Director David Cronenberg pulls over to answer AC's questions about Crash.

As the director of such uniquely disturbing and thought-provoking films as Rabid, They Came from Within, The Brood, Scanners, Dead Zone, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg has displayed a persistent interest in the horrors of the human body and mind. In The Brood, for example, a woman's psychic anxiety produces a horde of murderous mutant children; in The Fly, an overly ambitious scientist finds himself slowly transforming into a winged insect; and in Naked Lunch, author William S. Burroughs' kinky, drug-fueled fantasies are realized with hallucinatory relish.

Cronenberg's latest film, Crash, based on the novel by J.G. Ballard, presents a psychological futurescape populated by characters who, having lost the ability to connect on an emotional level, engage in fetishistic sex and bizarre car-crash rituals. Like Naked Lunch, Ballard's tale was almost universally regarded to be unfilmable, but Cronenberg has managed to turn the author's imaginative but decidedly offbeat material into an intriguing and enigmatic motion picture. After winning a Special Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, the film has caused a firestorm of controversy during its release elsewhere in the world, and its appearance on U.S. screens promises to be no less provocative.

AC editor Stephen Pizzello recently flagged down the Canadian auteur to elicit his views on the Crash phenomenon, as well as details about his collaboration with director of photography Peter Suschitzky.

AC: J.G. Ballard's book seems almost tailor-made material for you. Did it immediately strike you as being something you had to film?
Cronenberg:
Not at all. The book was sent to me by a lady journalist who thought I should make a movie out of it. I found the book to be very difficult, intense and strange. When I finished it, I thought, 'I can't see why [this journalist] thinks I should make a movie out of this book.' So I didn't have an immediate epiphany about putting the story on film.
A couple of years later, just after finishing Naked Lunch, I was talking to [producer] Jeremy Thomas, and he asked me, 'Is there something else that you'd love to do, because we should work together again.' I said, 'Yeah, I think we should do Crash, do you know that book?' Jeremy got very excited, because he had optioned the book when it first came out. He knew Ballard, and wanted to introduce us immediately.
What was it about the story that made you finally want to do the project?
Cronenberg:
I don't mean to sound evasive, but as is often the case with me, I had to make the movie to find out why I had to make the movie. It was not something that was obvious to me. I think the book started a process in me that was working away under the surface. I had to make the movie to complete the process. If a movie works, it seems obvious in retrospect that it was the right decision to make it.
Of course, when I read the book, I could see what I considered to be some superficial connections between the book and my earlier work, but now I see that the connections go very deep.
With both Naked Lunch and Crash, you seem to be making a habit of adapting stories that many people consider to be 'unfilmable.' Did you consciously set out to challenge yourself in that respect?
Cronenberg:
No. Not much of what I do is conscious. [Laughs.] It is and it isn't, when you come to major decisions like that. I try very hard not to worry about how I'm perceived, or about the arc of my career. It's only in retrospect that it all has some shape. I have to say that for me, all books are unfilmable. I have a very high regard for prose fiction and fine writing.
As two distinct media, film and books are completely different. One does not supplant the other; if you really want to do the whole Crash experience, you should see the movie and read the book as well.
The movie has already generated a considerable amount of controversy, particularly in the U.K., and it seems certain to ruffle some feathers here in the States, where politicians regularly demonize 'sex and violence in the movies.'
Cronenberg:
The difference is that the film will be released after the U.S. elections, whereas the Brits were pre-election. I think that timing has a lot to do with [the controversy surrounding the film] - which is not to say that if the movie appeared in the midst of a desperate time for some political party, they might not grasp it as some sort of solution for a problem they have. There's no question that there's a Puritan strain in U.S. life; it's perhaps less obvious than it is in the U.K.
The reaction in the U.K. has been very strange and hysterical. People say to me, 'Well, you must be excited about the publicity,' but the whole thing has nothing to do with my movie anymore. The sad thing is that everyone has heard of the movie, but very few have seen it. And when they finally do go, their expectations will be so deformed by everything they've read that they'll have to see it three times to really see it. I don't think of that as good publicity. More than half the people who were ranting and raving hadn't seen it - even the critics. It's like a phantom of my movie was being attacked, rather than the movie itself.
It seems to boil down to an issue of artistic freedom.
Cronenberg:
I agree completely. It has to do with our understanding of democracy and freedom of speech. The interesting thing in the U.K. is that during all of the debates, no one has mentioned the word 'freedom.' It's as if it's political suicide to mention that word there now, because freedom is equated with license, and they're totally into control through fear.

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