David Cronenberg

At 81 years old, David Cronenberg has this physical status:

Career

Cronenberg and Ivan Reitman collaborated on two short sketch films and two short art-house films (the black-and-white Stereo and the colour Crimes of the Future). Throughout the 1970s, the Canadian government provided grants for his films. During this period, Cronenberg concentrated on his signature "body horror" films such as Shivers and Rabid, the latter of which gave pornographic actress Marilyn Chambers work in a different genre, but Cronenberg's first choice for the role was a then-unknown Sissy Spacek. Rabid's debut at international distributors was a success, and his upcoming two horror films, The Brood and Scanners, received more attention. However, Cronenberg displayed dynamism at this time by establishing Fast Company between The Brood and Rabid, a venture that reflected his fascination with car racing and bike gangs.

William S. Burroughs and Vladimir Nabokov have both been cited as influences by Cronenberg. Cronenberg's 1991 "translation" of Naked Lunch (1959), his literary hero William S. Burroughs' most controversial book, is perhaps the best example of a film that straddles the line between his personal chaos and mental turmoil. Cronenberg acknowledged that a straightforward translation of the novel would "cost 400 million dollars and be barred in every nation in the world." Rather, he continued to blur the lines between what seemed to be true and what seemed to be hallucination triggered by the main character's heroin use in his earlier film, Videodrome. In this manner within the film, some of the book's "moments" (as well as incidents loosely based on Burroughs' life) are included. When writing the screenplay for Naked Lunch (1991), Cronenberg said he had a moment of synergy with Burroughs' writing style. He felt the connection between his screenwriting style and Burroughs' prose style that he jokingly remarked that if Burroughs' resignation, "I'll just write his next book."

Cronenberg has stated that his films should be seen "from the point of view of the disease," and that, in Shivers, for example, he associates with the characters after they are infected with the anarchic parasites. Disease and tragedy, in Cronenberg's work, are less likely to be solved than agents of personal change. "But because we're trying to impose our own model of belief on things we consider as being relatively stable," Cronenberg said of his characters' shifts. However, when I look at a person, I see this maelstrom of organic, chemical, and electron chaos; it's volatility and chaos, shimmering; and the ability to change and transform and transmute." People injured in car accidents in Crash (1996), on the other hand, prefer to see their ordeal as "a fertilizing rather than a destructive event." Cronenberg had voted against Paul Haggis' choice for Crash (2004), arguing that doing so was "very disrespectful" to the "important and seminal" J.G. A Ballard novel on which Cronenberg's film was based was based.

Cronenberg hasn't really worked in the world of big-budget, mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, apart from his two films (1983) and The Fly (1986), although he has had occasional near misses. He was considered by George Lucas as a potential director for Return of the Jedi (1983), but was turned down. Cronenberg worked on a version of Total Recall (1990), but later experienced "creative differences" with developers Dino De Laurentiis and Ronald Shusett; a new version of the film was eventually created by Paul Verhoeven. Cronenberg, a director of Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," the short story on which the film was based, said that his dissatisfaction with what he imagined was to be and what it hurt him so much that for a time, he suffered from a migraine similar to a needle piercing his eye, for a brief period.

Cronenberg was appointed as the producer of a sequel to another Verhoeven film, Basic Instinct (1992), but the project was ultimately cancelled. His thriller A History of Violence (2005) is one of his most expensive and most available to date. He said that the decision to direct it was influenced by his decision to suspend some of his compensation on the low-budgeted Spider (2002), but that it was one of his most critically acclaimed films to date, as well as Eastern Promises (2005), a film about one man's struggle to regain power in the Russian Mafia.

Cronenberg has worked on all of his films since The Brood (1979), with the notable exception of Michael Kamen's score The Dead Zone (1983). Artist Robert Silverman, art director Carol Spier (also his sister) sound editor Bryan Day, film editor Richard Sanders, costume designer Denise Cronenberg, and, of course, cinematographer Mark Irwin from 1979 to 1988. Cronenberg produced The Fly, Howard Shore's first opera in 2008.

Cronenberg worked with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky on all of his films since Dead Ringers (1988). (See List of film director and cinematographer collaborations). Suschitzky was the director of photography for The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Cronenberg said Suschitzky's role in the film "was the only one of those movies that actually looked good," which was a motivating factor to work with him on Dead Ringers.

Despite Cronenberg's work with a number of Hollywood celebrities, he remains a steadfast Canadian filmmaker, with almost half of his films (including main studio vehicles The Dead Zone and The Fly) being shot in his home province, Ontario. M. Butterfly (1993), most of which was shot in China, Spider, and Eastern Promises (2007), were all shot in England, and A Dangerous Method (2011), which was filmed in Germany and Austria. In and around Montreal, Rabid and Shivers were fired. The bulk of his films have been funded by Telefilm Canada, and Cronenberg, a vocal promoter of government-funded film programs, has said: "Every country needs [a scheme of government grants] to have a national cinema in the face of Hollywood."

Cronenberg has appeared in other directors' films as an actor. The bulk of his appearances are cameo appearances, as in the films Into the Night (1985), Blood and Donuts (1995), To Die For (1995), and Alias' television series Alias (2004), but Alias (1990) and Last Night (1998). He hasn't appeared in any of his own films, but he did appear in Shivers as an adolescent car-pound attendant; and his hands can be seen in eXistenZ (1999); and he appeared as a stand-in for James Woods' character in a videodrome for shots in which Woods' character wore a helmet that covered his head.

Cronenberg produced two extra-cinematographic projects in 2008: the exhibition Chromosomes at the Rome Film Festival, and the opera The Fly at the LaOpera in Los Angeles and the Théâtre Châtelet in Paris. Cronenberg finished production on A Dangerous Method (2011), Christopher Hampton's adaptation of The Talking Cure starring Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, and frequent collaborator Viggo Mortensen. Jeremy Thomas, an independent British producer, made the film.

Cosmopolis, his film in 2012, exhibited for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Cronenberg claimed in the Rue Morgue's October 2011 edition that he had written a companion piece to his 1986 version of The Fly, which he would like to direct if given the opportunity. It is not a traditional sequel, but rather a "parallel tale," he has said.

For a time it seemed as though, as producer Paul Webster of Eastern Promises told Screen International, a sequel was in the works that would reunite the main team of Cronenberg, Steven Knight, and Viggo Mortensen. The film was supposed to be produced by Webster's latest production company Shoebox Films in partnership with Focus Features and shot in early 2013. However, Cronenberg said in 2012 that the Eastern Promises sequel had failed due to a budget conflict with Focus Features.

July 8, 2013, in Toronto, Ontario, and Los Angeles, filming for Cronenberg's next film, a comedy drama called Maps to the Stars (2014) — with Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, and Robert Pattinson began. This was the first time Cronenberg filmed in the United States.

Cronenberg's short film The Nest was released on YouTube on June 26, 2014. The film was commissioned for "David Cronenberg – The Exhibition" at EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam and was on display on YouTube for the duration of the exhibition, until September 14, 2014. Consumed, Cronenberg's first book, published in 2014, was also published in 2014.

Viggo Mortensen revealed that Cronenberg is considering retirement due to a lack of funding for his film projects in a May 2016 interview. Despite this, Mortensen said in February 2021 that Cronenberg had improved an older script and that he wanted to film it with Mortensen. He went further and said that it is a "strange film noir" and recalls Cronenberg's earlier body horror films. The title was announced to be Crimes of the Future in April 2021. It was shot in Greece in the summer of 2021 and at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.

In the minute long short film The Death of David Cronenberg, shot by his daughter Caitlin and released digitally on September 19, 2021, Cronenberg appears as himself.

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