Some people hear "A History of Violence" and think it’s a documentary film.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that too. I said, ‘That would be a really long documentary - really long, really long.’ I’m a little surprised though, here. In France for example, they don’t have that. They don’t use the same expression that we do in North America, which is you say, ‘The suspect had a long history of violence.’
For example, we say someone was arrested who has a long history of violence. They don’t use that expression, so for them a history of violence, are we talking about the U.S.? Are we talking about human beings in general? What are we talking about? The human condition? I think all those levels are there. The personal one, the national one, and the universal are all sort of being discussed without it being too overt, but it’s all there. You can take this movie very politically if you want or you can take it very philosophically and it works on all those levels.”
It seems with this film as though you’re returning to more a graphic, pulpy movie after doing “Spider.”
“But [“Spider’s”] just one. That’s one movie. ‘eXistenZ’ was also an independent movie and it had a lot of creatures and things in it. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t see that [distinction].
I mean each movie is a unique thing for me. And a project - it’s like having a kid, really. If you feed the kid what it needs, like giving a project what it needs… I don’t hold stuff out of it. It takes on a life of its own and I don’t therefore put in something just to say, ‘It’s me,’ because people expect that of me. Nor do I take out something because it’s expected of me and I don’t want to do what’s expected. So, for example, the gore shots in ‘History of Violence,’ which are not many, are there for a very specific reason and the reason has to do with the movie. It doesn’t have to do with my other movies. It doesn’t have to do with my career. It doesn’t have to do with what people expect of me or not. It has to do with what the movie needs - the purpose of the movie. And in those particular cases I want the audience to be exhilarated and complicit in the violence, and then to be kind of compelled by the aftermath of what the consequences of that violence is. So that has only to do with the dynamics of the movie. It doesn’t have to do with what anybody thinks of my other movies, and that’s my approach, basically.
Obviously there are connections amongst the movies and you can make those connections and that’s fine. That’s perfectly legit but that’s more like a critic’s function. That’s not my function to do that.”
What’s more challenging – a smaller independent film or a studio picture?
“I think on aintitcool somebody said, ‘Oh my God, Cronenberg might become relevant again.’ So I asked all my friends, ‘Do you think I’m more relevant now?’ You know, it was obvious that this had more commercial potential than ‘Spider’ or ‘Crash.’
When you make movies like that, you can’t fool yourself. You know that they have a very limited audience. This movie cost $32 million, which is the most expensive movie I’ve ever made and it’s with a studio and they have expectations and their expectations were that at least it’s going to make some money as a project. And therefore it has to be more commercial than ‘Spider.’ But that’s all up front - it’s understood. It’s not an issue.
It was a short discussion we had. I basically said, ‘No, I’m not going to try and turn it into Spider,’ and they really knew that. And when I talked to them about where I thought the script should go, they could see that I wasn’t trying to make it less accessible; just stronger in what it was. As I say, I’m trying to make the movie as it is the best version of [/]it. I’m not trying to force something into it that’s not gonna go.”
Page 3: The Film's Sex and Violence, Working with New Line, and Indie Films
