COME OF AGE: An interview with Spider director David Cronenberg. By Warren Curry 2/24/03 Part 2 of 2

I don't know if you'd consider Spider a low-budget film, but you had problems with time and the budget for this film. Why do you avoid Hollywood?

Because you can't make Spider in Hollywood -- you simply can't. There's no one who will make this movie.

How much was the budget?

It was $8 million, but that included everyone deferring all of their salary because the budget was originally $10 million. I got paid nothing, Ralph got paid nothing, the producers, Patrick. If the movie makes some money in the theaters, it doesn't have to make a lot, but if it makes some, we'll get paid.

But you could do Spider for nothing and then do something bigger.

Well, Ralph for example does that. He went from doing Spider to doing Red Dragon. The problem is that for Ralph that's a two month commitment and for me it's a two year commitment. You have to have real passion to survive that two years. I like money, if someone said, "We're going to give you so much money to do this movie," I'd certainly listen. But, by then, I'm thinking that I've been working on this movie for a year, I've got another year to go and then I have to go out and talk to you guys and I hate the movie and I'm suicidal. Should I do this or not? My answer is not; don't do it. I'm sure you've all run into actors and you know their hearts weren't in the movie, they know it's not a good movie, but they're on the road promoting it because they're professionals. I don't want to be in that position.

Do you find yourself turning down a lot of work that comes from Hollywood?

Well, as I get older, it's obvious that I'm more interested in doing artsy films, but I do get offered the occasional thing. And I won't say that there haven't been some so called "Hollywood" projects that I haven't been interested in. M. Butterfly was one. That wasn't a studio picture, but it was a Geffen/Warner Bros. type picture. Even The Dead Zone was Paramount, so I don't disdain it, but at this particular period the stuff that is around in Hollywood I don't find very interesting. And even if I found it interesting to see for 2 hours, it's not the same as working on it for two years. You really have to love it and it's just rare.

Does Hollywood still perceive you as a horror director?

I don't think I'm perceived at all. I think if they see Spider, they're afraid. I've had this experience with a studio head, whose name I won't mention. He was talking to my agent about something and he wanted to see Spider. Then I didn't hear anything back and I asked my agent what happened. He said, "Well, they're afraid of you." They think that I would agree to do Spider-Man and turn it into Spider, I guess, which I wouldn't do. You might've known that I almost did Basic Instinct 2. That sounds surprising, and it is, and I didn't mind that it was surprising, but the script was really good. People who can't imagine why I would do that haven't read the script. If it hadn't been called Basic Instinct 2, you would say, "Wow, this is a great, perverse, erotic thriller, really dark and interesting." It's a long story, but it didn't work out. If the circumstances were right, because I'd like to make some money and get paid instead of not getting paid, but at the same time, I just don't want to do something that I'm going to hate myself for doing.

How did a movie like Crash impact on your career?

Well, I had an agent at the time, who's no longer my agent, begging me not to do Crash and begging me instead to do The Juror with Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. He thought that would be a better career move. Now you can tell me, do you think it was? Has anybody seen The Juror? It didn't make much money. Do you remember who directed it?

(The roundtable in unison) No.

So that is a Hollywood version of a good career move, because this agent is a professional and at the time those were hot stars and the budget would've been o.k., I would've made some money and it would have been promoted. I said, basically, "I'm doing Crash and if you don't understand that I should have another agent." I think Crash has only been good for me. You have to realize that any power base that I have has to do with Europe not with America. Spider for example was a Canada/U.K. co-production, so was eXistenZ, so was Naked Lunch, so was Dead Ringers and so was Crash. Most of the movies I do are co-productions with other countries and that excludes America.

In Europe people will go see one of your movies because it's a Cronenberg film. Do you feel they have a respect for you that you don't have here?

Yes. I think the Hollywood version of respect is contempt, quite frankly. I'm not saying this with bitterness, because there's no reason. That's the name of the game here and you know what game you're playing, and if I was going to do Spider-Man instead of Spider, I would know what was expected. It's useless to go into a movie and then try to subvert it for your own reasons. You know what's expected, so if you can't have that agreement up front that you know what you're doing, then there's no point in doing it. I don't think I have here what's considered respect, but maybe it's what they consider respect. The version of respect for creative elements in Hollywood is not the same as what it is, let's say, in France. I can get a movie financed in France up to a point, I can't do that here.

You were talking earlier about the horror films you've directed. Spider is a genuinely terrifying film. How is it different for you as a director to create a sense of real terror and more sensational terror? Do you approach both films the same way.

I've never myself felt like I was making a cheesy horror film. Even Shivers, Rabid and Scanners, which all have sort of sensational plot concepts that can be summarized in a high concept way, but my purpose was always the same. It was an exploration of all kinds of stuff -- philosophical things, humorous things. I think my films are very funny mostly, including Spider. I'm not saying totally funny, but there are funny things in it. But you have to be in the movies to get the jokes. I've never gone into a film saying, "Wow, this is going to be a cheesy horror film and people who love cheese are going to love it." I know that my son and my kids will often rent a film just because they know that it's cheesy. To me, this is horrifying, because I always used to go for films that I thought were going to be great and yet I can see the fun they have watching something they can laugh at. Basically, you're condescending to that film, or there's a conspiracy of cheese (laughs). The filmmaker and the audience know that they're involved in something that's sloppy and there's nothing wrong with that. That just doesn't attract me all that much.

What do you like to watch? What are you watching now?

Very little. There are a lot of films that were in competition at Cannes with Spider that I didn't get to see, and I'd like to see those films that were from all over the world , which you don't often get to see. Those are films that I'm interested in seeing. And I am a member of the Academy; I get to vote for Oscars. That's because of The Fly winning an Oscar, so from that point on, I've been a member. I get lots of tapes and DVDs every year.

Which ones have you enjoyed?

I'll mention one that seems obscure: Neil Jordan's film The Butcher Boy, which has resonances in Spider. I got that as an Academy tape. I thought that was a brilliant film; I think it's his best film and is fantastic. But it got nothing; some good reviews, but nonetheless I thought it was fantastic.

What did you think of A Beautiful Mind? It has some similarities with Spider.

I didn't see A Beautiful Mind until after I was finished making Spider. I thought it was just a feel-good Hollywood movie. That to me was its purpose. It's interesting that you ask that because I got a letter from a woman in Ontario, who was upset because she read on the Web that I had said bad things about A Beautiful Mind, which unfortunately I did. I normally don't do that -- filmmaking is too hard for me to be putting down somebody else's movie, so I tend not to do that in public, although in private I have my own opinions. At a conversation on stage at Cannes, I ended up saying some negative things about A Beautiful Mind and I regret having said them just for those reasons, although I still think the same things. This woman said that A Beautiful Mind did more for the public perception of schizophrenia and its acceptance of it than practically any schizophrenia society and associations have done, and so she was very upset with me for putting down that film. I will write her a letter back to say to her, first of all, I'm wondering if that's true. Look, there's a schizophrenic in that movie who manages to maintain a relationship with a beautiful woman his whole life, which is not true of the actual person, managed to have a career as a theoretical mathematician/game theorist, and then manages to still have a career as a teacher and then wins the Nobel Prize. If that's schizophrenia, most people would say, "Let me have it." (laughs) Then he gets a movie with Russell Crowe playing him and it wins an Oscar and he gets paid a lot of money for his life story. If that's good for people's perception of schizophrenia then I have to wonder about that, because in fact most people's lives are destroyed by it and it's not realistic. How good can that be? Everyone will expect people with schizophrenia to win Nobel Prizes. There's a dislocation there. I can see that in a way she might have a point; after all, it sounds like she's living with a schizophrenic family member, but on the other hand, I can't see it really working that way. The other element is the art of it -- what a movie might do in terms of social good does not necessarily make it a good movie, so we can separate it into different things.

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