David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, CC OOnt FRSCis a Canadian director, producer, filmmaker, screenwriter, actor, and author. Cronenberg is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or visceral horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical. In the first half of his career, he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction, although his work has since...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth15 March 1943
CityToronto, Canada
CountryCanada
It was apparent to me that religion was an invented thing, a wish-fulfillment thing, a fantasy thing. It was much more real, dangerous, to accept that mortality was the end for you as an individual. As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, so if you're thinking of murder, if your subject is murder, then that's a physical act of absolute destruction because you're ending something, a body, that is unique. That person never existed before, will never exist again, will not be karmically recycled, will not go to heaven, therefore I take it seriously.
For me, it's just a normal artistic endeavour to explore the dark side. Certainly, I'm not alone in it. Artists generally don't like to accept the version of reality that society and culture hand them. They want to know what's really going on. So you're always looking in the ceilings, under the floorboards and behind the walls, trying to find the mechanisms, the structures, and the truth. I find that often leads you into some dark places.
For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It's impossible to do.
I have a real aversion to ghosts because I don't believe in them. I think ghosts are actually a religious concept, because it means you believe in an afterlife. And I don't.
All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true.
I wrote a script that I thought had a lot of potential,
We joked about that on the set. There was a sense this was a portrait of a marriage in all kinds of ways, especially under duress.
At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible.
Many wonderful, creative people have won Oscars, so if you win one, you're in their company.
Consciousness is the original sin: consciousness of the inevitability of our death.
Even Hitchcock liked to think of himself as a puppeteer who was manipulating the strings of his audience and making them jump. He liked to think he had that kind of control.
My dentist said to me the other day: I've enough problems in my life, so why should I see your films?
When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy.
Long live the new flesh.