Circling π with Darren Aronofsky
CYBERPUNK LIVES AND THRIVES IN DARREN ARONOFSKY'S π, a relentless, pulsating paranoid thriller about chaos, Kabbalah, Wall Street and the elegance of numbers. The 28-year-old American Film Institute graduate, who won the director's award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, found his $60,000 high-contrast black-and-white film the subject of a bidding war, and it went to Artisan Entertainment for over a million dollars. the self-avowed "science fiction guy" says the movies in his head are of far greater scale than the usual indiefilm "vision." Aronofsky has burst boldly from the indie scene with a $600,000 pay-or-play deal through Miramax's Dimension films to direct Proteus," a big-budget historical sci-fi thriller that takes place on an American submarine during World War II. (He and his co-writer got $300,000 up front against a $600,000 back-end price for their screenplay as well.) Another deal has been announced for Aronofsky to adapt Frank Miller's DC samurai comic Ronin for New Line either before or after Proteus; that writing-directing deal could go as high as $1.3 million. A big leap for a director who cut his entire crew in for substantial shares of the producers' profits--in the once-unlikely case there would ever be any.
Entering his Chicago hotel room, I find the hyper Aronofsky bent over his brand new Mac G3 laptop, perusing the intricate website for the film (www.pithemovie.com) designed by its star, Sean Gullette. The website contains selections drawn from Aronofsky's effervescent shooting diary, including the rules he abided by for his production draft of the script.
In π Max Cohen (Gullette) is about to have a breakthrough and a breakdown, as ten years of work seem about to reveal a numerical pattern running under the stock markets, the ultimate system of ordered chaos. While there's a Wall Street firm ready to kill for their formula, so is a Kabbalah sect who believes that Max's work will unlock their ancient holy texts and bring on the end of the world.
Before telling his crew they'd get potentially worthless points, how did motivate them, how did he explain this story? "It's about God, math and bad-ass Jews," he says, laughing. "My twenty-four words or less when I had to use that was it's a sci-fi thriller about a renegade mathematician searching for numerical order in the New York Stock Exchange. I didn't mention anything about the Kabbalah. Now I might say it's a ninety-minute roller coaster ride about the meaning of life. It is hard to describe."
While there are resemblances to earlier movies such as Welles' The Trial, Aronofsky is more likely to cite Frank Miller's graphic novels and the writing of Philip K. Dick and Rod Serling. "Story-story-story" is at the core of movies that he likes. "The bottom line is that 'π' is a thriller, a chase movie. That's why I don't like comparisons to 'Eraserhead.' They look similar, maybe, but Lynch's film is totally expressionistic and doesn't have a narrative. I'm a total narrative junkie. That's what I aspire to—well-made stories. Stories that actually move. I want my 90 minutes of distraction, I want my 90 minutes of taking a roller coaster ride. That was the core. π had to have a thriller before I could add any of the esoteric material."
I wondered what Miramax's Bob Weinstein and New Line's Michael DeLuca had responded to in π. "I think it's a better question to ask Bob Weinstein, what they saw in the film was, at least what they told me, they liked the way that I was able to bring together all the different elements of filmmaking, from sound, to editing, cinematography, and tie it all into a cohesive piece of work. For me, filmmaking is a full sensory experience so every single element I try and tie into the narrative. When you come up with an idea, you talk to your friends about it, They say, 'I just read something about that,' then you go, 'Oh!' and check that out. That's how it happens. It's all about communication. All the ideas are out there. There are no original ideas, there are only original ways of dealing with story."
While exploiting mathematical history, Aronofsky says that "ultimately it's not a math movie. The math [in our story] is the cool math. This is a mad scientist story, a retelling of the Frankenstein myth for the digital age. Instead of the monster, we have Euclid, Max's supercomputer." Aronofsky is keen to admit he draws inspiration from any source he can. "For me, writing is a jigsaw puzzle. I take things I think are cool or experiences that are very interesting, things I've read, I try to shuffle the deck, make my own mixture that becomes my movie out of everything I've experienced."
But it always comes back to story. "Everything has to tie into the essential theme, and if doesn't you need to cut it away. Everything has to have a core of what the film is about, but once you tie in all into a theme, as many different pieces as you can throw in is a good thing." He sees π as "an extremely commercial movie," pointing out the worldwide bestsellers "The Celestine Prophecy" and "Bible Codes," a book about Kabbalah. "I think everyone is interested in themes that are covered in π, and that is the star of our movie, the concepts. Since we crawled out of the primordial soup, we've asked why are we here, what's the meaning of life, is there a god, what is God, who is God, where is God, that is the core and essence of 'π.' I think audiences around the world are going to dig that."
What were the inspirations that go him this far. "Definitely seeing the success of American independent films. That you can just go out and do it. When you get Robert Rodriguez's story, Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, you know you can do it. We wanted to make a comic book, paranoid sci-fi film. That was always the goal. The first cyberpunk movie."
Entering his Chicago hotel room, I find the hyper Aronofsky bent over his brand new Mac G3 laptop, perusing the intricate website for the film (www.pithemovie.com) designed by its star, Sean Gullette. The website contains selections drawn from Aronofsky's effervescent shooting diary, including the rules he abided by for his production draft of the script.
In π Max Cohen (Gullette) is about to have a breakthrough and a breakdown, as ten years of work seem about to reveal a numerical pattern running under the stock markets, the ultimate system of ordered chaos. While there's a Wall Street firm ready to kill for their formula, so is a Kabbalah sect who believes that Max's work will unlock their ancient holy texts and bring on the end of the world.
Before telling his crew they'd get potentially worthless points, how did motivate them, how did he explain this story? "It's about God, math and bad-ass Jews," he says, laughing. "My twenty-four words or less when I had to use that was it's a sci-fi thriller about a renegade mathematician searching for numerical order in the New York Stock Exchange. I didn't mention anything about the Kabbalah. Now I might say it's a ninety-minute roller coaster ride about the meaning of life. It is hard to describe."
While there are resemblances to earlier movies such as Welles' The Trial, Aronofsky is more likely to cite Frank Miller's graphic novels and the writing of Philip K. Dick and Rod Serling. "Story-story-story" is at the core of movies that he likes. "The bottom line is that 'π' is a thriller, a chase movie. That's why I don't like comparisons to 'Eraserhead.' They look similar, maybe, but Lynch's film is totally expressionistic and doesn't have a narrative. I'm a total narrative junkie. That's what I aspire to—well-made stories. Stories that actually move. I want my 90 minutes of distraction, I want my 90 minutes of taking a roller coaster ride. That was the core. π had to have a thriller before I could add any of the esoteric material."
I wondered what Miramax's Bob Weinstein and New Line's Michael DeLuca had responded to in π. "I think it's a better question to ask Bob Weinstein, what they saw in the film was, at least what they told me, they liked the way that I was able to bring together all the different elements of filmmaking, from sound, to editing, cinematography, and tie it all into a cohesive piece of work. For me, filmmaking is a full sensory experience so every single element I try and tie into the narrative. When you come up with an idea, you talk to your friends about it, They say, 'I just read something about that,' then you go, 'Oh!' and check that out. That's how it happens. It's all about communication. All the ideas are out there. There are no original ideas, there are only original ways of dealing with story."
While exploiting mathematical history, Aronofsky says that "ultimately it's not a math movie. The math [in our story] is the cool math. This is a mad scientist story, a retelling of the Frankenstein myth for the digital age. Instead of the monster, we have Euclid, Max's supercomputer." Aronofsky is keen to admit he draws inspiration from any source he can. "For me, writing is a jigsaw puzzle. I take things I think are cool or experiences that are very interesting, things I've read, I try to shuffle the deck, make my own mixture that becomes my movie out of everything I've experienced."
But it always comes back to story. "Everything has to tie into the essential theme, and if doesn't you need to cut it away. Everything has to have a core of what the film is about, but once you tie in all into a theme, as many different pieces as you can throw in is a good thing." He sees π as "an extremely commercial movie," pointing out the worldwide bestsellers "The Celestine Prophecy" and "Bible Codes," a book about Kabbalah. "I think everyone is interested in themes that are covered in π, and that is the star of our movie, the concepts. Since we crawled out of the primordial soup, we've asked why are we here, what's the meaning of life, is there a god, what is God, who is God, where is God, that is the core and essence of 'π.' I think audiences around the world are going to dig that."
What were the inspirations that go him this far. "Definitely seeing the success of American independent films. That you can just go out and do it. When you get Robert Rodriguez's story, Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, you know you can do it. We wanted to make a comic book, paranoid sci-fi film. That was always the goal. The first cyberpunk movie."
