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I thought the soundtrack was unbelievable. Can you talk about how you found the music and how that played into telling the movie?

It was again, as I said earlier, contrasting. I knew we were going to have to find different angles. If you did a smooth soundtrack that just confirmed the tone, it would be terrible. You’d have to break it up and be jagged really. I don’t like films that settle. I feel that they should be constantly surprising and challenging rather than toned, because I’d just fall asleep personally.

As an audience, we all have a collective memory of songs, and they all mean things to us, and sometimes you use them and they confirm that meaning and you are like, “Yeah,” and other times you go, “Oh!” You see it more ironically.

Is this story more about man or nature?

A lot of people say this story is of extraordinary self, individual courage, and self-sufficiency. I don’t think it’s true at all, and I never did. Right from when I first read the book, I thought that Aron was an incredible individualist. He is completely self-sufficient. He runs marathons in the desert, he goes on his own, he likes beating everybody else. He’s that typical example of the complete heroic individual – me.

And Nature stops him – BANG (punches table). Nature says, “Okay, unique individual. Get out of this now." And he can’t. All his power. All that strength he’s got. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t really drink. He’s at the absolute pinnacle. But nothing. Can’t do anything. It’s only when he learns where he belongs in a chain, which is parenthood, that he also learns that he’s been careless about people’s affection for him. He hasn’t returned phone calls. That girl who loved him, he treats her just casually. He now realizes that there is something much bigger than supreme individualism. There is a commonality that bonds us all together that is amazing and much more powerful than spiritually, personally. It’s something I deeply believe and try to convey in the film. That he literally swims back to people at the end.

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