David Cronenberg Quotations

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.

The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting.

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.

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.

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.

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.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.

Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing they're whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.

I see technology as being an extension of the human body.

Technology is us. There is no separation. It's a pure expression of human creative will. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe. I'm rather sure of that.

You have to believe in God before you can say there are things that man was not meant to know. I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.

The filmmaking process is a very personal one to me, I mean it really is a personal kind of communication. It's not as though its a study of fear or any of that stuff.

I'm just observing the world. I was born into it, like you were, and then I found out there were some really disturbing aspects to being alive, like the fact that you weren't going to be alive forever - that bothered me.

I never thought I was doing the same thing as directors like John Carpenter, George Romero, and sometimes even Hitchcock, even though I've been sometimes compared to those other guys. We're after different game.

But when you're writing a script - for me anyway - you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be.

But with my last film, Spider it was agony. The money was always disappearing, nobody got paid, it was very difficult - and it's very distracting from the process of making the movie, of course. So I think things have been getting harder and harder.

Each kid has a different level of expertise and some of them are very raw and inexperienced and some are incredibly mature and experienced. So you just have to go with what they are rather than have some abstract technique that you're going to try to apply to them.

For example I don't work with William Hurt the same way that I will work with Viggo. They're different guys and they work in different ways. So a good sensitive director has his general style and technique and personality that he uses but you don't impose that on the actors.

Let's put it this way, when I was casting, I cast Viggo first and then found someone who could play his wife, rather than the other way around. So for me he's still the lead character.

The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That's why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.

I don't have a moral plan, I'm a Canadian.

If you put yourself in a group of people you cannot work with it's obviously going to be a disaster.

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.

Do you remember when you found out you wouldn't live forever? People don't talk about this, but everybody had to go through it because you're not born with that knowledge.

Nah, I've done sex scenes before, you know, like in video.

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult.

So not only can you not imagine dying, you can't really imagine existence before you were born.

Your'e seeing me develop, not only as a filmmaker if you've seen my earlier films, but you're seeing me kind of learn how to be a human, how my philosophy has evolved.

Well I don't think sex and violence have ever stopped a movie from being mainstream.

I also think the relationship I have with my audience is a lot more complex than what Hitchcock seemed to want his to be - although I think he had more going on under the surface as well.

The process of making a movie has expanded in terms of effort and time for the director, doing commentaries for the DVD for example, finishing deleted scenes so they could be on the DVD, and doing things like a web blog.

We are at a major epoch in human history, which is that we don't need sex to recreate the race. You can have babies without sex. This is the first time in human history that has been true, and it means, for example, we could do some extraordinary things.

You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally.

I don't mind writing so I didn't find that difficult, it's just a question of finding the time to do it. I kind of like the direct connection with the fans actually, it's pretty neat.

Of course for many years directors have had to go on the road with their movies and promote them and I've done that since the beginning. So that's not new but the forms of it are different such as with the internet.

My father used to work here, back when it was The Toronto Telegram. These remind me of him.

I got my first credibility acknowledged here when I was a young filmmaker, ... I almost feel that my career and the festival's career have ascended in synch, in lock step, because the festival has gone from an interesting concept, as the Festival of Festivals, to being recognized as a brilliant concept and a unique one.

I don't think it's a good thing, really, for a filmmaker or an artist of any kind to only want to be appreciated or loved. It's if you start chasing that, then I think you've destroyed yourself.

I don't think I've made a movie that isn't funny, on one level or another, despite having other things going on at the same time, ... and this is no exception. I do ask the audience to take some twists and turns with me in terms of tone, because there's a moment that's funny that immediately turns into something emotionally devastating. Movies these days tend to be pretty clumpy; here's the sad scene with the sad music and the sad everything, and now we go to the reconciliation. Cue the happy music! That's not asking for much from the audience. And that's not the way anyone's day goes.

Certainly, it is more mainstream than Crash or Spider, ... so I thought maybe it was too much of a normal movie for Cannes.

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.

Yeah. I mean, technology wants to be in our bodies, because it sort of came out of our bodies. In a crude way, that's what I'm thinking.

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab.

As a filmmaker, I ask questions but don't have answers. Moviemaking is a philosophical exploration. I invite the audience to come on the journey and discover what they think and feel.

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.

My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There's nothing else, and when we die, that's it. No afterlife.

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.

I like to laze around. I think that's a huge part of creativity. You have to let your mind relax and then another part of your brain suddenly connects with the solution you're trying to find.

I'm simply a nonbeliever and have been forever. ... I'm interested in saying, 'Let us discuss the existential question. We are all going to die, that is the end of all consciousness. There is no afterlife. There is no God. Now what do we do.' That's the point where it starts getting interesting to me.

I can't imagine a life without humor. Especially if you have an existential understanding of life, you must acknowledge the absurdity of it all.

The artist's duty to himself is a combination of immense responsibility and immense irresponsibility. I think those two interlock.

To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American.

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution.

I work with my dreams or nightmares.

If the audience lets that stuff wash over them, you know - almost like music, rather than dialogue - and doesn't fight it, then they'll have a much easier time rather than being sort of frustrated and confused otherwise. But if you get in the right state of mind it really does work quite well,

I'm not very well organized unless I'm plugged into a structure like the opera or a movie. When I'm doing that, I have to be organized.

The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.

All romances end in tragedy. One of the key people in a romance becomes a monster sooner or later.

I have no rules. For me, it's a full, full experience to make a movie. It takes a lot of time, and I want there to be a lot of stuff in it. You're looking for every shot in the movie to have resonance and want it to be something you can see a second time, and then I'd like it to be something you can see 10 years later, and it becomes a different movie, because you're a different person. So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses.

I'm very anti-religious because religion tends to disembody you.

More blood! More blood!

When we talk about violence, we`re talking about the destruction of the human body, and I don`t lose sight of that. In general, my filmmaking is fairly body-oriented, because what you`re photographing is people, bodies.

You need language for thought, and you need language to anticipate death. There is no abstract thought without language and no anticipation. I think the anticipation of death without language would be impossible.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation.

When I am creating art, I have absolutely no social responsibility. It's like dreaming.

It's impossible to make a movie out of 'Naked Lunch.' A literal translation just wouldn't work. It would cost $400 million to make and would be banned in every country of the world.

I don't think that the flesh is necessarily treacherous, evil, bad. It is cantankerous, and it is independent. The idea of independence is the key. It really is like colonialism. The colonies suddenly decide that they can and should exist with their own personality and should detach from the control of the mother country. At first the colony is perceived as being treacherous. It's a betrayal. Ultimately, it can be seen as the separation of a partner that could be very valuable as an equal rather than as something you dominate.

The way a child discovers the world constantly replicates the way science began. You start to notice what's around you, and you get very curious about how things work. How things interrelate. It's as simple as seeing a bug that intrigues you. You want to know where it goes at night; who its friends are; what it eats.

See, you can't rewrite, 'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm, the tumbling out of the words, is a betrayal, and it's a sin, Martin, it's a sin." --Hank (Kerouac)to Martin (Ginsberg) in the film Naked Lunch

Sex is the invention of a very clever venereal disease.

You start selling the movie before you make it.

Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.

Long live the new flesh.

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.

My dentist said to me the other day: I've enough problems in my life, so why should I see your films?

Consciousness is the original sin: consciousness of the inevitability of our death.

Many wonderful, creative people have won Oscars, so if you win one, you're in their company.

Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition.

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.

There is no point in going to Cannes if you're not going to be in competition. That's my feeling. So you've got to get into it.

I should add that Kerry won our election.

I've been to screenings where people laugh at certain points and can see that they are entertained. But this movie is the furthest thing from ironic. If you are entertained, if you laugh, I hope you would ask yourself why. I would hope to make a movie in which the audience questions everything.

I've managed, really, to be pretty successful in terms of getting what I want in a movie. I leave people very happy with what we've done, even when I end up getting what I wanted and they don't get what they wanted.

You're really talking about the human condition because there's no country on Earth that wasn't founded on violence done to somebody.

I had to comes to terms with that with Martin Scorsese,

It's not as though I have a message . . . I haven't solved any problem. It's a discussion, it's a meditation on the complexity of it.

if you want the exhilaration of seeing the bad guys go down, then you have to accept the consequences.

I remember somebody saying to Joel Schumacher about one of his Batman movies, 'Isn't that over the top?' ... And he said, 'Well, nobody pays to see under the top.' I wish I could just say that. But I think you learn something when you go to extremes.

So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses.

A History of More Violence'? ... I think not. That reminds me of somebody's joke about Gandhi - 'Gandhi 2: Even More Non-Violent.'

A History of More Violence'?... I think not. That reminds me of somebody's joke about Gandhi - 'Gandhi 2: Even More Non-Violent.'

You could say it's a Hollywood film because the characters are agents, actors and managers, but it is not a satire like The Player.

It's the perfect car, the dream ... a combination of beauty and technology,

It's almost Twilight Zone y. There's an appeal to that longing for an imaginary pasta yearning for an innocence that was never so pure anyway. It's meant to be recognizably real, but it has to play as mythological as well. That's part of the balancing act.

There's a certain intimacy involved. You have to get very close to the person who's threatening you. It's the opposite of what your instinct is.

It's a funny movie, too. People may wonder what's going on when they hear that about a movie that has the title A History of Violence . I think once they see it, they'll get it.

It is specifically American, ... but that's not to say it's not universal. And I'm not fudging it. It is a parable of art that, to be universal, you must be specific. Otherwise, you are just talking about an abstraction. So you have to talk about a particular person and a particular place. Specificity is the essence of art. But it doesn't mean it doesn't have universal resonance.