(SciFi) Tarsem Singh's feature-film directorial debut, The Cell, doesn't open until Aug. 18, but he already finds himself on the defensive for his sometimes shocking SF vision. "I'm just hearing [about the outcry] today!" Singh said during a press briefing this week. "I had better get some preparation ready, because I've heard that today from three people. I knew there would be a little bit of a problem, but hey."

Singh - a native of India who has won awards for music videos (REM's Losing My Religion) and television commercials (Nike, Levis)--said his goal was to entertain and create a larger-than-life movie, not necessarily to shock audiences. But, he added, he was prepared to do so. "If, to make it bigger than life, I needed to shock, [then] yes," Singh told SCI FI Wire.

Singh described The Cell--in which a psychologist played by Jennifer Lopez enters the mind of a serial killer played by Vincent D'Onofrio--as "theatrical" and operatic. The film contains scenes of torture, evisceration and animal dismemberment, and features one character suspended from hooks and another drowning in a glass room filled with water. The Cell mixes these images with others of hallucinatory beauty.

"I remember when I came on, the first thing that I was told, right in that chair, [was,] 'Make us a dark film.' I said, 'You got your man!' And that was it," Singh recalled. "If I'm making a film, I'm making a film about entertainment for adults. There's very little entertainment for adults that hasn't got to do with sex these days. ... [The Cell is] not made for children. Are adults not allowed to have fun ...?"

But, Singh added, he was willing to tone the film down as requested by New Line, the studio releasing the film. "I tell you, the studio told me where [to draw the line]. Because I had a whole bunch of images that were a lot harsher. ... I think every culture, every place, draws ... different lines of acceptability. ... Now if you talk to Japan, the first thing the distributors wanted to know [is], '[Are there] any scenes that they took out that we can have back in?' So of course, their line of acceptance is a lot deeper. And I'm just saying, 'Well, I made one that is more general, with what I would find acceptable.' And I'm making it for this public, so I understand if they come in and say, 'That's too much.' And they took it off. But if I didn't fight it with them, I think they would have just decapitated the wrong thing."

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