With films such as The Brood and Videodrome, David Cronenberg established himself as Canada's most provocative director. With subsequent movies such as The Dead Zone, The Fly, Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch, Cronenberg demonstrated his ability not only to touch painful nerves but also to invest his own developing genre with seriousness, philosophical dimension and a rare emotional intensity.
Cronenberg on Cronenberg charts his development from maker of inexpensive 'exploitation' cinema to internationally renowned director of million-dollar movies, and reveals the concerns and obsessions which continue to dominate his increasingly rich and complex work. This edition, with an additional chapter, follows Cronenberg's work up to the creation of Crash.
At the age of six I decided I wanted to be an artist. I graduated in Fine Art (Painting)
in 1974. Having subsequently become disillusioned with my work, but by now
completely obsessed with the movies, I began programming independent cinemas in
1977. Courtesy of Channel Four, I was able to begin making documentaries in 1983
and have been an independent filmmaker ever since. In the intervening 35 years I
have produced and/or directed over 80 arts documentaries for television and
contributed to over a dozen documentary series. I first worked with David Lynch in
1993 while making a documentary about American independent cinema. In 1996 I
spent some time on the set of Lynch's Lost Highway and made a short film for the
BBC about its making and meaning. That year Lynch and I also began working
on this book. I also worked extensively with the director David Cronenberg, making
two documentaries about his work (one in 1986 and another in 1992), as well as
editing the book Cronenberg on Cronenberg for Faber and Faber. Unlike David
Lynch, I never returned to painting. He really told me off about that.