Ari Aster Says His Dad Suggested He Stop Writing His Own Movies After ‘Beau Is Afraid’ Flopped
Audiences looking to relive the messy, violent, paranoid emotions of mid-2020 America need look no further than Ari Aster’s “Eddington.” The COVID-era western, currently in theaters, marks Aster’s fourth film with A24 — and his fourth feature overall.
But according to Aster’s dad, he should’ve stopped writing after his third.
With his “Eddington” press run winding down, Aster visited the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast to speak with the comic and actor about his latest film and career. Around an hour into the podcast, conversation turned to “Beau Is Afraid,” Aster’s divisive third feature.
The film, which uses abrasiveness and discomfort as weapons in a three-hour odyssey of anxiety, performed poorly at the box office and saw mixed results critically. Near the end of the podcast, Maron asked Aster what his mother thought of his work, considering films like “Beau” and “Hereditary” in particular examine dark attachments between mother and child. He said his mother likes his movies, despite their intense themes and imagery. His father, my contrast, suggested that Aster stop writing his own movies after the hyper-personal “Beau Is Afraid” flopped.
“She’s very supportive. I think, you know, certain things she likes more than others … I’m lucky in that sense,” Aster said. “When ‘Beau Is Afraid’ flopped, my dad did tell me, ‘Uh, maybe you shouldn’t write the next one.’ He might’ve been right.”
You can listen to the full podcast below.
Strained relationships with parents, particularly mothers, appear heavily throughout Aster’s filmography. This is especially relevant in “Beau Is Afraid,” a movie centered around Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) and the constant paranoia embedded within him as a result of his mother.
At the start of his career, Aster quickly rose as a cash cow for A24. While his debut feature, “Hereditary,” made nearly $90 million on a budget of $10 million, his follow-up, “Midsommar,” brought in nearly $50 million off of a budget of $9 million.
Box office returns soured on “Beau Is Afraid,” however, after A24 gambled on a three-hour “nightmare comedy” with an estimated price tag of $35 million. The movie made just over a third of that at the box office.
“I was pretty sad that it was, like, so maligned,” Aster told Maron. “There are a lot of people who reached out to tell me that they loved it, and I really, that helped, but yeah, no, it was a bummer because it was a huge, you know, it lost money, and critically, I wouldn’t say it was, like, reviled, but it was definitely, like, there was no consensus whatsoever.”
Reflecting on its success, Aster noted that there are aspects of “Beau Is Afraid” he might have toned down if he could do it over again. He called certain elements of his comedy “exhausting” and “deflating” by design.
“All these things you take away after you release a film and you’re like, OK, it’s out of my hands now, I can’t really avoid people’s reactions, responses,” Aster said. “It’s like, you know, you kind of learn something … No matter what the response, you’re proud of for sticking with [decisions you made], and then certain things where you’re like, ‘Eh, I’m not sure if it was like worth losing that much of the audience for that decision.'”
“It’s a balance,” Maron said.
“Yeah, like, I think I ejected, like, a number of people from the theater,” Aster said. “I could’ve used them.”
Listen to the filmmaker’s full “WTF With Marc Maron” interview in the embed above.
The post Ari Aster Says His Dad Suggested He Stop Writing His Own Movies After ‘Beau Is Afraid’ Flopped appeared first on TheWrap.
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