Disappointed that the DVD release of Darren Aronofsky’s time-twisting love story The Fountain didn’t have a director’s commentary track like the releases for his other two films?
Don’t worry. Aronofsky was too. It seems that in light of the film’s poor box-office performance, the folks in charge decided that they didn’t want to invest time or money into any special features for the DVD. It was thought that a commentary wouldn’t help sell more copies of the DVD.
Rather than fight them on their decision, Aronofsky embraced it. If a commentary track was not going to inspire folks to shell out their hard-earned cash, he might as well just give it away. And that’s what he is doing over at his website. Just click on this link and synch up their audio track with your DVD player.
This is just the latest in a growing wave of directors making their own commentaries and releasing them via the internet. The idea seems to have started last summer when Clerks II director Kevin Smith announced plans for a downloadable commentary track that people could take with them to the theaters and listen to on an iPod while watching the film. Although the idea was scrapped and the commentary moved to the DVD release, it seems to have inspired some other filmmakers to do similar recordings. More recently, writer/producers Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo have made available commentaries for various episodes of their old Flash and Sentinel tv series. Even former Mystery Science Theater 3000 star Mike Nelson has used the idea for his own series of RiffTrax.
Via Cinematical.
