Cronenberg on Cronenberg

David Cronenberg is infamous for his unique style of horror filmmaking. His films–among them The Fly, Naked Lunch, and Dead Ringers–gaze with icy formalism on worlds where biology has gone mad. They’re a catalogue of physical breakdowns, sexual dysfunctions, florid mutations and hallucinations. His latest, Spider, based on Patrick McGrath’s novel, stars Ralph Fiennes as a muttering, schizophrenic Londoner who obsessively scribbles notes in an invented alphabet, struggling to make sense out of his fractured relationship with his mother (Miranda Richardson, terrific in a triple role). Quieter and largely grue-free, it’s still a clearly Cronenbergian film, and his best in years. The Rake crashed into the director recently for a Q&A.

RAKE: Last time I was here at Nicollet Island Inn it was for a romantic evening with my wife. Now I’m back, on Valentine’s Day, with the director of "Crash," "Rabid" and "Videodrome." Is that a bad sign about the future direction of my love life?

DC: I had a very lonely experience last night. I was alone in my room. But it is rather romantic. I think you’re safe. I think you’re OK.

RAKE: What attracts you to the subjects you choose to make films about?

DC: It’s hard to say… For me, filmmaking is a philosophical endeavor. I’m talking to myself and trying to explain things. Trying to explain the human condition and existentially what I am and what society is and what culture is and what art is and all those things. And I understand too that the first fact of human existence is the human body. And that’s something people try to avoid accepting, because if you accept the body as the totality of your existence as an individual then you accept mortality, you accept death. That’s a very hard thing to do even as an exercise.

RAKE: You’ve said that your intention with Spider was less a realistic portrayal of schizophrenia than a story with wider resonance to the human condition. What do everyday people have in common with someone as eccentric as Spider?

DC: Imagine taking away from yourself those things that Spider doesn’t have. He doesn’t have a wife, a family, a job. He doesn’t seem to have a religion, doesn’t seem to have politics. If you take all those things away from most people, I think you’ll end up with someone potentially very close to Spider. That is to say, feeling very disconnected from the flow of life around him, confused about himself and who he is. Knowing he can’t deal with people. And then struggling with his memories. He’s trying to figure out who he is based on these constantly shifting memories. I relate to that. I can feel that in myself. And I know how fragile identity is, and how much creative effort we have to put into maintaining an identity.

RAKE: Given that, it’s ironic that Patrick McGrath changed Spider’s character so much when he wrote the screenplay from his book.

DC: Yes. In the first draft of the script Spider was writing in English and there was voiceover. In the novel, Spider writes the novel, that’s his job. And that means he’s very good with language and very literary. But hearing that spoken over the face of our Spider, who is very inarticulate, was unbelievable. I still wanted him to write in the journal, because I still wanted to give him something physical to do that would show that he was obsessively trying to remember things; basically he’s taking evidence of a crime for some future use. But I didn’t want us to be able to read what he was writing, so I had Ralph develop the hieroglyphics that he did. As soon as I made the decision to keep the journal, I was setting him up to be an archetypal … maybe a failed artist, whose writings are unfortunately in a language that nobody can understand.

RAKE: Although you do eventually reveal the central mystery of Spider’s past, it’s obvious you’re careful not to explain too much.

DC: There are some things that if you just say it right out, they actually lose their meaning. Some things cannot be expressed without destroying them. So it’s a matter of balance. You be evocative, you give the audience clues, but they have to come up with it themselves for it to have that sense of revelation.

RAKE: Are you making the kind of films that you want to make? Is it too difficult to sell, for instance, a David Cronenberg slapstick comedy?

DC: Well, I’ve never tried that. But I do think my films are generally quite funny, even Spider. But no, I haven’t had trouble that way. I’ve been offered all kinds of films that I haven’t done just because I didn’t want to do them. But I was always happy that people recognize I could do other things, that I had the technique to do things I’m not necessarily known for. I haven’t found that to be a hindrance.

RAKE: Has it become more difficult for you to make movies as an independent filmmaker?

DC: It’s pretty tough right now, just because [moviemaking] is a business and the economy of the world is very shaky. Given the impending war with Iraq, I’d say it isn’t going to get any easier.

RAKE: And you’re not likely to make the next Sergeant York.

DC: Definitely not. Although I did like that movie.

RAKE: On most of the movies you direct, you write the screenplay as well, even when it’s based on a novel like Naked Lunch or Crash. Spider’s a rare exception. What attracted you to this story above shooting one of your own scripts?

DC: Laziness. Like most writers, I’ll do anything to avoid writing. It’s really hard. To do an adaptation is easier. To have someone give you a good script is easiest. Although I was very arrogant about that as a young filmmaker, I felt that you weren’t really a filmmaker if you didn’t write your own script. I’ve come to realize you can have some very interesting experiences fusing your own sensibility with someone else’s, to do things you never would have come up with yourself. In the case of Spider, it’s almost not like an adaptation, because it was the script I read first, and the script was the basis of my decision to do Spider. So you pray that a great script comes to you — and particularly if it has financing already done, that would be great. But if not, then my fallback is to write my own script. A lot of directors don’t have that fallback, because there’s no necessary connection between directing and screenwriting. It ‘s only an accident that you can do both. There have been of course multiple directors that couldn’t write.

RAKE: What effect do actors have on the evolution of your stories? Ralph Fiennes did a lot to refine his character, like adding Spider’s constant incomprehensible mumbling, which is really effective in showing how he occupies his own mental space separate from the rest of us.

DC: He came up with the idea, but I had to say yes to it. That’s how it works. In a collaboration everybody comes up with suggestions, not just the actors. The costume people, the production designers, they all come up with possibilities and options. But the director has to say yes or no to them because the director is the only one who has the big picture. He’s the only one who’s there for every scene and every moment, and will be responsible for putting together the editing. But you don’t want your actors to just be puppets. That’s not acting. You want an actor to have a lot
of input. That’s why actors like to work with me.

RAKE: Spider drinks his tea with about four heaping spoons of sugar. Was that a reference to Jeff Goldblum’s coffee habits in The Fly?

DC: I try very hard not to worry about connections that people might make amongst my films. I’m not a self-referential filmmaker. But I didn’t take it out for that very same reason–to ignore the existence of this other movie I made and go with what I think his character would do. I thought it was an accurate observation that Patrick made about the way a lonely man like that might be, the way he drinks the tea. It was in Patrick’s novel that Spider keeps eating all that sugar. And certainly Patrick was not thinking of The Fly. There it had a different meaning, which was that [Goldblum’s] metabolism was changing [as he turned into the Fly]. In this case it’s just what lonely people often do, just this comfort thing. It’s an entirely different meaning.

RAKE: If you couldn’t be a filmmaker, what would you choose to do?

DC: I always thought I’d be a novelist. And I was kind of surprised to find myself in filmmaking. Often I much prefer to read a book than see a movie…. I don’t actually watch my own movies. There are too many associations. Maybe when I get senile and can’t remember that I made those movies, I might be able to judge them objectively.