Susan Smythe-Bishop is not only one of the country’s most talented film publicists, but she is also a mean cake designer and baker and a gifted artist. On her website www.theaccidentalvicepresident.com she showcases her story and her art. Most recently she kindly included Richard on her Wall of Fame, a collection of drawings of “the kind and hard working artists” she has worked with over the years. Other entries include Michael Caine, Bryan Cranston, Jackie Chan, David Cronenberg and Sir Anthony Hopkins. Have a look now before she changes her mind and replaces Richard with David Hasselhoff!
Thanks to Mr. Will Wong for this photo from the Canadian Screen Awards press room. Richard hosted the night backstage, interviewing everyone after they had won their awards. This is David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen with Richard tucked away in the corner. When Cronenberg was asked where the inspiration for his movies come from he looked out at the assembled press and said, “Just standing here is giving me all kinds of ideas for horror films.”
These are the shoes Richard wore to last night’s awards. Thanks to Teddy Wilson for the “F**king dynamite shoes!” tweet and all other who compared them to ruby slippers.
Another press room shot courtesy of Linda Barnard of the Toronto Star:
1.) Technology may have killed off VHS but not before a cursed videotape knocked off a few of its own victims. The Ring, an American adaptation of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ringu, stars Naomi Watts as a journalist investigating the urban legend of a tape that kills viewers seven days after popping it into the VCR. “You start to play it, and it’s like somebody’s nightmare!” No, it’s not a badly dubbed copy of Rhinestone, it’s a series of surreal images from a dead girl’s life. The Ring is creepy and atmospheric until the last half-hour, but that’s when the VCR’s fast forward button comes in handy.
2.) Set in Tromaville, New Jersey The Toxic Avenger is the story of a 90-pound weakling who morphs into the lumpy-headed titular title character. Fighting corruption by spilling loads of fake blood, plunging hands into deep fryers and crushing a head, his methods provide unforgettable b-movie cheap thrills. That last effect—it’s a melon in a wig—is a timeless VHS classic and is actually enhanced by watching it on grainy video tape.
3.) A History of Violence makes the list because it was the last movie to be released on VHS in the golden age of video. Viggo Mortensen is Tom, a mild mannered man who must confront his violent past when local townsfolk start asking, “how come he’s so good at killing people?” An unopened copy of it will set you back $10,000 on eBay, but why would you want an unopened copy of one of director David Cronenberg’s best films?
4.) One of the main benefits of VHS tape is that it always stays at the point at which you left it. Snap it off at the twenty-minute mark, go back to it twenty years later and it will still be EXACTLY where you left off. In a way it’s kind of like hair metal, a genre that has loudly and proudly stayed stalled in the 1980s. Fans of bands like Poison and W.A.S.P. will want to rev up a VHS of The Decline of Western Civilization Part II, The Metal Years, because it rocks too hard to be released on DVD.
5.) The 1980s VHS boom gave us the dreaded direct-to-video movie and produced many bad flicks, countless of which had names that closely echoed those of big theatrical hits. In the down-and-dirty world of the actionsploitation genre, for instance, Schwarzenegger’s hit Commando became Strike Commando—”He’s A War Machine on the Warpath!”—only without the Austrian superstar or a budget for the big action scenes. The lurid cover art is better than the movie, but still, when viewed through a scratchy VHS snowstorm it’s a hoot.
“In honour of the huge David Cronenberg exhibit and retrospective currently happening at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto (running until January 19th), Dork Shelf talks to a plethora of film writers, personalities, programmers, podcasters, and filmmakers about what their favourite Cronenberg films are.
“You guys like guest stars? You guys like David Cronenberg? Want to know the favourite DC films from Richard Crouse, Jesse Wente, Thom Ernst and dozens more?
Here’s Richard’s personal take on Videodrome: “I had only lived in Toronto for a few years when Videodrome was released in 1983. Compared to my tiny home town the city was a wonderland; wide open and full of possibilities. CITY-TV was the coolest station in the world, with Baby Blue movies on late at night, music videos in prime time and Mark Daly’s booming voice as the glue that held it all together. I wanted to work there, be part of the something new and different. Something that was steering Toronto the Good into uncharted waters. Then I saw David Cronenberg’s film and read about how it was VERY loosely based on CITY-TV head honcho Moses Znaimer. Somehow this bit of information enhanced the movie for me, as though every time I turned on the television I was engaging in an act of rebellion. For sure the Late Great movies were never going to feature a snuff film, and nor did I want them to, but as a pop culture sponge there was something intoxicating to me about the connection between what I was seeing on the big screen and its relationship, no matter how tenuous, to my real life. Videodrome spoke to me in a way that other films that more closely echoed my experience didn’t. Goin’ Down the Road should have appealed to my Maritime roots, but I didn’t come to Toronto looking for lawyerin’ and doctorin’ jobs, I came for adventure and to be adventourous and that was exactly what Videodrome provided for me.”
Launching November 1 in the HSBC Gallery at TIFF Bell Lightbox, TIFF’s first major original exhibition, David Cronenberg: Evolution, parallels David Cronenberg’s evolution as a filmmaker with his longstanding fascination with the possibilities and perils of human evolution itself. Curated by TIFF Director & CEO Piers Handling and Artistic Director Noah Cowan, and divided into three major sections that provide a loosely chronological overview of Cronenberg’s career, the exhibition traces the development of the director’s evolutionary themes across his filmography through more than sixty original artifacts, visionary designs, and rare and unseen footage.
What did David Cronenberg say after reading “Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils”? Well, let me tell you…
“Reading this book was pure pleasure for me. It made me desperate to see Ken Russell’s gorgeous, crazed epic again — maligned, mutilated, censored, suppressed, tormented though it was — in any form that I could find (bootleg VHS tape from Spain?; flip cards from Cuba?). What could be better than that?”
David Cronenberg’s latest film is a trip into the mind of a severely mentally disturbed man. Institutionalized for twenty years after the death of his mother Dennis “Spider” Cleg (Ralph Fiennes) is released to a halfway house, and tries, shattered though his mind may be, to piece together the shards of his life. Fiennes delivers a fine, virtually dialogue free performance as the title character, but it is Miranda Richardson as several characters – all the women in Spider’s life – who really steals the show. Cronenberg handles the material with elegance, shooting 1950s London in shades of grey and beige, a color scheme that telegraphs the shadowy world that Spider inhabits. A spooky, cerebral thriller.
When David Cronenberg wrote the Cosmopolis script he transcribed much of the dialogue directly from Don DeLillo’s densely written novel. Those pages of complicated, lyrical conversation attracted the film’s star, Robert Pattinson.
“I liked the poetry of this script when I first read it,” he said. “My only idea was that it was really different to anything I had ever done and I thought I couldn’t do it. That stuck to me afterwards and I thought that should be the way to choose projects, or which projects to go after — the ones you don’t understand, or the ones you are scared of. That generally means you’ll end up being better afterwards.”
The script was so finely tuned that barely a word was changed during the shoot. The 26-year-old Twilight star says he is used to script changes on other movies, but a modification to a line about a gun on the Cosmopolis set jarred his pacing.
“I remember the line was about the attachment above the trigger guard,” he says. “But there was no attachment above the trigger guard (on the prop gun).
I was so used to the rhythms of everything and suddenly it changed the rhythm of the entire scene. We were doing page-and-a-half long sequences and it was so in my head that to suddenly change it on the day threw me.”
He’s been winning praise for his strange, otherworldly performance as billionaire money manager Eric Packer, but don’t suggest he delved deep into his own psyche to create the man we see on screen.
He says the perception is that actors have “to be psychoanalysts,” but that’s just from the ’50s. Before that actors only thought about their face, and their voice and their movement.
“I think that’s one of the things I have come away from this movie with, in terms of acting in general. You don’t need to analyze things that much. You don’t need to understand it.”
It’s a complicated film, bursting with ideas and one very much open to interpretation and debate, but Pattinson would prefer to leave the psychological heavy lifting to the
audience. “I’m not a post modernist scholar,” he says. Instead he remembers what drew him to the project in the first place — the dialogue.
“I like saying it,” he says. “When I see clips I want to say the lines again. It’s like eating.”
When TIFF 2011 raises its curtain on David Cronenberg’s new film, “A Dangerous Method,” audiences will ask: Can the controversial director finally win an Oscar?
It he does, it’ll be a long time coming.
Cronenberg, 68, first found fame in the 1970s for cult horror movies like “Shivers,” “Rabid,” and “The Brood.” Three decades later, he has transcended a genre seldom favoured by Oscar voters to become a filmmaking auteur equal to art-house favourites like Jean-Luc Godard.
His films increasingly encroach into the mainstream, while retaining Cronenberg’s unmistakable penchant for disturbing violence. In 2005, he gripped audiences with one man’s secret past in the crime thriller, “A History of Violence.” The protagonist was played by one of Hollywood’s top heartthrobs, Viggo Mortensen.
He got down and dirty with the Russian mob in 2007’s Russian mob drama, “Eastern Promises.” That film also starred Viggo Mortensen, who won his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey said Cronenberg has never strictly been a horror filmmaker, “even when he was making horror movies.”
“With films like ‘Eastern Promises’ and ‘A History of Violence’ Cronenberg showed that he could work in different genres and still bring really challenging elements to these stories,” Bailey told CTVNews.ca. “But these aren’t horror movies at all, and even less so at this point in his career.”
Now comes “A Dangerous Method,” a film about the power of ideas generated by two titans in the field of psychiatry: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
Set in Vienna on the eve of the First World War, “A Dangerous Method” has an impressive cast headlined by Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley.
The script is based on Christopher Hampton’s 2002 play of the same name. It digs into the turbulent relationship between Jung (Fassbender) and his mentor Freud (Mortensen). That relationship implodes after one patient (Knightley) undergoes their treatment and takes these giants to the dark side of genius.
“Oscar voters love films like these,” said Canada AM movie critic Richard Crouse.
“It’s got great actors, a great story and historical gravitas. It’s is also being launched at a major international film festival. You know Oscar voters will give it some consideration,” said Crouse.
Even so, Cronenberg’s horror roots may still be too dangerous for some Academy members. A shocking 1981 film like “Scanners” — where a character uses telekinetic powers to make a man’s head explode — is difficult to forget.
“Once you’ve earned a reputation for making people’s heads explode on film, it’s hard to get the Academy to think of you as an Oscar contender,” said Crouse.
That may explain why Cronenberg was denied a Best Director’s nod for “Eastern Promises” in 2008. Whether that matters to Cronenberg is another matter.
“Cronenberg stays true to himself. Telling a great story will always be his real satisfaction,” said Crouse.
Susan Smythe-Bishop is not only one of the country’s most talented film publicists, but she is also a mean cake designer and baker and a gifted artist. On her website www.theaccidentalvicepresident.com she showcases her story and her art. Most recently she kindly included Richard on her Wall of Fame, a collection of drawings of “the kind and hard working artists” she has worked with over the years. Other entries include Michael Caine, Bryan Cranston, Jackie Chan, David Cronenberg and Sir Anthony Hopkins. Have a look now before she changes her mind and replaces Richard with David Hasselhoff!
