The boring question to ask the talent is “What attracted you to this project?” That's because the answer is usually, “the script”. Unless you're talking to Immortals director Tarsem Singh.
“In the beginning I saw nothing interesting in it. I read the script. It really was nothing like what it has ended up as in the end. I just said, ‘It’s got gods, it’s got Greeks.’ None of that really interested me.”
We're guessing something must have peaked his interest, given that he took the directing gig.
“I’ve been an atheist since I was nine years old. And my mum is really religious, so we have a strange relationship. But if my mother was right, what would be the reason that the gods could let anything bad happen in the world?
"I took two or three months and I came up with a reason that I thought was enough and I went with it: if there is a God he’s definitely not benevolent. We should mean less to him than ants. And if there is a God or there are gods they would value, more than anything, free will,” he explained, getting a bit metaphysical.
Then he decided to elaborate using an example we'd like to file under Too Much Information.
“If a God showed up tomorrow, we’d go, ‘Oh my fucking God, he’s amazing’ and our free will would be compromised. The example I always give is, I’d have a very hard time taking a Barely Legal magazine and masturbating in a bathroom if I knew that Jesus could walk in.
"Your true nature doesn’t come out. So the gods let you do what you want because free will would be compromised if they showed up at the White House saying, ‘Take us to your leader',” Singh said.
How does all of this end with him directing a film based on a script he originally hated? Keep up people.
“When I came to the script, it was like, ‘Theseus goes to a door and there’s a hundred-headed monster there and Theseus fires on it.’ I said, ‘I don’t know how the fuck to do that. But if I can put this theme in, I’ll put my take on it. It’ll have my DNA.’ Relativity went, ‘Brilliant.’ Or maybe they were thinking, ‘How the fuck is he gonna do it?’ One of those two. And they left me alone. We got to make the film we wanted to make.”
