Make her mark. One of the things I loved about Requiem is that I have to deal with four points of views as opposed to one. That started a visual grammar and different techniques that we decided to move throughout the film. Connelly: I was so impressed by Matty and the way he worked. It was a totally different style of filmmaking than I had experienced. I had never done anything like that before.
Libatique: It was basically just a weight belt and a monopod stuck out. The effect was great and it spoke to another layer of subjectivity to get to.
That was the crux of the design angle on that movie and he was really excited about it. But I had not pitched on a movie before, so I had no visuals or anything. She basically had to do it in one take — we had to choreograph everything she did. Burstyn: And there was no rest. It was just, do it and do it at top speed. That was very challenging.
There were a lot of different technical things going on that I had never experienced before. I was panting by the time we finished. I remember him sending me a clip of the scene where Ellen Burstyn first takes the speed pills. We realized at that point we were in trouble. I had written a lot of stuff in advance, but in this hip-hopish vein.
When I started seeing the rough edit, we put the music to it, and nothing really latched on. Libatique: [Darren] came up with this idea of what would be called hip-hop montages, because of the beats that we cut them to. We came right on the heels of the height of MTV. As much as the quick cutting has been disparaged as time has gone on, in those small bits, it worked to convey imagery quickly.
It happens in a montage, then, you see the aftermath. Aronofsky: We even used it sometimes when [Sara] would check the mailbox. In the same way that we all check our mailboxes on our iPhones now for a little hit of dopamine.
Rabinowitz: So much of what everybody loves about the editing of Requiem for a Dream was baked into the script. The first time there was one of those micro and macro image montages, he explains what each shot is. BOOM, she pops one into the palm of her hand. And the second time he did it, he explained a lot less in the script.
Watson: The trap of a heroin movie is, you see people shooting up, right? Chinlund: It was important that we show these people as people with lives and creative output. Marion and her loft and all her dreams of a career in fashion, and Tyrone was a DJ and we had installed DJ equipment in his loft. It was a story about people and how easy it is for them to get derailed.
It was the responsibility of the sets to show the optimism, the potential of these characters against the darkness of the path it followed. I knew it had to be intense, and I knew by breaking the hip-hop montage for the first time on the actual insertion, and showing that to the audience, I was making a big statement.
The film sends all four of its main characters spiraling into despair as it builds toward its climax, but the most scarring sequence in the finale has to be the one in which Marion, desperate for a fix, shows up at what turns out to be a sex show for a crowd of hollering, bill-throwing men in suits. Watson: We basically shot [the sex show scene] in the very last night. We had a closed set. We had a lot of rules and regulations going into that. The women in the scene, they were strippers by profession.
They were very professional about it. Heather Litteer, Big Tim Party Girl: I was in the underground alternative cabaret scene already, doing burlesque, go-go dancing, indie films, all kinds of theater, Jackie Casting director Lori Eastside called me in and was telling me about this hot new director and who the cast was. Then she was explaining that the content was really illicit, so to make sure that we could do that.
Rabinowitz: I think Jennifer was only there relatively briefly, and they got those shots of her. But everybody was on their best behavior. Yeah, of course. Connelly: It was a scene that was important to the film.
Chinlund: We had been dressing the set all day. It was echoing through the canyons of the Upper East Side. I was so excited. Everybody was professional. We had a little talk and it was the personal information, and he had told me a name.
Rabinowitz: It was upsetting to me, how far he pushed the actors. Rabinowitz: We were just about done with the cutting, and he invited Jennifer to come to the cutting room and watch it.
Aronofsky: We got Selby to New York a few times [during shoots], towards the end of the film. He hung out. He had his own chair.
Something was off. It was Hubert Selby Jr. Aronofsky: There was always this idea that the film would start off wider and looser, and get tighter and tighter. At the beginning of the film, there are a lot of wide, landscape shots, and by the end we wanted it to be the size of a postage stamp. That last sequence, when all the stories intertwine and explode into misery, we really wanted to be somewhat mathematical, where even the shots were getting tighter in focal length — so less and less frames were happening with each shot.
Rabinowitz: We took a still frame from every image, from a certain point to the end, and we pasted them around the editing room. The first time you would get maybe 12 frames of each image. The second time you would get maybe one less. Each one was a few frames shorter. The ending just had no relief. The ramp-up was taking it as far as we possibly could to land on the three of them curled up in the fetal position.
Little clips of things that I did. Suddenly this piece of music just attached to the screen and what was going on. Rabinowitz: Clint Mansell and Brian Emrich, the composer and the sound designer, were on from preproduction.
So even as I was putting the film together for the first time, I was using the stuff that they had done. So this was an extraordinary thing. We could break it down that way. They did their own orchestrations from my demos. We went to Skywalker in San Francisco to record. The music is, in the best possible way, heavy-handed.
They were still doing what their artistic souls prompted them to do. In New York at the time, it should have cost 7 or 8. One thing we have learned was that your financial restrictions can force you to come up with creative solutions.
Chinlund: We were just giddy the whole time. That youthful exuberance and excitement and energy, I really do feel like that comes through in the movie, against such dark material. Requiem for a Dream caused a stir on the festival circuit — it premiered at Cannes, and then played the Toronto International Film Festival, where someone reportedly had to be taken away in an ambulance. Rather than cut the film, Artisan Entertainment agreed to release it unrated, though that would significantly limit the places in which it could play.
Watson: The first time I can remember showing it to people was at the midnight screening at Cannes. So all the actors, and all the people that came involved in the movie, we all sat together and watched this movie in this massive 3,person screening room. You could feel this electric feeling as we were watching it.
Aronofsky: I remember during the screening, one of my producers was sitting behind me, and as the film was descending into the hell that it becomes, he started laughing. Walk the red carpet, see the movie, and have the experience. I sat next to Hubert Selby Jr. Aronofsky: Then of course, we never got an R rating.
Watson: We had an appeal screening when they gave us an NC rating, and we tried to peer into a very murky world — the closed-door group of people that makes that decision. But on the positive side, controversy creates publicity. And so we definitely milked the publicity of having the NC rating as much as we could. It really did become a reference point for so many people in films, in commercials, in television, across the board.
It was a very trying experience. It was brutal at times. But Harry's philosophy is that drugs make things better. He should have this line tattooed on his chest. At the end, Harry takes this ideology to the extreme. In fact, he speaks this line right before injecting heroin right into his infected arm.
We have more to say about his arm in our " Symbols " page. Don't worry; we won't send you away unarmed. Too soon? The biggest question for every character in this movie is: why are they addicts?
Everyone has their own reasons, and they can be hard to pin down. Our best guess for Harry is that he uses drugs to avoid his emotions. He's not good at dealing with them. Marion often says, "I love you," to Harry, but he doesn't say it back. Instead, he says:. The most difficult emotion for Harry to cope with is guilt over his mother's loneliness.
Let's be real: Harry doesn't treat her right. A good son doesn't steal his mother's TV. A good son also calls every once in a while, and we doubt Harry is calling unless he needs something.
After Sara's confession that she's alone, Harry gets into a cab and cries. Harry has gotten deep into drugs, most recently with heroin. In order to sustain his habit, he has started selling drugs with his best friend Tyrone. The two of them have a plan to make a huge amount of money very quickly and then quit the hard life forever. The problem with users is that they have a hard time not using their own stash, cutting right into their profit margins — and clouding their judgment.
Profession… drug dealer. Harry never planned on being where he is. But drugs can do interesting things to people. Still, Harry has his eyes on the big prize. He and his girlfriend Marion plan to open a designer clothing store with their loot. Relationship Status… dating Marion Silver.
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