NEW YORK – Darren Aronofsky, the award-winning director, producer and screenwriter behind movies like “Black Swan,” “Noah” and “Requiem for a Dream,” visited his Coney Island alma mater, Mark Twain Intermediate College, on Thursday.
He was greeted by a standing ovation of eighth graders in a packed auditorium on Neptune Avenue.
“Nice educators, nice academics. A number of the greatest academics I’ve ever had,” Aronofsky informed CBS2’s Hannah Kliger.
It was not his first go to again; he was already induced into the varsity’s corridor of fame a number of years in the past. This time, he got here to speak about his new e book, “Monster Membership,” co-authored along with his writing associate and buddy, movie producer Ari Handel.
“They’d a lot vitality and enthusiasm and expertise. That is the nicely spring,” Handel stated of the scholars.
“Once I began engaged on this e book,” Aronofsky defined, “my time right here at Mark Twain was one thing that basically impressed me to kind of carry again to life.”
The warmly welcomed duo signed copies and took questions from the longer term era of movers and shakers.
“It is really actually cool as a result of I get perception a few well-known individual’s life in Mark Twain,” stated eighth grader Katie Alfred.
“I am extra impressed to work on myself and what I actually wish to do sooner or later,” added Elene Surguladze, additionally in eighth grade.
The college’s drama college students even placed on a efficiency of an excerpt of the e book, scrambling to get it collectively in the course of the first full week of college.
“It was a really thrilling piece to place collectively,” stated drama instructor Peter Decaro, standing along with his college students after the efficiency.
The children do not should go far to see the inspiration for the e book as a result of it is set in Coney Island. Drawing from the wealthy historical past of the individuals’s playground, Aronofsky says it is a story about childhood, creativeness and alter.
The college’s principal, Karen Ditolla, says she hopes that college students who see an enormous Hollywood identify who got here from their world may have a stronger drive to succeed.
“Clearly, we’ve had an incredible affect on Darren Aronofsky as a center schooler, therefore the truth that he wrote a e book about us and he continues to return again. So schooling actually, actually is a big drive,” Ditolla stated.
A kids’s e book is a brand new enterprise for the tenured director who principally labored on psychological movies for an older viewers. However for this viewers, it was a reminder that they, too, can dream massive.
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