He was the first pro who had nothing to do with the movie to see it, and he broke down in tears in Mickey's arms. Because it was the first time his story had been told -- not necessarily his story, but a story he could really relate to. No one's ever told the story of the tragedy of these guys. At a certain point, there's just no market for these guys anymore, and what happens to them' No one knows. You meet these guys who were superstars, Jimmy Snooka, Rocky Johnson, just trying to keep something together, and it's tough."

Now that Aronofsky's on top and in demand again, he has a couple of different projects in development. But already, one of them seems to be languishing in development: for a long time, he's wanted to direct The Fighter, the story of boxer Mickey Ward. Mark Wahlberg signed on to play Ward, and Brad Pitt was set to play his brother -- until Pitt bailed. Again.

Aronofsky hints that this time, Pitt's departure was a symptom of the delay, not a cause, but either way, he's already talking about the film in the past tense. "We were involved in it. I'm not sure it's going to be the next film. It's kind of had some complications that are really boring and not worth a story."

But then the stubborn streak rears its head again: he refuses to say it's a dead project: "We're still trying to get it made. I love sports movies -- Rudy and Breaking Away are two of my favorite movies -- so I just got involved in two projects along that line. The Wrestler got made, and hopefully we'll make The Fighter."

Another potential project sounds like it's out of left field: a remake of the '80s movie Robocop. "It's a development deal, it's not a go film," Aronofsky cautions. "We're not greenlit on the set. I've wanted to do a big film for a long time, and it's an interesting title to me."

So which appeals to him more, ultra-low-budget indies like The Wrestler or big studio movies like Robocop' "They're the same thing. There's no difference. Ultimately you got limited resources, limited money, limited time, and you just have to make the best with whatever you can do. They're both hard. If they're not both hard, something's wrong." ❏