noah“I was upset — of course,” the director says of Paramount testing alternate versions of the $125 million epic as he and the studio break their silence on efforts to appease a small but vocal segment of the faith-based audience: “Those people can be noisy.”

When Darren Aronofsky was a 13-year old in Brooklyn, he had one of those unforgettable teachers. Mrs. Fried dressed in pink and drove a pink Mustang; Aronofsky says she was “magical.” When she assigned his English class to write about peace, Aronofsky produced a poem about the dove that wings its way to Noah aboard the ark in the Bible. When the poem won a United Nations contest, it sparked Aronofsky’s nascent faith in his creative powers.

More than three decades later, the 44-year-old director is completing his epic take on the Noah story, a project he’s contemplated ever since he made his breakout indie film Pi in 1998. At that time, he says, he talked to producer Lynda Obst about the idea, prompting her to ask, “Do you realize what you’re getting into?”…

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