number that will explain all of nature. Re-
quiem for a Dream profiles a mother-son pair
of junkies spiraling out of control. The Foun-
tain charts the search for eternal life across
three separate eras. The Wrestler takes that
fatal leap into the ring alongside a man who
puts fame ahead of family. And now, with
the director's latest, Black Swan shows how
one ballerina's pursuit of artistic perfection
leads to her own mental unraveling. Con-
sidering the subject matter that drives him, it
should come as no surprise that Aronofsky is
more than a little obsessive himself.
set in the world of ballet. He developed the
idea with three different writers -- Andres
Heinz, John McLaughlin and Mark Heyman
-- with a specific star in mind, approaching
Natalie Portman about the project before
making his second film. A decade later, the
project would finally crystallize in his head.
thinking back to 2000. "I always wanted to
do something set in the ballet world because
my sister was a ballet dancer," he says, but
for a whole range of reasons, he could never
crack how to tell a story in that milieu. As the
years passed, he remembers Portman saying
to him, "I'm getting too old to play a dancer.
You better hurry up."
portunity in a spec script called The Under-
study, which had been acquired by producer
Mike Medavoy's Phoenix Pictures. Though
The Understudy provided the skeleton and
many of the key ideas for Black Swan, it
would take several years and a page one
rewrite from Heyman before Aronofsky felt
ready to step behind the camera.
actress, not a ballerina, who undergoes this
process," Heinz explains. "It was still cen-
tered around a performance in that it was
and through the pressure of the perform-
ance, coupled with her unstable mind, she
had this psychological breakdown."