Trivia / The Fountain

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $35 million. Box office, $15,978,422. The film divided critics and audiences upon its release but it became a Cult Classic down the line.
• Cast the Expert: The extras playing the Mayans had twenty actual Mayans flown in from Guatemala. Fernando Hernandez, who plays the lord of Xibalba, was the only one of them who could speak English.
• Development Hell: The film went through this, due mostly to Brad Pitt pulling out to work on Troy, until it was finally greenlit and shot with a different cast and half the original budget. At one point Aronofsky just wrote it as a graphic novel because he didn't think the movie would ever see the light of day.
• Doing It for the Art: Darren Aronofsky insisted on getting the film made, even after the studio cut half of his budget. When it looked like the studio would never approve the movie, he wrote it as a graphic novel and got Vertigo Comics to publish it. This was obviously a story Aronofsky had to tell. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz likewise agreed to work on the film at a reduced rate.
• DVD Commentary: A notable case in which Aronofsky recorded his own audio commentary and released it on his website after the studio decided not to include one on the DVD release. The file is no longer accessible on his website but it is available through other means on the Internet...
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • Hugh Jackman shaved off all his hair - head and chest - for scenes in the last third of the movie. He also slimmed down from his usual Wolverine physique, and practiced yoga for over a year to be able to achieve the lotus position for the space scenes.
  • Rachel Weisz likewise cut her hair short to be Izzi. As they shot those scenes first, she is wearing a wig as Queen Isabella.
• Fake American: Rachel Weisz is British playing the American Izzy. She uses her natural accent when portraying Queen Isabella. Hugh Jackman is Australian and alternates between doing an American accent as Tom and Tommy, and a British one as Tomas.
• Fake Nationality: Cliff Curtis (New Zealander), Mark Margolis (American) and Stephen McHattie (Canadian) as Spanish conquistadors.
• Follow the Leader: Inverted. The original script had a huge battle scene between the Mayans and the conquistadors but, as The Lord of the Rings, Troy, King Arthur (2004) etc had featured such large-scale battles - Aronofsky rewrote it so that it was just Tomas fighting. This ended up tying into the movie's theme of one man attempting to defy the odds.
• Method Acting:
  • Hugh Jackman and Ellen Burstyn attended brain surgeries to better get a sense of their characters' professions.
  • Rachel Weisz visited hospices and read accounts from people with terminal illnesses to get an idea of what Izzi would be feeling.
• Production Posse: Mark Margolis and Ellen Burstyn had previously appeared in Requiem for a Dream. Darren Aronofsky wrote their parts in The Fountain specifically for them.
• Reality Subtext: Much of the story surrounding Izzi's illness was formed around Darren Aronofsky watching both his parents battle cancer.
• Referenced by...:
  • Experimental Film: Lois listens to the soundtrack of The Fountain on infinite loop while she works.
• Romance on the Set: Darren Aronofsky was dating Rachel Weisz at the time. He actually almost didn't cast her for this reason, fearing accusations of favoritism. Hugh Jackman convinced him she was right for the part.
• Shrug of God: Aronofsky encourages fans to find their own interpretation.
• What Could Have Been: The original film project starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, as storyboarded in the graphic novel, was significantly different and more of a straight big budget sci-fi / fantasy, like Avatar, Solaris or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It included a huge Mayan battle scene and scenes showing Tom Reversing the Polarities to protect the space bubble from Xibalba's cosmic assault! It would have been much less small and contemplative, and more of a Matrix-style big budget film.
  However, Pitt's withdrawal and cost overruns led Warner Bros. to shut down production. Aronofsky rewrote the script to be sparser, and was able to resurrect the film with a $35 million budget with Jackman and Weisz in the lead roles. Production mainly took place on a sound stage in Montreal, Quebec, and the director used macro photography to create key visual effects at a low cost. When Pitt dropped out, Russell Crowe was sent the script, but he was exhausted from having just completed Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

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