Wywiad z reżyserem Darrenem Aronofsky

- Can you talk about the cinematic references in Black Swan?
Darren Aronofsky: Of course Polanski. I’m a big, big, big Polanski fan, of his subjective filmmaking – Repulsion and The Tenant. That’s clearly at play here. Cronenberg’s The Fly…for me, Swan Lake is kind of a werewolf movie. The story of Swan Lake…during the day she’s a swan, and at night she becomes this half-swan, half-human creature. So when I started to think about it, I thought ‘It’s a werewolf movie. It’s a ‘were-swan’ movie.’ I got excited about the possibility of taking this beautiful Natalie Portman flower and transforming her into this creature. And Swan Lake of course was a big influence, and Tchaikovsky’s music. I listened to it over and over again, so that it didn’t sound just like classical music to me. But it started to make some type of sense.

- What about All About Eve?
Darren Aronofsky: All About Eve was a big influence on the initial script that was written. I’d been thinking about doing something with Dostoyevsky’s The Double because I was a big fan of that. It’s about a guy who wakes up and his double starts to replace his life. And I liked the idea of doing something with that. At the same time, I had been interested in doing something in the ballet world, because my sister was a dancer when I was a kid. So it was in the background but I never understood it. Like wrestling, I felt it was a world I felt no one had really shined a light on for a long time, in a realistic way. Then I went to see a production of Swan Lake. In the middle, I realised one dancer plays the White Swan and the Black Swan – like ‘Oh, wow! There’s a double in this!’ It was this Eureka moment at the New York State Theatre. So that started to connect. I guess these were the earliest initial ingredients.

- Can you talk about casting Natalie Portman?
Darren Aronofsky: She’s unbelievable. She’s a complete professional. She’s incredibly disciplined. She’s responsible, reasonable, sane. Exactly like working with Mickey Rourke! She was so easy and a delight. My cast was fantastic. Vincent Cassel is just the freest of spirits. He has a dancer’s soul, the way he flows through words. My biggest regret with Vincent is that I can never direct him in French because my French sucks! But for people that speak French as their native tongue, to be able to appreciate a performance from Vincent Cassel in his native language must be unbelievable. In English, he’s spectacular.

- What made you pick Mila Kunis to play Lily?
Darren Aronofsky: Yeah, we thought a lot about who would that be, that we should cast someone that looks like Natalie. But then I just thought ‘Go for the best actress.’ I had seen this American comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was the only thing I saw Mila do. She’s also a TV actress. She just leapt off the screen – she was just so sexy and beautiful and charming and free. So I was thinking about her and then Natalie called me and said, ‘What about my friend Mila for the role of Lilly?’ I was like ‘OK!’ So I got in touch with Mila, and we got along and she seemed really into it.

- And your other actresses…
Darren Aronofsky: Barbara Hershey was incredibly respectful, even though she’s worked with some of the greats and we had very little time. But she was extremely patient and committed. She took a role that could’ve been incredibly one-dimensional and I think added great ambiguity, so you didn’t know if she was a bad guy or a good guy for a long time. Even when she’s a bad guy at the end, she is kind of a good guy because she’s trying to do the right thing. That was all her. She wanted to add those levels. Mila is exactly how you see her on screen – very carefree, very relaxed, very natural, very willing. And Winona [Ryder, who plays a former lead ballerina] was an incredible delight – a complete professional, sweet to everyone on set, no matter who you were. She has no pretension. I was like ‘Why?’ I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t any issues. I was like, ‘What’s wrong with this girl, she’s fantastic.’ I saw nothing. And she really tried and she really worked hard. That whole scene – the ‘you suck his cock’ scene – she did thirty takes for me, one after the other, just boom boom boom. It was just great.

- Do you see similarities between The Wrestler and Black Swan?
Darren Aronofsky: Absolutely. I dream about the day at an art theatre when there’s going to be a double feature of The Wrestler and Black Swan, because the similarities are very clear. Both characters leap at the end. They’re both performers that are in pain, that use their physical bodies to entertain. And one’s the lowest art in the world and one’s the highest art in the world. I thought it was a very interesting complement – two different world, two different sexes, two different ages yet similar human struggle, to a certain extent.

- What draws you to these similarly obsessive characters?
Darren Aronofsky: I don’t know. I just think it’s two characters that I stumbled upon and they happened to be really passionate. The Mickey one wasn’t really like that. Mickey really brought that to the role. Mickey is the type of guy – ‘I am who I am and I live how I am. I’ll die how I die.’ That shaped The Wrestler and it became about who Mickey was. Then the character became that. As we were constructing the ballet, we were aware of that and drew it towards that. So it became about these characters who live for their art and nothing else.

- You obviously revitalised Rourke’s career somewhat…
Darren Aronofsky: Somewhat? I’m fully responsible! He was still uncastable. Now he’s getting four million dollars a picture.

- OK. But what did The Wrestler do for you?
Darren Aronofsky: Well, it didn’t do much. Making this film was harder than getting the money for The Wrestler – even after the Golden Lion, and after the Oscar nominations and the Golden Globe wins and the Bruce Springsteen song. And now I have Natalie Portman, who is undeniably a bigger star than Mickey Rourke, Vincent Cassel, who is an international sensation…I thought it would be easy. But you’d go in and they go ‘It’s a ballet-thriller-horror film and she turns into a swan – what is going on?’ It wasn’t like ‘Where’s my chequebook?’ So basically everyone once again turned us down. Like every freakin’ movie we do, they turned us down. We figured out how to get the money independently. It was a nightmare. Two weeks before we were about to shoot, the money fell apart. It didn’t really exist. I went back to Fox Searchlight, and I said, ‘Please! This is what we’ve got.’ They were very nervous too earlier on, but then they’d seen how we cast it, and how the script had evolved, so they came in. They saved me at the last minute.

- So your reputation didn’t count for anything?
Darren Aronofsky: Not when you try to make a weird film. Anytime you try to do something different, it doesn’t matter. I always think it’s going to get easier with each one. They’re like ‘Yeah, sure, if you want to do this one, we’ll sign on the dotted line and give you this big fat cheque.’ But I’m like ‘I really want to make this thing.’ It’s my own personal demons.

- What made you shoot so much hand-held?
Darren Aronofsky: I really enjoyed the hand-held camera and the long tracking shots we did in The Wrestler. I wanted to bring that language to it. But I got really scared, because we were making a horror/psychological thriller and I was trying to think of another movie that did that. Would the hand-held destroy the scares of the film? I wasn’t sure. I was terrified of it. I thought about it for a long time. Eventually, me and my DP just said ‘Screw it. Let’s go for it! It’s original. We’ll see what happens.’ So we took a chance.

- What was the hardest part of Black Swan?
Darren Aronofsky: Pulling off the stage show was really hard, because we actually had to make a real, working production of Swan Lake, and then we had to figure out how to put the camera in there when there are spotlights from off screen. So there are shadows and then there’s digital effects going on. That big shot of her turning into a swan was technically a big challenge. I don’t know if it was on Avatar scale but it was a big challenge for me with no money.

- How did you choreograph the scenes?
Darren Aronofsky: It was very complicated. Like all the dance sequences took a lot of time. First I would talk to Benjamin Millepied about which part of Swan Lake to use, then he would modernise it or create something for it. Then we would work on that. Then eventually with a dance partner, he would dance it. And then me and Matty Libatique would bring in the video camera, and start to dance with them and try and get the cool shot on video. Then when we were shooting on the day of, especially the performances – because there were spotlights and issues with shadows – so it became Matty’s issue of lights going on and off. It was a jigsaw puzzle. And technically really hard. We had incredibly limited resources.

[CMS_PAGE_BREAK] - As a director, do you relate to Vincent’s character?
Darren Aronofsky: The character of Vincent is extremely manipulative. To be honest, I wish I could be that manipulative. I’m really not that good at it. I’m very direct, probably to a fault. But I think a ballet director might be very different to a film director, in the sense that film acting is all about trust. So you get into trouble if you start emotionally manipulating actors. I’m just very straightforward with actors, and will say it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be hard, that we will work together to get through it but it will be really, really hard. The result of that is I’ve scared away a lot of A-List of actors but I’ve attracted the ones I really want to work with. Mickey talks about the first conversation we had where I said, ‘You fucked up your career, you did this, you did that, and I’m going to make you work like a dog.’ He got it and that set the tone. I was very similar with Natalie. I said, ‘You’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked.’ And she did.

- Can you talk about your work with your regular composer Clint Mansell on the film?
Darren Aronofsky: He often writes some things beforehand but the final product of music is way different to where he begins. When I first started this project, we were on a panel – a BMG conference in LA. It was before the film even happened and I made a joke that the reason I was doing Black Swan was for Clint. And there’s a truth to that. I knew this great challenge of taking Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece and turning it into a movie score would be a really cool fusion. And I was really excited about what he would do. He basically took that great score, and ripped it apart and found certain themes and ideas and made this Frankenstein’s Monster that became the score. Then we came here to Air Studios and recorded it with an 80-piece orchestra.

- So what did you do?
Darren Aronofsky: We just went for it. I was terrified when we started off working on Swan Lake, because it’s such a complicated work that has an incredible history. So I never knew how I would get into it and wrap my mind around it. I knew nothing about ballet. I knew nothing about the Tchaikovsky score. Of course I knew a lot of the themes, but that was a problem. I associate a lot of the themes with Bugs Bunny – Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs Bunny! So how to make those fresh for an audience was a real challenge. That music has been deeply abused because it’s in the public domain. So how to make it fresh was a big question.

- What interests you about the theme of perfection?
Darren Aronofsky: People that strive for perfection through their physicality is really interesting. Like Pi was about someone who strives for perfection through his mind. So I think always this idea of striving for perfection – especially through the body which is breaking down at all times. The amount of pain that these dancers live in…yet they try to create something that’s effortless and lighter than air. That was an amazing challenge for me to try and show that effort, to try to reveal the invisibility of that effort to the world.

- Are you obsessive like this in any way?
Darren Aronofsky: Me, I’m a family man – so I have a pretty good balance these days. Maybe when I was making Pi and Requiem back in those days, I was pretty deeply connected to the work. We just did a Blu-ray of Requiem for a Dream. We went back to the negative, and did the sound, and then I had to watch it at the end to make sure it was alright. And I had no idea who the guy who made it was. I didn’t recognise that young man. I’m glad I’ve still got a little power in me. But I thought ‘What a nightmare to live with that person! Who is that person?’ I was single at the time. Now I know why!

- Are you a fan of the Method style of acting?
Darren Aronofsky: I’m probably pretty critical of the Method. I used to think it was cool, like most young film people. But watching Ellen Burstyn, and being around a few masters…everyone has their own process but I think it’s actually pretty selfish. It’s just make-believe. There’s a fucking half-a-million dollar camera there, and forty lights, and you’ve got to hit a technical mark. What is the Method when it’s such a technical job? It’s about make-believing for a very, very short window. Like I think the Method could work if you’re on stage. Sure…when you walk off stage, and you stay in character because you’ve got to keep the adrenaline going, that makes sense to me. But film is basically little bursts of acting – twenty seconds here, ten seconds there, two seconds there. In between takes, you could stay there but once it takes over, when you’re in the make-up chair, come on! You could be thinking about what you’ve got to get done that day and be serious but you don’t have to be an asshole all day. So to me, it doesn’t impress me, actors that do that. I think it’s a lot of wasted energy.

- You were doing a remake of RoboCop. Is that still on?
Darren Aronofsky: I think I’m still attached. I was never removed. It got caught up in the whole MGM bankruptcy and stuff. Black Swan was ready to go and MGM was facing bankruptcy, so even though making an independent film was a nightmare, it just seemed like the right choice at the time.

- Why does Hollywood produce so many remakes?

Darren Aronofsky: It’s unbelievable. The first RoboCop is great. Unfortunately, a lot of the business has become about that. With the right opportunity, it’s not such a bad thing. I don’t know. So much has changed in the ways we have made films since the Eighties. You can really do lots of different things. It could be exciting.

- How would you feel if someone remade one of your films?
Darren Aronofsky: Which one? Go for it! How are you going to remake Pi? Have fun! Do it in colour and we’ll see what happens!

- Is it true you’re working on a comic book?
Darren Aronofsky: We’re actually doing one. It hasn’t really been announced, so I don’t know if I should give you the scoop. But we’re doing a comic book of a script that’s really hard to make, and then see what happens. It seems like if you come up with an original script, it’s not as effective in Hollywood as if you come in with a comic book. They’ll take any unsuccessful comic book. How successful was Kick-Ass as a comic book or Scott Pilgrim? Those were fringe comics, right? I didn’t even know Scott Pilgrim, and then I went to the comic shop and it was a very underground comic. It’s really an underground comic. I’m sure it sold a lot since the film.

- What advantage is it to produce a comic first?
Darren Aronofsky: When you work really hard on material, you want to get it out there. The reason The Fountain comic exists is because for a long time we didn’t think The Fountain was going to happen. So I went after an artist because I wanted to get that vision out there. I’m a storyteller. If I can’t tell it through my medium of choice, let’s try another way. The Fountain comic came to its conclusion right about the time we got the film to conclude as well. So things change.