A peek into the mind Darren Aronofsky

"What was interesting was that swan lake the ballet is just this great fairy tale filled with Gothic and scary elements, and this one dancer was telling me how the swan queen is a half swan half human creature and this idea of a were-swan went of in my head and I realized, we were kinda making this were-wolf movie and it sort of built out of that."



My first Aronofsky experience took place in college and it came with a warning, "Raph, if you're gonna watch 'Requiem for a Dream', you NEED to have a happy follow up movie or your emotions are gonna be jacked for the next few days." I thought I was an avid movie watcher at the time, so I naturally scoffed such a ludicrous notion. Two hours later, I found myself sitting on my futon, clutching my blanket, and looking at my friend with eyes that screamed "Hug me!"

Years later I saw Requiem at Best Buy for 4 bucks and couldn't pass up the deal, however, it was at least another 2 years before I ever thought about watching the movie again because the thought of seeing Jared Leto shoot up into a decrepit vein made my skin crawl. I eventually manned up and re watched the flick, and because the initial shock was gone, I found that it was indeed a really great movie.

Fast forward to the theatrical release of 'The Fountain'; the day I went to see it, I had the top row, middle seat of an empty theater save 3 teenagers, 2 twenty somethings and a couple at least in their fifties if not older. At the end of the movie, I sat in silence because I really loved the film and as I proceeded to look around, I noticed that the teens made jokes about the movie being stupid, the twenty somethings seemed to be satisfied with the evenings entertainment and walked out, but the older couple, they really got it. Mid way through the movie, they started holding each other and at the end, they looked into each others eyes, passionately kissed, and walk out hand in hand. To evoke such different emotions from three different age groups according to their understanding of life astonished me and from then on I knew, I was in love with Darren Aronofsky as a film maker.

Needless to say, hearing Aronofsky talk about his new film Black Swan is super inspirational to me!