Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
First, an aside. I goofed. I made a technical mistake when recording this interview, and for a little while, I was starting to think it was irreversible. Thankfully, I was able to call in a favor and get some help, and I was finally able to transcribe this entire interview, so you can enjoy the whole thing. I would have been gutted if it hadn’t worked, because this was one of the afternoons I’ve most enjoyed in recent months.
See, I’ve been an avid David Cronenberg fan for as long as I’ve been aware of his work. I can trace it all back to one forbidden image, the infamous “exploding head” cover of FANGORIA from when SCANNERS came out. I saw that on the magazine rack at the age of ten, and I fell in love. One by one, I tracked down his films, and one by one, they expanded my consciousness better than even the finest product to ever roll out of Owsley’s lab. VIDEODROME in the theater, to this twelve-year-old’s eyes, was so intense, so wildly transgressive, that it felt criminal.
When New Line finally put me in a room with the man a few days before the opening of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, it marked the first time I’ve been genuinely nervous about an interview since I sat down with Miyazaki.
“MORIARTY”: I finally had a chance to see A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE last night...
DAVID CRONENBERG: Oh, were you at the premiere?
“M”: No, I saw it at a press screening. I have to say... it strikes me as a monster movie, in the sense that Viggo is the thing that he’s most afraid of in this film. The moments where Joey comes out... where Joey murders... they’re set apart from the rest of the film stylistically. How did you approach the construction of those scenes and showing the switch in Viggo?
DC: Well, it’s all about the acting, of course, but it’s sort of a transformation. You have to decide how much you want to give away in your article. This is obviously difficult stuff to write about.
“M”: I’m going to wait until people have at least had a chance to see the film.
DC: Good. Viggo and I knew we were sort of making two movies at once. The first movie is the first time you see the movie and the second movie is the second time you see the movie. And it had to work differently... but completely... both times. If you see it twice, you’ll start to see things... several things... that look for now that you wouldn’t look for before. Thing you wouldn’t see before. And they’re all there, moments where you say, “Hey, is that Joey peeking through?” It’s something you would never think. It’s supposed to be like what Edie would be going through, so you can think back and say, “Oh, that was Joey. Now that makes sense to me.” And it’s all really about you buying that relationship. That comes from the collaboration between the actors and the director. It’s having an understanding of what these moments were, what these people are really doing... what they couldn’t do, what they should do, what they should not do, and constantly being in touch about every detail. And, of course, the other thing is that Viggo is just... a great actor.
“M”: You seem to have a knack for drawing the best out of your actors, working with them to create high points in their careers. Goldblum’s work in THE FLY, for example, is a landmark for him.
DC: Thank you.
“M”: There’s something about his physicality. It’s so particular, so peculiar to Goldblum.
DC: Right.
“M”: Once you see it, it’s like, “No one else could have done that.” With Jeremy Irons in DEAD RINGERS, it’s exemplary work again, and I haven’t seen him do anything like that in anything else he’s done. Chris Walken in DEAD ZONE. James Woods in VIDEODROME.
What is it that gives you this rapport with your actors? I mean... you act as well, for other directors. You were really good in LAST NIGHT and on ALIAS and... of course... in NIGHTBREED. Were you trained as an actor at any point?
DC: No. No, it’s all... everything that I do as a professional is self-taught. I never took any courses in anything. Acting or filmmaking or drama or anything. Well, I did do a little drama in high school, you know. I was in MACBETH. And, actually, when I was a kid... maybe when I was 11 or 12, I did some stage acting. Wow. I haven’t thought of that in a long time. That really goes back quite a way. Once again, though... not trained. I never went to film school. If it’s something that I love to do, even if it’s bicycle maintainence, I like to figure it out, be able to do it, and just get the tools to do it. That’s just my way of thinking.
“M”: Does it help you, when you’re speaking to your actors, to know what it takes for you as an actor to accomplish certain things?
DC: I think I was able to do that before I started to do any real movie acting, which I guess begins with John Landis and INTO THE NIGHT. It does... it really does relax you as a director once you’ve had the acting experience, because you suddenly understand why actors are like that. You understand where they’re coming from. Their vulnerabilities and their concerns. Which, honestly, you barely notice as a director. You’re just interested in results. You’re not interested in the process of getting there. If you’re working with really good actors, you don’t have the time to be fully involved with their process. I’m not going to teach Ed Harris how to act. What you’re doing is guiding them, so his character is in the same movie as the other actors and their characters.
“M”: There’s such a particular tone to your work. There’s a level of control in your films that you only see when directors work with the same key creative crew in film after film.
DC: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah.
“M”: In so many of your films, you work with [director of photography] Peter Suschitzky, obviously with [composer] Howard Shore, [film editor] Ronald Sanders... and their work seems to be part of the fabric of what you do now.
DC: There’s a stability there. The downside would be if you got into a rut, or if you felt like you were repeating yourselves and you needed other people to refresh you.
“M”: You’re hardly repeating yourself. NAKED LUNCH is nothing like A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE or DEAD RINGERS or SPIDER...
DC: That’s... they’re all so different that it’s never really been an issue. And of course, they all get to go away and work with other people. I think Howard’s in New Zealand recording music for KING KONG right now...
[At the time, he still was – “M”]
DC: ... and then they come back to me, and they’ve had all of these other experiences, and I’ve had whatever experiences I’ve had, and we excite each other all over again. And we can be incredibly efficient. It sounds cold, but it’s not cold. It can be very emotional, that efficiency. We know each other. We love each other. So it gives you a much higher and more stable platform to jump off into the stratosphere from, and the thing is... the actors... they sense that. The actors know that. They come on the set, they’ve got great radar, and they can feel the tone. For example, William Hurt was only in for five days. Suddenly, he was so... he was so enveloped and caressed by the tone on the set that... he said himself, he normally doesn’t like to fool around on the set and joke and have fun and stuff. But he was totally relaxed and he had great fun. He knew that everything was being taken care of. He didn’t have to worry about things.
“M”: I think the best directors are the guys who create real spaces, spaces where your actors feel free to explore. In this film, the room you give to both Maria Bello and to Viggo... the sexuality in the thing is very strong and very intimate, and I think it really helps ground the connection between these people.
DC: Sure.
“M”: And it’s not “movie sex.” You feel like you’re peeking at a real private moment between this couple. That’s got to be about trust.
DC: Yeah. We all understood each other, and we understood what we were doing in those scenes and why. We wanted to portray this married couple of 20 years with two kids, which is not what you see normally portrayed sexually onscreen, certainly in America. There’s this whole adolescent sex thing in America, which is like after high school, sex isn’t interesting or it’s not important. Which is why it’s good that Josh wrote that scene with the cheerleader outfit. In his original script, there were no sex scenes. And I said, “Josh, we have to get to know this couple intimately, and we have to see the change in their relationship. If you don’t know them sexually, you can’t really know them.”
“M”: Well, those are certainly the two moments where they are totally unguarded with each other. That second scene says everything you need to know about the change between them. Were you worried about what the MPAA would do to you? Violence seems to be perfectly acceptable right now, but sexuality is very tricky.
DC: Yeah, my friend Atom Egoyan just had some trouble with them.
“M”: In a scene that is absolutely essential to his film.
DC: Yes, it is. However, I have to give the MPAA credit because, in our case, they did not say anything about our sex scenes at all. They apparently had an hour-long discussion, a debate... and when they came out, they had a couple of queries about the violence that were easily settled. None about the sex scenes. I have to give them some credit for that.
“M”: Maybe it’s the way it seems adult, but not remotely titillating. I think context is everything in this film.
DC: Maybe.
“M”: I want to ask you about your use of violence in the film and how you shot it. You certainly have a reputation as an extreme director, and I frequently hear you mentioned as someone who constantly pushes the envelope. I think it’s really only moments in your moives that transgress, though, and never the whole films.
DC: Absolutely.
“M”: Someone like Miike or Gaspar Noe, they love to assault you, wall to wall...
DC: Yeah.
“M”: You seem to be very careful about how to shock or when to use violence. THE BROOD is one where, if you see it in the theater... there’s nothing like a crowd’s reaction to the big reveal with Eggars at the end.
DC: [laughs] Yeah.
“M”: How did you approach the extreme moments in this film?
DC: Oh, I’m very aware of anything that might be considered offensive. I’m careful to really pay attention to what I’m trying to do with it. The sex scenes, we talked about. With the violence... you know, I don’t worry about my other movies, or what people think of them. The movie tells me what it needs and what I have to feed it. In this case, it was... okay, where does the violence come from? It comes from inside these characters, so where did they learn it, and what does violence mean to them? In Viggo’s case, it’s the line, “I thought that business would come first,” meaning violence. Violence is their criminal business, so to me, they learned it on the streets of Philly, and it’s business. It’s something you do with efficiency. It’s not for sadistic pleasure. It’s not ballet. It’s not martial arts. It’s just get it over with and get on to the next thing.
“M”: You take away an impression of the violence as you watch. It happens so quickly...
DC: Well, that’s the other thing. It’s shot real-time. It’s not shot impressionistically, or, or certainly not John Woo type balletic action stuff.
All of the continuity is there, but it’s fast stuff. It’s like a fight in a bar, where you suddenly turn around and three people are on the ground, and you didn’t see it. You didn’t see the broken beer bottle go across the guy’s face. That’s what I wanted. It’s all real-time. Those things happen fast. It was meant to feel intimate. Very close to the body.
“M”: Your use of sound during the fights is so percussive. So much of the rest of the movie is so quiet. As a viewer, you get that adrenaline spike, and you feel shaky afterwards.
DC: It doesn’t work like an action movie at all. You’re not overwhelmed constantly by sound. You’re not being assaulted and hit on the head. There’s a lot of quiet and a lot of this contada and this music that’s very very quiet. And when those moments happen, they have a big impact. I think there’s only about a minute and a half or maybe two in the whole film.
“M”: When you became attached to the script by Josh Olson, which I think is a really clean piece of writing... I know you worked with him to shape the script. What hooked you?
DC: Well, first of all, it was the iconic Americana aspect of it, the sense that we’re dealing here with America’s mythology of itself. It’s a perfect small town, the perfect little family. What does it take to support that? What goes on outside that small town to make that possible? And then, of course, the question of whether that is enough. Would you be really happy living there? Do we actually call in these other forces to liberate us in a way? And that leads to other questions about the complex nature of violence and our relationship to it. How much of it do we love? How much do we need? We can imagine a world with no violence, but would we really want to live in that world? Really? The answer is, perhaps, disturbing. No. We really wouldn’t. The kids would leave that small town. Not enough danger. Not enough titillation. So the movie also has those reverberations of the American Western and gangster movies. It’s not a retro... it’s not a Quentin Tarantino sort of a pastiche...
“M”: It doesn’t really refer directly to any other films, but it certainly knows how to play with iconography.
DC: Well, that’s the thing. What’s interesting to come to grips with is the way that iconography has become a weird reality in America, a force that suddenly has become real. The way the Bush Administration is playing out various scenarios, it’s like references to old Western TV series or something. WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE. That sort of thing. And suddenly it takes on a reality that goes beyond mythology. We’ve started to believe our own mythology. The movie leads you into... gently, obviously, because it’s not overtly political... but it leads you into a meditation if you’re of that mind.
“M”: I think your films have always been... and this is one of the reasons I think horror is undervalued as a serious genre... even your overt horror films are very political.
DC: Yeah.
“M”: And they’re about very personal things.
DC: Yeah.
“M”: And that’s what the genre allows you to do with more depth and more freedom. This is a very subversive genre, and for this to be embraced as the mainstream David Cronenberg film... I think it’s not because you calculated how to make something more commercial. It’s just that we recognize ourselves in a more immediate way in this film.
DC: I think when people call this mainstream, that’s exactly what they’re talking about. The characters are familiar. They’re recognizable. They’re attractive. And normally, it’s true, my characters tend to be on the margins of society. They’re outsiders and eccentrics. In this case, I start with an audience that’s willing to connect with these characters. Normally, the audience is holding back from my characters, and I have to seduce them. Here, it’s the reverse. I have them at the start, and then I take them to some darker, forbidden place.
“M”: I think the beginning and the end of the film are these great dramatic book-ends. The beginning is just that long great single shot outside the motel...
DC: Yeah.
“M”: It sets the tone and the stakes for the film right away. The way the scene ends, you know that anything can happen to anyone.
DC: Yeah.
“M”: Then the end of the film is... I think maybe it’s the most hopeful ending of your career.
DC: Thank you.
“M”: There’s light at the end of this film. It may not wrap things up neatly or put a bow on it, but I think it does just enough to suggest reconciliation. It’s very emotional.
DC: It was a very emotional scene to shoot. It was maybe the most emotional scene I’ve ever shot, maybe the most emotional day on the set I’ve ever spent. Everybody on the crew was walking around whispering, like they didn’t want to spoil the mood. Maria was practically weeping all day, throughout the whole scene.
“M”: There’s no dialogue. No big action. It’s all just these simple gestures that resonate because of how invested we are in what happens to this family.
DC: I hope so.
“M”: Maybe that’s what people think is so radically different about this one. You are, after all, the man who threw Marilyn Chambers’s dead body into a dump truck at the end of RABID. You shoot the Fly in the head. Johnny Smith has to die to stop Greg Stillson. The Mantle Twins... I mean, you’re not known for happy endings.
DC: True.
“M”: Let’s change gears for a moment if that’s okay.
DC: Sure.
“M”: I wanted to ask you about the new Fox DVD release of THE FLY. You’ve said before in interviews that unless the film had a director’s commentary and a new transfer by Mark Irwin, it wasn’t the version you approved. You’ve spoken very strongly about this film in particular...
DC: Absolutely.
“M”: So is this the one? Are you happy now?
At this point, I pulled out the FLY DVD, which Fox had just sent to me that morning. It was still a few weeks away from street date.
DC: I haven’t actually seen one of those yet. I haven’t held the actual commercial version.
“M”: I worked in a theater the summer this film came out. I think I saw it 14 times. Seeing it on video, it’s never looked right.
DC: Mark Irwin did this new transfer, and then I looked it over, and I was very happy with what he’s done. They finally listened to me, and I’m so glad. As a result, I did the commentary, and I agreed to include the infamous cat-monkey deleted scene. I hadn’t seen it in 20 years.
“M”: Many of your films have gotten the deluxe treatment on DVD. RABID looks great. There’s that awesome VIDEODROME that Criterion put out...
DC: That was terrific.
“M”: In an age where everyone’s films are being remade at the speed of sound, is it nice to see you’re your films are being taken care of and that people are rediscovering them?
DC: Oh, yeah, it’s great. It’s absolutely great. These films are getting a second or a third life now. It really has changed the face of filmmaking.
“M”: I was part of the first generation of video kids, but thanks to DVD, there are things out now that I’ve never been able to find, like FAST COMPANY or your short films. People can digest your whole filmography at once now.
DC: I haven’t done commentary for everything yet. There are still a couple left.
At that point, New Line’s publicists broke in to tell us that the conversation was over.
“M”: Who do you watch? I know a number of filmmakers who say that they really don’t watch anyone else’s work. How about you?
DC: Yeah, I really don’t feel that I have to see everything. I sort of... I watch a lot of the Academy DVDs that I get at the end of the year. I know that’s a relatively narrow glimpse at all the films in the world, and I know there are some Asian films and film from Brazil, for example, that I haven’t really seen. That’s because I don’t really got to film festivals. When I go to a film festival, it’s work. I don’t get to see other movies, and sometimes, those are the only places you can see them. I don’t really seek them out obsessively, and I feel like I’m poorer for it, in terms of the interesting things that I hear about that are out there. There’s some filmmakers who are very well known, filmmakers whose work I’ve never seen.
“M”: You should track down IN MY SKIN, a French film but Marina de Van.
DC: I’ve heard of it.
“M”: I imagine you would like it quite a bit.
DC: I’ll check that out. As I say, though, I’m more likely to pick up a novel.
“M”: Speaking of which, are you still adapting Martin Amis’s novel LONDON FIELDS next?
DC: It’s possible.
“M”: And how about PAINKILLERS? Is that happening?
DC: That one’s pretty much dead as far as I’m concerned. I told the producers that if they want to take it to another director, they can do that. I can see why that’s possibly a good project, but I just disconnected from it for some reason.
At that point, we were completely out of time, and we had to cut things short. After I walked out of the room, I had something happen to me which rarely does during interviews.
I realized I’d forgotten to ask my primary question.
I freely admit to being so nervous and excited about finally meeting Cronenberg that I just got caught up in the conversation. As a result, I felt like I really dropped the ball, so I e-mailed New Line and asked them if they could forward my question to him for maybe a simple e-maila answer.
To my surprise, I got word back that Cronenberg was going to call me to discuss the question, giving me his answer himself. A few days later, sure enough, my cell phone rang, and when I answered it, I heard, “Hello, Drew, this is David Cronenberg.”
We chatted for a moment while I got my recorder ready, and then I dove right in:
“Moriarty”: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, thematically and even dramatically, bears a strong resemblance to what you were planning to do with your version of TOTAL RECALL. Was it a conscious decision of yours when you read [Josh Olson’s] script? Did you say, “Oh, great, here’s a way for me to finally deal with those ideas?”
DAVID CRONENBERG: Absolutely not. It was never something that even occurred to me. But now that you say it, it’s undeniable. There’s certainly a connection. You asked me in your e-mail if I’d finally “scratched my creative itch.” I don’t think it works that way. Of course I mourned the loss of that version of TOTAL RECALL, and I never even made it to a final draft on that project. But even if I had made TOTAL RECALL, I still would have made A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE as well. I don’t think that making TOTAL RECALL would keep me from making this film. The tone is very different, of course. One is a sci-fi sort of... you know, I don’t even know which draft you read. I don’t even have a draft of my script. Where did you get yours?
“M”: I had a friend who worked at Dino’s company, and he had a big box of scripts for various projects. When I saw that one, I was like, “Oh, yes, please.”
DC: [laughs] Well, because ultimately, I did twelve drafts, so I have no idea which one you got. I really was going to have the guy’s face change at the end, so that I would use a different actor. That was also a big bone of contention. That obviously would be a difficult thing for an actor to accept, to hear that he isn’t doing this role all the way through, and he’s going to be replaced by another actor as opposed to, say, doing make-up on him to make him look different. I never really got to deal with whether that was going to work or not, practically or artistically, either. Would the audience accept that? That’s another question. So that was one of the more radical things that I was playing with, uh, with that.
“M”: And you had Richard Dreyfuss attached to star, right?
DC: I spoke to Richard, but, no, no one was attached. After him, I was very serious about William Hurt. That was the first time we met, actually.
“M”: I always loved the idea of Quaid as a common man. It hardly seems like a surprise if Arnold kills six guys bare-handed... but William Hurt?
DC: Well, as you can see, my approach was very different than that. To me, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE isn’t that. I can see how this is connected to that, but it’s not more connected than, let’s say, SPIDER is, in terms of dealing with identity and so on.
“M”: I’ve just read so many people try to say that this is a departure for you, but the more I look at the film and the more I explore it, it just fits so neatly into some of the ideas you continually explore in other pieces.
DC: That’s certainly the way I feel about it. I can, of course, see the obvious things that make them say that, but... but if you really look at it with any depth, you realize that’s kind of a false premise, really. I was always amazed when people say, “Well, this is a real departure for you,” getting all excited, and I’m saying, “No, not really.” It didn’t feel that different to me. And you can see they’re disappointed because they want it to be that. I’ve never had a movie that made $50 million before, so maybe that can be the departure. That would be okay.
“M”: Do you ever look back at things like TOTAL RECALL or TOP GUN or even BEVERLY HILLS COP... films you were connected to or that you almost made... and wonder if those choices would have led you to a different place as a filmmaker?
DC: No, I never think that way. At all. It’s, uh... you might as well... I mean, how many people wonder what would have happned if they’d married a different woman? Maybe in their first marriage or their second marriage, and what would that have done for them? The fact is, yeah, your life would have been different, but I’m not sure people really think about it or obsess about it in that way. When you make the decision or when you do the act, then you’re living in that present, and it’s as though you’re extinguishing all the other ones. You might as well have a total fantasy about what you would have done. That’s what it’s like for me. I’m sure there are people who say, “Oh, god, if I had only done that movie, I would have won the Oscar, and then my career would be totally different.” But would they have won the Oscar if they had been the ones who made it?
“M”: Right. It would have been their film, a different piece of material.
DC: That’s right. You don’t know. You might have done it so differently that it wouldn’t... it would have just been different.
“M”: I really appreciate you calling back about this. My last question has to do with THE FLY.
DC: Okay.
“M”: I noticed that you are involved with the new DVD edition of the film...
DC: Yes.
“M”: ... you provide a commentary, you supplied them with deleted scenes, but you’re not in the documentary, which is so exhaustive otherwise.
DC: Yes, that was just a matter of timing. They did a lovely documentary. That wasn’t about me not wanting to do it. I was making this movie, and I just couldn’t do it. I simply didn’t have the energy to focus on my other movie and to give them the time that they needed.
“M”: That’s what I figured.
DC: It certainly wasn’t a deliberate snub or anything like that. It’s too bad I wasn’t in the documentary. It is a gap. There’s not much we can do about it, but at least I did have time to do the commentary.
“M”: Since we spoke last, I’ve had a chance to see the entire 2 hour 45 minute documentary. It’s just mammoth.
DC: [laughs] Yeah.
“M”: It’s one of the more comprehensive pieces I’ve ever seen, and it’s great at tracing the film from the very beginning stages of development through release.
DC: Yeah, well, this guy David Prior was overseeing it, and he’s the one who talked me into including the deleted cat-monkey scene. He was very persuasive. The way he orchestrated it was that he showed it to me, sort of reconstructed. My argument was always that you delete a scene because it’s no good, or because you didn’t want it in the movie. Or, at least, you think it doesn’t work in the movie, even if it’s okay as a scene on its own. The second thing is, it never gets to be properly finished. It never gets to be color-timed or fine cut. You usually delete it early in the editing process, and then you don’t ever finish it, so you’re not only showing a deleted scene that you didn’t want to see in the movie, but you’re showing one that’s never been properly finished, so it’s rough, and not in its best shape. But he showed it to me in a way that made me think, “Hey, this is a pretty good scene.”
With that, Cronenberg had to get back to work supervising the video transfer for A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, bringing our interview to its second conclusion. I hope you guys enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed conducting it, and if you haven’t seen the film yet, it’s still playing in a lot of theaters. Make the effort. See it on the bigscreen for maximum impact.
Now I’m off to finish a pair of set visits for you guys, as well as an interview I conducted Friday with Darren Aronofsky, and then I’m going to work on my review for one of the fall’s heaviest studio movies and my first report from the AFI Film Festival, which has been running since Thursday. Good stuff coming up. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
