Earlier this month, I had a long conversation with director Darren Aronofsky, the man responsible for this year’s most ambitious sci-fi film The Fountain, and who has also given us Requiem for a Dream and Pi.
We talked by telephone about The Fountain, and about how it begs to be interpreted in so many different ways. We talked about the power of myth, the idea that the world’s religions can be traced to common origins, and humankind’s constant struggle to solve the problem of mortality through scientific endeavor.
When Aronofsky stopped in Seattle to do a Q&A with an audience at an advance screening of The Fountain, I met with him the next morning for half an hour.
As I sat down with him, he held up his cell phone to show me a photo of tiny, tiny infant.
“One day old,” he said proudly.
I sat down, wide-eyed and confounded. “One day old?! And you’re here? In Seattle?”
“One day old.”
My head was spinning. “So… that must be tricky. You must be feeling a little stressed out!”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Are you talking about the screening last night?”
“Well, yeah… that means you must have been a little distracted during the screening.”
“No, actually. It was a great audience, and they had good questions.”
“Yes, but, I mean… were you on the phone all night with Rachel? How are the mother and baby?”
“Oh, well, they’re fine. He’ll was five months old at Halloween.”
Blink.
Blink.
“But you said… I thought… I thought you said he was one day old.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no… the PICTURE was taken when he was one day old.”
And that’s how our second conversation began.
Today, you can read excerpts from my two conversations with Aronofsky at Christianity Today Movies.