‘The Nines’ Writer-Director John August Is Cool With Your Not Understanding His Movie

As a successful screenwriter, John August earns top dollar scripting easy-to-follow blockbusters like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Charlie’s Angels movies. But it’s okay, the 37-year-old August told us, if people don’t understand his directorial debut, The Nines, a labyrinthine dream fantasy starring Ryan Reynolds as a similar character in three interweaving stories: “A friend of mine who is a video-game designer said, ‘John, it’s like you took your head and smashed it against a wall and this movie is the brain splatter that’s left.’ I agreed with him. The movie is my brain splatter on the screen.�

To fund the film, August hit up some wealthier friends and colleagues, instead of a movie studio, which gave him total creative freedom. But comparisons to another “director’s vision,� Darren Aronofsky’s much-maligned time-travel fantasy The Fountain, make August laugh. “All the stories I read about the failure of The Fountain had to do with how much money it cost versus how much money it made,� he said. “My movie did not cost much because everyone worked for nothing, and I think with independent films, the question should never be, ‘Oh my God, what if we don’t make money?’�

Newmarket Films releases The Nines in New York and Los Angeles today, and right now, they’re probably thinking, Oh my God, what if we don’t make money? —Steve Ramos