I’ve always wanted to introduce hip-hop filmmaking to film. There’s hip-hop art, dance, music, but there really isn’t hip-hop film. So I was trying to do that.
I feel that so many sci-fi films and films in general have just become really dependent on and addicted to CGI, and that some of the big CGI films of the summer, you see these effects that look like crap.
When people think about the ark, they’re always thinking about all the thousands of years of religious iconography of a ship with a bow and a deck, where Noah and the giraffes could walk around. In the actual written text it is basically described as a long, rectangular box.
I spent about a year and a half doing technical post work on ‘The Fountain’. Although I do like the process, I think my favorite part of filmmaking is the actors.
I’m Godless. And so I’ve had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is — ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme.
I’ve been joking that if Madonna taught us anything, you’ve got to reinvent yourself. I think it’s important as a filmmaker, as any person working in the arts, that you’ve got to try new stuff and challenge yourself and take chances.
For too long we have been taking, and the Earth has been giving. But that free-for-all, that all-you-can-eat buffet, it’s over. The salad bar is closed.
I don’t make films that are easy to market, unfortunately. I think that ‘Pi’ was the easiest one, because we had that symbol to stick up everywhere, so that was a good gimmick, and created a good mystery, and we didn’t have to do huge scale.
The ’90s were a party, I mean definitely maybe not for the grunge movement, but people were partying harder in the ’90s than they were in the ’80s. The ’90s was Ecstasy, the ’80s was yuppies.
If you think of that, as a parent, you know that if you have too much justice and you’re too strict, you destroy a child. If you have too much mercy, as a parent, you destroy a child as well. A big part of this movie is Noah finding mercy for man.
These wrestlers aren’t organized. They have no union, no pension and no insurance. You meet wrestler after wrestler who sold out Madison Square Garden ten years ago, basically running on fumes today. There’s a lot of drama there.
I think there’s something in collaboration – the fact that you can sit there and bounce ideas off of someone. It definitely matters who the person is, because certain people… T
Also expressionistic filmmaking – making the audience feel like they were inside the characters’ heads. And so we create all these different types of techniques to put the audience there.
I think people are people and, if their feelings are truthful, they can connect. It doesn’t matter if you’re an aging, 50-something wrestler at the end of his career, or an ambitious, 20-something ballet dancer.
