Revisiting CRASH

In the past couple of weeks, I have watched David Cronenberg's 1996 film of J.G. Ballard's CRASH no less than three times. This is a period when I should be reviewing new product, or perusing old product that was neglected the first time around, but CRASH started reaching out to me in ways that could not be denied.

It began innocently enough with me realizing that I had never acquired the film on DVD during those years of the industry's LD to DVD conversion, for two very good reasons: 1) the New Line DVD had not ported over the Cronenberg commentary and extras from the Criterion laserdisc, and 2) what it had put in their place was an optional R-rated viewing option, which I found offensive. I wrote about CRASH in a feature length essay that appeared in VIDEO WATCHDOG #42 (Nov/Dec 1997, sold out); since then, I hadn't seen the film again, but during that interval, I've sometimes asked myself if I might not have been too hard on it, because I'm such an admirer of J.G. Ballard's 1970 novel. (On one of my VIDEODROME interview tapes from 1982, I can be heard recommending to Cronenberg that he should read CRASH -- "I will," he promises).

I suddenly wanted to see the film again and my only ready option was my old Criterion laserdisc, which I decided to dub onto DVD-R in the process. The disc looked great on my old 32" Sony Trinitron, but viewed on my 60" Kuro Elite, the picture looks seriously dated: dim, pale in color with very uneven blacks, and, of course, non-anamorphic. I recorded the LD with its supplementary items (two cheesy trailers and a short featurette that finds the cast members talking about the project in mostly incoherent terms) and then recorded it again with Cronenberg's excellent, useful commentary activated.

Watching the film twice in close succession proved to be a useful exercise. In retrospect, CRASH appears to be the best film from Cronenberg's weakest period -- post-DEAD RINGERS to pre-SPIDER -- but, as brilliant as it sometimes is, it cannot meet the book's greatness even halfway. Yet there is something about it that tempts one to imagine that it will play even better on the next viewing -- and, in some ways, this hope holds true. After my second run-through, I knew that I couldn't live with my Criterion disc as my only reference copy anymore.

Thanks to the phenomenon of the Amazon Store, I was able to find a shrinkwrapped DVD for only $12. I watched it a few days after it arrived and it was indeed revelatory, not only as a sensual experience but because the enhanced anamorphic clarity of the image made sense of things the Criterion transfer had inadvertently glossed over, at least for me. For instance, the penultimate scene of Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter, a committed but miscast performance) and Gabriella (Rosanna Arquette)'s lesbian assignation in the back seat of a car never quite worked for me, seeming ungrounded in the rest of the story somehow; but the New Line DVD was so crisp and clear that I finally understood that they were coupling in the backseat of Vaughan (Elias Koteas)'s burned-out wreck of a car. The scene charts the inevitable next stage of Vaughan's advent into iconography.

I have not gone back to my original essay to refresh my memory of my raw first impressions of CRASH, but I remember writing that it's a failing of the film that James (James Spader) and Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) are such inexplicably icy characters; they seem to be such compulsive sex-obsessives because they require the warmth of other people. I think I made the point that they seem like the tenants we see driving out of the Starliner highrise at the end of SHIVERS, parasite-driven erotophiles rather than real human beings. This is curious because Cronenberg's commentary admits to him not appreciating CRASH on his first reading, finding Ballard's language too clinical and without the "passion words" he needed to feel closer to the story. In Ballard, that clinical quality of the wording is its passion, but Cronenberg's translation of the text to the screen is not just cerebral but unfeeling. Seeing the film again did persuade me that Unger really is quite remarkable -- ravishing in an Ava Gardner, film noir kind of way, as Iain Sinclair notes in his fine BFI Modern Classics book on CRASH -- but misdirected, so that she's far too poised and abstracted. Spader's lead performance strikes a cold note, too, but at least he's permitted scenes that show him an aggressor in passion and not without a sense of humor. Unger, far better in David Fincher's wonderful THE GAME, doesn't quite thaw even when she momentarily fears that Vaughan might strangle her.

Elias Koteas as Vaughan, whose interpretation of the role I don't think I liked initially, turns out to be the film's ace in the hole. He's brilliant in the way he summons the charisma from this creep, who is somehow able to pass for a doctor in a hospital corridor, able to drive into roped-off accident sites on the highway with a flashbulb camera, able to slip his unwashed hand between Dr. Remington's legs in one brazen move and send James a primly conservative "what are you looking at?" reprimand look a second later. I also like how the film, moreso than the book, shows how the standards of people like James and Helen slip as they become lured into Vaughan's underground fetish world, ending up passing their evenings in the seedy living room of the stunt driver family, the Seagraves, watching videos of car crashes narrated in languages no one in the room understands.

There is an elliptic scene of male homosexual foreplay (involving bizarre medical tattoos of what Vaughan calls "ragged prophecies") and intercourse, but where the movie presses its most provocative buttons is in the car sex scene between James and Gabriella, who wears a bizarre kind of leather and metal body brace. James is shown removing the cumbersome accoutrement from her leg, ripping away her fishnet stockings to expose a frankly labial gash that runs up the back of her thigh, encompassing an even more frankly clitoral nub of flesh, and having sex with the wound. It's the film's most persuasively erotic scene, but the one leading into it -- Gabriella teasing a Mercedes dealer who tries to install her in a showroom car and ends up inflicting costly damage in the display model -- is anecdotal and silly, though extremely well played by Arquette. In his commentary, Cronenberg describes the car salesman as the most realistic character in the film, but he seems to me the least realistic -- a sitcom's idea of a car salesman.

The side break on the Criterion disc actually assists the film by punctuating a problem spot where the movie appears to have run out of money. One minute, James is in Vaughan's car and then we're suddenly looking at the back of James' head as he's looking out an office window -- it's still night, but he's somewhere else entirely. Someone, presumably a co-worker, asks if he needs a lift home. Without turning his head, James answers that Catherine is coming to pick him up. In the next shot, Catherine is there, outside James' office, watching, but so is Vaughan, clearly shaken up as he's questioned by police about some offscreen incident involving the hit-and-run of a pedestrian. "Vaughan's not interested in pedestrians," James says -- a nice line. The New Line DVD, which plays through without side break interruption, makes the viewer more aware of something missing, of something assembled from available pieces, in order to explain what would otherwise be the sudden introduction of Catherine into the backseat of Vaughan's car for the celebrated car wash sequence.

My retrospective interest in the film led me to belatedly acquire the aforementioned Iain Sinclair book, which I can enthusiastically recommend, especially to Ballard fans. He has problems with the film also, and the book spends most of its slim page count in a valuable exploration of J.G. Ballard's work and its adaptation to film, including some very rare early films either based on or somehow connected to Ballard's CRASH.

As for Cronenberg's CRASH, while I have a better feeling about it now than I did prior to this revisitation, it still leaves me very much in the same place where it leaves its two protagonists -- knocked sideways rather than for a loop, disappointed if not quite disengaged, and muttering to myself, "Maybe the next one... maybe the next one..."

VIDEODROME Arrives

My author's copies of my new book VIDEODROME arrived today from Millipede Press, and I'm very pleased.

I was expecting a book of a certain size and heft because this "Studies in the Horror Film" series has its basis in the "BFI Modern Classics" book series, so I was welcomely surprised when I unwrapped the first copy. VIDEODROME measures 6" x 8.5" and weighs a full pound, so it has the feel of something substantial, a book in its own right rather than a slim softcover postscript or sidebar to the main event (that is, the movie in question). The paper quality is exceptional and, detail of details, it even smells good. If the Bava book was 32 years in the making, this one covers a 27 year gestation period (admittedly, with a lot of off-time between 1983 and 2007), so seeing the job finally done properly gives me a feeling of nearly equal satisfaction.

I'm also delighted by this book because, although I've been working as a critic in print for over 30 years, I haven't had too many film books published outside my own imprint. So it's a pleasure to see my film-related writing published by someone else, and to see the job done so well. Furthermore, although I have contributed to many books in my time, VIDEODROME is, by my count, the tenth book to carry my name as author or co-author -- so it marks my advent into the double-digit phase of my book career.

1. YOUR MOVIE GUIDE TO MOVIE CLASSICS VIDEO TAPES AND DISCS by the Editors of Video Times (Tim Lucas and Alex Gordon, 1985)

2. YOUR MOVIE GUIDE TO SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY VIDEO TAPES AND DISCS by the Editors of Video Times (Tim Lucas, 1985)

3. YOUR MOVIE GUIDE TO HORROR VIDEO TAPES AND DISCS by the Editors of Video Times (Tim Lucas, 1985)

4. YOUR MOVIE GUIDE TO MYSTERY/SUSPENSE VIDEO TAPES AND DISCS by the Editors of Video Times (Tim Lucas, 1985)

5. THE VIDEO WATCHDOG BOOK (1992)

6. OBSESSION: THE FILMS OF JESS FRANCO by Lucas Balbo, Peter Blumenstock and Christian Kessler, with special material by Tim Lucas (1993)

7. THROAT SPROCKETS, a novel (1994; four different editions: US trade paper, UK hardcover and trade paper, French mass-market paper in translation as SALLES OBSCURES)

8. THE BOOK OF RENFIELD: A GOSPEL OF DRACULA, a novel (2005)

9. MARIO BAVA: ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (2007)

10. VIDEODROME ("Studies in the Horror Film," 2008)

Our vendor's copies of VIDEODROME are not yet in stock, but we are expecting them soon... so, as they say in the realm of video, stay tuned.

Your Faithful Blogger on the VIDEODROME set

One of the many things we've been doing this week is getting some last minute additional images together for my "Studies in the Horror Film" book on David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME, which is being published by Millipede Press. I thought I would share a few of these shots with you, partly to stir up interest and partly because I'm not altogether certain these particular ones will make the cut; it's not a book about me, after all. If they do appear in the book, they'll look a lot better, because I didn't do anything much to restore these. I'll leaving that task to the many-handed team at Millipede.

Anyway, this was me twenty-five years ago. Dig those Italian frame eyeglasses. This particular Author's Photo, which finds me simultaneously posed by and broadcast on the fabled Flesh TV, was taken by the show's video effects supervisor Michael Lennick.

Here I am on the actual "Videodrome" set, interviewing assistant director John Board -- a wonderful fellow, knowledgeable, funny, authoritative, keeps a set on its toes. This is one of the few shots that finds me looking color-coordinated with my surroundings. It wasn't really in Pittsburgh, but in Toronto. Photo by Donna Lucas.

That's me with a chunk of Barry Convex's cancer in my hand. Polyvinylchloride, I think it was. Photo by my good friend Robert Uth, who asked me to look queasy.

And, last but not necessarily least, here I am in Rick Baker's EFX workshop holding a foam latex casting of Rick's own hand, which was later used to fill Barry Convex's right sleeve during his animatronic death scene. Another photo by Robert Uth.

My VIDEODROME book will be coming out sometime later this year or early next, I'm told. Needless to say, I'll be sure to let you know when it's available.

Cronenberg's Next

I've found a riveting new trailer for David Cronenberg's forthcoming EASTERN PROMISES online. Watching this made me think of two things: as good as she was in them, it's heartening to see Naomi Watts moving away from KING KONG (film and video game) and the RING series and going back to serious drama (I recently watched 21 GRAMS again and she's never been better); and secondly, this dark thriller looks like it could be the Oscar contender for Cronenberg that A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE wasn't, quite.

Speaking of Cronenbergian things, I'm told that my Millipede Press book on VIDEODROME is proceeding nicely and now in the photo selection/clean-up stage. This past week I pulled out some additional never-before-published shots, including several of myself on the set -- images I literally haven't seen in decades. I was surprised to discover that photos exist of me standing on the actual Videodrome set, and the derelict ship where the film's closing scene takes place, and in Rick Baker's EFX workshop holding a severed arm and a big chunk of Barry Convex cancer. There are also shots of me in the company of David Cronenberg, James Woods, Debbie Harry, Mark Irwin, Carol Spier, and co-producer Victor Solnicki (who I didn't recall meeting). Since I don't anticipate seeing too much more of myself in the book than an author's photo, I will share some of those images here once Donna has a chance to digitally rejuvenate them.

PS: Truphen Newben is back with two more terrifying TALES FROM THE PUB at YouTube: "The Return" and "Doppelganger."

Cronenberg at 64, Cronenbook at 25

Today is David Cronenberg's 64th birthday, and the perfect occasion to go public with some news I've been keeping quiet for awhile.

Some background first: Perhaps some of you know that I spent most of the 1980s writing almost exclusively about Cronenberg's films, beginning with a series of CINEFANTASTIQUE set reports -- and finally a cover story -- about the making of VIDEODROME. I was the only journalist granted access to the set, which was closed to protect the film's revolutionary storyline from being leaked. I visited for nine full days. My deal with CFQ was to write a book-length article that would appear as a double issue. This issue happened to coincide with the editor's marriage and, by the time he and his wife returned from their honeymoon, VIDEODROME had opened and closed -- a huge boxoffice flop. CFQ had an unfortunate history of bad feature article choices (KRULL, THE BLACK HOLE, etc.) and it was decided to literally cut the losses by editing my material down to a single issue feature. (I was, of course, being paid by the word.) Then it was announced that Cronenberg had been signed to direct THE DEAD ZONE for Dino De Laurentiis, which prompted the decision to assign me to cover that filming for a special double issue that would cover both films, to be published about a year later. (I was, of course, to be paid on publication.) I visited the set of THE DEAD ZONE for a few days, wrote my article and sent it in, whereupon the editor got cold feet -- Stephen King movies were not doing so well at the boxoffice, so it was decided to run my coverage of both Cronenberg films in a single issue. This whittling-down process was agonizing on a monetary level, but that agony was nothing compared to reading what the magazine had done to my VIDEODROME manuscript. Piers Handling, the head of the Academy of Canadian Cinema, had told me that it was the finest production history of a Canadian film he had ever read -- he included a section of the manuscript in a book he edited, THE SHAPE OF RAGE: THE FILMS OF DAVID CRONENBERG, as it was originally written, while CFQ published an abortion, so greatly condensed that my work couldn't be simply cut; it had to be paraphrased. I was so angry when I read the results that I temporarily lost the power to speak, and it ended my ten-year affiliation with the magazine.

My original manuscript then went into a file cabinet, where it resided for the next 20-odd years. Criterion welcomed portions of it into their marvelous DVD of VIDEODROME, but there was a much they didn't use. In fact, material exists in my files -- like a lengthy Q&A with Cronenberg, which I conducted after my first viewing of the film -- that was omitted from the original manuscript because I didn't then have the time to include it and meet my original deadline. After that first deadline had passed, there was no reason to add anything more because pages were already being cut.

Now that you have the messy background, here's my very neat announcement:

Later this year, in the fall, Millipede Press will be publishing my VIDEODROME book as the first offering in an exciting new trade paperback series called "Studies in the Horror Film." If you've seen the BFI's "Film Classics" and "Modern Classics" series, or Continuum Press's "33 1/3" series about rock albums, the same principle applies here... except this series will consist of uniform numbered books devoted to the in-depth study of individual classics of horror cinema. Publisher Jerad Walters is anticipating that later books in the series will run, on average, about 20,000 words and 144 pages, but VIDEODROME -- being a full production history -- will likely be a bit longer. I'll also be adding some new material to help the book bridge the years of its long sleep: hard as it is to believe, this year marks the 25th anniversary of the manuscript's completion.

I've been working with my original typescript to recreate it as an editable computer document, and reading through it again has been an uncanny experience. The book puts me back on the set in so many ways, back into the warm and funny camaraderie of the people who made it, and I think fans of the film and Cronenberg's work in general will be impressed by the level of intimacy it achieves with its subject. I honestly can't remember reading another book quite like this -- it will give you the VIDEODROME you know, of course, but also the VIDEODROME you don't know unless you too were there, the one that David Cronenberg didn't quite know even as he was writing it by night and directing it by day. In other words, it will put you in the midst of Cronenberg's creative process, his wrestling with the raw idea of VIDEODROME. That's what reading it has been doing for me anyway, and it's been so long since I wrote this book, it feels like the work of someone else, a better writer than I remember being at that age, who was somehow privy to my own experiences.

I've been out of touch with David Cronenberg for a long time, so it's interesting to resume touch with him again through my writing, which was so sympathetic and attuned to him and what he was doing. Wherever he is, whatever he's doing, I wish him much happiness on this, his Paul McCartney birthday. As the aged onion skin of my typescript is being rejuvenated on my computer screen, I reflect on those words I was among the first to hear -- "Long Live the New Flesh!" -- and pass them back to their author with many happy returns.