Cronenberg on Cronenberg

by Chris Rodley (Editor), David Cronenberg

With films such as The Brood and Videodrome, David Cronenberg established himself as Canada's most provocative director. With subsequent movies such as The Dead Zone, The Fly, Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch, Cronenberg demonstrated his ability not only to touch painful nerves but also to invest his own developing genre with seriousness, philosophical dimension and a rare emotional intensity.

Cronenberg on Cronenberg charts his development from maker of inexpensive 'exploitation' cinema to internationally renowned director of million-dollar movies, and reveals the concerns and obsessions which continue to dominate his increasingly rich and complex work. This edition, with an additional chapter, follows Cronenberg's work up to the creation of Crash.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Biography, Horror, Media Tie In, Memoir, Collections

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Chris Rodley is the editor of Cronenberg on Cronenberg and of Lynch on Lynch. He has made films for televison, as well as a short film based on a story by Raymond Carver.

Reviews

[Ugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another book where I kept turning down the corners of the pages because I liked a particular sentence or paragraph. It's a very readable format, put together from Rodley's conversations with Cronenberg over several years, and presented in the form of brief scene-setting by Rodley followed by Cronenberg speaking directly to the reader. I thought Rodley provided just the right amount of context before sitting back and letting Cronenberg do the talking.

And the man himself certainly has plenty to say, is always interesting, and is almost always perfectly clear and sensible. There were only a couple of sentences on mutation early on that I thought weren't particularly clear; aside from that it was all gold. Cronenberg must surely be one of the most interesting film-makers around, and he's very generous in explaining his philosophy and approach here.

The quality of the photos is pretty poor, but that's really my only complaint.

Some stuff I liked:

I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.

The essence of creating anything is control and shaping, and you can't get control if you don't know how things work.

As an artist, one is not a citizen of society.

One of the reasons you find a writer so compelling is that they crystallize for you stuff that's in you already.

..being forced to do things that you really want to do anyway. You want to desperately, but it's no good unless you're forced.

[Jared Busch · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say... if you love Cronenberg, you'll love this. Like all the greats, he didn't give a damn what anyone thought about how "out there" his ideas were, and was never afraid to go too far. This book gives me courage.

I love this series of books... I would recommend these to anyone wanting to get into film/learn how to write screenplays, and suggest they stay the hell away from those Syd Field style hack books and those bougse film schools. The only way to learn is by watching the movies you love, figuring out how they did it, and trying it yourself. Getting the information straight from the directors' mouths is incredibly inspiring and beneficial, and very low on bullshit.

[ra · Rating 5 out of 5]

just a warning this will be a useless review because i have nothing normal to say david cronenberg is my absolute favourite in the whole world i feel immensely reassured by the very fact he's making movies. so so many good bits in this book i'll carry with me forever. sidenote this book ends with a chapter/interview on crash and i did cry a little bit

— "The standard way of looking at Shivers is as a tragedy, but there’s a paradox in it that also extends to the way society looks at me. Here’s a man who walks around and is sweet: he likes people, he’s warm, friendly, articulate and he makes these horrible, diseased, grotesque, disgusting movies. Now, what’s real? Those things are both real for the person standing outside. For me, those two parts of myself are inextricably bound together. The reason I'm secure is because I'm crazy. The reason I'm stable is because I'm nuts. It's palpable to me."

— "Maybe the exercise is to deliver an essential part of you that cannot be delivered in any other way."

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two thirds of this are excellent, up to the really high standard of depth and insight as other books I've read in the series. In discussing his early films, and the development of his interests and methods on his breakthrough films in the 80s, Cronenberg comes out with one fascinating perspective after another (some of which I agree with more than others). The latter section with interviews around Naked Lunch, M Butterfly and Crash feels thinner, and Rodley's discussion of Cronenberg's achievements becomes overly fawning. When it's good though, this is great.

[Dmitry Kurkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

В принципе, у книги только один недостаток: она очень старая. С середины 90-х фильмография Кроненберга увеличилась почти вдвое, и о том, как он снимал "Экзистенцию", "Космополис" и "Звездную карту" (а они в числе моих любимых кроненберговских работ), я бы тоже с интересом почитал.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imprescindible. Un libro que me leo cada cuatro o cinco años desde su publicación, en 1993. No solo repasa la primera mitad de la obra de Cronenberg, si no que va mucho más allá y nos muestra al autor detrás de la obra a través de sus pensamientos e ideas, muchas de ellas aún válidas hoy.

[Eleanore · Rating 5 out of 5]

"To deny the muck is no consolation; it's a false philosophy. The reason my films can be so dark is that I have a real compulsion to make optimism real, to have it based in reality, however tough."

The more I read (or hear) Cronenberg speak about his films, how they are made, where they come from, and all the rest, the more I admire him and appreciate his output. This is possibly the best collection of insights into any director I've read; the only shame is it inevitably doesn't go any further than the release of Crash without having been updated since.

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book on this seminal film-maker (actor and writer) with so many relatable stories about creation, and developing artistic projects into a seemingly "finished" product. I'm enjoying this "Directors on Directors" series of books very much (recently read Lynch on Lynch also).

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desde los comienzos hasta Butterfly. El propio Cronenberg se explica en largas respuestas que son parte del Nuevo Testamento.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Does your film have its own life, or is it only a parasitic thing?”

As other reviewers have said, if you like Cronenberg you’ll like the book. Aside from that, I found the “analytical-biographical segment/Cronenberg response” format to be very revealing, often yielding a rejection of public/private mythologizing that I find very tedious in an (auto)biography. Very valuable personal insight into the different, almost farcical, eras of 60s-90s Canadian film production as well. Love love loved it.

[ComicNerdSam · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eye opening read on Cronenberg's methods and on just the history of his films in general. Also has a good mini lesson on the Canadian film industry.

[Sepk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Freak

[Dragan Nanic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was said in another review:


if you're not already a fan of the director, this probably won't change your mind, and if you're a superfan, you've likely heard a lot of this before


Well, I am a fan. Maybe even want to be a superfan, but I haven't read a lot about Cronenberg before. Sure, I watched his movies as soon as they came out since I first watched Scanners long time ago on a television (in a programme called: Hronike Festa). Reading this book gave me the pleasure of remembering most of them and seeing the early ones for the first time. I even got my girlfriend to watch with me.

I would say this is a relevant reading even for superfans, like meeting with the David for the nth time and while the talks maybe familiar, they are still super interesting. After all, they are about him breaking the frontiers, connecting flesh and technology, travelling into the depths of human psyche. And they are honest and direct. Can't get much better than that.

[Bjlevek · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it helps to be a fan of writer/director David Cronenberg, he offers an incredibly dense amount of insight and autobiography to be enjoyed by anyone who loves and respects cinema. The irony is that more than once Cronenberg mentions attempting to write a novel yet fails. He could write screenplays but not one novel. Overall, the writing is captivating, crisp, and, yes, just like his films, creepy and unsettling.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought and read this because I recently hosted a two-weekend-long film festival in which we screened the near-complete filmography of David Cronenberg, from his earliest student films through his latest movie, "Maps to the Stars." Having a book like this on the coffee table makes a nice diversion to page through while we cue up the next feature. I've owned a few other books in this series, including Herzog and Cassavetes, and they're all consistently great. Since all of the books in the series tend to focus on auteurs who think and speak a lot about what their work means, it means their insights come out as beautiful, flowing paragraphs dripping with anecdotes and opinions. This is no different. Cronenberg is clearly an intelligent fellow, and like Altman, Kurosawa, Scorsese and others, he's working out a handful of burning obsessions again and again with each new film. Our concentrated immersion in his films brought all sorts of hidden elements to the fore. Films seemingly against type like "M. Butterfly" make more sense after seeing the gender confusion in films like "Crimes of the Future," "Rabid," "Videodrome," and "Naked Lunch." A one-off like "Fast Company" is better understood when you realize Cronenberg was a gear-head since he was 9, and had built his own hot rod and was an amateur racer. One of his earliest works (shot for the CBC) involved a group of motorcyclists stealing a prized Italian motorcycle from an art collector. Both of these, of course, directly flow into "Crash." Like Phillip Glass, John Cage, and others, once you find your idea, a central pillar of thought and interest, seemingly endless variations can be created.

As for the book itself, I can't give it much higher than 3 stars from a formal standpoint. It's a collection of interviews artfully stitched together, and not exclusive to the book. The editor worked on "Long Live the New Flesh" and "Naked Making Lunch," two documentaries about Cronenberg, and his answers there are liberally quoted in this book. As such, it's a useful supplement to your viewing, but not really an independently-created work of scholarship. It's organized very well and Cronenberg's answers are frequently insightful, though. But if you're not already a fan of the director, this probably won't change your mind, and if you're a superfan, you've likely heard a lot of this before.

[Evan Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I preferred "David Cronenberg: Interviews" but this still had gems:


The way a child discovers the world constantly replicates the way science began. You start to notice what’s around you, and you get very curious about how things work. How things interrelate. It’s as simple as seeing a bug that intrigues you. ...everybody’s a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We’re all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos...


I tend to view chaos as a private rather than social endeavor.


One of the things you want to do with any kind of art is to find out what you’re thinking about, what is important to you, what disturbs you.


Every community has a whole unspoken dictionary, and I wanted to invent one of my own.


It’s like a tumor or liver or a spleen that decides it will have its own independent existence. It still needs to share the common blood that flows through all the organs, but the spleen wants to go off and do a few things. It’ll come back. It has to. But it wants to have its own adventures. That’s fascinating to me. I don’t think of it as a threat. It’s only a real threat if all your organs decide to go off in different directions. At a certain point the chaos equals destruction. But at the same time the potential for adventure and creative difference is exciting.


In Crimes of the Future I talk about a world in which there are no women. Men have to absorb the femaleness that is gone from the planet. It can’t just cease to exist because women aren’t around. It starts to bring out their own femaleness more, because that duality and balance is necessary... Burroughs was fascinated when I told him about a species of butterfly where the male and female are so different it took forty years before lepidopterists realized. They couldn’t find the male of one species and the female of another. But there are also hermaphrodite versions of this butterfly. They are totally bizarre. One half is huge and bright and the other half—split right down the middle of the body—is small and dark. I can’t imagine it being able to fly. There’s no balance whatsoever.


I have to show things because I’m showing things that people could not imagine. I’m presenting audiences with imagery and with possibilities that have to be shown.


The strength of the middle class is that it’s like an amoeba. It can absorb anything. The way it defends itself against what seems radical and threatening is not to put a shell around itself that can be cracked and broken, but to absorb whatever it is and assimilate it.


Why is it not much consolation that a hundred billion people have gone through death before us? You’d think by now we could say, “Well, Alexander the Great died, so what am I complaining about?” Does it help? No. The fact that it’s so common doesn’t diminish its potency on a personal level.


How about some of these films being a rehearsal for a life after death, or a transmuted life—a life that is transformed into something else?


I’m talking about the possibility that human beings would be able to physically mutate at will, even if it took five years to complete that mutation. Sheer force of will would allow you to change your physical self. To understand physical process on earth requires a revision of the theory that we’re all God’s creatures—all that Victorian sentiment. It should certainly be extended to encompass disease, viruses and bacteria. Why not? A virus is only doing its job. It’s trying to live its life. The fact that it’s destroying you by doing so is not its fault. It’s about trying to understand interrelationships among organisms, even those we perceive as disease. To understand it from the disease’s point of view, it’s just a matter of life. It has nothing to do with disease. I think most diseases would be very shocked to be considered diseases at all. It’s a very negative connotation. For them, it’s very positive when they take over your body and destroy you.


All lovers are young lovers, even when they’re sixty. Old people don’t think they’re old. There’s no such thing as an old person. There’s a person who has been broken on the rack of pain and infirmity, but there’s really no old person. When someone dies at eighty, it’s the death of a young person.


On dreams: It’s the tone. Intangible. And yet it’s palpable, in the sense that you wake up and you’re still living in it. You’re not in the narrative any more, but the half-life is still there. I had a dream that I was watching a film and the film was causing me to grow old fast. The movie itself was infecting me, giving me a disease, the essence of which was that I was aging. Then the screen became a mirror in which I was seeing myself age. I woke up terrified. That’s really what I’m talking about, more than any puny virus.


...underneath the veneer of artistic and philosophical endeavor comes the childlike. Which is why even the most pessimistic film-making has some optimism behind it. Just making a film is a positive act, some act of faith


I have to go back to the voice that spoke before all these structures were imposed on it


It’s like the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Borges has written a wonderful critical essary on that poem, saying that the English translator, Edward Fitzgerald, was no good as a translator because his work on the Rubaiyat is very faulty; that Khayyam was actually not a very good poet. But somehow, over the span of nine centuries, they combined to make this little gem of a poem that would never have happened otherwise.


One of the reasons you find a writer so compelling is that they crystalize for you stuff that’s already in you.


Burroughs says you must allow yourself to create characters and situations that could be a danger to you in every way. Even physically. He in fact insists that writing be recognized and accepted as a dangerous act.

[Jevron McCrory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read!

I was expecting merely a treatise and analysis on the man's movies but throughout the course of the book, Cronenberg waxes lyrical on politics, religion, sexuality, morality, social economics, the age old drama of screen violence, scriptwriting, casting a movie, rehearsals, financing your first film, the influence and opinion of peers and a whole plethora of other topics, all backed with sound and left of circle logic and reasoning.

I found the interviews overwhelmingly inspirational and have gained a far greater respect for him and his impressive body of work.

This is a definite re-read.

[Max Rudd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have been taking more of an interest in books like these of late, especially as I would like to have another go at directing.

This collection of interviews with David Cronenberg by Chris Rodley is something of an eye opener and has been a wonder opportunity for me to revisit some of his best works. But overall I didn't find this one as moving or nearly as inspirational as Rodley's interviews with David Lynch.

Happy to have read it and there are certainly some fundamental pointers in here, but didn't fire my imagination.

[Joakim Gustafsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about ideas and the intellectual musings of an out of the ordinary filmmaker.

The book focuses on the early to mid era Cronenberg, from his pre-film life where a lot of his later fascinations are planted, his first films and the very exciting culture they were created in. And then walks on to his era of masterpieces (Videodrome, The Fly and Naked Lunch).

Unfortunately it's brief and while it starts strong a lot of the same sentiments are repeated throughout, but any fan of Cronenberg would find this book exciting.

[Tadeo Cocucci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Canadienses, no lo entenderías

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a series of in depth interviews with Cronenberg, reviewing his career chronologically up to M. Butterfly, with an additional, much brisker, chapter on Crash. This imposes some constraints on the level of insight: though Chris Rodley displays some actual judgement in the Introduction, the interviews are necessarily sycophantic (so he can't really ask why Stephen Lack was so bad in Scanners, say, though he clearly wonders).
These interviews provide some insight into themes explored by Cronenberg's movies, though there is little that leaps out to me as radically challenging if you have already seen the films. The anecdotes about production and snapshots of Canadian film history probably provide more value than the philosophical pondering, which distilled on page loses the potency that it gets from Cronenberg's visual presentation.
On one topic - for me inseparable from the aesthetic of the earlier films - that of conspiratorial institutions (ConSec, Spectacular Optical) that unleash chaotic forces through their attempts to mould the world, Cronenberg goes rather off the rails and offers some limp observations comparing institutions to bodies composed of cells (with, e.g., rogue 'little sections' in the CIA being equivalent to tumours). For me, this misses a memorable aspect of Scanners and Videodrome, the attempts by these organisations to 'strengthen' 'North America' - through weaponry and social cleansing - in a world devoid of values or ideology, and the consequences. Cronenberg's concern with the body is well established but this exploration of a fascistic desire to improve the 'strength' of a people, like a body, through alteration of individuals' bodies and minds is more interesting to me than an slightly tedious analogy between cells and individuals within a corporation.
This doesn't amount to more than a companion piece for Cronenberg's films. Worth the read for me, if only because I intend to rewatch them all (and indeed I have a few left to watch for the first time) and this gives me something to bounce thoughts off of.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I was not a David Cronenberg super fan I wouldn’t have given this 5 stars, because of this you may have already guessed that this is going to be one of my less objective reviews.

I knew this book was going to offer an excellent insight into Cronenberg’s brain when it arrived and had copious dog eared pages, a wide selection of underlinings, circlings and exclamation marks in the margins - accompanied with scribblings of varying degrees of legibility. It’s comforting to know that this book was owned by a fellow Cronenberg super fan before it arrived in my hands (although since they gave the book up can they really be a true Cronenberg super fan?).

If you’re already a fan of Cronenberg you’ll love this. If you’re not a Cronenberg fan you’ll still find this book fascinating - the guy has some very interesting and unique thoughts regarding the human existence, philosophy, and, of course, sex. I don’t agree with everything he says in the book but you can’t deny the man has conviction and that at the very least should grant him some attention.

This is an excellent book for someone who wants to get into the weird and wonderful films of Cronenberg as it presupposes no prior knowledge and is structured in such an easy to read way - a truly delightful book.

[Rase McCray]

This book is simply a series of interviews with Cronenberg, covering his whole output from beginning to when the book is published. It's therefore almost like a biography in interviews, filled with interesting quotes and analyses, self-reflections, and behind-the-scenes tidbits. I really enjoyed it and found it often insightful or funny.

It's not, however, definitive as an analytic tool in that it doesn't always feel like Cronenberg is objective, or maybe even fully reliable. I love the vulnerability he shows and the not-insignificant amount of self-reflection he offers. But it would be interesting to get an outsider's perspective on how some of the same events played out from a different perspective.

Ultimately, this is a fairly fun and extremely readable walk through Cronenberg's films, and I'd recommend it to any of his fans.

[Rögnvaldur Brynjar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bókin var allt sem ég átti von á og meira en það. Farið er yfir feril David Cronenberg's frá upphafi og fram að Crash (1966) sem er með sinn eigin lokakafla í viðtalsformi. Ég hefði viljað að bókin væri lengri en hún fer yfir helstu myndir Cronenberg's svo ég er mjög sáttur. Eina sem hefði mátt bæta er að ljósmyndir teknar úr myndunum hefðu mátt vera í lit.

Innsæið sem þessi bók gefur í verk Cronenbergs er dásamleg og ég fann mig taka myndir af blaðsíðum til að geta geymt qoutues. Must read fyrir Cronenberg ádáðendur.

Aftast í bókinni eru framleiðslu upplýsingar og fleira t.d. tegund af filmu notuð og lengd allra myndanna sem Cronenberg gerði fram að þessari bók. Ég er klárlega að fara að lesa fleiri bækur úr þessari seríu og Cronenberg var góð byrjun þar sem hann er einn af mínum uppáhalds leikstjórum.

[Juan Valencia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me demoré bastante leyendo este libro porque no me había visto algunas películas entonces las que me faltaban las iba viendo cuando llegaba a esa parte :p Me gustó mucho contrastar mi percepción sobre cada cosa que vi y luego leer lo que pensaba Cronenberg, y entender cómo se dieron los diferentes procesos en el desarrollo de cada película o:

Me encantó la edición que leí y muy bueno que incluía fotogramas y fotos detrás de cámara de cada película

[JaumeMuntane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta colección es una auténtica joya. Un recorrido por la obra de directores emblemáticos (en este caso, Cronenberg) a través de la propia voz del director. La leí en su momento cuando la publicaron y me encantó. Ahora, realizando una reelectura simultánea a la revisión de su filmografía, el entusiasmo por este libro, y por la obra fílmica de Cronenberg, continúa en cuotas altas.

[Zac · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful and entertaining look into the mind of David Cronenberg and the themes in his works. Some anecdotes about the production of the films but probably more about his philosophies on life and art.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

cronenberg is kinda boring in interviews... dont bother unless u really really care

[David]

Sexual body horror the censors cut off my child's hand.

Interesting to hear about the origin and making of some of the more wilder movies I watched growing up.

When scientists become filmmakers.

[Ed Dougherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was taking a break from film books and then I cracked. No regrets! Just wish it had been written later and covered more. But that’s not the author’s fault!