TRANSCRIPT A PINEWOOD DIALOGUE WITH DAVID CRONENBERG The Canadian director David Cronenberg has redefined the notion of what a horror film can be. While horror and science-fiction films traditionally have been about threats from the outside—monsters or alien forces— Cronenberg's films (including The Brood and The Fly ) have been about threats that come from inside our own bodies, and our psyches. It was fitting, then, that Cronenberg should be the director to adapt William S. Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch , with its grotesque and comical mix of the organic, the chemical, and the hallucinatory. Cronenberg spoke at the Museum with a premiere screening of Naked Lunch on the opening day of a complete retrospective of his films. A Pinewood Dialogue following a screening of CRONENBERG: Most Canadians define themselves Naked Lunch , moderated by Chief Curator as not being American. That’s the truth. Canada David Schwartz (January 11 and 12, 1992): was formed in defense against the thirteen colonies, and I think that continues, the idea. The SCHWARTZ: So without further ado, David first thing a Canadian is going to say, if a Cronenberg. (Applause) Frenchman says, “Well, what’s the difference?” is, “Well, we’re not Americans.” What I’d like to do is start—I’d like to use Naked Lunch as a way to talk about your entire body of And we have a very ambivalent love/hate work. I was surprised at how much you kept the relationship with the U.S., which most Americans spirit of the book but really made it into your film. are completely and wonderfully oblivious to, which The very first film you made, Transfer , I just is one of the reasons for the hate, you understand. watched, and it’s set in a snowy field. It immediately Marshall McLuhan said that one of the reasons that reminded me of the ending of Naked Lunch . One of he was able to make such trenchant philosophical the characters is a psychiatrist who flees into exile observations on American media was because he to become an artist. And there were echoes even in did not exist in the middle of it, that he was, as he a student film of Naked Lunch . So I wanted to really put it, in a backwater of culture, that is, Toronto. start with the ending of Naked Lunch as a way to get back into talking about all of your films, and the He was therefore able to observe America from that first thing I wanted to ask you about was just the strange, ambivalent standpoint that all Canadians idea of Annexia and what that means, the idea of have. So I think there’s a sense that all Canadians, the artist in exile. in a way, are outsiders vis-à-vis American culture— very affected by it, can’t get away from it, are CRONENBERG: Well, Annexia is Canada, of course. constantly trying to define what is uniquely (Laughter) Canadian in a sort of a vacuum and a limbo. And my argument always is that to consider Canada SCHWARTZ: Right. without considering the U.S. is actually an impossibility right from the very beginning. So this CRONENBERG: All Canadians recognize it when they does not make me popular in certain circles, you see that, that scene. And, next year in Annexia. The understand. sequel will take place in Annexia. SCHWARTZ: When you were writing fiction and were SCHWARTZ: You’ve said a number of interesting influenced by Burroughs earlier in your career things over the years about being a Canadian artist, before you were making films…Burroughs sees what it means to be Canadian. himself as an outsider to American culture. And I constantly finding myself doing other people, doing just wondered what the— Burroughs, doing Nabokov, another influence. And when I got to film, I was free. I felt totally liberated. I CRONENBERG: He does, and he doesn’t. I mean, felt, well, I could invent my own art form, although, that’s why he’s sort of a Canadian. He has this of course, I didn’t. I’ve seen, as much of filmmaking same ambivalent relationship to America, but from as I can. It wasn’t the same relationship that I had within. Right now he’s living in Lawrence, Kansas, to literature. So I felt quite free. And it just—only in which I think is, geographically, about the absolute retrospect, looking back and saying, “Well, yeah, I center of America. And yet, in order to do his art, he mean, I guess there’s a lot of Burroughs there.” felt he had to get away from America. And of course, Paul Bowles is an American writer who still But when I first read Burroughs, it was kind of more lives in Tangiers, and yet he’s definitely an a shock of recognition—someone much more American writer. In a way, it’s a traditional artistic mature, much more crazed, much more paradox. James Joyce had to get out of Ireland to experienced in bizarre ways, who had crystallized be Irish. He had to live in Paris. So it’s not unique to things that I was only beginning to grope towards. America, I’m saying. But for Canadians, it is this But, if you don’t have an affinity for viruses, reading strange...almost a part of our culture that we are Burroughs is not going to give you one. And I outside America. guess I do, because…so, once again, the question of influence and what it really feels like when you’re SCHWARTZ: What was the influence of Naked Lunch doing your own work is a strange one. and Burroughs early in your career? ’Cause a film like Stereo feels very much Burroughs-influenced. If People like De Palma talk about Hitchcock and you could—I’d just like to know. then in his films, he will actually reproduce this— scenes in The Untouchables from Eisenstein and CRONENBERG: Well, it’s invisible to me, or, in so on, almost shot for shot. And that’s, to me, that’s retrospect, of course, it isn’t. But I’ve been doing a very strange. I don’t understand it at all, because, lot of interviews for Naked Lunch lately. I did 36 in of course, you don’t come from nowhere. You are three days in London, twelve a day, half-an-hour influenced. But when you’re doing your art, you feel each. You don’t get up, you know? There’s a chair, as though you are not influenced. You feel as and somebody gets into it. And what it does is, it though you’re absolutely inventing it all, and I think forces you to be analytical about things that you that’s the way it has—it should feel like that. really did totally intuitively. And in a way, telling journalists that you have—that you were influenced SCHWARTZ: You talked about the writing process as by William Burroughs is handing them a sword being unconscious, and your depiction of the which they then plunge directly into your guts. writing process in Naked Lunch is—writing is There was one journalist who’s kind of a friend who almost something that comes up from the said, “It’s possible that without William Burroughs, unconscious. And so I just want to know your—I’d Cronenberg would be bereft of imagery.” And I like to know about your approach when you finally thought, “I don’t know what that means, actually.” I decided to sit down and write the script for Naked mean, he’s basically talking about plagiarism, isn’t Lunch . You came up with something that was very he? But the point is that hundreds and thousands linear, very different from the novel. Did you try of artists have read Burroughs and been influenced different approaches, or did this—I know in by him, and it doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in interviews you’ve said that this seemed to flow right a very directly observable way. And really, I’m—so, out when you finally decided to write it. going back, I mean…when I started making films, I wasn’t thinking about Burroughs or literature at all. CRONENBERG: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, it did. I mean, In fact, it was one of the excitements for me of film, I’d been—you know, I met Burroughs at his 70th that it was not literature. birthday party. And then I was at his 75th birthday party, and I still hadn’t written a word. And we were Because as a—I had been a would-be novelist kind of saying, “It would be nice if William were alive since the age of five. My father was a writer, and I to see this movie.” So, write something, as they say always assumed I would be a novelist. And I was in Annexia. And I—Clive Barker was insane enough TRANSCRIPT: A PINEWOOD DIALOGUE WITH DAVID CRONENBERG PAGE 2 to offer me the third lead in his movie Nightbreed , These were blessings from the Pope of Interzone to as an actor. And I told him he should get a real go ahead and do what I had to do. actor, but he was determined. So it meant I was going to be in London for about two-and-a-half And we talked about sexuality. And I said “Mine is months, and I bought my first laptop and started to different from yours, and I don’t know what that’s write Naked Lunch on the plane going over.