Inside filmmaker Darren Aronofsky there are two wolves.
One wolf yearns to make mainstream entertainment that is accepted by the critical establishment and the moviegoing masses. The other wolf is more fussy, more artsy, able to turn even the most commercial concept into something idiosyncratic, offbeat and, occasionally, downright alienating. It’s the tug-of-war between these two wolves that makes him such an exciting filmmaker. You can see them tussling right before your eyes.
“The Whale” in 2022 chronicled a morbidly obese man eating himself to death, but was a sleeper hit (making nearly $60 million on a budget of just $3 million) and won Brendan Fraser an Oscar. In 2014 “Noah” was a Biblical epic starring Russell Crowe but also an environmental screed that featured weird rock creatures. And 2010’s “Black Swan” was a thriller inspired by a cult anime film that blended 19th century ballet and body horror to win Natalie Portman an Academy Award and gross nearly $320 million worldwide.
Aronofsky’s latest is “Caught Stealing,” an adaptation of Charlie Huston’s 2004 novel of the same name (Huston adapted their own book), which Sony opens wide Friday. It stars Austin Butler as Hank Thompson, a bartender and former baseball player who gets sucked into an increasingly violent mystery. Set in 1998 New York City, it feels a bit like Aronofsky returning to his roots. His debut feature, “Pi,” a jittery conspiracy thriller about a mathematician who becomes unglued, was shot in New York and released that very year.
“Caught Stealing” may represent one of Aronofsky’s wolves showing dominance, with a vibe that’s more commercial than many of his other projects. The marketing materials make it seem like something of a romp, a comedy thriller with big stars (Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Regina King, Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber are among the cast) and the kind of jaunty, energetic crime world of a movie released in the years after “Pulp Fiction.”
“Caught Stealing” isn’t the first time Aronofsky has considered a more commercially straightforward genre project — he was attached to a “Batman” movie before Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” and was also set to direct “The Wolverine” with Hugh Jackman before bowing out.
But, this being an Aronofsky film, “Caught Stealing” is also darker and more layered than you’d expect based on the marketing. It is also significantly more violent, with literate cinematic references (Griffin Dunne shows up in a supporting role, which draws a link between “Caught Stealing” and Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours”) and Aronofsky’s inventive visual flourishes.
When I ask if he was going for something more audience-friendly, Aronofsky replied, “Do you think I’ve succeeded?”
He first read the book 18 years ago. “I felt the energy in the streets of the East Village, which I love so much. There was a visceral fun-ness to it,” Aronofsky said of the novel. Three years ago, Huston reached out and said that he was in control of the book. He read Huston’s script. “I still felt that energy,” Aronofsky said.
He was inspired by classic New York City films. Sidney Lumet was “the patron saint of this movie.” Journeyman director Stuart Rosenberg was Aronofsky’s mentor and Rosenberg’s “Pope of Greenwich Village” became a big inspiration. “The films that really bleed of the streets of New York was something I wanted to go after,” Aronofsky explained.
And yes, he was on the lookout for something more commercial. After all, over the course of his career, Aronofsky has had some very high-profile misfires. Two years before he rebounded with “The Wrestler,” which earned Mickey Rourke a Best Actor Oscar nomination, he made “The Fountain,” an elliptical sci-fi fantasy starring Hugh Jackman, that made only $16.5 million on a budget of more than $35 million. 2014’s “Noah,” his post-“Black Swan” studio movie, was a Biblical epic and an environmental call-to-arms that cost between $125 and $160 million and made almost $360 million worldwide. And 2017’s “Mother!,” a strange thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, made only $44.5 million on a budget of $30 million.
“If there’s so much drama going on in the world, the amazing thing about movies and what Hollywood does is that we can take strangers from all walks of life and stick them in a dark room and make them connect with a single character,” he said. “That’s what we do. And for me, that’s what I think it’s time to get back to – unite people behind heroes that unite us. Hollywood’s been doing that with superheroes and people with superpowers.”
What makes “Caught Stealing” different is that Butler’s character “is a normal guy over their head.” He points to movies like Roman Polanski’s 1988 film “Frantic,” which sees Harrison Ford searching for his missing wife abroad, as a great example of this subgenre.
“What happens when you’re a normal guy, just like me or you, and your world starts to fall apart? How do you deal with it? How do you hold it together?” Aronofsky said. “And Hank in this movie, is a pretty solid guy. He’s a good guy. He’s not hurting anyone, except for maybe himself, and the only skills he has is that he was once a good athlete in high school, but beyond that, he’s got nothing going for him.”
Early in the film Hank gets beat up by some goons and winds up having a kidney removed. It’s the kind of visceral jolt you might expect from an Aronofsky project but not one from a studio thriller starring one of the world’s most in-demand actors. It’s a swerve that was inherent to Aronofsky’s plan for “Caught Stealing.”
“Yes, it’s a traditional film in the sense that it’s a crime caper. And I really wanted to make a purely genre film, but to take my team – I’m surrounded by all these masters in my crew, because they’re the best of the best – and have them focus on making great entertainment. Because I think that’s the mission right now – let’s get people in the theater having a really good time.”
It’s fun to see Aronofsky’s inventiveness applied to an ostensibly more straightforward crime movie, like during a chase around the Unisphere, a stainless-steel globe located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens that was designed and constructed for the 1964-’65 World’s Fair. At one point during the chase, Aronofsky flies a drone through the Unisphere. He said that the Parks Department was “incredibly generous” to let him shoot a chase there. “They were a little ambiguous if they would let me fly a drone through it, but luckily no one was really paying attention. We got the shot, which I don’t think has been done before,” the filmmaker said.
It definitely has not been done before.
What might be most striking about “Caught Stealing” is that it really is a movie made for adults – there’s smoking, drinking, sex, violence. All the stuff that is supposedly passe for modern audiences. Aronofsky credits Sony Pictures head Tom Rothman, “a lover of movies,” for giving him the freedom to go there.
“He has supported me throughout the whole process. And it’s challenging to open a film like this, and I think it’s important for the business to keep trying to get people to come back to the theaters to see high-end entertainment like this,” Aronofsky said.
Considering there are two other books written by Huston that follow Butler’s character, Aronofsky has a chance to make a franchise that wouldn’t exclusively cater to 13-year-old boys. Not that 13-year-old boys shouldn’t see “Caught Stealing,” he said.
Aronofsky said that he remembered when he was eight-years-old and “Saturday Night Fever” stormed the world.
With the help of his sister, who is three years older, they lobbied their mother to go to the movie. She relented, mostly because she figured most of the inappropriate stuff in the movie would fly over their heads.
The next morning at breakfast, he and his sister were debating what a blowjob was. “My mom is sitting there, terrified, freaking out over the eggs,” Aronofsky remembered.
When asked what type of movie he’d really want to make, the filmmaker shared that he’d love to tackle a heist film. “I haven’t found a good one,” he said.
