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 almost Twilight Zone y. There's an appeal to that longing for an imaginary pasta yearning for an innocence that was never so pure anyway. It's meant to be recognizably real, but it has to play as mythological as well. That's part of the balancing act.
So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses.
We are at a major epoch in human history, which is that we don't need sex to recreate the race. You can have babies without sex. This is the first time in human history that has been true, and it means, for example, we could do some extraordinary things.
I have no rules. For me, it's a full, full experience to make a movie. It takes a lot of time, and I want there to be a lot of stuff in it. You're looking for every shot in the movie to have resonance and want it to be something you can see a second time, and then I'd like it to be something you can see 10 years later, and it becomes a different movie, because you're a different person. So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses.
The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It's not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff.
I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.
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.
I wrote a script that I thought had a lot of potential,
We joked about that on the set. There was a sense this was a portrait of a marriage in all kinds of ways, especially under duress.
It's not as though I have a message . . . I haven't solved any problem. It's a discussion, it's a meditation on the complexity of it.
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's a certain intimacy involved. You have to get very close to the person who's threatening you. It's the opposite of what your instinct is.
It's the perfect car, the dream ... a combination of beauty and technology,