Darren Aronofskys The Fountain has been amazing experience for all involved, including me, when I got a chance to visit the set in early 2005. While I did get to walk on the famous tree ship set and feel that reality, I know that seeing the film will be a totally different experience. Now The Fountain graphic novel drawn by Kent Williams captures the powerful emotions of the piece.
Originally The Fountain was set to be a $90 million dollar movie starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. But after some complications the production was shut down and thought dead. Eventually the film started up again at half the budget with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, so the script had to be rewritten to accommodate that budget. Then the original script was then passed along through Vertigo to Kent Williams to illustrate.
The Fountain is a powerful moving story that goes back and forth between three time periods, ancient Mayan war, the present day which follows one doctor's desperate search for the cure for cancer and the far future through the vast exotic reaches of space.
Kent Williams is best known to the comic world for his collaboration with Walter and Louise Simonson on Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown and since then has done sporadic comic work. Now he mostly shows his poignant artwork in galleries all over the world.
Buy the graphic novel of The Fountain
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you working on today?
Kent Williams: Im working on a larger new painting for a future exhibition.
DRE: Wheres that exhibition going to be?
KW: Its going to be at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery here in Los Angeles. Its been my gallery for a number of years now.
DRE: What did you think when you got the call to do illustrate The Fountain?
KW: Well knowing that it was a screenplay from Darren [Aronofsky] I was interested. At the time I was pretty much set on not doing any larger graphic novel work. I had a page limit in my head that I didnt want to really go beyond. Of course this book goes well beyond that. Its about the largest book Ive done [laughs].
I set that plan aside and agreed to do the book. Primarily because of getting the chance to work with Darren and I also really enjoyed the script. After reading it, I really felt something for the material.
DRE: What did you know about The Fountain before you got involved?
KW: Oh nothing. I had not heard anything about it, so I was in the dark. Once I started speaking with Darren I got all the details of where it was and where it had been up to that point.
DRE: Had you seen Pi?
KW: Truthfully I had not seen Pi or Requiem for a Dream. I was aware of both films, but had never gotten around to seeing them. So I immediately ran out, bought the DVDs and watched them.
DRE: What did you think of them?
KW: I loved them. Im probably more of a fan of Requiem than Pi. But I really did love them both.
DRE: I like Requiem much better than Pi. From seeing Pi, I knew he had amazing amounts of talent but I wanted to see the next one.
KW: Good, were on the same page then.
DRE: How much back and forth was there between you and Darren?
KW: A fair amount but probably not as much as there would have been if we were living in the same city. We could have popped over to each others place and just sat down in the middle of the floor and gone over stuff more casually. But still, we had our regular conversations on the phone. I would usually wait until I got a good batch of 15 pages or so done and send them as a group every couple weeks.
DRE: Are you considered the co-creator of the graphic novel?
KW: Ultimately its Darren and Ari Handels story and screenplay. I did adapt the screenplay as I saw fit to make it work within the graphic novel medium. Then of course after I did the adaptation, Darren went in and adapted his material to accommodate my translation.
DRE: What kind of materials were provided to you? Was it a lot of stuff from the first attempted shoot or was it from the books that Darren and Ari l had?
KW: They basically said that their whole library was open to my use. I could get whatever I needed from all the material that they gathered. Initially they offered to show me all the production art that had been created for the film at that point. At first I didnt want to see that stuff because I didnt want to be influenced by what other artists had already generated. However, when I went to New York to have my meeting with Darren, he was anxious to show it to me. He was very excited about it and started pulling out stuff. So I saw a certain amount of the material upfront and then on top of that he let me borrow all kinds of props like helmets and swords. Matter of fact, I came back with a truckload of all of this stuff that filled my studio for the whole time I was working on the project.
DRE: Did that stuff help put you in the mindset?
KW: Yes it did but also it made the prep work for that part of the book a lot easier. They were fairly authentic reproductions of Mayan weapons and artifacts from that period of time. Also Spanish armor, shields and that sort of thing. It certainly was a big help to have that stuff.
DRE: Did you totally understand the screenplay or did you need to have Darren explain certain things?
KW: I felt I got it right out of the starting gate so I didnt really need a lot of explanation. Im a big fan of storytelling that is not always so literal. I like a certain amount of ambiguity in my stories and in my artwork. I like having that room for my own interpretation.
DRE: Who did you feel you were servicing with this project, the material, Darren, the audience?
KW: Ultimately I try to make work that I would like. At the same time, I knew that Darren was going to see the material and I wanted him to be pleased with it. But that didnt influence me but so much. I have my own point of view, my own vision of things and Im pretty much a diehard to achieve that vision. I cant really say that I take what the audience is going to feel into account.
DRE: Did you feel a connection to the story right away or was it only through the drawing that it became personal to you?
KW: Ive read a number of screenplays in the past and generally speaking screenplays dont grab me. I get through them but they dont carry me like a novel does. Im always aware that Im reading a screenplay. I guess because of the descriptive captioning and that sort of thing. But I have to say once I made it halfway into The Fountain, I got lost in that world almost as if I was reading a novel and by the end I was truly moved by it.
The core of the story is pretty universal, its a love story. Most of us have dealt with love, the loss of it or possible loss of it. In that way I think we can all connect with it. I was in the middle of some pretty dramatic life changes myself at that time and the story was a lot about finding closure, accepting death or at least accepting a great loss. So it paralleled a lot of what I was going through at the time.
DRE: Was it a divorce?
KW: Yes. Not a very good time in my life. It pretty much tied in with what I was dealing with. Whether it served as a catalyst for me to accept my situation, I dont know. I know that through the making of art, supposedly you can use that for self healing, growth and finding your way through it all. Ive certainly done paintings over the last couple years that relate to what Ive been going through. I feel compelled to address some of these issues in my work, but I dont have an answer yet. I dont think Im far enough on the other side to know if it helped me through the whole event.
DRE: Have you seen a rough cut of The Fountain yet?
KW: No, I havent. Being here in LA and Darren in New York, I didnt have the opportunity. I know they showed a rough cut to a group and if I was there, I would have been able to see it. Ive only seen a total of about 15 minutes of footage. But I had finished most of the book by the time I saw that.
DRE: What did you think when you saw the footage?
KW: I was blown away. I thought I would like it but it was so much more than I imagined. I went to the film set in Montreal last February while they were shooting and Ive got to hand it to Darren, he really promoted the book. He had shown it to everyone and gave it his absolute full attention. A lot of the people he was introducing me to had seen the material and expressed their like for the work. So I was feeling pretty high from it all and then I saw the footage. I was overwhelmed but at the same time my heart sank, because it felt so much more than what I felt that the graphic novel could ever have done. Afterwards I had to go back to my hotel room and digest everything. The difference between the two mediums was made so clear to me.
The next day I went into the tree ship set for the first time and I had the strangest feeling because it was all so familiar to me. I had lived with that for so long already so I had imagined walking around in that space for the last year or more. It was so much the way that I had drawn it in the graphic novel. It was a very special feeling that I had that day.
DRE: Your artwork is very emotional, but it is difficult to compete with reality you can walk on. But I honestly dont think theres going to be much of a comparison between the two. Your artwork is more about the capturing of the emotions of the moment and a movie is more about presenting a reality.
KW: That makes sense. But hitting that reality face on after being high on finishing the book and getting that attention humbled me a lot.
DRE: I know you cant use Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weiszs real faces without the whole legal thing but the characters in the graphic novel dont look unlike those stars. How did you decide on their look?
KW: One of my stipulations up front was that I didnt want to do a movie adaptation. I wanted to take the screenplay and interpret it as I saw fit. I didnt want to have to deal with anything like likenesses or approvals or what a character should or shouldnt look like. Luckily Darren and I were pretty much on the same page with that. So I made the decisions on what I wanted the characters to look like, what they wore and that sort of thing. I think that it fell pretty much in line with Darrens vision. As for details, Tomas was a Spaniard so I just automatically pictured him with darker hair.
DRE: Most of the key creative team on the set said that the tree ship was the most difficult set to visualize and create, was that true for you as well?
KW: Technically it makes sense that the tree ship set would be the most difficult. For me it wasnt because thats the beauty of comics. Those things that are technically complicated to create on film are not necessarily the case with drawing or painting. The most difficult stuff to deal with was the historical stuff like making sure that the Conquistadors uniforms and the Mayan material were more or less accurate. Dont get me wrong, I didnt get caught up in every detail but it still had to reflect what things were like at that time. Of course getting those props from Darren when I set up my model shoots made it much easier.
DRE: Have you ever been part of anything so secretive before?
KW: [laughs] I guess not. When I got the screenplay every page was stamped, For Kent Williamss eyes only or something like that. That certainly was new to me.
DRE: I just realized that you probably met Hugh, did he know that you drew Havok and Wolverine: Meltdown?
KW: I did get the chance to speak and hang out with him a little bit on set but I never got around to talking with him about Havok and Wolverine or that I even had anything to do with Wolverine in the past. Truthfully I dont know if he knows that or not.
DRE: It isnt that your Wolverine was ideal for a movie, but it just popped in my head, Oh, thats right, this guy did one of the definitive Wolverine books. [laughs]
KW: Oh yeah, its a lot of the way things come around in life. I wouldnt have guessed years ago when I was working on that book that Hugh Jackman would not only play Wolverine but would also be the main actor in The Fountain.
DRE: Do you do much comic work anymore?
KW: No, but also Ive never done a whole lot. If you look at my career in comics, its always been very selective and limited. Im always working on something but I bide my time to pursue other artistic paths. In the past few years my main focus has become my personal or gallery work. I do some illustration work for Playboy, Readers Digest and that sort of thing.
DRE: Do you get pitched a lot of comics?
KW: Yes and no. In a lot of cases people have sort of given up so I dont get as many calls as I used to. But I do get the offers and occasionally something comes along that I find interesting. Before The Fountain, Id picked up a graphic novel that I had started a number of years ago called Kokoro. When I finish it will be a 96 to 100 page book. Im about halfway through that now.
DRE: Whats Kokoro about?
KW: Basically its an adoption story. It is wrapped around the life of this American couple who want to have a child. The story takes place primarily in Venice. To tell a little more, theres a certain amount of Japanese mythology and lore wrapped into the story in a surreal type way. I workshopped it at The Sundance Institute so it will be a screenplay as well as a graphic novel.
DRE: Would it be something youd like to direct?
KW: It would be great to direct it but its not a necessity. With the right director I would love to see it get made.
DRE: Did you get the chance to see MirrorMask?
KW: I did.
DRE: I thought that recreated Dave McKeans work really well onscreen.
KW: Yes it was a really beautiful piece of work and it reflected Dave from the beginning down through the credit roll.
DRE: If you were able to direct Kokoro, Im not saying you would go as far as Dave did, but would you want to make it look like one of your paintings?
KW: I think that the reality based parts of the story would be more straight up and not overly designed. But then the surreal parts of the story would take on more of the qualities of my paintings.
DRE: For a guy with your style, how did you end up doing comic books in the first place?
KW: It really wasnt my goal. I went to college in New York and I had some interest in comics. Then while I was still in college I met Archie Goodwin who ran Epic at Marvel and started doing short stories for the anthology magazine Epic Illustrated. In a lot of ways it became my work study and I probably did 9 or 10 short stories for them. Then I stepped in for Jon Muth to do a fill-in issue of Moonshadow. The idea of doing a full 30 page comic was unfathomable to me but at the time but I thought I would give it a go. I dont know how I managed to get through it.
DRE: How old are your sons?
KW: I have two boys. The oldest one is Kerig who is ten and the youngest one is Ian whos nine.
DRE: Do they paint or draw?
KW: Yes and theyre not so bad. They havent chosen it as a career yet [laughs]. They draw in very different ways. Kerigs drawings are very energetic with a lot of explosions and action. Ians drawings are more careful and observed. He actually looks at things and draws them.
DRE: Have you seen any Kent Williams related tattoos?
KW: I havent. Ive been asked to do some which Ive not done.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Originally The Fountain was set to be a $90 million dollar movie starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. But after some complications the production was shut down and thought dead. Eventually the film started up again at half the budget with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, so the script had to be rewritten to accommodate that budget. Then the original script was then passed along through Vertigo to Kent Williams to illustrate.
The Fountain is a powerful moving story that goes back and forth between three time periods, ancient Mayan war, the present day which follows one doctor's desperate search for the cure for cancer and the far future through the vast exotic reaches of space.
Kent Williams is best known to the comic world for his collaboration with Walter and Louise Simonson on Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown and since then has done sporadic comic work. Now he mostly shows his poignant artwork in galleries all over the world.
Buy the graphic novel of The Fountain
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you working on today?
Kent Williams: Im working on a larger new painting for a future exhibition.
DRE: Wheres that exhibition going to be?
KW: Its going to be at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery here in Los Angeles. Its been my gallery for a number of years now.
DRE: What did you think when you got the call to do illustrate The Fountain?
KW: Well knowing that it was a screenplay from Darren [Aronofsky] I was interested. At the time I was pretty much set on not doing any larger graphic novel work. I had a page limit in my head that I didnt want to really go beyond. Of course this book goes well beyond that. Its about the largest book Ive done [laughs].
I set that plan aside and agreed to do the book. Primarily because of getting the chance to work with Darren and I also really enjoyed the script. After reading it, I really felt something for the material.
DRE: What did you know about The Fountain before you got involved?
KW: Oh nothing. I had not heard anything about it, so I was in the dark. Once I started speaking with Darren I got all the details of where it was and where it had been up to that point.
DRE: Had you seen Pi?
KW: Truthfully I had not seen Pi or Requiem for a Dream. I was aware of both films, but had never gotten around to seeing them. So I immediately ran out, bought the DVDs and watched them.
DRE: What did you think of them?
KW: I loved them. Im probably more of a fan of Requiem than Pi. But I really did love them both.
DRE: I like Requiem much better than Pi. From seeing Pi, I knew he had amazing amounts of talent but I wanted to see the next one.
KW: Good, were on the same page then.
DRE: How much back and forth was there between you and Darren?
KW: A fair amount but probably not as much as there would have been if we were living in the same city. We could have popped over to each others place and just sat down in the middle of the floor and gone over stuff more casually. But still, we had our regular conversations on the phone. I would usually wait until I got a good batch of 15 pages or so done and send them as a group every couple weeks.
DRE: Are you considered the co-creator of the graphic novel?
KW: Ultimately its Darren and Ari Handels story and screenplay. I did adapt the screenplay as I saw fit to make it work within the graphic novel medium. Then of course after I did the adaptation, Darren went in and adapted his material to accommodate my translation.
DRE: What kind of materials were provided to you? Was it a lot of stuff from the first attempted shoot or was it from the books that Darren and Ari l had?
KW: They basically said that their whole library was open to my use. I could get whatever I needed from all the material that they gathered. Initially they offered to show me all the production art that had been created for the film at that point. At first I didnt want to see that stuff because I didnt want to be influenced by what other artists had already generated. However, when I went to New York to have my meeting with Darren, he was anxious to show it to me. He was very excited about it and started pulling out stuff. So I saw a certain amount of the material upfront and then on top of that he let me borrow all kinds of props like helmets and swords. Matter of fact, I came back with a truckload of all of this stuff that filled my studio for the whole time I was working on the project.
DRE: Did that stuff help put you in the mindset?
KW: Yes it did but also it made the prep work for that part of the book a lot easier. They were fairly authentic reproductions of Mayan weapons and artifacts from that period of time. Also Spanish armor, shields and that sort of thing. It certainly was a big help to have that stuff.
DRE: Did you totally understand the screenplay or did you need to have Darren explain certain things?
KW: I felt I got it right out of the starting gate so I didnt really need a lot of explanation. Im a big fan of storytelling that is not always so literal. I like a certain amount of ambiguity in my stories and in my artwork. I like having that room for my own interpretation.
DRE: Who did you feel you were servicing with this project, the material, Darren, the audience?
KW: Ultimately I try to make work that I would like. At the same time, I knew that Darren was going to see the material and I wanted him to be pleased with it. But that didnt influence me but so much. I have my own point of view, my own vision of things and Im pretty much a diehard to achieve that vision. I cant really say that I take what the audience is going to feel into account.
DRE: Did you feel a connection to the story right away or was it only through the drawing that it became personal to you?
KW: Ive read a number of screenplays in the past and generally speaking screenplays dont grab me. I get through them but they dont carry me like a novel does. Im always aware that Im reading a screenplay. I guess because of the descriptive captioning and that sort of thing. But I have to say once I made it halfway into The Fountain, I got lost in that world almost as if I was reading a novel and by the end I was truly moved by it.
The core of the story is pretty universal, its a love story. Most of us have dealt with love, the loss of it or possible loss of it. In that way I think we can all connect with it. I was in the middle of some pretty dramatic life changes myself at that time and the story was a lot about finding closure, accepting death or at least accepting a great loss. So it paralleled a lot of what I was going through at the time.
DRE: Was it a divorce?
KW: Yes. Not a very good time in my life. It pretty much tied in with what I was dealing with. Whether it served as a catalyst for me to accept my situation, I dont know. I know that through the making of art, supposedly you can use that for self healing, growth and finding your way through it all. Ive certainly done paintings over the last couple years that relate to what Ive been going through. I feel compelled to address some of these issues in my work, but I dont have an answer yet. I dont think Im far enough on the other side to know if it helped me through the whole event.
DRE: Have you seen a rough cut of The Fountain yet?
KW: No, I havent. Being here in LA and Darren in New York, I didnt have the opportunity. I know they showed a rough cut to a group and if I was there, I would have been able to see it. Ive only seen a total of about 15 minutes of footage. But I had finished most of the book by the time I saw that.
DRE: What did you think when you saw the footage?
KW: I was blown away. I thought I would like it but it was so much more than I imagined. I went to the film set in Montreal last February while they were shooting and Ive got to hand it to Darren, he really promoted the book. He had shown it to everyone and gave it his absolute full attention. A lot of the people he was introducing me to had seen the material and expressed their like for the work. So I was feeling pretty high from it all and then I saw the footage. I was overwhelmed but at the same time my heart sank, because it felt so much more than what I felt that the graphic novel could ever have done. Afterwards I had to go back to my hotel room and digest everything. The difference between the two mediums was made so clear to me.
The next day I went into the tree ship set for the first time and I had the strangest feeling because it was all so familiar to me. I had lived with that for so long already so I had imagined walking around in that space for the last year or more. It was so much the way that I had drawn it in the graphic novel. It was a very special feeling that I had that day.
DRE: Your artwork is very emotional, but it is difficult to compete with reality you can walk on. But I honestly dont think theres going to be much of a comparison between the two. Your artwork is more about the capturing of the emotions of the moment and a movie is more about presenting a reality.
KW: That makes sense. But hitting that reality face on after being high on finishing the book and getting that attention humbled me a lot.
DRE: I know you cant use Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weiszs real faces without the whole legal thing but the characters in the graphic novel dont look unlike those stars. How did you decide on their look?
KW: One of my stipulations up front was that I didnt want to do a movie adaptation. I wanted to take the screenplay and interpret it as I saw fit. I didnt want to have to deal with anything like likenesses or approvals or what a character should or shouldnt look like. Luckily Darren and I were pretty much on the same page with that. So I made the decisions on what I wanted the characters to look like, what they wore and that sort of thing. I think that it fell pretty much in line with Darrens vision. As for details, Tomas was a Spaniard so I just automatically pictured him with darker hair.
DRE: Most of the key creative team on the set said that the tree ship was the most difficult set to visualize and create, was that true for you as well?
KW: Technically it makes sense that the tree ship set would be the most difficult. For me it wasnt because thats the beauty of comics. Those things that are technically complicated to create on film are not necessarily the case with drawing or painting. The most difficult stuff to deal with was the historical stuff like making sure that the Conquistadors uniforms and the Mayan material were more or less accurate. Dont get me wrong, I didnt get caught up in every detail but it still had to reflect what things were like at that time. Of course getting those props from Darren when I set up my model shoots made it much easier.
DRE: Have you ever been part of anything so secretive before?
KW: [laughs] I guess not. When I got the screenplay every page was stamped, For Kent Williamss eyes only or something like that. That certainly was new to me.
DRE: I just realized that you probably met Hugh, did he know that you drew Havok and Wolverine: Meltdown?
KW: I did get the chance to speak and hang out with him a little bit on set but I never got around to talking with him about Havok and Wolverine or that I even had anything to do with Wolverine in the past. Truthfully I dont know if he knows that or not.
DRE: It isnt that your Wolverine was ideal for a movie, but it just popped in my head, Oh, thats right, this guy did one of the definitive Wolverine books. [laughs]
KW: Oh yeah, its a lot of the way things come around in life. I wouldnt have guessed years ago when I was working on that book that Hugh Jackman would not only play Wolverine but would also be the main actor in The Fountain.
DRE: Do you do much comic work anymore?
KW: No, but also Ive never done a whole lot. If you look at my career in comics, its always been very selective and limited. Im always working on something but I bide my time to pursue other artistic paths. In the past few years my main focus has become my personal or gallery work. I do some illustration work for Playboy, Readers Digest and that sort of thing.
DRE: Do you get pitched a lot of comics?
KW: Yes and no. In a lot of cases people have sort of given up so I dont get as many calls as I used to. But I do get the offers and occasionally something comes along that I find interesting. Before The Fountain, Id picked up a graphic novel that I had started a number of years ago called Kokoro. When I finish it will be a 96 to 100 page book. Im about halfway through that now.
DRE: Whats Kokoro about?
KW: Basically its an adoption story. It is wrapped around the life of this American couple who want to have a child. The story takes place primarily in Venice. To tell a little more, theres a certain amount of Japanese mythology and lore wrapped into the story in a surreal type way. I workshopped it at The Sundance Institute so it will be a screenplay as well as a graphic novel.
DRE: Would it be something youd like to direct?
KW: It would be great to direct it but its not a necessity. With the right director I would love to see it get made.
DRE: Did you get the chance to see MirrorMask?
KW: I did.
DRE: I thought that recreated Dave McKeans work really well onscreen.
KW: Yes it was a really beautiful piece of work and it reflected Dave from the beginning down through the credit roll.
DRE: If you were able to direct Kokoro, Im not saying you would go as far as Dave did, but would you want to make it look like one of your paintings?
KW: I think that the reality based parts of the story would be more straight up and not overly designed. But then the surreal parts of the story would take on more of the qualities of my paintings.
DRE: For a guy with your style, how did you end up doing comic books in the first place?
KW: It really wasnt my goal. I went to college in New York and I had some interest in comics. Then while I was still in college I met Archie Goodwin who ran Epic at Marvel and started doing short stories for the anthology magazine Epic Illustrated. In a lot of ways it became my work study and I probably did 9 or 10 short stories for them. Then I stepped in for Jon Muth to do a fill-in issue of Moonshadow. The idea of doing a full 30 page comic was unfathomable to me but at the time but I thought I would give it a go. I dont know how I managed to get through it.
DRE: How old are your sons?
KW: I have two boys. The oldest one is Kerig who is ten and the youngest one is Ian whos nine.
DRE: Do they paint or draw?
KW: Yes and theyre not so bad. They havent chosen it as a career yet [laughs]. They draw in very different ways. Kerigs drawings are very energetic with a lot of explosions and action. Ians drawings are more careful and observed. He actually looks at things and draws them.
DRE: Have you seen any Kent Williams related tattoos?
KW: I havent. Ive been asked to do some which Ive not done.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
courtneyriot:
Darren Aronofskys The Fountain has been amazing experience for all involved, including me, when I got a chance to visit the set in early 2005. While I did get...