To me, watching a movie is like going to an amusement park. My worst fear is making a film that people don't think is a good ride.
Aronofsky, Darren.
A good ending is the most important thing because that's what people are leaving the theater with. I guess films kinda should have an orgasm, they should climax and we've always sort of pushed our films to have that extreme end.
Aronofsky, Darren.
Well, whenever there's not intensity, emotional intensity, I just light up the fireworks. You know, because I think that's what it's about.
Aronofsky, Darren.
I think the biggest crime is to bore an audience. Really, I can't stand being bored. If anyone sleeps in my film, I'll kill ya because I just don't -- I just want to get people their money's worth.
Aronofsky, Darren.
When I was a kid, me and my sister and friends used to put on these little shows. We used to put on records and lip-sync or dance to them. We’d invite the parents up and during this one show, I’ll never forget, I turned off the lights and… had the spotlight [a big flashlight] on my sister dancing to some music… And my Dad screamed at me, ‘Turn on the lights!’ What I learned from that is that if it gets in the way of the performance, then don’t do it.
Aronofsky, Darren.
Because I had no money, I put myself on a kibbutz with dreams of being in an avocado field, picking avocados with my shirt off and catching some rays. In fact, they stuck me in a plastic factory and my job was to run between assembly lines for eight hours a day...It was a nightmare so I ran away after two days.
Aronofsky, Darren.
My roommate [and future business partner Dan Shreker] would finish the year with a movie and I’d finish with a bunch of C’s. I decided to switch and found that film was the first thing that kept me awake at night, solving problems and doing mental edits. Film was also the first thing in which I got an A.
Aronofsky, Darren.
If you want to be a filmmaker, the best thing you can bring to the world is your own story. And there is something that is very personal to you and something that you have your own singular connection to that if it really is important to you, there are people all over the planet that will relate to it. So, the mistakes happens when you try to figure out what everyone likes because the only thing you can be sure of is what you like. And the reality is what you like ends up being what a lot of people like because we are all going through a very similar story.
Aronofsky, Darren.
If you understand how a person works within a story, then that's the story you need to tell.
Aronofsky, Darren.
I went into College having no clue what I wanted to do with my life.
Aronofsky, Darren.
You gotta really have a honest open communication with your actors. And, I think the Director-Actor relationship is all about trust. And, so you have to figure out a way to create trust between the two of you.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky Offers." in: MakingOf. No Date.
For me the worst thing in the world is when you see an actor acting their heart out in a film and the film around them is terrible and it sucks. Because I know that when an actor goes and watches that movie they are going to close, like a flower they are going to close up. And the next director that works with them is going to have to try and pry open those petals to show that beauty. So you find a lot of actors that are scared, which is totally fair because so many actors get burnt all the time.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky Offers." in: MakingOf. No Date.
I think in my films actors are often ... they really show themselves. And I imagine that certain things must be very embarassing for them but I really work hard to make sure at servicing the stories and not exploitive for the actors because that doesn't accomplish anything. It ultimately is not good. So it's just about trust and letting them know that that's what you're working to do.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky Offers." in: MakingOf. No Date.
The money hunt is a real pain in the butt because it seems that every project I come up with no one wants to put a dime in. And it just happens over and over and over again. It's really tough. Unless you do very very clear genre movies there's no way out of it and it's getting worse. So that's tough.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky Offers." in: MakingOf. No Date.
We're unfortunately not in a time where there's such a luxury in film-making where you can get 85 days to shoot an independent film. I don't know how many days Scorsese took to shoot Raging Bull, but it's clear that there's time there. And so I just don't think films like that get made anymore.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky Offers." in: MakingOf. No Date.
It was very gruelling. So many of those dancers start when they’re four and so their bodies start transforming, their joints hyper-extend and they get a turn-out in their hips that’s its own thing. So to try and replicate that was really tough.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky Offers." in: MakingOf. No Date.
I thought, you know, having been a public school kid from Brooklyn, where the education was mixed, to say the least, and uh... I thought I should study you know the great classics and stuff.. and no matter how hard I worked I was a sort of a B- student. And my roommate just by random chance happened to be an animator and he was drawing. So he would end the year with a movie and I would end the year with a bunch of papers with B minuses on them. So when I was Sophmore I decided to take a drawing class and that drawing class it was a great teacher and he kind of changed the way I looked at the world. He was just a great teacher ... and so that kind of started the path.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Reel Life, Real Stories." in: MakingOf. No Date.
I didn't get into the sculpture class, I got into the film making class, so that was sort of the path that happened. I wasn't one of those people that like destiny called me, I was definitely at a loss entering college and it took me a while to figure what I wanted to do.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Reel Life, Real Stories." in: MakingOf. No Date.
I'm Godless. And so I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is -- ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Reel Life, Real Stories." in: MakingOf. No Date.
Those are just, you know, marketing teams trying to add a little, you know, terms to our stuff. But vibra cam was a camera, you know, it was just a technique, a film technique we started in "Pi," which is whenever Max Coen had his headaches, the frame would shake. And how we did it back then, we just literally put the camera on a long lens and just shook it, because that was about what we could afford. And in "Requiem" we got to sort of master it. Snorry cam is basically a rig that attaches the camera to the actor's body. I call it the utmost in subjective filmmaking because the character is frozen in the sense of the frame while the background is moving.
Aronofsky, Darren and Making Of (Interviewer). "Reel Life, Real Stories." in: MakingOf. No Date.
Your mind is all over the place and I love -- the great thing about filmmaking is that as filmmakers, we can show where a person's mind goes, as opposed to theater, which is more to sit back and watch it.
Aronofsky, Darren and B. Ruby Rich (Interviewer). "An Interview With Darren Aronofsky." in: Tripod.com. No Date.
I think that working with Mickey Rourke changed my take on filmmaking because there was no way to really control him. It was more about letting him loose and being in the moment with him. I think filmmaking is now just about setting up a space where you get as many bright, focused people together and be open to see what happens.
Aronofsky, Darren and Alistair Harkness (Interviewer). "Black Swan - Darren Aronofsky Interview." in: The List. January 3, 2011.
We were mixing the film – Bruce wasn’t there – and I kept saying: “I can picture a three-legged dog and I can picture a two-legged dog, but what the hell is a one-legged dog?” After it won the Golden Globe, I had a couple of drinks in me, so I said: “So, Bruce, what the hell is a one-legged dog walking down the street?” And he said: “Sometimes the poetry is in the mistakes.”’ Not that he makes mistakes – he’s Bruce Springsteen. But I think what he was saying was that the things that don’t quite make sense are often where the mystery rises up. I just thought that was an interesting idea.
Aronofsky, Darren and Alistair Harkness (Interviewer). "Black Swan - Darren Aronofsky Interview." in: The List. January 3, 2011.
I have a company called Protozoa in New York and I got a lot of really smart sensitive people working with me, hardworking. And we develop a lot of things, you, there's a lot of ideas and it's kind of a marathon for those ideas. They're all racing to... except they are racing to the starting line. Which one's gonna stay together. And we just push them forward and forward until one of them seems to sort of click. The ones that keep drawing me back, you know that I'm like 'wow there's something there' and I don't know what it is necessarily, it could be a shot, a character, a scene ... it's weird ...
Aronofsky, Darren and Alex Billington (Interviewer). "New Video Interview: Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky." in: First Showing. September 27, 2010.
She did an amazing job Natalie (Portman) ...what's interesting about this film is she hasn't really been given that many opportunities to play women. She's mostly been playing girls because she is so youthful and so beautiful and so they've given her those characters. But having known her I had the ability to know that there was more to it that of course she was a woman and that there was a lot of complexity there. And so I kind of liked the idea that we were going to take her innocent image and explode it into womanhood.
Aronofsky, Darren and Alex Billington (Interviewer). "New Video Interview: Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky." in: First Showing. September 27, 2010.
You hear about man-child but this is a woman-child story and it is a kind of coming-of-age film. Natalie noticed there's an incredible pressure in the world of ballet for youth. It's treasured and if you're not a star by 24/25 it's probably not going to happen ... So it's kind of a much more brutal version of what goes on everywhere, it's with journalism, with filmmakers, with everyone there always this real attention on youth.
Aronofsky, Darren and Alex Billington (Interviewer). "New Video Interview: Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky." in: First Showing. September 27, 2010.
What's interesting about ballet is that these, um, you know, athletes start training from the time they're kids, and their bodies start to transform; their bones and their muscles are different by the time they get to our age. And, and that's because they are doing incredible things. And so when you see ballet and you see a woman standing on the point of her toes with her leg in the air spinning ten times they've worked so hard to make it look effortless, it's invisible how hard they've worked ... You don't know really how hard it is until you try. As a filmmaker it was really a challenge to say okay how am I going to show the pain and the effort to show what these people are doing, so that was a great challenge.
Aronofsky, Darren and Alex Billington (Interviewer). "New Video Interview: Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky." in: First Showing. September 27, 2010.
We shot a few shots digitally, we stole the shots on a subway. We brought down a digital camera to do that ... I actually was very impressed some of the digital stuff is lookin' really interesting and good; it definitely has a different feel to film but I'm not afraid of it. I think I probably would have to have a little more experience of looking at the images to really know what you can and cannot do with it. Lighting video is not necessarily easier than lighting film. For certain issues perhaps, if it was a really nighttime, dark film perhaps. But, I think even then you really need to, you know be very careful with how you handle video in the same way you do with film. But I think, ultimately in film, you get a lot of beauty out of it.
Aronofsky, Darren and Alex Billington (Interviewer). "New Video Interview: Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky." in: First Showing. September 27, 2010.
I got really excited by the hand-held Cinéma vérité style in The Wrestler because I mean ultimately The Wreslter was kind of a documentary of Mickey Rourke playing a character in a film. You know, so I wanted the freedom to move with him. And then I realized he just worked so well with his back. And then when, you know when we start working on Black Swan we realized there was a lot of connections between the two movies. I started to think well maybe it would be interesting to stylistically connect them with the film stock and the ratio ... then I started to get nervous thinking well has there really been a horror film with a hand-held camera? Most times horror films are done ...very, very ... you know on sticks and dolly's and all that, and I think because no one else had ever done it we just sort of said "you know what, it may screw it up, it may make the horror beats not work but fuck it let's just go for it!".
Aronofsky, Darren and Alex Billington (Interviewer). "New Video Interview: Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky." in: First Showing. September 27, 2010.
I don't think I could make a perfect genre film, I definitely just try to throw a lot of things and see just what sticks.
Aronofsky, Darren and Alex Billington (Interviewer). "New Video Interview: Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky." in: First Showing. September 27, 2010.
I think it's really important as a filmmaker to keep changing things up and reinventing it, and doing new stuff. And I think if you look at the extreme from going to The Fountain to The Wrestler to ballet, uh, you know, that's my instinct is just to keep trying new stuff.
Aronofsky, Darren and Alex Billington (Interviewer). "New Video Interview: Black Swan Director Darren Aronofsky." in: First Showing. September 27, 2010.
[LL:] Do you know Danny Boyle? Because when I interviewed him he said he'd seen The Wrestlerand really liked it. Are you two friends? [DA:] Just recently. Both of our films were picked up by Fox Searchlight. So we met for the first time at The Toronto Film Festival, right after Fox bought my film. Then recently me and Danny did a face-to-face and they filmed it. It's us just talking about each other's films because I saw Slumdog Millionaire when I was in L.A. We had a great time together; it was really interesting, because he's a legend. He's one of my Gods. Trainspotting was before Pi even ... what year was that, do you know?
Aronofsky, Darren and Laremy Legel (Interviewer). "Darren Aronofsky Interview - The Wrestler." in: Film.com. January 9, 2009.
Yeah, it's important to respect your audience. Audiences are pretty sophisticated and smart. We've all seen so many fucking movies and we know how they all work out. It's nice to allow people to talk about things afterwards and not just be hand-fed stuff.
Aronofsky, Darren and Laremy Legel (Interviewer). "Darren Aronofsky Interview - The Wrestler." in: Film.com. January 9, 2009.
Whenever you're dealing with nudity in a film it's a very sensitive issue. Those images end up on the internet, pirated, the second the film finds its way on to video. It's very tough. The only thing you can do is be straight, up front, and honest. So I just told her what it was. I said "I completely get it and understand if this role is not for you for those reasons. That's completely acceptable." I know a lot of actresses passed for that. But if we're going to do this here's why it's important. This film is about how these people use their bodies to make money. How they use their bodies for performance. So to not deal with it or not show it isn't going to happen.
Aronofsky, Darren and Laremy Legel (Interviewer). "Darren Aronofsky Interview - The Wrestler." in: Film.com. January 9, 2009.
I think it's important as a creative person to keep challenging yourself and keep doing new stuff. If you end up trying to repeat yourself it's death. It just becomes boring and takes the passion out of it. You gotta find stories and characters that you really want to hang out with.
Aronofsky, Darren and Laremy Legel (Interviewer). "Darren Aronofsky Interview - The Wrestler." in: Film.com. January 9, 2009.
Well it's always been hard for me to make my films. I've always had to make them with incredible financial limitations because it's the only way to get them made.
Aronofsky, Darren and Laremy Legel (Interviewer). "Darren Aronofsky Interview - The Wrestler." in: Film.com. January 9, 2009.
...to make a good film you really gotta fight and work hard, so to do that for something you don't believe in ... I'm not gonna do that.
Aronofsky, Darren and Laremy Legel (Interviewer). "Darren Aronofsky Interview - The Wrestler." in: Film.com. January 9, 2009.
I think real violence on film is completely acceptable and should be seen.
Aronofsky, Darren and Laremy Legel (Interviewer). "Darren Aronofsky Interview - The Wrestler." in: Film.com. January 9, 2009.
When you don't show the consequences it makes it seem like it's okay. I think video games and that stuff should be as violent as possible, but age-appropriate. It should be realistic. When it's not realistic you run into kids running around shooting people and not realizing the consequences.
Aronofsky, Darren and Laremy Legel (Interviewer). "Darren Aronofsky Interview - The Wrestler." in: Film.com. January 9, 2009.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)