The Toronto International Film Festival held a unique exhibition at Bell Lightbox in Toronto last November. The exhibition called Evolution took us through the career of David Cronenberg starting with his student films and then moving forward through every film he has directed. Most of the films were represented by film clips, stills, scripts, and props to give you an exhaustive overview of the director’s work.
His earlier pieces – Stereo and Crimes of the Future start the exhibition off and it follows into his 70’s horror films like Shivers, Rabid, The Brood and Fast Company, before chronicling his 80’s output. Obviously his most prolific work as a film maker was detailed during this decade, so we got presentations on Scanners, Videodrome and The Deadzone. Following those films, we were presented with a large selection of props from The Fly (his most recognizable film) – including the teleportation pods, machetes, creature props and various script pages to cap off a truly great film in his oeuvre.
The exhibition then delves into the 90’s with such films like Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, Crash and Existenz. Again, like the Fly the film Existenz was well represented with impressive props like the bone gun, the flesh pods and other freaky gadgets used in the film. I believe this film was a highpoint for the decade, so it was interesting to see how they curated this movie.
When we get to the later period of his work – films like Spider, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis all receive some of the spotlight celebrating Cronenberg’s cinematic output.
The exhibition also features an interactive area, allowing patrons to enter the famous bar scene in Naked Lunch (recreated here) to get their picture taken with a life-sized mugwump. This area is also adorned in movie props – including the bondage mugwump, the butt-bug typewriter and other strange elements from the film.
On a whole, Evolution is quite impressive and informative. For those who adore the director’s work, this will titillate your cinematic desires, and for those unfamiliar with his work the exhibition will undoubtedly educate the uninitiated. TIFF did an outstanding job curating the many films Cronenberg had a hand in directing and I was glad to have the chance to see this show.
Kenneth Gallant, Editor HMS
“Why would anyone want to watch a scum show like Videodrome?” That quote comes from the uber-weird masterpiece Videodrome by David Cronenberg. It is what movies today lack: Originality. Cronenberg had already made Rabid and Scanners, so if he had never made another film, his legacy would have been solidified in the hearts of Horror fans and cine-files in the 21st century and beyond.
Sleazy Max Renn (played by the dazzling James Woods) runs Civic TV - a rogue TV station that shows controversial material ranging from soft core porn to over the top violence. While searching for “edgier” content, he taps into a pirate satellite signal called Videodrome. It provides an outlet for hardcore sex and torture. Max has struck gold, but soon finds out it’s not something to mess with, and he becomes obsessed over it. Hallucinations of the bizarre kind also become a part of Max’s daily routine. The movie also stars Debbie Harry (of Blondie fame) as Max’s sexually provocative girlfriend.
This movie deals with technology taking over the human body and society, along with ideas of body horror as a political weapon. This seemed to be the main idea popping up in several of Cronenberg’s films.
An interesting behind the scenes documentary called ‘Forging the new flesh” is available now. It tells how the SFX were created, as well as Interviews with James Woods and Cronenberg (who had said as a child he would pick up late night TV from Buffalo, New York and was worried he might see something disturbing) and effects genius Rick Baker.
Many of the elements of the movie have a basis in reality. Civic TV is really homage to Toronto based City TV. A station notorious for broadcasting soft core porn and violent shows (in the early 70’s). There’s even a reference to the founder of City TV, Moses Znaimer, and one of Max’s business partners was so named Moses. The title of the film had such working titles as Network of blood and ZoneKiller.
The script, in fact wasn’t even completed. It was written as it was being filmed. The wild first script was how Cronenberg landed major talent. He approached Woods’ agent with the script that was only 70 pages with no ending.
The creepy soundtrack was created by Howard Shore, who had done other soundtrack work for Cronenberg, as well as Tim Burton. He created the haunting soundscape by using a Synclavier II digital synthesizer. The music follows Max’s decent into hellish hallucinations and was released on vinyl and re-released on CD in 1998.
Filmplan international financed the film and began shooting on Oct. 19th, 1981, wrapping up on Dec 19th, 1981, with additional photography in the spring of 1982. Many shots were cut from the final film and some images were cut by the MPAA because they thought a man was being castrated. As Cronenberg said, “It was only electrodes attached to the man’s testicles.”
A great DVD release came from Criterion in 2004 and funny enough a novelization by Dennis Etchison (credited as Jack Martin) in 1983. So the imagination of not only a few a big wig producers had been captured, but a few publishers too. Of course, now Hollywood is courting the idea of a remake because there seems to be a shortage of ideas in Tinseltown; there is no reason for this. The film stands on its own and is a testament of a filmmaker’s vision and an essay on entertainment of the last half of the 20th century.
So go get your cancer gun and say it with me: “Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!”
Mark Slade, HMS
Read the previous installment.