Director Brad Anderson has done the unthinkable – he persuaded Batman to lose 63 pounds for the sake of a low-budget film.

After talking with Anderson, director of the new film “The Machinist” which opens tomorrow in Chicago, he insisted that persuading the 6-foot Christian Bale to come down to a nasty 120 pounds was simple.

An interesting premise and a great script were enough to get him on board. Understandably so, “The Machinist” is the next best thing to anything by Alfred Hitchcock, one of the film’s obvious influences. The film follows Trevor Reznik (Bale), a man who claims not to have slept in over a year. The starving Reznik lurches around screen like a walking skeleton, looking like a man who hasn’t eaten or exercised in weeks. We then try to figure out what is causing Reznik to deprive himself of sleep. Like a good mystery, things slowly start to make sense.

Weekender: Let me get this out of the way; the issue of the weight. Did he really lose that much?

Brad Anderson: He lost 63 pounds. It was the way the character was described in the script – as a walking skeleton. I needed an actor who could really commit himself to the part and there are not a lot out there who would go to the lengths that he went to. I don’t think he expected to lose as much as he did; he lost almost a third of his body mass.

WE: I was remembering ‘American Psycho’ while watching this and I kept asking, ‘Is that him?’

BA: Yeah, I know, totally different-looking guy. And I’m sure he’ll look much more different in the Batman movie. I was gratified because without seeing this guy look so emaciated and utterly worn out, it wouldn’t have propelled the mystery of the story forward.

WE: Going along with that mystery, there is a feeling of overwhelming guilt throughout the film. This and the dramatic score in the film demands a Hitchcock reference.

BA: I’ve always liked Hitchcock’s films and when I read Scott’s script, I felt that it had a Hitchcockian vibe to it. There’s the subject matter, the character who feels like the whole world is against him, with the weird tone full of menace. The music was something that I was consciously emulating, especially the Bernard Herrmann scores in ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Spellbound.’ And Hitchcock wasn’t making fast-paced movies, they have a certain languid pacing to them. I wanted this movie to feel more like an old-fashioned film.

WE: I’ve watched this film three times now and each time I learn something new with the story. It seems that, unlike many films these days, each shot in your film seems to mean something. The shots seem to propel us toward the answer to the mystery.

BA: It’s like a puzzle movie. There are pieces of the puzzle, but they’re not in order. The idea is that in the end, you want these little clues to pay off and take on their meaning after the fact. It’s hard to convince the producers of a studio film that you want to keep some things mysterious and unanswered, but with a movie on this level, you can do it. I don’t want my stories to be clear cut; I don’t want all of the answers laid out. It’s good to have some mystery.

WE: Right. I think the film leaves enough unsolved to really satisfy us, but it answers the important questions. It seems like studios these days fall into these traps after test screenings and attach those three minute sequences where we flash back and see the answers to everything, so the audience has no questions whatsoever.

BA: That’s right, I think that you obviously have an obligation to answer some questions, but by answering everything, you sap a good story like this of its mystery. And audiences believe that too, but I think studio executives don’t understand this because they want everything to be underscored and obvious.