“A Love Poem to Death”: One of my personal favorite descriptions of The Fountain is something Aronofsky says his producer came up with. “I think that’s a pretty good description," agreed Aronofsky. "I also like the ‘psychedelic love story’ or even better, actually, I think ‘a psychedelic fairy tale’ because I think it very much is a fairy tale. It’s an adult fairy tale and I think that’s what the word psychedelic does, it makes it more adult. But, yeah, I do like a love poem to death.”
Keeping the Idea Alive for Six Years: The Fountain took six years to get made and Aronofsky admits that during that time his passion for the project waned a bit, but never to the point where he was ready to shelve it and move on. “It’s always a waning back and forth, back and forth type of thing. But, the thing is, at the core of it there is something that rings deeply true to you, something that basically gets you out of bed in the morning. It keeps it alive for you. I think you also have to surround yourself with a group of filmmakers that believe in the same thing that you believe in. I think when you’re a team, you can pretty much do anything.”
“I think the story of the search for the fountain of youth is a movie,” explained Aronofsky. “I think the way we decided to tell it, in kind of three different ways and trying to connect them all together, is the way to do it. So I was pretty excited about that.”
The Fountain – Take Two: The script changed after the budget had to be cut to $35 million. Aronofsky's original story still exists, but in a different form. “For the true scholars, or whatever people are curious, there’s the graphic novel version of the film that came out in hard cover a year ago and now it’s coming out in soft cover with the film. That’s the original screenplay.”
When Aronofsky says the graphic novel is the original script, he means it. “Pretty much to the letter,” confirmed Aronofsky. “It was probably changed somewhat to fit the big graphic novel form, but you get the real essence of what that project was. But I’d say that, you know, at the core they’re the same thing. I always say consider it like a Samurai blacksmith making a sword and the extra time I got to hone it and make it sharper, make it meaner, make it leaner. But the steel was the same in both of them.”
The Studio’s Involvement: Aronofsky had a year and a half to edit The Fountain and fortunately for the filmmaker and his audience, Warner Bros Pictures adopted a fairly hands-off approach and let Aronofsky cut the film as he saw fit. “They pretty much left me alone. You’re always collaborating with the people who are making it possible. With Pi and Requiem there were money people behind those films as well, and you have to work with them. I think the same thing was true with The Fountain. But they were pretty respectful and careful and caring. They let me nurture the film.”
Page 2: Microscopic Photography, the Visual Effects, and the Use of the Color Gold
