David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and the intertwining of the psychological, physical, and technological. Cronenberg is best known for exploring these themes through sci-fi horror films such as Shivers, Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly, though he has also directed dramas, psychological thrillers and gangster films.
Cronenberg's films have polarized critics and audiences alike; he has earned critical acclaim and has sparked controversy for his depictions of gore and violence. The Village Voice called him "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world". His films have won numerous awards, including the Special Jury Prize for Crash at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, a unique award that is distinct from the Jury Prize as it is not given annually, but only at the request of the official jury, who in this case gave the award "for originality, for daring, and for audacity".
From the 2000s to the 2020s, Cronenberg collaborated on several films with Viggo Mortensen, including A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method and Crimes of the Future. Seven of his films were selected to compete for the Palme d'Or, the most recent being The Shrouds, which was screened at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Early life and education
David Cronenberg was born in Toronto, Ontario, on March 15, 1943. Cronenberg is the son of Esther, a musician, and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor. He was raised in a "middle-class progressive Jewish family". His father was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and his mother was born in Toronto; all of his grandparents were Jews from Lithuania. Milton wrote some short stories for True Detective and had a column in the Toronto Telegram for around thirty years. The Cronenberg household was full of a wide variety of books, and Cronenberg's father tried to introduce his son to art films such as The Seventh Seal, although at the time Cronenberg was more interested in western and pirate films, showing a particular affinity for those featuring Burt Lancaster.A voracious reader from an early age, Cronenberg started off enjoying science fiction magazines like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy, and Astounding, where he first encountered authors who would prove influential on his own work, including Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, although he would not encounter his primary influence, Philip K. Dick, until much later. Cronenberg also read comic books, noting his favorites were Tarzan, Little Lulu, Uncle Scrooge, Blackhawk, Plastic Man, Superman, and the original Fawcett Comics version of Captain Marvel, later known as Shazam. Although as an adult, Cronenberg feels superhero films are artistically limited, he maintains a fondness for Captain Marvel/''Shazam, criticizing how he feels the character had been neglected. Cronenberg also read horror comics published by EC, which in contrast to the others, he described as "scary and bizarre and violent and nasty—the ones your mother didn't want you to have." He has cited William S. Burroughs and Vladimir Nabokov as influences.
Early films that later proved influential on Cronenberg's career include avant-garde, horror, science fiction, and thriller films, such as Un Chien Andalou, Vampyr, War of the Worlds, Freaks, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Alphaville, Performance, and Duel. He also cited less obvious films as influences, including comedies like The Bed Sitting Room, as well as Disney cartoons such as Bambi and Dumbo. Cronenberg said he found these two Disney animated films, as well as Universal's live-action Blue Lagoon, "terrifying" which influenced his approach to horror. Cronenberg went on to say that Bambi was the "first important film" he ever saw, citing the moment when Bambi's mother died as particularly powerful. Cronenberg even wished to screen Bambi as part of a museum exhibition of his influences, but Disney refused him permission. In terms of conventional horror films that frightened him, Cronenberg cited Don't Look Now.
Cronenberg attended Dewson Street Public School, Kent Senior School, Harbord Collegiate Institute and North Toronto Collegiate Institute. He enrolled at the University of Toronto for Honours Science in 1963, but changed to Honours English Language and Literature the next year. He graduated from university in 1967, at the top of his class with a general Bachelor of Arts. Cronenberg decided to not study for a master of arts after making Stereo.
Cronenberg's fascination with the film Winter Kept Us Warm, by classmate David Secter, sparked his interest in film. He began frequenting film camera rental houses and learned the art of filmmaking. Cronenberg made two short films, Transfer and From the Drain'', with a few hundred dollars. Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman, Bob Fothergill, and Iain Ewing were inspired by Jonas Mekas and formed the Toronto Film Co-op.
Career
1969–1979: Film debut and early work
After two short sketch films and two short art-house features Cronenberg went into partnership with Ivan Reitman. The Canadian government provided financing for his films throughout the 1970s. During this period, he focused on his signature "body horror" films such as Shivers and Rabid, the latter of which provided pornographic actress Marilyn Chambers with work in a different genre, although Cronenberg's first choice for the role had been a then little-known Sissy Spacek. Rabid was a breakthrough with international distributors, and his next horror feature, The Brood, gained stronger support. Even then, he showed variety by making Fast Company between The Brood and Rabid, a project reflecting his interest in car racing and bike gangs.1981–1988: Breakthrough and acclaim
In 1981, Cronenberg directed the science-fiction horror film Scanners. In it, "scanners" are psychics with unusual telepathic and telekinetic powers. The film has since become a cult classic. He followed it with another science-fiction horror film Videodrome starring James Woods. The film was distributed by Universal Pictures. Janet Maslin of The New York Times remarked on the film's "innovativeness", and praised Woods' performance as having a "sharply authentic edge". That same year he directed The Dead Zone, based on Stephen King's novel of the same name, starring Christopher Walken.Cronenberg directed The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. The film is loosely based on George Langelaan's 1957 short story of the same name and the 1958 film of the same name. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox and was a box office hit, making $60 million. Cronenberg has not generally worked within the world of big-budget, mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, although he has had occasional near misses. At one stage he was considered by George Lucas as a possible director for Return of the Jedi but turned down the offer. Peter Suschitzky was the director of photography for The Empire Strikes Back, and Cronenberg remarked that Suschitzky's work in that film "was the only one of those movies that actually looked good", which was a motivating factor to work with him on Dead Ringers.
Since Dead Ringers, Cronenberg has worked with Suschitzky on each of his films. Cronenberg has collaborated with composer Howard Shore on all of his films since The Brood, with the exception of The Dead Zone, which was scored by Michael Kamen. Other regular collaborators include actor Robert A. Silverman, art director Carol Spier sound editor Bryan Day, film editor Ronald Sanders, his sister, costume designer Denise Cronenberg, and, from 1979 until 1988, cinematographer Mark Irwin. In 2008, Cronenberg directed Shore's first opera, The Fly.
1991–2002: Career fluctuations
In 1991, Cronenberg adapted Naked Lunch, his literary hero William S. Burroughs' most controversial book. The novel was considered "unfilmable", and Cronenberg acknowledged that a straight translation into film would "cost 400 million dollars and be banned in every country in the world". Instead he chose to blur the lines between what appeared to be reality and what appeared to be hallucinations brought on by the main character's drug addiction. Some of the book's "moments" are presented in this manner within the film. Cronenberg said that while writing the screenplay for Naked Lunch, he felt that his style and Burroughs' had synergized, and jokingly remarked that the connection between his screenwriting style and Burroughs' prose style was so strong, that should Burroughs pass on, he might write the next Burroughs novel.Cronenberg has also appeared as an actor in other directors' films. Most of his roles are cameo appearances, as in the films Into the Night, Blood and Donuts, To Die For, and Jason X and the television series Alias, but on occasion he has played major roles, as in Nightbreed and Last Night. He has not had major roles in any of his own films, but he did put in a brief appearance as a gynecologist in The Fly; he can also be glimpsed among the sex-crazed hordes in Shivers; he can be heard as an unseen car-pound attendant in Crash; his hands can be glimpsed in eXistenZ ; and he appeared as a stand-in for James Woods in Videodrome.
Cronenberg has said that his films should be seen "from the point of view of the disease", and that in Shivers, for example, he identifies with the characters after they become infected with the anarchic parasites. Disease and disaster, in Cronenberg's work, are less problems to be overcome than agents of personal transformation. Of his characters' transformations, Cronenberg said, "But because of our necessity to impose our own structure of perception on things we look on ourselves as being relatively stable. But, in fact, when I look at a person I see this maelstrom of organic, chemical and electron chaos; volatility and instability, shimmering; and the ability to change and transform and transmute." Similarly, in Crash, people who have been injured in car crashes attempt to view their ordeal as "a fertilizing rather than a destructive event". In 2005, Cronenberg publicly disagreed with Paul Haggis' choice of the same name for the latter's Oscar-winning film Crash, arguing that it was "very disrespectful" to the "important and seminal" J. G. Ballard novel on which Cronenberg's film was based.