Peak Humanity: Why Darren Aronofsky's Heroes Don't Wear Capes

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Speaker 19 Hey, I'm Tricia Hirschberger, gamer, streamer, and Amazon Live host.

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Speaker 18 I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738, Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities.

Speaker 18 Please drink responsibly because today we're going to find out what this sound is. Get out of my neighborhood.
I'm like, this is my fing neighborhood.

Speaker 18 I am 99% sure I've been here longer than you, motherfucker. Get on my street.

Speaker 18 Right after this ad.

Speaker 18 The 50 Simply Bet. Delicious.
This is the 50th episode.

Speaker 18 It's 1970. So, wow.
So I got this during the pandemic. Oh, wow.
No, so I

Speaker 18 do understand what that means to me at that place.

Speaker 18 I'm not an idiot. So I've owned this shirt.
I wear this shirt a lot. Oh, my God.
I'm not just doing it. I'm like thinking what I can trade for that shirt.

Speaker 18 We might have a deal. By the end of this episode, we might have a transaction.
So, like, let me explain to you what Roll roasting means. So, should I put these on? How's that work? Let's do it.

Speaker 18 So, Roll Roaster is,

Speaker 18 let's see. I don't know if I want to even hear my voice, but if you don't want to, we can take them off.
It's kind of sexy. No, I'm all right.

Speaker 18 You can wear them. I don't care.

Speaker 18 So, I grew up like

Speaker 18 a bird's eye shot, I guess they call it, maybe half a mile from there. The original Roll Roast in Sheepsa Bay.

Speaker 21 We're not so fast, roll and roaster. We're not so fast.
Roll and roaster. We're taking the time, making everything just right.

Speaker 21 Waking up your appetite, we give you real roast beef, bigger burgers cooked the way you want.

Speaker 21 At Rollin' Roaster, the not so fast, fast food restaurant.

Speaker 18 At Rollin' Roaster, we take just a little bit. That to us was like the place.
Like, you know, two o'clock in the morning, you come and you get the roast beef with

Speaker 18 the cheese on top of it. The cheese with a Z? The cheese with a Z.
No cheese at the end. Which, by the way, I don't think I'll tell you exactly what that cheese is.
You know what it is?

Speaker 18 So, first of all, back in the day, all the waitresses were like the most beautiful women.

Speaker 18 Again, I'll show you the illustration on the. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go.
Exactly. So, they were always, they were the most beautiful women.

Speaker 18 So, we'd always go in there, but we were like little geeky guys. And so, you know, we had no play.

Speaker 18 So, when I was a like, I think my freshman, right before I started freshman college at Harvard, I'm bragging because it's part of the story.

Speaker 18 I wanted to get a job there

Speaker 18 cleaning tables at Roller Roaster. And the motherfucker turned me down.
Oh,

Speaker 18 there's a couple down. There's a couple of things that the universe is doing to us right now.
But then the other thing is, so then I, now I live in the East Village.

Speaker 18 And they tried, and when I moved into the East Village, they turned, there was a roller roaster on across the street from the movie theater on 11th and 3rd, and they tried to, which was a few blocks from where I live.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 And it didn't work. But it was kind of amazing that.
I didn't know they franchised. They tried.
They tried. It didn't work.

Speaker 18 but that's the bomb and i love oh oh it's it's it's it's a special thing yeah yeah rolled roaster so the thing that i so i from manhattan yeah how'd you find out about it i would go to like cody island and i get a car oh wow and i would drive around oh wow with my friend and we get whatever we we'd so she just stumbled on rolling roaster i knew of it oh wow but the reason why this place blew my mind yeah is because You look at the menu and there's the roast beef and they claim, by the way, that this is a key to like longevity.

Speaker 18 There's a part of the menu I want to quote the menu here because one of my favorite New York things is like the you know the true like native New York energy when it says um what a delicious way to lose weight exclamation point and they go on to just sort of proclaim 100% trans fat free and then you look at the menu up top and it's like standard stuff standard stuff okay like cool I got roast beef they're really into that then you can get the champagne oh I don't even remember.

Speaker 18 Do you know what?

Speaker 18 Actual, they have an alcohol license.

Speaker 18 You can buy $59.95 Merouette champagne. And it's like.
That's new. That's post-my time.

Speaker 18 So I'm like, what is this place?

Speaker 18 Like genuine reaction. It's real Brooklyn.
And it's

Speaker 18 delicious. So I've been.
It's delicious. I mean, the buns are great.

Speaker 18 I won't give away what the cheese is because that's like a big secret. But I mean, roast beef with cheese cheese and roast fries.

Speaker 18 I mean, you know, look, it's all rumors, but there was lots of conversation growing up.

Speaker 18 It's such a huge part of my lore. And it's funny because when I shot Caught Stealing, the new movie,

Speaker 18 we do a sequence out in the water, which didn't make the movie, but we launched our

Speaker 18 platoon of boats across the street. And my crew was there.
And they were, I was like, guys, you got to go check out Rolling Roast. And they're like, what's that? And it literally like two stores down.

Speaker 18 I was like, go check it. And then suddenly they were like trucking it in throughout the shooting.
I was like, totally addicted to it. It's amazing.

Speaker 18 And so it's crazy that it never got much bigger, but it really,

Speaker 18 it's in a far corner of South Brooklyn and it's really at the bomb.

Speaker 18 So I just got to jump in here to point out that I had never met Darren Aronofsky, who was one of the most provocative and surrealist and unapologetic filmmakers in all of Hollywood.

Speaker 18 until he walked into our studio. We'd reached out to Darren because for a very long time I had been fascinated by what seemed like his thoughtfully contrarian approach to storytelling.

Speaker 18 He's the guy who cooked up Requiem for a Dream with Alan Burstyn and The Wrestler with Nikki Rourke and Black Swan with Natalie Portman and Mother with Jennifer Lawrence.

Speaker 18 And none of those movies allowed the audience a happy ending.

Speaker 18 But speaking of predictability, it is also clear now that Darren Aronofsky had no idea that we share one brag in common.

Speaker 18 It's a joke to the point where we will put up days since Pablo has said he went to Harvard on the wall. You actually went? Yeah, yeah.
Very cool. What year were you? I graduated in 2007.

Speaker 18 Okay, so now once again, you have mentioned that you went to Harvard.

Speaker 18 Darren Aronofsky made me do it.

Speaker 18 But the other thing Darren enabled a couple weeks ago was a ticket to a screening of his aforementioned new film, Caught Stealing, out August 29th.

Speaker 18 And I knew absolutely nothing about this movie walking into it. I had no idea that Caught Stealing's main character would be a former Major League prospect named Hank, played by Austin Butler.

Speaker 18 And also, given Darren's larger catalog, which I had ingested in advance,

Speaker 18 I did not foresee the very special kind of surprise

Speaker 18 that I wound up being.

Speaker 18 There's a lot of surprises, and I don't think it's, even when you know what it is a bit, it's it gets people. I've been, we just started some screenings.

Speaker 18 We went down to Puerto Rico and did our world premiere and that was in Mexico. It's like

Speaker 18 hearing people gasp was pretty cool throughout it. Yeah.
Discovering bad bunnies in this. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Our friend who is sat in that chair, Action Bronson, is in this. Action's the bomb.
I had no idea when I was interviewing him. Yeah.
Is this good?

Speaker 18 And then I listened back and I'm like, this is, I think, the greatest conversation I've ever had, maybe. It's out of controls.
We were just doing a little press with him.

Speaker 18 He's been really generous with his time because he's not the type of guy that does that type of stuff. No, no, sweetheart.

Speaker 18 You know, they're asking on camera a bunch of questions, and they're like, Okay, what's your favorite crime movie? And I think Austin says heat, Austin Butler, yes, Austin Butler, yes.

Speaker 18 And Zoe Kravitz says uh, true romance. And then, you know, action takes that like totally long pause, way too long, and then goes, Schindler's list.

Speaker 18 And the room just didn't know to laugh, to smile, or what, man. He was actually kind of right.
Oh, no. That's far as a crime.
I mean,

Speaker 18 show me the lie. Exactly.

Speaker 18 This is a thing that is relevant to the film, but it's a baseball metaphor. It was like catching a knuckleball talking to him.
I'm like, I don't know where this is going. Am I an idiot?

Speaker 18 That's so rusty. Is this? That's so right.
That's right. It's sort of going all over the place and then it comes right across the book.

Speaker 18 There's so little spin that it's the most spin you've ever seen. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 18 But I say all that to say that I didn't know this was a fing sports movie in a real, again, not entirely, but meaningfully. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which is good.

Speaker 18 There's a lot of stuff in it that only sports fans will get. I mean, there's so many things we did that are like deep sports.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 18 I was like checking like the baseball reference page and I'm like, did this? Oh, no.

Speaker 18 We actually changed the year of the movie because we wanted the Giants to be having a better run. Yeah.

Speaker 18 So it was like, I think in the book, it's set in 2000 and we moved it to 98 because there was the wild card. And so that was kind of an interesting backstory for the film.

Speaker 18 Are you yourself a self-identified sports fan? It's been a long time. Like I was as a kid.
I grew up in South Brooklyn. So it was like the Mets and the Jets who were both playing at Shea at the time.

Speaker 18 And so, and also I was born in 69, so that was a victory year for

Speaker 18 those teams. And I did see Joe Namath on the field as a boy,

Speaker 18 and Tom Seaver and Kingman. And so I saw some of that.
But like in the 70s, then it's like Reggie Jackson time.

Speaker 18 So it was really hard to resist and stay a Mets fan when everyone's selling out to become a Yankees fan. It's hard to peak at the year of your birth.
Exactly.

Speaker 18 And then have to wait till, what was it, 86 to have another victory. Yeah, yeah.
A more cocaine-y,

Speaker 18 but follow-up championship experience. I started watching a little baseball for this movie and sort of got caught up on some of it, but I didn't get deep.

Speaker 18 The thing that I experience as I'm going through this film and watching Austin Butler,

Speaker 18 having watched, again, in a weirdly compressed amount of time, Pie and Raccoon for a Dream and the wrestler and Black Swan and Noah and Mother,

Speaker 18 I go into this film and I'm sitting there and it ends. And I'm like, did Darren Aronofsky just like make a romp?

Speaker 18 Is this the sort of thing where you say, like, this is madcap?

Speaker 18 Caper. Caper's the term.
But I'm like, this shit was not just fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it was. Thank you.
There was something in it.

Speaker 18 And I don't know if you'll take offense at this when I say it, but

Speaker 18 there's a hero yeah yeah oh gosh how dare i

Speaker 18 how furious are all of the xenophile perbs

Speaker 18 you know look it's funny uh i i just it's just something i felt it's like there's a lot of um seriousness going on in the world and uh everyone's screaming at each other And I think one thing that

Speaker 18 movies do and stories do is they kind of unite people. You know, they bring people together.

Speaker 18 I mean, the act of watching a movie, it's an exercise in empathy, but I, and you've heard that before, but it's it's more meaningful than that because basically you are forgetting about yourself.

Speaker 18 In a really good movie, hopefully, you're in someone else's shoes. Literally, you're like in their head.
Because one of the great inventions of the 20th century that's overlooked is the close-up.

Speaker 18 And what the close-up allows you to do is you can look at Austin Butler up close without being self-conscious, that he might look at you or he might judge you, or you could just look at him deeply and you can study him and you can actually kind of really connect with him and really go through the experience with him.

Speaker 18 And I think that is like a super important thing that people are doing less and less of when they're scrolling. You're not really separating yourself.

Speaker 18 You're usually jealous or, you know, all different types of thoughts are going through your head. But in a movie, you're going on a long emotional journey with someone else.

Speaker 18 And that's a deeply human act.

Speaker 18 And so I think it's super important to get as many people as we can to watch these movies because I think anyone on any political spectrum, they come together and hopefully they're going to dig Hank because Hank is kind of just like an American hero.

Speaker 18 And I think we miss that. There's a lot of American heroes, but they're usually superheroes.

Speaker 18 And I kind of wanted to do like put out an American hero out there who's just a guy that a lot of us can relate to, that a lot of us can hope for, and then just connect with him.

Speaker 18 And it doesn't matter where you're coming from. Typically, though, because you are a master of the close-up, you're invading

Speaker 18 the interiority of your protagonist. Yes.
And you are showing us what it's like in there. And typically, I would say your catalog is defined by that being

Speaker 18 almost as traumatic for the audience as it is for the person that we're meeting. Yeah, yeah.
And this,

Speaker 18 this, I like Hank. Yeah.
I was rooting for Hank. Absolutely.
This is not the anti-hero antagonist dynamic. Did you take, I took a class at at Harvard as the

Speaker 18 resetting of it,

Speaker 18 yeah, exactly.

Speaker 18 The class I took was

Speaker 18 it was derided, but it was concepts of the hero and Greek civilization. Is that heroes for zeros? That's how they derided it.
Exactly.

Speaker 18 You know what? I never took heroes for zeros, but that was a huge mistake in my sight because it took me another 20 years to discover Joseph Campbell and become a total addict of it.

Speaker 18 And I could have gotten it back when I was walking out of college. Cause that's actually a huge tool for me in filmmaking now, the hero's journey.
But it did take me a long time to find it. So

Speaker 18 finding it in terms of you learning about the hero's journey,

Speaker 18 but also you now in this film doing something that feels more classical

Speaker 18 to that point. Yeah.
Was it fun? Was it more? How do you describe your process? I always have a good time. I mean,

Speaker 18 the filmmaking process for me is never that different from Pie with whatever it was, $20,000 to this movie and all in between.

Speaker 18 They all have their own challenges and stuff, but the process is very similar.

Speaker 18 But there was something nice about

Speaker 18 getting my crew together. And basically, I've been working with a lot of the same people

Speaker 18 since the 90s. And

Speaker 18 they've all become incredible masters of their craft. And then

Speaker 18 bringing that all to like make a solid genre film.

Speaker 18 Because if you think I've never really done clear genre, like Pi is not really sci-fi, requiem. My biggest letdown just to talk sports was on the wrestler.
Yes.

Speaker 18 ESPN would not allow me to go for the best sports film of the year because they were like wrestling is not a sport. And I was like, God damn it, Don.

Speaker 18 Someone yesterday, by the way, also called Black Swan a sports movie, which I thought was interesting too, because it is in many ways.

Speaker 18 Golf is a sport ballet.

Speaker 18 Well, it's an athletic,

Speaker 18 absolutely, it's an athletic movie. So this is kind of the third sports film, but they're similar, except that it's like, um, it's very clearly a crime caper.
That's what we wanted to do.

Speaker 18 So bringing together that team of like masters that I surround myself with and be like, you know what, let's make the best

Speaker 18 genre film we can and have a great time. In 90s, New York.
90s, New York, which is my childhood. I remember 85.
Oh, very cool. Oh, so yeah, so you're a teenager in that time.

Speaker 18 So it must have sparked a lot of, a lot of visceral memories. Frankly, it was like, oh, if I was cooler, I could have gone down to the east.
Yeah, I'd be around there.

Speaker 18 I grew up, you know, in Murray Hill, which is. Yeah, it's not that far.

Speaker 18 I'm sure you guys wandered out a little bit. My mom is discovering that I wandered out a little bit from this very conversation.
Exactly.

Speaker 18 But also just, man, the nostalgia for that era. What do you miss the most about that? Well, of course, there's just so much.
In many ways, it isn't that different, but of course, it's so different.

Speaker 18 And the main thing is like the social media aspect of it and just like the communication aspect.

Speaker 18 Like back in the day, and you probably remember this as a 13-year-old, hey, meet me on the corner of blah, blah, blah, at blah, blah, blah. And you were there.

Speaker 18 And if you were late or you missed the person, you didn't talk to them until you got back to your house and had a telephone, unless you had a beeper or something. So it was

Speaker 18 a whole different way of communicating and interacting with each other. And I think there's also an immediacy back then

Speaker 18 of being in the present, of being what's happening right now that we've lost because the reality is we're spending seven hours inside of our telephone and our machines at this point.

Speaker 18 We are basically these cyborgs and we're gone. And I'm not saying, I'm not judging.
I'm not going to be like Elvis, don't sway your hips type of guy because I think it's interesting.

Speaker 18 Like I'm all leaning into all the new stuff, but it's different. And that's kind of interesting.
And I think there is a FOMO, like you just had,

Speaker 18 even as a city boy, that you wanted to get downtown. Yeah.
The 90s in New York and downtown, I call it peak humanity because like the Soviet Union had collapsed. Our biggest problem was Y2K.

Speaker 18 Everyone was just talking about did Bill Clinton have sex with that woman.

Speaker 18 That was, that was our biggest controversy with our president. The scandal at that time is so funny.
If you watch the West Wing now, you're like, what?

Speaker 18 It was like school uniforms.

Speaker 18 Like that. How dare they? That was a real problem America was grappling with.
Exactly.

Speaker 18 So it was like everything was like the temperature was a lot lower and you know pre-9-11 It was a very different world pre-911 is the era and then musically it was like hip-hop was booming and going international which as New Yorkers was exciting grunge was kind of over by 98 But was still important electronic music was just starting musically there was just so many still new forms.

Speaker 18 There was still an underground which is like hard to have at this point. So I feel like a big part of this film is the FOMO of the 90s.

Speaker 18 Like you want to see what it was like, like, you know, come home. Yeah.
Oh, my God. Like, the idea of

Speaker 18 America being so optimistic that to be cynical felt radical.

Speaker 18 Well, I had that a lot because back then I saw making Requiem for a Dream and Pie and all these kind of more underground films then and finding a little love, but it was hard because Paris Hilton was queen.

Speaker 18 Letterman was cynical and that was that he had a bite. But was distinguished by the zag that's right he was making.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's so and

Speaker 18 Requiem, which I had my experience with that is that high school, college, I just remember being like, why are people chanting? As

Speaker 18 you ask.

Speaker 22 So, what are we going to do now?

Speaker 22 Ass to ass.

Speaker 21 As to ass.

Speaker 18 And I then was like, oh, oh.

Speaker 18 So I revisit it. And I'm like, what genre do you, for people who somehow haven't seen it? Yeah.

Speaker 18 I mean, I guess I would ultimately say it's a horror film where the monster is addiction in a certain way. It's invisible, but it's kind of horrific, the film, but it doesn't really fit into a genre.

Speaker 18 Right. Right.

Speaker 18 But that guy, by the way, did you catch him in the movie? Did you see him in Caught Stealing at 92 years old? No, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 18 The Gil Hodges line. Oh, my God.

Speaker 18 The studio begged me to cut it, by the way, because they're like, no one in the world knows who Gil Hodges is. And I'm like, you know what?

Speaker 18 Me, there's a bunch of Brooklyn boys.

Speaker 18 This podcaster knows the legend of Gil Hodges, Brooklyn Dodgers. That's right.
Of course. So, yeah, and he just wrote me recently, Stanley Herman is his name.

Speaker 18 That's like what he's known for, and he gets recognized. And he might actually put on his tombstone.
Ask to ask. Exactly.
I was like, you know, more people will come visit you. Stanley Herman.

Speaker 18 I met him actually. I was a film student in the early 90s in LA, and he came in.
And I was like, hey, so I've got this one role in this little short I'm doing called The Pervert. Will you do it?

Speaker 18 He's like, definitely. And so he's been the pervert in every movie, pretty much, except in the new movie, he's a Brooklyn Dodges fan.
I want to explain ask to ask for people.

Speaker 18 Really?

Speaker 18 Welcome to Pablo Torify.

Speaker 18 Can you describe it? I don't want to summarize it. I want to know how you would explain it to someone who's never seen just that scene.

Speaker 18 I mean, basically, when we put the movie into the world, the MPAA, which is the censorship board for Hollywood,

Speaker 18 they wanted to give us a X rating for

Speaker 18 mostly for that scene and what happens in that scene. And other things, of course, in the movie.
There's a lot of drug use in it and a lot of profanity. And it's terrible.

Speaker 18 You know, it's a pretty tough film. Oh, it is like a,

Speaker 18 I want to laugh about this in the context of this movie will change you. Yeah.
Because it's real in a way that is just rare in cinema. Well, it's funny.

Speaker 18 So this is the 25th anniversary, and there's big screening at the Travancore Film Festival, and they're re-releasing a DVD any moment type of thing that has all these things on it.

Speaker 18 But for the Toronto Film Festival 25th screening, I got Ellen Burson to come out, a 92 as well. And she was like, I'm watching it.
So I was like, you know, I haven't seen it in years.

Speaker 18 So I was like, okay,

Speaker 18 I'm going to sit next to Ellen and watch this because I think the last time we watched it was at the World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 90, in 2000. How'd the French react?

Speaker 18 We had an incredible reaction in France. It was insane.
It was like, it had started at,

Speaker 18 we were a midnight screening because they thought it was too rough to be earlier. But the movie before us went too late.
So we started at 1 a.m. And it finished at 3 a.m.
And the applause went on.

Speaker 18 Like, you know how they talk about these applause, but it was

Speaker 18 in my career. I've never seen anything like it in any other film, not even my own.
It was like, it was crazy at three o'clock in the morning and it was very emotional.

Speaker 18 But we still had no idea that it would be this thing people would be talking about 25 later and the impact of that film on young people.

Speaker 18 And now young people that are actually making films, it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 18 And it just had just like a bunch of, I guess we were like late, we were probably 30, a bunch of 30-year-olds just trying to do everything we could and just make as good a movie as we could.

Speaker 18 So it was a great, it was a great, um, it was a great experience. And then, but sitting next to Ellen during the screening, I mean, she was just slapping me.

Speaker 18 She was like, shame, shame.

Speaker 18 And I was kind of shocked. I was like, wow.
You know, it's definitely the film of a 30-year-old, not the film of a 56-year-old. So, you know, it's a different movie for me.

Speaker 18 Well, that brings us back to the

Speaker 18 ratings and the question of what do you do with the scene that is still being

Speaker 18 talked about. Yeah.
So at that point, not having an R rating,

Speaker 18 there was a huge problem. So I think there still is.
Like you can't advertise in newspapers.

Speaker 18 But the studio stood by me because

Speaker 18 I was like, look, this film is about what addiction can do to you. And if we shave back anything, we're undermining the whole purpose of the movie.

Speaker 18 So the movie has to go there because it's showing you how dark it can get if you kind of allow yourself to be ruled by addiction.

Speaker 18 So yeah, it's like McGruff, the crime dog, was like the standard mode of warning people about drugs are bad. I was doing a QA, and there was a woman who stood up and said, Thanks for requiem.

Speaker 18 It made me sober 25 years ago. And the guy who wrote it, Hubert Selby Jr., a great author who wrote Last Exit to Brooklyn famously, he was an NAAA sponsor for 30 years.

Speaker 18 And the amount of lives he saved with this and with the film and with the book, it's an amazing accomplishment.

Speaker 18 And we're back live during a flex alert. Dialed in on the thermostat.
Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

Speaker 7 And that's the end of the third.

Speaker 8 Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

Speaker 18 Clutch move by the home team.

Speaker 8 What's the game plan from here on out?

Speaker 18 Laundry? Not today. Dishwasher? Sidelined.
What a performance by Team California. The power truly is ours.

Speaker 8 During a flex alert, pre-cool, power down, and let's beat the heat together.

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Speaker 19 Hey, I'm Tricia Hirschberger, gamer, streamer, and Amazon Live host.

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Speaker 18 So I just got to go back to the concept of the hero's journey for just a second here. Because as Darren Aronofsky said, he came to it regrettably late in life.

Speaker 18 And I've been thinking about this because as much as he became critically acclaimed for being this weird and abstract and disturbing auteur who is bootstrapping low-budget but highbrow movies, it turns out that Darren has toyed with the idea of making a film that is not just about a hero, but a superhero.

Speaker 18 And he's been thinking about this for a while now. Around the year 2000, Warner Brothers originally hired him to develop the movie that eventually became Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.

Speaker 18 10 years later, he was then attached to direct Hugh Jackman in the Wolverine, and Darren dropped out of both of those projects, obviously.

Speaker 18 But he was intrigued.

Speaker 18 And I wanted to know why.

Speaker 18 I've always been interested in that because I do think like

Speaker 18 there's always interesting to do with certain of those characters. I kind of had a

Speaker 18 like, I was attached to Batman for a while and Superman and the Watchmen because I've always I wasn't a crazy comic book fan as a kid,

Speaker 18 but I got into graphic novels when I was in college. Actually, my roommate was an animator and he turned me on to The Watchmen and, gosh, the Frank Miller.

Speaker 18 Yeah, what's it called again? The series? Anyway, the Dark Knight, the Dark Knight series. So I read all those and they were like real literature,

Speaker 18 those things.

Speaker 18 But I wasn't really a big superhero fan. And then I got,

Speaker 18 you know, when I got the call about Batman, I was in the edit room on Requiem, and it was kind of before they would take all these young directors and stick them on big franchises.

Speaker 18 So it was kind of a new idea. And I was kind of intrigued, but I've always felt like a need to author some stuff and not necessarily just do someone else's character.
So

Speaker 18 I've been very lucky that I've been able to do my originals first. So when Batman came on, I really wanted to make The Fountain.
And that was this kind of really big, expensive

Speaker 18 experimental movie. And

Speaker 18 I felt like if the studios saw me as a superhero director, maybe they would let me do this crazy thing. And eventually they let me me do the crazy thing instead.

Speaker 18 You know, and then, you know, Chris Nolan had the launch of his career off of it, which is great. And he did it in such a smart way that I don't think I would have ever done.

Speaker 18 I would have probably made it small and edgy type of version. Or more dildos.

Speaker 18 Not that dark. I don't think I would have gotten away with that.

Speaker 18 And then I've been lucky because after the fountain, you know, I was able to go small and do the wrestler and Black Swan. And I've always been able to do the ones I want to do.

Speaker 18 So there are some interesting things in the superhero universe but i think most of that stuff has been visited and kind of where i am now is like

Speaker 18 real human heroes and that can unite people i think that's that's my sweet spot and where i'm looking to like do stuff is like bring people together with stories and characters that kind of remind us of how great our lives are and like and like and and be positive towards the future because it feels like

Speaker 18 it's like things are getting ripped and torn apart you know it says something and from a macro perspective, of course, you're right.

Speaker 18 If you're to trace the arc of history from, as you yourself have made films about the origins of the human condition and also like humanity as a concept, if you're to trace that, things have undoubtedly gotten better over time.

Speaker 18 But in the present tense, it feels miserable to the point where to go and do the inverse of what we observed before,

Speaker 18 things are so overwhelmingly cynical that optimism feels. punk rock.
That's where I am. Exactly.
And it's funny. I'm hearing that from other filmmakers too.

Speaker 18 Like you're going to see like a lot of the kind of indie-edgy guys people are starting to lean into that because, you know, I've been talking about it.

Speaker 18 Like if Hollywood can do anything right now, it's like shut up and dance. Like let's, let's entertain.
Let's entertain.

Speaker 18 Let's do what we do great, which is we make great movies that capture the world and remind, you know,

Speaker 18 about the human potential and where the world can go. It's not a dystopian future.
Like where is the protopian future? Where's the gray future ahead of us?

Speaker 18 Or where's the great human characters that have grit that just just sort of power through?

Speaker 18 Part of what I think you would have, I mean, clearly you've thought about this, what you would have hated about superhero filmmaking is being beholden to a canon that was not your own and a community of policemen

Speaker 18 who would have hated. Yeah, yeah, and you pushed the edge a bit.
The choices and the interpretations. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 18 I mean, and some, and look, and it's not something it's impossible to do, because again, Christopher Nolan, totally a gothic Batman, that was incredible.

Speaker 18 But the policing of your work from people who feel like they are the actual arbiters of the content.

Speaker 18 Well, now I'm about to be policed, as you said, by people who are like, well, this isn't a real Aronovsky film. And that's my point.
It's like, you have now made the subreddit of, I mean,

Speaker 18 figurative.

Speaker 18 I don't want to give too much away, but when you actually think of the content, how many people live, how many people die.

Speaker 18 I should be very clear. I'm grading on a Harvard-level curve.
Exactly.

Speaker 18 The gentleman's

Speaker 18 the gentleman's a of man darren only had this many people shot in the head

Speaker 18 he's gone soft exactly so there's a there's so much of that obviously but on the scale of requiem yeah yeah it's a different world it's a different world but i love it but again it's it's just like but that's part of what i found so delightful yeah and the question is can we bring the same level of attention and filmmaking to a different kind of genre?

Speaker 18 That's been fun to breathe life into other types of stories. Yes.

Speaker 18 Speaking of life,

Speaker 18 so good at segues.

Speaker 18 Your sort of field biology,

Speaker 18 sort of that section of your CV,

Speaker 18 part of what I, one of my favorite things in life that I do in my show, I talk about quite a bit is just like how the ecosystem of New York City is underrated.

Speaker 18 But you're somebody who like went abroad to

Speaker 18 in your teen years, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could you explain what you did? And just, I want to sort of bring that back to where we are.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I mean, I've always had, I'm from like the southern, southern part of Brooklyn and like two houses away from a concrete parking lot that leads to Manhattan Beach, the actual beach, like the sand and the oceans right there, like

Speaker 18 real nature. And, you know, being in the southern tip of Brooklyn, you know, there were two types of people growing up in my Brooklyn, not today's Brooklyn.

Speaker 18 People who wanted to get to the big city and people who were never going to get the f ⁇ out.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 I was always like, I want to get to the big city. And then very young, I really was into travel and like, you know, seeing the world.

Speaker 18 The other great thing about

Speaker 18 growing up down in South Brooklyn is there was the New York City Aquarium where a lot of my friends would intern.

Speaker 18 Because if you intern there, you'd get a t-shirt that would let you go on the cyclone in Coney Island as many times as you want. We would go on the cyclone 40, 50 times a day.

Speaker 18 We would just ride it all day until like our brains were like. That's insane.
Yeah, exactly. We have what's CTE? What does that cost? Exactly.

Speaker 18 You and the NFL have a number of things in common.

Speaker 18 And while there, one of my friends stumbled on this kind of brochure for this program that took kids and trained them as field biologists around the world, a group called School for Field Studies, which is still around, training ecologists of the future.

Speaker 18 I'm on the board now. And

Speaker 18 so I went with them to Kenya and I studied ungulates, which are animals that stand on their hooves. Like giraffes.

Speaker 18 Anything, yeah, gazillion, zebra, anything.

Speaker 18 And then the next year I went with them to Prince William Sound in Alaska and studied thermoregulation and harbor seals.

Speaker 18 And just like being in crazy nature when you couldn't find all that stuff on Google totally blew my brain.

Speaker 18 And definitely, you know, I became a scientist, you know, and the way I look at the world is through the scientific method.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 18 what I am sort of connecting with you about when it comes to the optimism is like a fundamental sense of like truly like nostalgic wonder.

Speaker 18 And in New York, the thing that has blown my mind is whales.

Speaker 18 There are whales in New York Harbor.

Speaker 18 I have not heard about this. Really?

Speaker 18 Yeah. Because they're driven up north from the from climate.
Because it's a multivariate equation. Right.
But there's been a cleaning of the harbor.

Speaker 18 So humpbacks are what's

Speaker 18 wow. So like you can, dude, there are photos, and these are real.
Really? In which there are humpbacks breaching. No, in the background, it's a cyclone.

Speaker 18 Oh, really?

Speaker 18 Oh, wow. I have not seen this.
Yes. Oh, my God.
Oh, so that's actually out on my beach. Yes.
Down in South Brooklyn. Yes.
Oh, wow. So send me that.
I actively will. Okay, good.

Speaker 18 I will spam you with my pro-whale propaganda.

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Speaker 18 New York to me, right?

Speaker 18 So it went from a place of growing up, and this is the pre-social media era, obviously, pre-cell phones.

Speaker 18 It was part of my nostalgia, I realized, oh, this is,

Speaker 18 it felt like a

Speaker 18 like a like a small town in a way.

Speaker 18 Like now, New York is so fragmented because phones have fragmented everything. Right.
And there are a zillion New Yorks for people. And there's a TikTok New York and sub-genres inside of that.

Speaker 18 Interesting. When I was growing up, I just felt like, oh, man, everyone's talking about Rudy Giuliani.
Right. Everyone is sort of dealing with this.

Speaker 18 So even like a blackout to me growing up was amazing. Right? Amazing.
I had a lot of fun on the blackout. Everyone's talking about the same thing.
Right.

Speaker 18 You don't feel that connection in New York still? I just think that because we are seeing things through our phone,

Speaker 18 there's just less of it.

Speaker 18 That might be true.

Speaker 18 It's an interesting thing. I don't know.
I mean, shooting, caught stealing in the East Village.

Speaker 18 We shot on the corner of 6th and A,

Speaker 18 where Benny's burritos used to be. I just live in 10th and C.
Okay, you know exactly where I am.

Speaker 18 But it was a freaking circus. I thought I was on Bourbon Street.
I was kind of grossed out by like what the East, what the East Village, I was like, oh, this is.

Speaker 18 Alphabet City city was a place my parents warned me i guess yeah yeah yeah yeah no alphabet city was alphabet city was hardcore absolutely i don't think it's so scary anymore but it was very very i moved there to the point very intense but um

Speaker 18 and it seemed like people were having a good time though so like at first like friday night i was super pissed off because i thought i didn't realize the type of crowds we were gonna have to be dealing with and people screaming you know people screaming get out of my neighborhood i'm like this is my neighborhood i am 99 sure i've been here longer than you motherfucker Get on my street.

Speaker 18 But then I realized people were having fun. And then I did, I've gone out a few times in it because I had to go check out bars and scout bars.
And there was a lot of life going on still in New York.

Speaker 18 It felt alive

Speaker 18 in a real way. One of my takes about New York that I feel as a true

Speaker 18 New Yorker and the question of when do you get to claim that?

Speaker 18 Do you have a standard for that? Does anyone get to claim that if they're not from here? Not from here. You know what I mean?

Speaker 18 We all know when it's all my second question, where are you from, New York? Second question, where'd you go to high school? And I was like, oh, we moved to Long Island when I was seven.

Speaker 18 I was like, okay. Yeah.
Yes. Yes.
No, we're total snobs. Total snobs.
No, I mean, because we did pay dues. We did pay dues.
And, but beyond the whole like

Speaker 18 look at what New York used to be like, yeah, what we grew up with. Which is our favorite conversation as New Yorkers.
Absolutely.

Speaker 18 That or I was like, I could have got bought that building for blah, blah, blah. Christ.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 18 The whole thing of like, I've been, I found a rent control department that I'm still, just like the whole lore of

Speaker 18 where to live, how to live, all of that.

Speaker 18 Part of what I feel walking around to what you just described is just knowing what's been here before

Speaker 18 reduces, I think, the anxiety lots of people feel around how intimidating. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Like, oh, this street, even like walking through, I, so one example, yeah, like walking through a busy street in like the West Village, and it's like all of these very attractive people, and it's like they're all, you know, watching you and all of that.

Speaker 18 I'm like, none of you people used to be here. No, like you are new here.
Yeah. Like that confidence is like what to me, you have to, that's like accumulated decades of just like not, like, f you.

Speaker 18 Like, I'm not, you can't, you can intimidate me off of this street. But I love that New York is always changing.
Like

Speaker 18 it used to be, I used to really complain, like, oh, that used to be like this, but I find it exciting that it's like a living, growing, changing city.

Speaker 18 And like on my corner where the rolling roaster is, I don't know what they're putting up, but they took down everything and it's going to be something ugly.

Speaker 18 But I'm like, it's going to be a cave door, Darren. It's going to be illegal.
We asked for legal weed and we got it and it sucks. Yeah.
But at least that shrunk too. That was like everywhere.

Speaker 18 Now it's Bodega. Now it's being and now it's like, now the ones that have the license seem to know what's going on a bit.

Speaker 18 But it's, yes, it's, you get everything you want when you no longer want it that much. Correct.
Like my friend

Speaker 18 Ari Zablotsky built his bar Zablotsky's in

Speaker 18 Williamsburg, but it, you know, he built it when I was like 36. And I'm like, dude, I got a baby.
I'm going to bed at 10.30.

Speaker 18 I was like, where were you in the 20s when we needed a fing dive bar that we could drink for free? So you always, your friends get, at least for me,

Speaker 18 I'm always, it's always 10 years behind what I needed. I have a friend who just opened a bar and I'm like, I am not going to be there.
I may not ever go see you. I'm not going to hang out.
Exactly.

Speaker 18 You will never see me there. Maybe, you know, if it's your birthday, I'll come by for her.
That's literally what I did. And I was there and I shook his hand and I'm like, I got to go.

Speaker 18 I have a five-year-old. Exactly.
But

Speaker 18 the other thing I, the most authentic, like, just like feeling about New York that I have is the wonder, not merely that there are whales here suddenly, speaking to the changes of things, but that there are places that are just so close to me that I've never even walked into that one day I do.

Speaker 18 Yeah. After decades of ignoring it, and I'm like, this has been here the whole time.
There are always discoveries and things are always changing. That's, it's, I just went to that thing.

Speaker 18 I met this guy, um, his last name's Digital, but he's this artist, Kevin Kezzen. I can't remember, but he built this like observation thing that's inside of

Speaker 18 um, it's all covered in mirrors. Have you seen this thing yet? It's like this new observation tower like around

Speaker 18 Grand Central Station. Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, the Vanderbilt, one Vanderbilt. Yeah, yeah, one Vanderbilt.
Yeah, the observation deck. Yes, it's sick.
Did you go inside?

Speaker 18 It's actually worth checking out. Can I tell you what I did? So I bought a ticket for me and my wife.
And Kenzo digital, I think.

Speaker 18 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's right.
So I bought a ticket and the line was so long that it snaked into the subway. I'm like, I'm not waiting.
I could hook you up. I met the guy.

Speaker 18 So next time you go, it's on there.

Speaker 18 I've been doing it. He's actually cool.
I was like, oh, this is,

Speaker 18 it's like an artist's interpretation of an observation deck, and it's like a lot of fun.

Speaker 18 So to me, the fact that there are these like, you know, in that case, a literal, almost like funhouse mirrors scenario

Speaker 18 up in the sky. I'm like, yeah, I'm also, another one of my just beliefs is New Yorkers, real New Yorkers, also should do some tourist sometimes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because it's actually, oh, guess what?

Speaker 18 Central Park is cool. Yeah.
Oh, Central Park's a tourist thing now? That's scary.

Speaker 18 Am I breaking the news to you that it's largely European? I haven't been above 56th Street in like 30 years.

Speaker 18 It's been a long time since I've been up there. I mean, I drive up the FDR and pass it, and I'm always like, oh, there's people there too.

Speaker 18 I always like wonder, like, who are these people like north of 50? I mean, there's big buildings with like lots of people in them and stuff. I have no idea who those people are.
Nothing up there.

Speaker 18 But that's also what's great about New York City. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 18 There are countries, there are republics. Yeah, they're whole countries.
It's just like literally it could break off and I would not even need a passport to get in because I have no interest.

Speaker 18 And to be clear, some are. luxury towers largely owned by uh like I've heard Chinese billionaires who never show up that's the weird thing when you like

Speaker 18 when you're coming in from wherever JFK or whatever and you look at the land, I have no idea what that is. It used to be I knew every

Speaker 18 skyscraper and I have, there's these little thin things and I'm like. But thin things are, that's what's over.
They're confusing. There's many of them and they're all over the place now.

Speaker 18 And it's like, what is that? I feel like we've become, at the end of this podcast, Statler and Waldorf just complaining about skyscrapers. Oh, you're welcome to be a New Yorker.
Yeah, no, it is.

Speaker 18 Should we talk about Shea Stadium? Oh, my God.

Speaker 18 I mean, I'm, so I grew up a Yankee fan. Okay.

Speaker 18 So part of my. Have you ever been to Shea? Of course.
Okay. I don't don't know how you can.
Oh, no, no, no. I mean, how dare you? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 18 But old Yankee Stadium, even more than Shea, but Shea as well. Yeah.

Speaker 18 What I miss, of course, is that feeling of like, you walked in because all these places are now the equivalent of a billionaire's skyscraper, City Field, as well as the New Yankee Stadium.

Speaker 18 Yeah, which is nice. City Field's pretty nice, though.
They're both. Beautiful.
Yeah. I haven't been to the New Yankee Stadium, which is embarrassing.
I got to go see it.

Speaker 18 City Field is better than New Yankee Stadium, if I'm being objective.

Speaker 18 But both feel so much less. I mean, Yankee Stadium, I'll speak to because that's my experience growing up, going to the bleachers, McDonald's, and just like yelling at outfielders.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 Truly, like Raul Mondese, we just like, we just yell at him. He's like on the team.
We're just like, I don't know. We're just, this is what we do.

Speaker 18 It's less intimidating. Yeah.
It's less. There used to be like a home field advantage was actually a meaningful competitive advantage.

Speaker 18 And now it's just less because all the things you've described about New York and its changingness, the glory of it, but also like the

Speaker 18 sanding down of those edges. Yeah, it's true.
It's true.

Speaker 18 Yeah. I remember when

Speaker 18 the Subway series and I was like, I want it, I want tickets, whatever it's going to take. And so I was, I had just made pie.
I had a few Hollywood connections. I was like calling anyone.

Speaker 18 I couldn't get tickets. And I was on a fifth floor walk up in Hell's Kitchen where I lived.
And suddenly my door knocked.

Speaker 18 And Morgan, who lived on the third floor, she's like, you know, you want tickets to go see the games? I was like, and I forgot you worked for MLB,

Speaker 18 like a neighbor in New York. So I had tickets.
And I was like, well, how many can I get? She's like, how many do you need? I was like, I'd like 10 tickets to the bleachers.

Speaker 18 So I had 10 tickets to the bleachers of every Subway Series game, and I brought all my boys.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 the worst, one of the worst experiences talking about Home Advantage was being...

Speaker 18 at Shea, I guess it was. Was that still Shea? Yeah, it was Shea.
At Shea when the Yankees won and there were more Yankees fans than Met fans, and the Yankees were booing.

Speaker 18 The fans were booing the Mets at home.

Speaker 18 And I was like, eat it, Aronofsky. It sucks.
No, it sucked because you guys had money and you bought all our fing tickets. I was so angry.
I was so angry. I was like, this is so disrespectful.

Speaker 18 Come to someone's house and piss all over it. It sucked.
I got destroyed. Sorry that capitalism

Speaker 18 exists.

Speaker 18 I want to quote something from you. Okay.

Speaker 18 Because I want to geolocate where you are now with regard to this. Okay.

Speaker 18 Quote, I don't give a f about the test scores. My films are outside the scores.
10 men in a room trying to come up with their favorite ice cream or going to agree on vanilla. I'm the Rocky Road guy.

Speaker 18 Jesus. How old was I when I said that? That was yesterday.
Exactly.

Speaker 18 You know, I totally tested this movie because 2014. Yeah, it was a different world.
I totally tested this movie because,

Speaker 18 you know, Charlie Chaplin famously would tour his comedies around the states and he would go to bum wherever just to see barnstorming. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 18 And so I was inspired by that because there is comedy in this and there's like violence in this and there's like shock moments and I wanted to see how they were playing for different audiences.

Speaker 18 And I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot from it because, once again, it was a different exercise.
It really was about making something fun and entertaining. And I wanted to reach people in that way.

Speaker 18 And so you learn a lot from it. You learn a lot.
And you learn things unexpectedly. You get shaken up.

Speaker 18 Things shake up because you're like, okay, for some reason, something's not quite clicking. How do you get that to click? And so we did a bunch of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 18 It's a different, different Darren.

Speaker 18 The whole notion of, because you're how old now?

Speaker 18 56. At 56, you're like, the whole thing of

Speaker 18 what people

Speaker 18 have always wanted from me, which is to listen to them. Right.

Speaker 18 There's now a point at which that's creatively interesting. Definitely.
Definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 18 I think, look, my mentor, Stuart Rosenberg, this great director who did Cool Hand Luke and Pop of Grange Village. He'd always say he had a sign on his desk that said, where is my audience now?

Speaker 18 And I think that's always true. And I've always believed that.

Speaker 18 Like, even when I was making films that were more weird or abstract or disturbing, I am always thinking about it because you want people to

Speaker 18 understand what's happening, even if it's not the most pleasant understanding of what's going on. I don't know.
But, you know, I've done this before.

Speaker 18 The Wrestler is a similar film where you have a hero that you're rooting for who just can't get out of his own way.

Speaker 18 And Austin Butler really

Speaker 18 was able to do that, was able to take a beating down to the mat, but always kind of dust himself up, stood up, licked his chops and put up his dukes and started fighting again.

Speaker 18 And so it was kind of fun to do that. Did you know that you want, and

Speaker 18 forgive me if this, this, I'll give a big spoiler alert. Yeah.
Did you know that you wanted to do something with this one that you

Speaker 18 I don't recall you doing, which is actually give people what feels like a happy ending?

Speaker 18 It's a mixed happy ending, to be fair. But I, yes, I felt,

Speaker 18 you know, it's a tough ending and a lot, it's a hard ending to land. It took us a while.
And I think I wanted people to leave with a positive feeling into the world because I think

Speaker 18 the character is on an upswing. But this is the first of three books.
And in many ways, it's setting up a lot of things that happen later.

Speaker 18 I have no idea if that will happen. The film works as its own piece and has a very, very good ending.

Speaker 18 But it's a complicated ending because the character has gone through a lot. And it's like a lot to, there'll be a lot of like unpacking in the next few years of his life.
Yeah.

Speaker 18 I mean, in the last, some of the last scenes, a literal unpacking. There's a reveal that the boxes are.

Speaker 18 Oh my God. Yes.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 We'll end it there. Thank you.
But the whole thing of.

Speaker 18 I think you just, what I found out today is that Darren Aronofsky is finally, you're developing a cinematic universe.

Speaker 18 D-A-C-U.

Speaker 18 Dare I say,

Speaker 18 like Roland Roaster,

Speaker 18 you might be attempting a franchise. Exactly.

Speaker 18 Well, hopefully, we'll do better in Manhattan.

Speaker 18 Man, thank you so much. I enjoyed this conversation.
Oh, my God. And when did you graduate Harvard? 2007.
Oh, that's right.

Speaker 18 Click. Oh, God.

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