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David Cronenberg
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Feb 18, 2003
Interesting, strange, witty and always with a small smile Cronenberg reels you in with his charm then keeps you at a distance just like his movies.
The film Spider will hopefully change people’s perception of what is a David Cronenberg film. This is first film of Cronenberg’s to utilize no major special effects since the drag racing film he did called Fast Company back in 1979.
Cronenberg calls his star Ralph Fiennes the only special effect he needs. Spider is the story of a very disturbed person who lives at a halfway house in London in the 1950’s. The character is called Spider because of the webs he weaves out of string. He very inconspicuously slips into hallucinations which put his mother at the forefront of his every thought. It is an amazing film.
Check out the website for Spider at: http://www.spiderthemovie.com/spider.html
Daniel Robert Epstein: Your movies that start with other people’s novels are very different from the films you write alone. Even eXistenZ was a throwback to your earlier pre-Dead Zone films. What is it about other people’s work that sends you off into a whole other direction?
David Cronenberg: Other people. That’s exactly why you do that. When I started making films I was very intolerant of directors who didn’t write their own scripts. I was even going further with the auterist theory than the French critics. They were not insisting that the directors wrote their own scripts. They were just finding connections amongst all their films. I thought one should really write their own stuff. I realized at the same time that there were some directors who could not write. Kubrick was one. You couldn’t put him down in front of a typewriter in those days. He couldn’t do it. You could still be a wonderful director and not write. The two things only come together by accident that you can write and direct. They’re not necessarily connected. When I did the Dead Zone I was really very happy with the film and the experience of mixing my blood with somebody else’s in that case Stephen King. That’s exactly what happens whenever you use someone else’s work as a basis. It’s something you would never do on your own but something you feel an incredible empathy for and a connection with. The two of you mix together and make something that didn’t exist before. I just realized, it’s like sex.
So I didn’t have the experience that [William] Burroughs had or that David Hwang had when he wrote M. Butterfly. In fact even though Dead Ringers is a script I co-wrote was based on a newspaper article that was about real twins. Even then I realized that it doesn’t matter where it comes from. That kind of purity really doesn’t matter. I’ve been lucky all the movies that I have done that are adaptations have resulted in movies that live on their own. It’s inevitable because you can’t really do a translation of a book. There’s no dictionary for that kind of translation. You really have to reinvent it totally.
I read the script for Spider first. I only read the novel later and once. So for me in a weird way I wasn’t doing an adaptation. I was doing a script that was written by somebody else. You’re doing all these different mixtures and the excitement is that you are in fact fusing yourself with somebody else.
So I didn’t have the experience that [William] Burroughs had or that David Hwang had when he wrote M. Butterfly. In fact even though Dead Ringers is a script I co-wrote was based on a newspaper article that was about real twins. Even then I realized that it doesn’t matter where it comes from. That kind of purity really doesn’t matter. I’ve been lucky all the movies that I have done that are adaptations have resulted in movies that live on their own. It’s inevitable because you can’t really do a translation of a book. There’s no dictionary for that kind of translation. You really have to reinvent it totally.
I read the script for Spider first. I only read the novel later and once. So for me in a weird way I wasn’t doing an adaptation. I was doing a script that was written by somebody else. You’re doing all these different mixtures and the excitement is that you are in fact fusing yourself with somebody else.
DRE:
How big of a rewrite did you do on Patrick McGrath’s script?
DC:
Patrick said he did the changes I asked for in one and there were other changes done but they were the kind of changes you make as a director even if you wrote the script yourself.
It has to do with the mystery of a movie taking on its own life which happens when you work your collaborators. It’s all very physical and tactile. I don’t do storyboards. They’re so abstract to me that I don’t understand them. I need to be with my actors and figure out how to shoot them. That happens when you make a movie and if the movie is alive you want that to happen. You want the movie to kind of push you around. Some things that Patrick had like he had a potato that gets cut and bleeds. Of course it’s his mother’s blood because he thinks she’s buried under this potato patch. It’s a hallucination that has meaning. I had the special effects guys makes this potato which they were very proud of. They were disappointed when I didn’t shoot it. The reason was that by the time we got to that the movie was somewhere else. I knew that the potato scene was from some other movie. That’s all intuitive. It’s my feeling and I don’t regret it.
There were a lot of changes in fact and in another way there were no changes. Patrick had a lot of hallucinations and a lot of special effects stuff. People would normally think I would like that but if it doesn’t work then I don’t. I don’t have to do special effects, it’s just another tool.
But as for the changes in the novel Spider, the main character has written the book you are reading. It’s his journal and it’s very literary. But Patrick’s first draft had Spider writing in his journal and then had voiceover where Spider would read. I could see immediately that these were two different characters. Patrick had already created a new Spider for the screen that was inarticulate, could not have possibly had those thoughts. To me it was obvious but not to Patrick and that’s why you need another perspective. I took away the perspective but I still wanted Spider writing. I needed Spider to have something physical to do that would show he was obsessive and paying attention to detail. Spider thinks he’s taking evidence of a crime that was committed. He’s gathering this evidence from his memory. So I asked Ralph to invent his own hieroglyphics which he could write fluently. There are other crucial but small things.
It has to do with the mystery of a movie taking on its own life which happens when you work your collaborators. It’s all very physical and tactile. I don’t do storyboards. They’re so abstract to me that I don’t understand them. I need to be with my actors and figure out how to shoot them. That happens when you make a movie and if the movie is alive you want that to happen. You want the movie to kind of push you around. Some things that Patrick had like he had a potato that gets cut and bleeds. Of course it’s his mother’s blood because he thinks she’s buried under this potato patch. It’s a hallucination that has meaning. I had the special effects guys makes this potato which they were very proud of. They were disappointed when I didn’t shoot it. The reason was that by the time we got to that the movie was somewhere else. I knew that the potato scene was from some other movie. That’s all intuitive. It’s my feeling and I don’t regret it.
There were a lot of changes in fact and in another way there were no changes. Patrick had a lot of hallucinations and a lot of special effects stuff. People would normally think I would like that but if it doesn’t work then I don’t. I don’t have to do special effects, it’s just another tool.
But as for the changes in the novel Spider, the main character has written the book you are reading. It’s his journal and it’s very literary. But Patrick’s first draft had Spider writing in his journal and then had voiceover where Spider would read. I could see immediately that these were two different characters. Patrick had already created a new Spider for the screen that was inarticulate, could not have possibly had those thoughts. To me it was obvious but not to Patrick and that’s why you need another perspective. I took away the perspective but I still wanted Spider writing. I needed Spider to have something physical to do that would show he was obsessive and paying attention to detail. Spider thinks he’s taking evidence of a crime that was committed. He’s gathering this evidence from his memory. So I asked Ralph to invent his own hieroglyphics which he could write fluently. There are other crucial but small things.
DRE:
What is it like using no special effects for a film?
DC:
Ralph is my special effect. He’s very physical. He’s concerned with gas emanating from his body. I don’t need to show it the way I often do like with eXistenZ. Although the themes are the same but the creation of reality and memory by human will with the understanding that those things are creative acts. Memory is one of the subjects of this movie and so is identity and reality which connects with my other films. It’s like the same crystal seen from different facets. That’s the way I think o fit if I think of it at all.
Frankly I must say I don’t think of it at all. I don’t want to be dishonest. I do think of it sometimes. But it has nothing to do with how I make another movie. I don’t think of how it will fit in with my other movies or what people’s expectations are. Because it’s so difficult to find a project that you can live with for two to three years and still find exciting and fascinating that you’d be a fool to say something like the people who loved Scanners and The Brood won’t like this so I won’t do it after all. You can’t do it that way.
Frankly I must say I don’t think of it at all. I don’t want to be dishonest. I do think of it sometimes. But it has nothing to do with how I make another movie. I don’t think of how it will fit in with my other movies or what people’s expectations are. Because it’s so difficult to find a project that you can live with for two to three years and still find exciting and fascinating that you’d be a fool to say something like the people who loved Scanners and The Brood won’t like this so I won’t do it after all. You can’t do it that way.
DRE:
You’re making films which is your art which you need to do but is it also fun to tweak the audience. To make them feel like they are Spider.
DC:
I’m not a Hitchcock type director. He liked to be the puppeteer. The audiences were his marionettes. He would pull their strings and they would laugh or cry. My relationship with the audience is much more collaborative. I don’t feel like I am doing anything to them. I feel like I am doing things to myself and then talking to the audience about it or inviting them to have the same experience. If I was to do any tweaking then I would be doing it to me.
DRE:
Ralph was perfect for the part. What made you think he could do it?
DC:
I had seen many of the movies he’s done. He hadn’t done anything quite like this. Casting is a black art. You see actors that you like and think are good but you don’t really have any particular desire to work with them. Then others that you see and you say “That’s my kind of actor.” It’s very hard to articulate why. It’s a very strange and intimate relationship that you have together. If it’s working then it should be intimate, strange and beyond articulation. There’s a lot of trust involved. When I read the script after two pages I saw Ralph in the script.
On set we discuss everything and are very close. I’m very open with my actors. I didn’t hide anything. I don’t yell, scream, it’s all very congenial and it’s very warm. What I need to do on the set is create a protected environment where people can and want to do their best work. That they will be listened to. It’s all very Canadian. It’s not hostile and confrontational. There are some directors who like the mystique of being sadistic or torturing their actors. When you’re working with professional actors they know how to torture themselves. I don’t have to do it.
I’m not a Kubrickian kind of director. I’ve never done 80 takes of anything in my life; I think that’s just jerking off.
On set we discuss everything and are very close. I’m very open with my actors. I didn’t hide anything. I don’t yell, scream, it’s all very congenial and it’s very warm. What I need to do on the set is create a protected environment where people can and want to do their best work. That they will be listened to. It’s all very Canadian. It’s not hostile and confrontational. There are some directors who like the mystique of being sadistic or torturing their actors. When you’re working with professional actors they know how to torture themselves. I don’t have to do it.
I’m not a Kubrickian kind of director. I’ve never done 80 takes of anything in my life; I think that’s just jerking off.
DRE:
John Neville appearing in Spider makes me think of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen which reminds me that you and Terry Gilliam share similar themes in your work.
DC:
Well I love Terry and his filmmaking. It’s the kind of filmmaking I can’t do. He started as a graphic artist and I was more of a writer. We have different backgrounds but I do like his films.
DRE:
Could a film like Lost in La Mancha be applied to any of your films?
DC:
I haven’t seen that yet but I heard for a filmmaker that’s its just heartbreaking. Spider almost lost financing a few times. I had to fly back from London and wait to see if we could put it back together again. For Ralph and me the fact that Spider wasn’t going to come to life was the real sadness.
DRE:
Why is it so hard for you to get your films off the ground?
DC:
Well movies were going down all around us. It was like charging the machine guns. The only time I’ve had a film fall apart like that was Basic Instinct 2 and that was a whole other story which I don’t think would have been as amusing as Lost in La Mancha.
DRE:
Is Spider also a moral story of people who are abandoned by social and protective forces?
DC:
Some people could see that young Spider’s webs that he was making were more like a safety net for him rather than a trap. The idea that it’s the decay of social health services in England and in America. America never had much of them anyway. In countries where they start to fall apart the consequences are dire. There are those elements suggested in the movie. There were those people who would just turn their house into a halfway house for people who are released from asylums. They could make money by not treating them well.
DRE:
What’s next?
DC:
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