David Cronenberg and the literary influences of his horror work...

Interview: Author Mark Browning's new book connects the dots of David Cronenberg's literary influences...



For more than thirty years, David Cronenberg has made independent films such as Scanners and A History of Violence which aim to provoke, surprise, and challenge audiences. In his work, he has drawn themes, inspiration and source material from a number of authors (J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Patrick McGrath) whose themes connect readily with Cronenberg's. Author and film scholar Dr. Mark Browning's new work David Cronenberg: Author or Filmmaker?(Intellect) is a work that attempts to illuminate and unravel the connection between the great Canadian auteur and his literary influences. Dr. Browning was good enough to speak to FSW about his work and the cinema of Cronenberg.


FSW: You mention that most, if not all of Cronenberg's works are based on a literary source-Do you think this is intentional on his part and do you think this approach suits his gifts as a filmmaker?


MB: "Very much so. The scope of the book focuses on the period from Videodrome up to the response to Crash- a film, which I believe over time will come to be seen as one of the most significant for a generation. Literature forms part of Cronenberg`s life-blood- in interviews he talks fluently and in detail about the content of books, not just their titles and mentions critics knowledgeably too. Critics who formed their view of his work in the late seventies assumed that the films he was making then was all he could do but post-Videodrome it is literature, not disease which sits at the core of his aesthetic approach



"I should say here that the book had quite a troubled gestation period. There is, in some circles, as sense that there is a fair amount of Cronenberg scholarship but actually that is only partially true. There are essays and collections of essays but my book is only the second single-authored study on Cronenberg in English and if it had been piublished when I first submitted it, it might have been the first. Two publishing houses, who shall remain nameless, shelved the project on two different occasions due to entirely predictable reasons of internal politics completely unrelated to the book, which was frustrating to say the least."

FSW: Do you see Cronenberg's career divided up in a particular way?

MB: "Yes and no. As Cronenberg himself has said, his films do read like chapters in a single book but I would place Videodrome as a pivotal work. It shows him working through issues of what the film medium can do, which makes the film still resonate 25 years later."

FSW: You mention the influence (or at least acknowledgement) of the culture of pornography in Cronenberg's work (Videodrome and Crash are two of the more obvous examples you cite)-Do you think that Cronenberg's attitude toward this is consistent or mixed? Do you see this theme in his more current


MB: "I don`t think that Cronenberg is fascinated by porn per se, although as I mention in the book, it gave him a way into film-making, it´s more that he is fascinated by the apparently polar opposites of masochism and sadism, which commonly find their cultural expression in pornography. I think it`s worth noting too that in the evolution of the moving image, pornography has played a central and continuing role and anyone who wants to make films about how human sexuality might evolve (one of Cronenberg`s key concerns) cannot avoid considering this."

FSW: There is a fair amount of Cronenberg scholarship (such as The Modern Fantastic)-Besides your approach to Cronenberg's work as grounded in a literary tradition do you think you have unearthed any other interesting themes in his work?

MB: "Unearthing themes is not really what the book`s about and I am quite adamant about that. Far too much supposed analysis of films makes generalised comment without considering specific scenes and shots in actual films themselves with the result that completely different readings can be taken from the same film without any sense that one has more validity than the other. Suffice to say, film comment that designates a representative status to character actions, bugs the hell out of me. As does psycho-analysis but that`s another question."

"The approach to Cronenberg via literature is not just one more thing he`s interested in- it permeates almost everything he does. That said, there are probably PhDs yet to be written about Cronenberg & painting, his Canadianness (especially linked to other filmmakers like Atom Egoyan)- essays have touched on this but not far really, his directorial method on set & Cronenberg and philosophy (especially Schopenhauer)."

FSW: Do you think any of Cronenberg's work has elements
of traditional Hollywood filmmaking?

MB: "All of it does. Apart from generating finance and using large studios (which he has also done on occasion). He uses stars, he markets his films as part of the conventional publicity machine, he gives countless interviews and most importantly, in terms of his technique, there is little that breaks conventional codes of filmmaking. What makes his films different is the uses to which these are put. For example in eXistenZ, you have plenty of shot-reverse/shot editing but often what a character is apparently looking at is not there, i.e. virtual reality sequences are unsignalled by a wobbly or blurry screen or helpful voiceover. Similarly, many of his films open with a forward tracking shot- plenty of films do- but his often go further. We wait for a cut that does not come and the camera appears to be wandering around looking for a subject (think of the opening of Spider or Crash or more recently A History of Violence). We are not spoonfed what part of the image to look at or what the relationship between shots could/should be- there`s no voiceover (removed from the original script of both Crash and Spider) to give us a moral compass- we`re on our own."


FSW: Do you place any significance on Croneneberg's acting career?


MB: "Not much. I did like his character in To Die For but that is a really interesting film all round. He tends to choose the sinister figures of authority that interviewers expect when they meet him so you could say he is playing with audience expectations of his persona. He`s not Hitchcock, going for a nod and a wink as part of a cinematic “Spot the Dog” game with his die-hard fans. That is closer to Stephen King, who has appeared in numerous films for that tongue-in-cheek element of self-referentiality (this is fresh in my mind as I am currently working through all 70+ films based on his work)."

FSW: Do you see the influence of certain filmmakers in Cronenberg's work?

MB: "This is one of the perennial frustrations about reading interviews with Cronenberg. Not only has he got carefully-worded repsonses to any question you care to give, he has evaded the notion of influence for years. He will admit admiring Fellini and Bergman for example but will claim that like all artists he absorbs their influences and then creates something holly original. My book suggests the reality is slightly different but its focus is literary. A superb PhD thesis suggestion would be Cronenberg and the European art film, which I think has influenced him quite strongly, most particularly in the concept of the auteur, which he seems to buy into completely without question. It was only (and finally) in interviews about Spider in 2003 that he began to accept the influence of Carol Reed on the visual look of the film but even here he would always nervously switch the conversation to Beckett or Pinter."

FSW: How do you see Cronenberg's career evolving withhis most recent work Eastern Promises? Do you detect growth? new themes? new outlooks?

MB: "Hard to answer this one as I haven`t seen Eastern Promises yet but greatly looking forward to it. It might suggest an enduring fondness for London (after the experience of Spider) and working with specific actors (Viggo Mortenson, after A History of Violence). As for the future, there is an off-on self-scripted project called Painkillers, which looks back to Videodrome but I suspect that Cronenberg`s future projects may involve Martin Amis` London Fields- with its shifting sexual identities and an author who is an avowed fan of Nabokov, I would say it´s a strong contender but I would also say that one of the great attractions of going to see a Cronenberg movie is that you never really know what you`re going to get."

Vincent Price scholar (and good friend) David Del Valle talks about MGM's new Vincent Price Collection

Vincent Price scholar (and good friend) David Del Valle talks about MGM's new Vincent Price Collection

When you count Vincent Price and Barbara Steele as your good friends it might be assumed that you have led an interesting life. This is the case with Horror scholar David De Valle. De Valle's interest in horror has seeen him be featured on the BBC, A & E and The Sci Fi Channel. He also oversees one of the most fasnicnating collections of horror, sci fi and fantasy film ephemera and memorabilia called (appropriately enough), The Del Valle archives. One of his most significnt contibutions to the history of film is his production and hosting of Vincent Price: The Sinister Image, an interview expressely concerned with Price's rich horror career (the only such interview Price ever conducted). David will also be featured in the new documentary Spine Tingler from Automat 
Pictures about the innovative horror master Wiliam Castle (the trailer for this is presently on You Tube).

David is featured on the recent MGM box set of Vincent Price films, part of the Scream Legends Collection-David, a fellow alumni of the publication Films in Review was nice enough to speak to FSW about a man who he knew as a friend, the magnificent Vncent Price-
"
MR: Price seemed to have a real ambivalence about Hollywood. He had been postionted to be a leading man in the early part of his career, but he never seemed to completely embrace this. In many ways, he seemed as happy to be on Hollywood Squares as to be a working actor.

DDV: " He said to me once "Hollywood is one of the most evil places on earth, and I have seen it destroy people's lives firsthand.� But, you know he was vindicated at the end of his life because he was able to make films like Theatre of Blood. He was able to tour in Diversions and Delights. A lot of this had to do with his marriage to Coral Brown. She was quite a character and she helped snap him out of that kind of male menopause depression that comes to us all when you begin to see the third act of your life and what does it all mean. The whole kind of retrospect you go through with your career and your life. He used to say, 'I know something good will happen to me when I am 65,' and that is when he met Coral and it really turned his life around. " 

"She loved the stage and when she became Mrs. Vincent Price she said 'You know Vinnie, you really have to get back on the stage." Unfortunately at this point in his life he was terrified to have to memorize mountains of dialogue and maintain a character for an extended period of time. He wasn't lazy, but he was comfortable with a certain way of working unique to film. But, if you talk to anyone who saw his performance as Oscar Wilde you saw how gifted he was. He really was much more of an actor's actor, much more than Bela Lugosi or Lon Chaney Jr. I will say that Karloff was his peer in most ways because he (Karloff) was equally adept on the stage or screen. A nice memory was seeing Price and Karloff on the Red Skelton show where Karloff recited that Sinatra song 'A Very Good Year.' Vincent told me he did it (the program) because he knew Karloff wasn't going to be around much longer.

MR: You know, unlike a lot of other horror icons like Lorre, Karloff and Lugosi Price seemed to have leading man qualities/


DD: "Well, when he did Service Deluxe with Constance Bennet this is where he was headed. He was pretty uncomfortable with this, as he said in my interview on DVD, Vincent Price the Sinister Image, 'In my day we were all taught to talk in the vernacular and we all kind of existed in period costumes.' By the time James Dean, and the method took over everything had to be real. In Theatre of Blood, he talked about how the actor who took his prize could do nothing except mumble. All of that kind of thing had a double meaning. 



MR: Can you explain the continuing appeal of the Price films-Most of them are not truly frightening to the contemporary filmgoer-

DDV: "I have never been frightened by any of Price's films. But, you compare any of the current torture cinema to films by Val Lewton, Roger Corman and the like and there is no comparison. Bela Lugosi for instance never frightened anyone. He did, however, fascinate. So, I think it is time for people to understand the difference between being terrified and being fascinated with a macabre personality. With actors like John Carradine, Basil Rathbone, Conrad Veidt, and Lugosi it is all about the technique." 

"The ability to create larger than life characters that fascinate an audience is a real craft that makes them mesmerizing, but I don't think any of them have ever scared anyone (Laughs)."

MR: The New Screem Legends Collection contains an interesting anthology film of Nathaniel Hawthorne adaptations. What was the significance of this film?

DDV: "Well you know Twice Told Tales was kind of a bargain basement Cormanesque Poe film, because it was made at the time when Price was kind of the voice of Poe. But, Price had an exclusive contract with American International Pictures so Admiral films made this film. It seems to me that Hawthorne was put in as a substitute Poe. 


MR: What aspects of Price made him uniquely suitable to the horror genre? As was mentioned earlier he was more presentable than a lot of his peers in the horror genre>

DDV: "I am addressing this in my book on the Poe films. In the book we address the subtext of Price's acting. Roger Corman was very restricted at the time, but Corman could depend on Price to bring this sexual ambiguity to his acting. A certain effete quality that might be identified with homosexuality." 



"And, maybe some kind of inner turmoil or grief that his character seemed to go through, whether it was a restrained sexuality or a repressed sexuality; European film critics often compare Barbara Steele and Price and there acting. In Barbara's case, they usually site her for being a symbol of fetishism rather than an actress. There is a cult of worshippers at this woman's shrine because of her overt sexuality that was so compelling in a time that was sexually confused in the 60's. 

MR: She was really more of a unique performer than Price was.

DDV: "Well, she was the first woman to ever become a predator. In horror films, the typical role of a woman is victim. She assumed the mantle and once again, the sexuality is flip-flopped a little bit. She would often play these predatory women who would emasculate these men who would come into her orbit. She often played dual characters and was kind of a symbol of those great European directors like Fellini. Price, of course, had his accomplice in Roger Corman."



MR: What about the interview with Price about his horror career (available on DVD as Vincent Price-The Sinister Image)? How did you talk him into that?

DDV: "Well, he did it as a favor to me and I talked him into it by saying 'Vincent, you are always being asked about your horror films on the Carson show and you only have a couple of minutes to talk about this. Let's sit down and talk about nothing else. Then when you are asked about your horror films you can hand them this videotape. ' The interview has always been well-recieved, some of the fans have been dissapointed, however, and have emailed me saying 'Why didn't you talk about Batman? Why didn't you ask about Orson (Welles)?' So I emphasized that we only had an hour and he had sixty years in showbiz so it was hard to check in with him about everything."

MR: Can you trace the origin of horror career to one role or series of performances?

"Dragonwyck to me is the one film that began Price's career as a horror star. The film has all of the elements that you find in The House of Usher, in fact you can see bits of Roderick Usher in Vincent's performance as Nicholas Van Ryn. In this film we find Vincnet playing a perverse kind of character who uses opium and has a very elitist attitude and only uses Gene Tierney to have a child to carry on his dynasty. "




"I just did the audio commentary for The Fly with David Hedison, and David said 'Don't you think that The Fly is the film that made him a horror star?' And I said, 'Well, I think it put him on the road, but I frankly think that Price was just a supporting player in the that film."

MR: What about some of his work on radio? Did that contribute to his image in a ny particular way?

DDV: 'Price was the original voice of The Saint on radio and I think he
would be the first to tell you that Radio was a great workshop for the
actor to experiment and train the voice. I think radio gave birth to
that fantastic "Vincent Price" laugh that the entire entertainment world
heard on Michael Jackson's mega hit THRILLER album. Vincent's theater
background was put to great effect on Radio. I wish someone would
collect as many of his radio programs as possible and put them out on CD.(Editor's note-The Sinister Image DVD includes one of Price's more famous radio performances in a program called Three Skeleton Key)

MR: Are there Price performances that are lost or underrated?

DDV: "Well, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre were great friends before the Poe films. In fact, I believe if you look on YouTube you can see a failed pilot called The Left Fist of David about two art dealers who are also crime fighters. I think the guest villan in that was Thomas Gomez. You can see the chemistry between Peter and Vincent even in something like that."



MR: Of all the films in this new collection, Witchfinder Generalseems like a film that has risen in stature in a noticeable way-

DDV: "The fanboys kind of go gaga about (Director) Micheal Reeves. I think the film is a good film, I think Mike was a good director who died too young and who is to say what would have been? But, in my opinion, Michael Reeves only made a couple of films of varying quality and then after making Witchfinder General he died. Without Vincent Price being in Witchfinder General, I guarentee you we would not be talking about it today. I think that the lionization of Reeves has gotten a little bit out of hand, because Price brought whatever fasination we have with the film today. The fanboys like to chuckle over Reeves direction of Vincent and the antedtoe wher Price said 'I have made over 160 films young man, what have you done' and Reeves supposedly retorted 'I have made three good ones.' Well, that is not really true, because my friend Barbara Steele worked on one of his films (La Sorella di Satana) and she said 'He was just a kid, I worked for a few hours then took my $5,000 dollars and went to New York.� The Sorcerers is a very interesting film, but mostly because Boris Karloff is in it. If Barbara Steele, Vincent Price and Boris Karloff are not in Mike Reeves' films we would not be discussing them today."



Check out David's Camp David column at www.filmsinreview.com

Also, for more info about David's upcoming book untitled Nevermore: The Edgar Allan Poe Films of Roger Corman check out www.tomahawkpress.com