A Talk with Arnold Schwarzenegger

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of John McTiernan's sci-fi/action classic Predator, I'm reprinting the interview I conducted with Arnold Schwarzenegger in late May 1987. We met in his suite at the Atlanta Ritz-Carlton. He was dressed casually in a floral shirt, and had his trusty cigar always nearby. Shaking hands with the man was a memorable moment--I don't remember being intimidated by his height, but his width was certainly commanding, and his meathook of a hand crushed my own mitt with gentle confidence. He was kind and low-key, and he later signed my Predator one-sheet while puffing on that cigar. The interview appeared in the June 23 1987 edition of Georgia State University's Tuesday Magazine:

It seems strange to say, but it's the truth: Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting has, on the whole, been getting better and better ever since he first broke into movies back in the mid-1970s. He's may be no Olivier, but he's proven wrong those who once claimed this hulking man was nothing more than the post-1950s version of Steve Reeves, the screen's most famous Hercules. Schwarzenegger admittedly took a little time to bloom, but bloom he did, emerging tall above the star most often cited as his closest rival, Sylvester Stallone. While Sly takes himself and his movies with utmost seriousness, Arnold strikes a humbler stance, realizing what he provides audiences with is entertainment, and not necessarily great art (though, even as mere entertainment, his works approach artfulness often enough).

Schwarzenegger has been primed for success from the beginning, as unlikely as his success once seemed. A native of Austria, he began body-building before he hit age twenty. By the time he retired from the sport in 1974, he'd won the prestigious Mr. Olympia title an astounding and unsurpassed seven times. He was and still is an astonishing example of human construction and precision. But, more importantly, he's a model of determination, dedication, and willpower. "My decisions have always been, with certain things, to say 'Okay, I'm going to start at the beginning, down at the bottom, and I'm going to shoot for the top.' When I shot for the top in body-building, I was thinking of my idol, Reg Park, who was a three-time Mr. Universe. He had done several Hercules movies and opened up a chain of gymnasiums and so forth. I thought 'That's exactly what I want to do'--not just win the title, but use it as a means to an end. Have some fun, maybe get into some movies, get into the business and all those things." In 1970, Schwarzenegger even took up the beloved Hercules mantle in a little-seen B-movie called Hercules in New York, pairing him with nasal comedian Arnold Stang and too cleverly renaming Schwarzenegger as "Arnold Strong." The movie currently resides in the dustiest of video store shelves.

It was during one of the Mr. Olympia competitions that Schwarzenegger saw the materialization of his first shot at cinema greatness. Documentary filmmakers George Butler and Robert Fiore were so taken with the bodybuilder and his pursuit of what would be his final Mr. Olympia title that they decided to film the competition in full (including visitations with Arnold's closest rival, Incredible Hulk star Lou Ferrigno). Once released, the documentary Pumping Iron was a critical and box-office smash, with audiences taking note that Schwarzenegger was no mere muscle-bound freak of nature, but instead a very human being replete with wild charisma, bright humor, and a booming sense of self-confidence--traits that usually translate well to the big screen.

Once Schwarzenegger decided he'd accomplished everything he could in the world of body building, it was time for a change-up. So, with 1975's Pumping Iron garnering raves, he turned his eyes to acting. At first, no one took him seriously. He showed up in a bit role as a bodyguard in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, but was constantly being shrugged off by agents and directors because of his thick Austrian accent, immense size, and formidably long name. But these obstacles didn't sway him, of course; he immediately began to take acting lessons and speech training. In the meantime, he made a few small but significant television appearances--significant because it was one of these assignments that helped net Schwarzenegger a role in a film by acclaimed director Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens). All of the sudden, in Rafelson's Stay Hungry, Schwarzenegger was performing opposite acting heavyweights Sally Field and Jeff Bridges—and, amazingly, Arnold held his own, shining in a smart, well-observed look at the Alabama body-building scene. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association saw such merit in his performance they awarded him a 1977 Golden Globe for Best Newcomer. It's still his most personally insightful role.

The next few years, though, were relatively dry for Schwarzenegger. Demand for an actor with his imposing physical stature was then so low, so he had to stoop to appearing in such disappointing fare as Hal Needham's embarrassingly silly 1979 western spoof The Villain playing the white-suited "good guy" to Kirk Douglas' Wile E. Coyote-like title character (he did get to sport Ann-Margret as his female lead, which he recalls with a toothy smile). He landed a plum dramatic role in the TV-movie version of The Jayne Mansfield Story, cannily well cast opposite Loni Anderson as the blonde superstar's muscle-bound husband Mickey Hargitay. Even by 1982, when he starred in director John Milius' hugely popular adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Conan The Barbarian, it was apparent he hadn't yet found his niche. The film was a gigantic hit, but his performance was rather stiffly mannered in comparison to his earlier work. Still, Schwarzenegger himself can't deny the impact Conan The Barbarian and its sequel, Conan The Destroyer, had on his career. "That gave me the chance to launch an acting career that lifted me above a lot of the other guys and put me in a certain category," he says.

But Schwarzenegger's real big break--the one there was no retreating from once it dropped--came in 1984 when relative newcomer and Roger Corman protege James Cameron cast him in the diabolical title role of The Terminator. The film was an unexpected fall season sleeper--a remarkable combination of non-stop action, fresh characterizations, fast-paced direction, and mindbending science-fiction that owed much of its effectiveness to Arnold Schwarzenegger's frighteningly taciturn performance as an unstoppable killer cyborg from a decimated future. That year, The Terminator adorned many "Ten Best" lists and, with over $100 million in box office grosses, led the National Association of Theater Owners to name Schwarzenegger the International Star of 1985.

Since that film, Schwarzenegger has smartly developed a screen persona that can only be described as decidedly tongue-in-cheek. With movies like Commando and Raw Deal, two of the biggest hits of the past couple of summers, he's successfully blended his comedic, dramatic, and ass-kicking chops to create for himself a natural and engaging image for himself, comparable to the places top stars like Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood had secured for themselves decades earlier.

This summer, Schwarzenegger has delivered again. In Predator, he plays Major Dutch Schaefer, the leader of an elite rescue unit whose members, sidetracked on a mission in the South American jungle, are being picked off one by one by a crafty alien hunter. The film is a relentlessly taut science-fiction tale that Schwarzenegger strongly contends is, along with The Terminator, his best to date. "What I liked about this film, specifically," he says, "was that it was a team effort—an ensemble--rather than me coming out right on top, with the first scene establishing me as the lead character. Here, I try to blend in with a team of guys. I mean. I'm the leader of the rescue team, but everyone in the film gets the same amount of screen time until guys start fading away and being killed. Then I emerge as the lead. This is, again, a whole new concept that I'd never dealt with before." The film's director, John McTiernan, is a new name in the film business; his first film, Nomads, was released in 1986 to mild critical notices and less-than-outstanding public recognition. Yet Schwarzenegger maintains McTiernan is very much like Cameron in ability. "When I think about the way they work, the way they move the cameras, the way they visualize ahead of time what a film is going to look like after it's been edited, I am amazed at how incredible the similarities are," he says. "Cameron is a genius and I think McTiernan's a genius, too."

Even so, Schwarzenegger says he ran into a little bit of trouble with McTiernan (as he does with all of his directors) when he wanted to add certain elements of humor into Predator's most dire sequences. "For instance," he offers, "I fight with the creature at the end. I improvise on these things. I just go along with my feelings. So I said 'Wait, this thing just took his helmet off and it's fucking ugly!' And I just thought I should say that, that it would amuse the audience in this really tense moment. And John says 'Arnold, come over here. I don't want to make a big scene in front of all these guys but do me a favor: don't do this because you'll really fuck up the momentum of the whole picture.' And I said 'I realize all this, but I think it is more important to throw the humor in there because, by now, they are all very tense in the theater and now we throw in the comic relief and it makes them breathe a sigh of relief.' "

Ultimately, Schwarzenegger's instinct won out--this and a few other carefully-placed jokes were dutifully fit into Predator's final running time, to the delight of the test audiences which whom he's viewed the film; he says each gag is unfailingly greeted with gales of laughter. One may ask "If Arnold Schwarzenegger has such a gift for making people laugh, why doesn't he develop it?" He says he plans to in the near future. "Eventually, I will be doing a straightforward action/comedy. A lot of the time what happens is that ninety percent of the stuff I want to do is rejected by either the director or the writer. They think 'Wait a minute. You can't be in the middle of this battle in this village and have humor. You are there to do this job.'  So I say 'Yes, you're right. But I'm Arnold. People don't mind if it doesn't quite fit in. If Joe Blow does it, then it wouldn't work.' It's like Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child. Any other guy who might have done that film would've played the part as seriously as possible, because it was a serious matter. But he clicked in and bubbled off his stuff and was Eddie Murphy. People laughed. No one said 'That humor didn't quite fit in there.' It was enjoyable. That's why that movie--which was actually pretty crappy--did $70 million at the box office."

Although his movies are popular with audiences, they always spark a certain level of controversy due to radical on-screen violence (Commando, in particular, with its crotch stabbings and buzz-saw attacks hit a new high in this department). For that reason, his films, like Stallone's, constantly spark boycotts from concerned parents and church organizations alike (not to mention they're constantly being looked down upon by more high-brow film artists and moviegoers). Arnold has an assured mental outlook on this harshness, though. "You never worry about what people say because, remember, whatever you do, you will always have a certain percentage of people not liking your stuff and a certain percentage of people loving it. You just have to realize you're not out to win a popularity contest. You're just trying to do your best work possible."

In order to be attracted to a role, Schwarzenegger says the part must highlight a previously untouched aspect to his personality. "Every film I do, I try and reach out and find other things I haven't done yet.” And though his past performances may generally belong in the same ballpark, they indeed do each show us a new side to the actor: from the Bond-like sophistication he displayed in Raw Deal and the paternal instincts he showed off opposite Alyssa Milano in Commando ("Working with a child brings out a whole new you. You have to relate to a kid in your work and in your real life, so your whole personality changes—you become kind of cute”), then to the cog-in-the-machine feel he lent to his roles in Predator and his mechanically emotionless performance as The Terminator. "With each movie," he says, "I want people to go back and look over the entire portfolio I've collected, and feel certain that I've reached out for and hit my different emotional obligations."

Schwarzenegger has a plethora of emotional, artistic, and financial goals to live up to as well. His much-publicized marriage to journalist and Kennedy clan member Maria Schriver has just hit its one-year mark. Later on this summer, he will be seen in an adaptation of Stephen King's short story The Running Man, playing a contestant in a futuristic TV game show (hosted by kissy Family Feud scion Richard Dawson) where the object of the game is simply to survive. And, in the following months, he'll be toiling away on a Terminator sequel, reteaming him with director James Cameron.

As if that weren't enough, he'll continue putting time into his own businesses (he's a renowned real-estate developer, mail-order businessman, and art collector). Still, his first love will be acting, with body-building coming in a close second. When he looks back on his early career as an athlete and compares it to the present stage of his output, he sees very little difference. "I work as hard now as I did then. I did exactly the same things as in bodv-building. To be a good actor, you analyze what you need: you go to acting school, you go to speech training and so on. It's the same thing as having to work more on my deltoids, except now I have to work more on something like my accent. You pick certain things that are your weak points and the harder you work, the faster you grow up and the faster you can make it."

A Talk with Spike Lee

This is a reprint of my interview with Spike Lee, printed in the Georgia State University's newspaper The Signal (as part of their features section Tuesday Magazine) on February 9, 1988. The interview was part of a promotional tour for Mr. Lee's then-new film School Daze, which was filmed in Atlanta, GA. The interview itself was conducted on a cold January day in a suite at Atlanta's Ritz-Carlton. 

Those who expect Spike Lee to be like Mars Blackmon, the affably clownish character he played in his directorial debut She's Gotta Have It, would be in for a jolt were they to come face to face with him. In reality, Lee is a reserved man on the sharp edge of cool. He makes few jokes and the laughs he does reach for come not from snappy one-liners, but from organic facial expressions, personal swagger and, occasionally, a juicy slang word.

Not that the 30-year-old Lee is sedate; he is simply considerate--a thinker. He sits back and lets ideas wash over him. If he doesn't agree, he'll speak his mind, but without raising his measured voice. He's shrewd enough to know that the first man who raises his voice has already lost the argument. He was also shrewd enough to realize, back in 1984 that, where black people were concerned, there was a bottomless void in the film industry. With few exceptions, their stories were not being told on cinema screens.

A year after he had graduated from New York University with his master's degree in film and a Student Academy Award for his thesis short film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, Lee began to get antsy--he hadn't picked up a camera for months. So he cranked up the gears and began courting financiers for one of the two screenplays he'd written. When plans fell through for Messenger, a film about a Brooklyn bike courier's family life (possibly his next project), Spike Lee started over, swallowing the bitter hurt along with the weeks of intense rehearsal time he and his cast had spent on the movie.

Next time around, he penned a script he thought might be more appealing to investors--one that dealt with sex and the crippling double standard men place on women in that realm. That film, She's Gotta Have It, took six months to write. During that time, Lee was obsessed with getting the $175,000 he needed to complete the film. "It was a struggle trying to raise the money," Lee says. "I always had a lot of people telling me I could never do it, so I had to keep myself pumped up all the time." With a great deal of help from a number of New York arts councils and Island Films, the company that distributed the completed picture, Lee put the final touches on She's Gotta Have It on his 29th  birthday. That same day, he was invited to Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was given the prize for Best New Director.

Now Spike Lee has finished his second feature, a musical comedy-drama titled School Daze. Shot entirely on the campuses of Atlanta University, Morris Brown College, Clark College, and Lee's own alma mater, Morehouse College (where he graduated with a degree in mass communications), the movie follows an ensemble of black students through homecoming weekend at the fictional Southern black institution called Mission College. Lee has no problem admitting the autobiographical nature of the film, which he wrote right after leaving NYU. "School Daze is my four years at Morehouse in a two-hour film. But the film is not really about Morehouse as much as the whole college experience."

Fraternities and sororities are part of that experience but Lee's portrayal of Greeks in School Daze is far from adoring. In the film, Lee plays Half-Pint, a scrawny Gamma Phi Gamma pledge who is made to endure a slate of degrading humiliations before being accepted by the Gammas and their leader, Julian "Big Brother Almighty" Eaves (Giancarlo Esposito). Through this probing, Lee gets to vent his ill feelings about the Greek system. "The whole concept and meaning of fraternities--I'm talking specifically about black fraternities because that's what I know--has been corrupted over the years. I mean, what do fraternities do? These people, they're full of shit. Y'know, they say they're supposed to do all this community work. My experience is, the only community work they ever do is they might collect a couple of cans at Thanksgiving. And that was it." The filmmaker doesn't even agree with the conviction--at least, not in principle--that fraternities give certain social advantages to those who pledge. "I think a person's gonna have to try to find in themselves the things that will make them a better person and not go looking in a an organization or another person. I mean, you think because now you're wearing purple and gold because you're an Omega or black and gold because you're an Alpha or red and white because you're a Kappa, all of a sudden you're a better person? That's a fuckin' lie."

In spite of his innate feelings towards the Greeks, Spike Lee (who, of course, never pledged a fraternity) made a concerted effort to be fair in the film. He even went so far as to hire what's billed as a "Fraternity Life Technical Advisor” ("His name is Zelmer Bothic III--Z-Dog," Lee says, smiling. "We had a mass communications class together at Morehouse and I remember him not being able to sit down in class because he had hemorrhoids from all the paddlings. He also has twelve Omega brands on his body.") Clearly, to Lee's thinking, the attempts at even-handedness panned out. In fact, the director thinks his treatment of the Greeks in School Daze might even be a bit lenient. "There was a lot of stuff we put in this film about the nasty stuff they do, but we left it out. You got guys tying other guys up to chairs and pushing them down stairs and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that shit's crazy."

But while part of the controversy surrounding School Daze is directed towards the film's anti-frat attitude, the more potent portion of criticism will probably be pointed towards Lee's exploration of the differences that separate blacks from other blacks--those of a financial, class-based, educational or political nature. And, yes, it's the internal schisms related to skin color that will most likely inform white audiences and inflame black ones. Lee wrote two rival groups into the film: the Greek-oriented, blue-eyed, light-skinned blacks called the Wannabees, and the independent, nappy-headed, dark-skinned blacks called the Jigaboos. The former represents the black person's striving for success in a predominantly white world, even if that success means giving up authentic beliefs and background. The latter reflects the mirror image of that attitude: the retaining of the black heritage, even at the expense of mad economic success. Lee kept the actors playing the Wannabees and the Jigaboos in separate hotels during filming “so they wouldn't get chummy with each other." The tactic worked; an on-screen fight between the two factions was totally spontaneous.

Perhaps the film's most amazing feature is its refusal to take sides, regardless of its subject matter and the strong opinions of the man behind the camera. Lee, however, says that he, himself, does take sides. "I just don't put it up on screen. I don't hate anybody, either." Still, he believes that School Daze is going to upset a lot of black people. "We touch on taboo things that a lot of people think shouldn't be discussed, especially not in a film for the whole world to see."

That, in fact, is exactly the attitude that the Atlanta University Center administration took when they decided to bar Lee from filming on campus a few weeks after production had begun. The now-retired president of Morehouse, Hugh Gloster, had heard rumblings that the film was derogatory towards black colleges and contained, as Lee says he called it, "the M-F word." Gloster called Lee into his office and delivered an ultimatum: either he let him read the script or risk being thrown off the campus. Lee, thinking it would be futile to let Gloster judge his screenplay, refused. The production promptly ground to a halt long enough for a shift to Atlanta University, which was the only campus that had signed a location agreement. Lee says that the decision hurt him "but only for a minute." He then had to get down to the nagging business of finishing the film. Months later, he regards the decision with a mixture of humor and puzzled anger. "What they really wanted me to do was a documentary about black colleges that would have no cursing, no sex, students who look like they just walked out of Mademoiselle and GQ, talking very proper. That's not the school life. President Gloster really showed me how much he was out of touch with reality and with his students for him to think that students don't curse. And to think that parents wouldn't send their children to Morehouse just because they heard “motherfucker” in School Daze! I don't understand that kind of thinking. It's backwards."

At present, Spike Lee is trying to build up a new relationship with the AU Center's faculty. Nonetheless, he still harbors ill feelings towards many administration officials. "The woman who was acting president of Spelman last year was so ignorant, she wouldn't let us set foot on Spelman's campus. She hadn't even seen She's Gotta Have It 'cause people told her it was pornographic.” Even the students at AU Center now incur Lee's wrath. "They're asleep, for the most part. They didn't say nothin'. When I went there, if a young black filmmaker would've come to Morehouse and the administration shut them out, we would've had a fit. But people were a lot more active then. Right now, it's just about graduating, getting a corporate job, getting an M.B.A., a BMW, and making $35,000 a year."

Spike Lee carted School Daze to Columbia Pictures during producer David Putnam's short but productive reign as its chairman. Independent outfit Island Pictures was originally set to finance and distribute the film, but the financially-troubled company pulled out when budget estimates for the film zoomed towards $6 million. In his move to the Columbia roster, Lee brought with him two of his longtime collaborators, photographer Ernest Dickerson and jazz artist Bill Lee, who also happens to be Spike's father and, by admission, one of his top influences (Spike Lee doesn't acknowledge any filmmaking mentors, though he does admire Martin Scorsese's style). Lee is quite adamant, but still realistic, about his relationship with both artists. "I've done small stuff without Ernest," he says, "but I'd be very leery to do a feature film without him. We were classmates at NYU and, since we met, he's shot all my stuff, plus Brother From Another Planet and Raw. He's a fine cinematographer. Now, my father I want to use as much as I can, but there's going to be times where the type of music that he does best won't be the right music for that film. He's a jazz purist. He won't do any kind of electronic or rap music at all." It's Bill Lee who provides most of the music for his son's newest movie, including the exuberant songs that are performed by the young cast (although the movie's hit party song "Da Butt" is not an example of his work--that spirited number was penned and performed by Experience Unlimited, aka EU).

Spike also brought to School Daze an energetic cast, divided evenly between veteran actors--like Ossie Davis, Art Evans, Samuel Jackson, Joe Seneca, and Larry Fishburne--and newly minted performers. Lee was especially eager to work closely with his actors. The 15-day shooting schedule for She's Gotta Have It was usurped with technical problems, so time spent with the cast was strikingly limited. As a result, Lee thinks the acting in that film was "a little shaky in spots." Now, with the luxuries of Columbia's time and money, Lee was finally able to bear down on directing his actors. That explains his enthusiasm for the performances in School Daze. "I don't think there's a weak one in the movie."

Since he's currently filling that abyss-like lack of black-oriented movies, Lee is naturally more concerned with how this movie is going to hit black audiences. For years, he's been disgusted at the treatment black stories have gotten from white writers and filmmakers (one of his most abhored  targets has been Steven Spielberg's 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, with Richard Attenborough's Stephen Biko biopic Cry Freedom standing as a new offender). Yet, Lee still speaks encouragingly when advising white screenwriters or directors on making films about black people.

"I think the number one dilemma that a lot of filmmakers have to face is the fact that you shouldn't write or make a film about something you don't know. If you know the subject and you know the people, go ahead and do it. And if you don't know about it, learn all that you can. That knowledge will be exemplified in the work. But if you don't know it, black audiences just sit there and go 'Black people don't speak like that'--'Get off my back, you jive turkey.' You hear dialogue like that, you know no black person wrote that. Just be truthful and you'll be all right."

Even though whites often achieve accurate portrayals of blacks in films, Lee says that often the converse of that statement is not true. "I think every black person is qualified to talk about white people because that's all you see all your life—in television, movies, commercials--everything. Yet you really can't say the same thing goes the other way around." Lee says he's considered doing a film dealing exclusively with white people, but that the right script has not come along yet.

But the black audience, and black stories, are still Spike Lee's main focus. He walks the high wire hoisted between activism and dispassionate observance. That's the limbo he's been caught in ever since he first rampaged onto the cinema scene two years ago. It's also an attitude with which he's soaked every frame of School Daze. He's hoping that that attitude will payoff when audiences of any racial background leave the stunning final scenes of his new film. "I think there's going to be a lot of conversation about the film, pro and con, which is good. Today, there's an awful lot of films, you sit there for 90 minutes or two hours, and it might even be a good film and you might laugh, but it's so generic that five minutes later you don't even remember what you just sat through. If you can make a film that raises some issues and gets people to talking, then you've done all you can do."

Film #174: The Fountain

A dialogue:

FUTURE ME: Why are we doing this? I have work to do.

PRESENT ME: Well, I called you two here to talk about Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain.

PAST ME: One of my favorites.

FUTURE ME: Oh, I was so young in 2006. Not even forty. I was really into anything kind of trippy and obscure.

PAST ME: How did I get so cynical in my old age?

FUTURE ME: Hey, I still like it, but I don’t ever need to see it again. I stopped watching movies I’ve already seen years ago.

PAST ME: Wow!

PRESENT ME: That’s kind of where I’m at now. I think I’m starting to agree with Pauline Kael that watching movies even a second time clues you into their tricks and faults. Only the best ones escape this. This probably means I’ve been watching too many movies.

PAST ME: I can’t see many faults in this one. I saw it on the big screen twice and it stunned me with its boldness and beauty. There’s really nothing like it.

PRESENT ME: The Fountain works most effectively on the big screen, I agree. But there’s a reason for there being nothing like it—it’s a sentimental mess, though occasionally moving. And a box office bomb–way too inquisitive and slow for the masses, even if it’s only 90 minutes long. But it’s brave and beautiful nevertheless.

PAST ME: I love it. It just hits me, and fascinates me. And there’s part of me that sees it as Aronofsky’s effusive love letter to his wife, Rachel Weisz, whom he clearly adores. Just look at all those loving close-ups.

PRESENT ME: They’re divorced now. She remarried James Bond—Daniel Craig.

PAST ME: Aww, that sucks. Man, where’s the love? And I can’t believe Daniel Craig is James Bond now. Weird choice.

FUTURE ME: You should see who’s playing Bond now—Benedict Cumberbatch.

PAST ME: Cumberwhat?

PRESENT ME: Guys, guys…back on point. I still find the conquistador segment of the story transfixing, and the future bubble, with the Tree of Life being sent up into a golden nebula, remains a helluva image.

FUTURE ME: We still don’t have any flying bubbles, but we did finally get the Hoverboard down.

PAST ME: So it’s the present day story, with Hugh Jackman trying to save his wife from cancer that you don’t like?

PRESENT ME: Yeah, that part—which takes up most of the film—feels stiff, soapy and badly acted, even with the post-Requiem for a Dream gift of a supporting role for Ellen Burstyn.

FUTURE ME: Requiem for a Dream. Now that still works. And I DEFINITELY don’t need to see that one again. I’m depressed enough.

PRESENT ME: I get ya on that. But, yeah, I do like how the film is a melding of the three time periods, as if they’re conferring with one another. Do you think the Jackman and Weisz characters are all the same person, only reborn in different bodies?

FUTURE ME: It would seem in keeping with the spiritually transcendent feel of the whole thing. Sometimes it feels a bit overwrought, this aspect of it.

PRESENT ME: When you look back on Aronofsky’s career, there does seem to be copious soul searching throughout. I get the impression he’s ingested a lot of drugs in order to find his spiritual center.

PAST ME: A friend I saw it with the second time said the director has obviously done a lot of DMT, evidenced by the very end, which he said is a pretty fair approximation of that drug’s effects. And I know from another friend Aronofsky’s looking to buy land in Costa Rica. That should tell you something.

PRESENT ME: I’m sorta glad I haven’t hung out with those friends in years. They were fascinating back then, but it was frustrating trying to keep up with their insane babblings. But, yeah, with Pi, Requiem for a Dream and Noah (which was his dream project, amazingly enough), Aronofsky does strike me now as a sideways religious proselytizer.

PAST ME: He did a movie about Noah? Noah’s ark Noah?

PRESENT ME: Yes. Don’t watch it. It has big tree monsters or something in it. They’re introduced about two minutes in, and that’s when I cut it off. I think the drugs have finally gotten to him.

PAST ME: Thanks for the warning.

FUTURE ME: It’ll definitely be the Aronofsky movie you’ll be glad not to see. It’s a real shame. He’s doing heavy metal Christian music videos now.

PRESENT ME: Anyway, I wouldn’t want to fix The Fountain. It’s a movie Aronofsky fought hard to make, although I understand it started off a great deal differently, with Brad Pitt attached as star in an action-packed Matrix-y kick-ass-fest. Pitt still acted as a producer on The Fountain.

PAST ME: I definitely prefer Pitt as an actor over Jackman, who I think works here best as the bearded Spanish conquistador, devoted to his queen and to the quest for the Tree of Life. I’ve just never been able to connect with Jackman as a movie actor, although Aronofsky did a good job of making him look radically different in each episode here.

FUTURE ME: Jackman’s much more charming on the stage. He’s a song-and-dance man. He’s won two Tonys (for musicals) in the past twenty years. No singing and dancing here, though. By the way, why was it that the Tree of Life was needed to save Spain?

PRESENT ME: It’s a little murky, but it has something to do with vanquishing the evil Crusaders who, with their fundamentalism, were destroying the fabric of the country and the world. More to the point, it’s because the queen said it was necessary.

FUTURE ME: I guess Aronofsky made that fairly clear, now that I think about it. But it wasn’t very compelling from a plotting standpoint.

PRESENT ME: No, but I accepted it without much complaint. That section of the film is pretty gorgeous and constantly thrilling. When we switch back to it, I still feel myself prickling up excitedly. The acting style here just seems to suit that setting, and on an art direction and costuming level, I think it’s really sumptuous.

FUTURE ME: But the Matthew Libatique photography is a little dark, no?

PAST ME: It’s a dark film in general. But I like Libatique.

PRESENT ME: He’s at his best with Aronofsky–bet you can’t name one movie he’s done without him (Black Swan is a notable Aronofsky collaboration). I do love the way key shots are centered in a way that recalls religious iconography. Some of the work reminds me of Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates, only tinted to a greater degree. However, the play between dark and light struck me sometimes as a visual cliché. I mean, is there any reason to have the surgery rooms lit like Don Corleone’s office?

FUTURE ME: Exactly. That was absurd.

PAST ME: I just though it looked neat. But maybe you’re right. I loved the twin shots of Jackman’s breath blowing against the hairs on Weisz’s neck and then onto the tree’s fuzzy trunk. That was immensely effective. You know, I think I’m compelled by that middle story just because I’m a goofy romantic.

FUTURE ME: How’s that gone for ya?

PAST ME: Not so well, I’m afraid.

PRESENT ME: Yeah, it’s been a hard road.

FUTURE ME: Uh-huh. Look, I can accept the darkness in the Spanish segment, particularly, because it’s contextually correct, and plus it adds to the menace inherit in that third of the story. It works, too, in the future section of the piece, because outer space is the setting. But, man, I can hardly remember now the “present day” part of the movie, except that it felt like an overly-intellectual Love Story to me, and that I became impatient with. 

PRESENT ME: Yes. Okay, two things I think we all can agree on: The visual effects have a wonderfully hand-crafted quality to them. I mean, I’m sure much CGI is used here, but Aronofsky and his team managed to conceal most traces of it. The future sequence is consistently brilliant, with its smoky, painterly travels through the ether and the odd sight of the live action backed in such a surreal manner.

PAST ME: This is true. Great effects, and also I should mention the terrific editing–it’s an economical movie in length, and it hops to and from each segment in inventive fashions. As to the computer involvement in the visuals, there are moments, approaching the nebula, that feel like we’re entering a CGI vagina. I dunno…maybe that’s a point Aronofsky was conveying there.

FUTURE ME: Yeah, and I suppose the tree is a kind of phallic stand-in. It’s a movie also concerned with the connection between sex and death, without being a very sexy piece (though there’s that rather chaste bathtub scene). I don’t think it knows what it’s saying here, beyond the “Road to Awe” theme that’s repeated throughout (by the menacing, opulent gatekeeper guarding the way to the Tree of Life, and then by Izzy, Rachel Weisz’s sickly present day character). I guess we can just leave it at that—both sex and death are the road to awe. The little death and all of that…

PRESENT ME: And is she named Izzy because she is the character that’s IS who she IS? That somehow she’s the character in the movie that most embraces her present? I mean, I know she gloms onto death gallantly and everything, but I think they fell down on that. She didn’t seem particularly special to me, even while throwing snowballs and romping around in the bedroom with her once-long hair. The film is radically humorless. 2001 has more laughs. The writing needed a little beefing up, I’d counsel.

PAST ME: That’s kind of cruel, but I guess you’re correct—Aronofsky didn’t rely on much beyond her sumptuous face and curious nature to illustrate her luminosity. Another point, getting back to the sex thing–not to get too gooey on the subject–but is there something there in the creamy white juice that Jackman’s conquistador wrings out of the tree?

FUTURE ME: Yeah, that’s there, but can we please not talk about it?

PRESENT ME: I do have to say, I find the climax to that story—and please excuse me for using that word—to be the most surprising moment in the film. It’s the moment we were waiting for—the confrontation with the Tree of Life, the film’s most mysterious character–and it leaves us shocked and breathless.

PAST ME: I agree.

FUTURE ME: Yep. Though I noticed they were careful in keeping that gunk away from Jackman’s beard.

PRESENT ME: Eww, you’re right. Moving on…



PAST ME: I bet the other thing you were going to mention is Clint Mansell’s score.

PRESENT ME: Exactly. It’s a wonder, just like his score for Requiem for a Dream, which was a masterpiece.

FUTURE ME: Yes, that’s the element of the film that’s beyond reproach. It completes its most important work.

PAST ME: It feels like a character unto itself.

PRESENT ME: That’s probably the best thing one can say about a score to a movie, though in some instances, it can be the worst.

FUTURE ME: Not here. It’s superb.

PRESENT ME: Okay, well, that was quick. One question, since we are gathered to talk about The Fountain while in the realm of science-fiction: Is this a science-fiction film?

PAST ME: That’s interesting. It strikes me more of a fantasy piece, but science does certainly play a role in it.

FUTURE ME: Believe me, there is no real science in it. It’s all a matter of the heart. As you get older, you find yourself faced with death often—the deaths of those you love personally, and the deaths of those you’ve never even met but to whom you were close to anyway. And you find yourself wanting to find a way to stave all that death off. But you can’t. We’re mortal. It’s something we have to live with. The idea of a cure to it, or some magic potion, increasingly escapes you, just as it escapes all the characters in this film. But I suspect—and I say this because I’ve never been in real love, except with my cats, which is not the same thing—the injection of deep emotion into the equation complicates things grandly. In the end, it’s a science-fiction film only by default of our own limited pigeon-holing of creative works into stifling categories, mostly for salable purpose. I mean, it’s got space travel and microscopes and telescopes in it and everything, so it’s science fiction, I guess.

PRESENT ME: So what does The Fountain have to say about death and life and sex?

FUTURE ME: I don’t see it as a movie about sex except peripherally. But on life and death, I think it states its case very clearly: There’s nothing we can do about anything but press on. Love doesn’t enter into it, except that it makes life’s inevitable conclusions that much more painful and yet transcendent.

PAST ME: It’s tough going, but I can accept that. What choice do I have?

FUTURE ME: No choice at all.

PRESENT ME: Okay. Well, it’s a thrilling movie to look at and consider, at least.

PAST ME: It makes us think, definitely.

PRESENT ME: That's good enough for me. 

FUTURE ME: Gotta get back to work. Are we done?