David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, CC OOnt FRSCis a Canadian director, producer, filmmaker, screenwriter, actor, and author. Cronenberg is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or visceral horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical. In the first half of his career, he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction, although his work has since...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth15 March 1943
CityToronto, Canada
CountryCanada
It is specifically American, ... but that's not to say it's not universal. And I'm not fudging it. It is a parable of art that, to be universal, you must be specific. Otherwise, you are just talking about an abstraction. So you have to talk about a particular person and a particular place. Specificity is the essence of art. But it doesn't mean it doesn't have universal resonance.
It's a funny movie, too. People may wonder what's going on when they hear that about a movie that has the title A History of Violence . I think once they see it, they'll get it.
There is no point in going to Cannes if you're not going to be in competition. That's my feeling. So you've got to get into it.
At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible.
Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition.
Many wonderful, creative people have won Oscars, so if you win one, you're in their company.
Consciousness is the original sin: consciousness of the inevitability of our death.
Even Hitchcock liked to think of himself as a puppeteer who was manipulating the strings of his audience and making them jump. He liked to think he had that kind of control.
My dentist said to me the other day: I've enough problems in my life, so why should I see your films?
It was apparent to me that religion was an invented thing, a wish-fulfillment thing, a fantasy thing. It was much more real, dangerous, to accept that mortality was the end for you as an individual. As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, so if you're thinking of murder, if your subject is murder, then that's a physical act of absolute destruction because you're ending something, a body, that is unique. That person never existed before, will never exist again, will not be karmically recycled, will not go to heaven, therefore I take it seriously.
When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy.
Long live the new flesh.
Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.
Of course for many years directors have had to go on the road with their movies and promote them and I've done that since the beginning. So that's not new but the forms of it are different such as with the internet.