Darren Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky, director of the indie sensation Pi was in town to screen his latest, last year's Oscar-nominated Requiem for a Dream as part Southern Methodist University's film festival. I had the privilege of getting to know Mr. Aronofsky at the Amstrom Gallery after party.As a kid in Brooklyn, Aronofsky took the D train to Manhattan so that he could sneak into such films as A Clockwork Orange and Eraserhead. The films were, at that time, X-rated (they are both now rated 'R'). "They were films," he says with a smirk, "you weren't supposed to see." Fifteen years later, Aronofsky finds himself making controversial, provocative movies for the same restless young people.Mr. Aronofsky first wooed critics with his 1998 debut Pi. The film was a Sundance hit, managing, of all things, to add some suspense to the ever-dull world of a mathematician. The film became a small triumph for Aronofsky (and Artisan Entertainment, its theatrical distributor), a no-budget science fiction drama that was financed by Aronofsky's credit cards, his friends, and complete strangers that populated Brooklyn.Aronofsky promised friends and strangers alike that if they put up $100, he would pay them that same amount plus interest, if the film made
" That all ceased once he got behind the camera. And it was always meant that that three-minute climax was going to be a violent barrage on the audience - we wanted to bombard them. In areas where Pi showed signs of freshman folly (the movie overplays its visual flaire), Requiem is near perfection. Will he strike a comparison to Brian De Palma, making smart, personal films early in his career and then losing himself behind big-budget gimmickry? Or, more likely, will he become one of Stanley Kubrick's predecessors, a chronicler of man's advancement with a general indifference towards emotion? "I hope I'm still working in 20 years," Aronofsky says. One of the characters undergoes graphic electroshock while another is disgraced while performing in a live sex show. None of the scenes are overly violent or sexual, but they come at you so fast and relentless that the result is a horrifying stare into addiction's dark eyes. Aronofsky admits that he only got into comics late in his college career when a friend turned him on to The Watchman and The Dark Knight Returns. " Upon graduating from Harvard, Aronofsky headed to the American Film Institute's Conservatory in Los Angeles, where one of his professors - Scott Rosenberg, the director of Cool Hand Luke and The Pope of Greenwich Village - told him: "Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, or scare the [expletive] out of 'em. Those scenes are taken from something I witnessed. I'd run out of my girlfriend's bed in my underwear to the editing room and not come back until I'd finished a cut. With one of his friends in tow, Aronofsky traveled to Brooklyn's only mall, Kings Plaza, to see a movie that he now can't remember. The film received a five-minute standing ovation at last year's Cannes Film Festival, and topped many critic's top-ten lists (including my own). But if you want to see a film that's right down the middle of the road, please, please, don't come see Requiem for a Dream.
Common topics in this essay:
Artisan Entertainment,
I'm Brooklyn,
Brooklyn Aronofsky,
Fifteen Aronofsky,
Dream Aronofsky's,
Aronofsky I'd,
Kings Plaza,
Aronofsky Batman,
Greenwich Village,
Film Festival,
requiem dream,
science fiction,
brooklyn aronofsky,
brick wall,
film festival,
science fiction drama,
fiction drama,
artisan entertainment,
|
Acceptance Essays
