By Scott Macaulay
Translator: Qin Tian
Proofreading: Easy two three
Source: Filmmaker (Winter 1997)
This interview with David Cronenberg's Desire Express was first published as a cover story in the Winter 1997 issue of Filmmaker magazine. Standard Collections has just released a restored version of Desire Express, and this is the first time the interview has been published online.
Similarly, art critic Joanne McNeil's has written about The Desire Express and J. McNeill's. The relationship between G. Ballard's original novels.
Desire Express
Blood, semen, and gasoline are not only the liquids that appear in The Desire Express, but also David Cornenberg's compelling study of fetishism in sexual fetishes. But "Desire Express" is not a chaotic film, and its calm accuracy and keen way of provoking the audience's intellect are shocking.
The film is based on the novel by J. Thompson. G. Ballard's 1973 novel, which tells the story of a group of tired urbanites who emotionalize a car accident, can be said to be not only Cronenberg's best film since "Guilt Buckle" (1988), but also a simple, simple but emotionally moving film with a little romantic feeling.
"Iniquity Buckle"
In the film, James Spade plays the role of Ballard, the director of the film who has little sex with his wife, Deborah Carla Anger. One night, his car accidentally crashed into Holly Hunter's car, resulting in the death of the latter's husband.
It was also from this moment that a series of sexually inverted relationships began between the three of them, as did the bizarre behavior of mutated viral creatures in Cronenberg's earlier films, such as Rabies (1977) and Creepy (1975). The triple's growing eccentricity leads them to Vaughn (Elias Cortés), a leader of the Car Accident Fetish group.
The Desire Express won the Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, but in London it was banned from the cinema by the City Council.
However, after being reprimanded by New Line Pictures' Ted Turner, Desire Express is scheduled to be released and released this spring through New Line Pictures' art theater Line Film Company.
Q: You read J. G. Ballard's original novel, Crash, and Read It many times before writing the script—did it help you deal with the original? Did you shoot Desire Express differently than Rabies?
David Cronenberg: For me, it's hard for me to realize what's changed in the process of making a movie. Obviously, I wanted to be better and more mature, but probably not either. I didn't reread the original book carefully because my experience was: you have to be prepared to betray the book in order to be faithful to it. This sounds like a paradox, but it's not.
Rabies
Fiction and film are two different mediums, and if you try to stay true to the original, all you get is failure. I realized that I had to adapt to working with my own mind and nerves to the story, to create a work of my own life for the audition of the film.
I think the process of adapting "Crash" and adapting the original novel of "Naked Lunch" is very similar. "Naked Lunch" is not only a book, but many of the materials in it are also about the novelist William W. Bush. Life of S. Burroughs. However, to my surprise, when I started making Desire Express, the original material was directly translated into the language of the film in my place, and I found a sense of cinema that I did not have in the filming of Nude Lunch. There are characters that keep coming up, and you can see changes in those characters as well.
Nude Lunch
Of course, the original Crash does have a distinct, unforgiving tone, which for me provides the basis for the film, although the structure of the film is not classical in any sense, just as the original novel is not a classic Victorian novel. On the surface, the film is a bit like a normal mainstream movie, but it doesn't work that way, and it also triggers some interesting senses of confusion and confusion.
Q: One of the differences between the film and the novel in terms of the structure of the story is that the book blends the concepts of spectacle and media mythology; at the end of the novel, there is a big car accident involving Elizabeth Taylor. But in the film, these parts all seem to disappear, beginning to take on a claustrophobic feeling, telling only about the relationship between these three people.
David Cronenberg: Actually, it should be said that it is a relationship between five people, but it is not wrong to say that three people. But I don't think the original novel was a spectacle. In the book, the author describes Vaughn's desire to crash with Elizabeth Taylor in a bystander's brushstroke, and the plot of his near-completion of that wish. Maybe we can talk about why I didn't let Elizabeth Taylor star in the movie, but I found the book to be very restrained. In the book, the image of the policeman is almost abstract.
The perspective presented in Crash is very different from that of crime novelist John Gleason's book, which takes the investigator as the subjective point of view—that is, the police representing society. I think the focus of this book is not on social forces, but on internal forces, so I think that's how I'm loyal to the book.
There are not many group performances in this movie. During filming, my poor assistant director kept saying, "I have hundreds of group performances in my hands, should I let them walk around the streets and augment reality?" And I kept telling him, "No, I don't want that." Actually, I felt like my [filming this film] process was like J. G. Ballard wrote the novel in the same way. It's also a bit like Godard when he invented the jump-cut shot — he said, "I'll ignore anything that's boring and uninteresting to me." I think Ballard and I both did that.
I'm really not too interested in what passers-by sitting in another car would look at this prostitute in the back seat of [Vaughn]'s car. If the film were in a realistic style, the audience might have expected (seen) that reaction, and the footage might have become a joke.
And this movie, like the original novel, is very simple and condensed, which is its tone. Even though we've dealt with all sorts of details, we think the process is the same.
Q: There has always been a certain intimacy between Ballard and the Surrealist artist, arguing that the outside world is a projection of the subconscious.
David Cronenberg: Yes! Indeed it is.
Q: But Ballard is certainly interested in these landscapes of the 20th century and their relationship to psychology. I can understand Elizabeth Taylor starring in the movie, but billboards, commercials, different forms of media —
David Cronenberg: Television —
"Spring Supper" elizabeth Taylor
Q: Yes, there aren't many television scenes in this film.
David Cronenberg: That's right. It must be said that the existence of television is not particularly conspicuous in the book. As for Elizabeth Taylor – even Elizabeth Taylor is no longer that Elizabeth Taylor. She's no longer the iconic Hollywood icon of 25 years ago. Of course, Vaughn and 65-year-old Taylor collided in the car without the feeling of her being prosperous!
Lacey the Greyhound by Elizabeth Taylor
Q: Maybe you could have had Sharon Stone play a role in the movie.
David Cronenberg: I don't think it's okay to do that. I don't think Hollywood idols still have the role and power of the past. They're different. Also, when Ballard wrote Crash, he didn't set Vaughan as a guy who tracked the behavior of his stars, which I tried in the movie, which was kind of demeaning to him. I wanted to make him more cunning and more elusive.
So, I abandoned the "Tracking Elizabeth Taylor" plot in the original book and replaced it with James Dean's bridge section for two main reasons — to die safely and naturally become a Hollywood icon of the 1950s.
Q: When I mentioned the word "realism," I suddenly realized that if you decide to deal with some extreme subject matter, if the film has some kind of relationship with the real world, people know how to react. For example, one might be struck by the film Half-Baked Boy (1995) because it represents a certain educational conception of "today's children," an idea that is also reflected in the film. On the other hand, I think the horror of Desire Express stems from imagination, which seems a bit difficult for the audience to accept.
"Half-Baked Boy"
David Cronenberg: Yeah, but you can't look at the truth in a movie separately from its structure. Since the birth of cinema, Hollywood films have represented the production model of mainstream films, and even more so now. People come to the movies with "Hollywood-style filters."
One critic once said to me, "I think the most disturbing thing about your film is its lack of a moral stance." But in most films, moral stance is just a narrative device. In these films, it seems that the characters have to be angry, and the filmmakers have to be angry, but that's just a means.
However, most people know that the people who made this movie didn't care about the subject matter at all and wouldn't be easily provoked. And "Desire Express" explores: What if you don't have a moral stance? What if moral positions are all false? Or, at least, this position belongs to the past and is no longer valid anymore – a true existential attitude toward modern life. We have no values. We can create any value we want.
Therefore, to take a moral stance is a complete betrayal of the promise of the film. It's really exciting; instead of letting the audience come to the film with preconceived notions, it's better to say, "I don't have any preconceptions." And this [idea] allows us to escape that "Hollywood filter."
Q: The sex passage at the beginning of Desire Express is also not part of the Hollywood filter.
David Cronenberg: There are some very interesting formalist scenes in this movie. In fact, it starts with three sex scenes in a row, which may have frightened the audience. They either laugh or get upset and don't know how to respond. Because maybe a lot of people have never seen so many sex scenes in a movie except in movies, they will think that the movie is pornographic and make their own judgment. However, they don't see everything that's evolving in these scenes and see the combination of these scenes.
Q: Do you think there is any difference between film and literature in their presentation of the concept of "pain"?
David Cronenberg: We're talking about this again, film and literature are two different mediums that they don't replace each other. In fact, in my opinion, there is no overlap between them. In literature, for example, the novelist Danielle Steele often uses the technique of "inner monologue". In movies, voiceover doesn't have the same effect. In a movie, it's not the same to have a person in pain talk about their pain. Painful scenes are hard to photograph (in a complex way), and they're often not as scary and realistic as you see.
In Desire Express, in order to express the subtleties of it, the pain in the film is based entirely on both sides and is quite complex, and I (in filmmaking) adopt a completely cinematic approach to expression, not a literary one. The soundtrack becomes very important, and the rhythm of the editing also expresses some of the things that the characters are going through. It's because the movie is so real and concrete, you have to work on overcoming that.
Q: I know that Desire Express has a smaller budget than some of your other films. When you were shooting, did you go back to the way you worked to make your earlier films?
David Cronenberg: Yeah, but that's because of the nature of the film, not the budget. For example, the filming process of Desire Express is very similar to that of Deadly Spirits (1981), not like Butterfly King (1993). When it comes to budget, directors always feel the same way: their own budget is never enough. It doesn't matter how high the budget is. You may think you're talented, smart, and therefore can deceive yourself briefly, but that's not the case. I can only try to make progress from adversity.
I think the filming process of every movie is like this. We were shooting on the streets at night in cold weather, so we had to use a lot of ambient light because we couldn't afford the cost of lighting up the 5-mile highway. In the final scene of the movie, the rain that falls at night is real rain. At the time of the night filming, there were 35 stunt drivers and 35 stunt cars on the road. We just added some artificial light when conditions permitted, such as enhancing the brightness of the car's headlights, which brought a sense of control to the picture of the movie. We did most of the road scenes on Highway 407 in Toronto, without building a new highway, and I wanted to make the road in the film look used and natural.
So it was an option for me. We couldn't do whatever we wanted on a limited budget, but we had other gains, such as the texture of the film, the way the protagonists dressed, and the overall feel created by the rusty car. I also have a clear feeling that I don't know if I want to see Vaughan's last crash, but if I can afford it, I'll give it a try. But I couldn't do it, so I decided to let it happen off-camera, designing it to be a static picture.
Q: How do you handle all the car scenes?
David Cronenberg: In Desire Express, I really wanted to avoid the clichés of action movies, so the audience couldn't see the slow-motion shots, you wouldn't see all the repetitive things from the perspective of each of the five people. One of the problems with making this film was how to make action scenes without the trappings of action movies.
I had to deal with the hardest parts without better conditions. Even though there are 35 stunt drivers, it's hard to choreograph their movements, but I'll also say, "I don't want the car to flip." I didn't want to shoot it flying in slow motion in the air and then exploding." Even putting the camera in the car——- I mean, the two things that are filmed the most in the movie must be sex and cars.
So that's the subtlety; I like it when audiences say they've never seen a film like this before. You've probably seen these shots in commercials, but the camera's angles and the way the dialogue is handled take the film out of the center. Again, it's not about the budget. You have to think about where to put the camera.
Q: Did you make a boom specifically for car scenes?
David Cronenberg: Oh, we've done a lot. The crew had six Lincoln sedans, and I cut one in half and made a pickup truck so that space in the car's base, rear seat, and trunk could be given to moving cameras, moving light sources, and generators. We built very delicate tubes on Porsche for illumination. But it's almost invisible. We wanted to blend the light into it so you don't feel that plastic-like disconnect between the studio lights and the ambient light.
Q: How did you pick those cars for the film?
David Cronenberg: During the shoot, I was trying to get rid of my identity as a car enthusiast. I asked the character of Ballard to drive a very boring car— a "Dodge Dynasty" car, even though we changed the logo ourselves. I didn't want it to look too novel. Wired magazine called Canadian racing driver Jacques Villeneuve a great driver — he seemed to be so integrated with his body that he didn't have to think about which car to drive. That's why I picked a boring car for Ballard.
Q: Did making a controversial film have an emotional impact on you?
David Cronenberg: I don't like the impact that controversy brings to me. I don't know if Oliver Stone really likes everything the controversy brings him. I hadn't met him, and I thought maybe he was a more aggressive, confrontational person than I was. Maybe he'll be happy to bother people. But I'm not like that. I would be very happy if everyone who had seen Desire Express said, "I enjoyed this movie."
But in the UK, where the media misinterpreted the film and demonized it, pulling in a lot of things that had nothing to do with the film – it was very frustrating. In France, the film sparked audiences to discuss what the film looks like, as well as the topic of sex, which makes me happy. But the idea that any propaganda is beneficial is wrong. They should go and talk to the writer Salman Russidi.
Q: There are many sexual fetishes in the world, but the fetish for car accidents is uncommon.
David Cronenberg: Not really.
Q: You can't find this kind of information online.
David Cronenberg: You'll probably see that soon.
Q: Before filming, how much research did you do on the fetish behaviors that might exist in real life in Desire Express?
David Cronenberg: I didn't do any research. I mean, the film was so entirely thought and shot in the medium nature of cinema that those studies really didn't matter. Ballard conveys in the film that the car accident is not that the car accident is sexy, but that there is a deep erotic element hidden behind the car accident. I believe that, and we talk about it a lot in the movies as well. But it's hard for people to understand.
Some people will say, "I've been in a car accident, and it's not sexy at all." I heard a psychiatrist say, "Yeah, I deal with one of these weird people every week." He would go to the crash site, stand nearby, and then arouse his own sexual desire. To me, these weird things have almost nothing to do with this movie, which is more about the relationship between sex and death — when we're physically threatened, we're also aroused by sexual desire. There's a very old and primitive trigger mechanism here: as humans, when you see people of the same species dying, you make yourself sexy so you have a chance to mate and reproduce.
This is about sex and death, and it is also about Freud's theory of "transcendent pleasure" (Freud believed that sexual behavior was the cause of all human behavior, and Freud proposed the theory of "desire to die" beyond this theory in his article "The Principle of Transcending Pleasure"). This theory has always existed, but it will not be understood by the british journalists who are sensational. This is a very complex interrelationship. Thinking about it from the level of death, you will find many meanings in this movie.