Darren Aronofsky Talks ‘mother!’ Screenplay, Comparisons

Darren Aronofsky’s mother! is somehow only four weeks away, and the filmmaker is out there giving us hella trailers and sneak peeks and discussing the project to help build anticipation.

Recently, Aronofsky spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the screenplay for mother! and how it’s most closely related to, unsurprisingly, Black Swan. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

“I was always jealous of singer-songwriters who can pop out a song in a couple of days or a few hours,” Aronofsky says. “I had this idea, and I felt it rise up in my head. I took a long weekend and got into this fever dream and just pumped it out. [Laughs] We’ll see what the results are. It’s been an interesting way to approach it — trying to capture a single emotion and trying to tell that two hour story out of that emotion.”

A screenplay for a major motion picture being completed over a weekend is crazy to consider. But Darren Aronofsky, like the subjects of his films, apparently knows a thing or two about obsessiveness.


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Speaking of obsession, Aronofsky compares mother! to an obvious work in his catalogue. “It is closer to Black Swan in spirit than anything I have done in a while,” he tells EW. Makes perfect sense, although it makes me wonder what the Jennifer Lawrence character might be addicted to. It’s a staple in Aronofsky’s work, and while the “what’s real and what’s not” element is obvious in these wild ass trailers, a specific obsession is not as clear.

We can all find out when mother! opens September 15.

Larry Taylor - Managing Editor
Larry Taylor - Managing Editor
Larry is the managing editor for Monkeys Fighting Robots. The Dalai Lama once told him when he dies he will receive total consciousness. So he's got that going for him... Which is nice.