‘Requiem for a Dream’ director talks GTA IV as a moment that mattered in 2008

OK, so based on the sales numbers, I knew that gamers weren’t the only ones playing Grand Theft Auto IV this year. But imagine my surprise when I saw that Darren Aronofsky, director of Requiem for a Dream and the upcoming The Wrestler, used Rockstar’s game as an example when talking to the New York Times for a recent “Moments That Mattered” piece.

“Looking over Niko’s shoulder up at the virtual parachute jump in Grand Theft Auto IV‘s version of Coney Island, grabbing a dollar hot dog off the boardwalk to get my health back, then leaping into a bullet-hole-riddled Hummer and smashing through my childhood neighborhood, flying over sand dunes on Manhattan Beach and finally drowning in the sea off Brighton Beach,” wrote Aronofsky, breaking some imaginary “run-on sentence about videogames” record.

He adds: “Man, I wish they made this game when I was a teenager.”

It’s refreshing to hear Aronofsky, not necessarily what you’d call a typical gamer (he’s 39 yearsold and wrote Pi, for Christ’s sake), speaking so reverentially about a videogame. Requiem for a Dream was already one of my favorite films, like, ever. But now I clearly see that the dude gets it, and I’m getting ready to set up tents to catch the first midnight showing of The Wrestler when it hits theaters on January 16.

[Thanks, Russ]