Supervert Picks
For a good part of the century, the vanguard thing for a writer to do was to renovate his medium importing techniques from film: montage, jump cuts, close-ups, slow motion, and so forth. But if the writer with cinematic influences has since become a familiar — perhaps a too familiar — type of artist, the literary director is still something of an anomaly. When asked for their influences, most directors cite other filmmakers, and yet David Cronenberg tends instead to name William Burroughs, Samuel Beckett, Philip K. Dick, the Existentialists. Before undertaking a career in film, there was a brief moment when Cronenberg even toyed with the idea of becoming a writer. In a series of fascinating interviews with Serge Grunberg, Cronenberg admits that he always dreamed of being an "obscure" writer along the lines of Kafka: Quand je pensais devenir écrivain, avant de découvrir le cinéma, mon désir profond était de rester un romancier obscur. Obscur. Le genre d'écrivain sur qui on tombe par accident et dont on se félicite qu'une telle personne ait écrit ces, disons, trois petits romans qui n'ont jamais eu de succès et qui étaient pratiquement impossibles à trouver. Ils auraient toujours été épuisés, mais, presque par miracle, vous auriez réussi à les dénicher. Je ne crois pas qu'on puisse être le pendant cinématographique de l'écrivain obscur, mais croyez que je le regrette. (From David Cronenberg: Entretiens avec Serge Grunberg. You can order this from amazon.fr now or you can preorder the forthcoming English edition from amazon.com.) But instead of languishing as an obscure writer, Cronenberg switched disciplines and became what he is today: a director remarkable less for his cinematic qualities — you can't credit him with purism or much innovation in film technique — than for the unique vision and literary sensibility he brings to his films. Given this literary outlook, you might expect that Cronenberg's screenplays are writerly tours de force — which they manifestly are not. In a slightly puzzled preface to this introductory volume of his screenplays, Cronenberg emphasizes that the screenplay is not the venue for literary pretention. "Screen prose," he writes, "is rigorously functional. Its focus is narrow, narrower than a haiku, and its purpose is very limited... In fact, profound, complex prose just gets in the way of the real business of a screenplay, and thus is generally derided, considered pathetic." Accordingly, the two screenplays of Cronenberg's first feature-length films — Shivers and Rabid — are best read in conjunction with the films themselves. They're study aids, production documents that can help in the analysis and understanding of the films — and they're not much more than that. But what about the screenplays for Stereo and Crimes of the Future, two of Cronenberg's early attempts at avant-garde cinema? Most readers won't have seen these films, since about the only way to get them is to purchase an nth-generation VHS from ebay. What's more, neither text is really a screenplay in the proper sense, since each was written not before but after the film was shot. So what are you to make of these ex post facto voiceover monologues? Are they hybrids of the writer that Cronenberg wanted to be and the filmmaker that he eventually became? Or are they just juvenilia? The script for Stereo introduces a world similar to the one Cronenberg created in the film Scanners. Volunteers at the Canadian Academy for Erotic Inquiry submit to telepathy experiments that lead to unexpectedly erotic results — to "omnisexuality," an "expanded form of bisexuality." As a text, the script closely prefigures the type of pseudo-scientific prose perfected by J.G. Ballard in The Atrocity Exhibition (aka Love and Napalm), which is ironic given that Cronenberg has claimed not to feel much affinity with Ballard upon first reading. Crimes of the Future also introduces familiar Cronenberg themes — essentially pathology and perversity. Here it is easy to detect a young cineaste deeply under the influence of Burroughs. For example, Cronenberg writes that a colleague's body "has begun to create puzzling organs, each one very complex, very perfect, unique, yet seemingly without function. As each is surgically removed, it is quickly replaced by another, equally mysterious. He has taken to breaking into the specimens room and stealing the jars containing the organs. His body, he insists, is a galaxy, and these creatures are solar systems. He becomes melancholy when they are far from him. His nurse says that his disease is possibly a form of creative cancer." This, of course, is almost a paraphrase of a famous passage from Naked Lunch. Given the obvious immaturity of these early pieces and the narrow functionality of the screenplays of Shivers and Rabid, is it worthwhile to read — to buy — even to publish — this first volume of Cronenberg's collected screenplays? For the casual fan, the answer is probably no. These screenplays will not give you literary kicks independent of the films. But for those who are fans of Cronenberg the director, these screenplays are indispensable for understanding how the would-be author became the cinematic auteur. Email this page to a friendTell someone about Supervert Picks - Cronenberg Screenplays at supervert.com. (Email addresses are not recorded or used in any way.) Your name
Your email
Friend's email
Your message
Other Supervert Sites
© 2008 Supervert 32C Inc. All Rights Reserved. » Sitemap
|
David Cronenberg, 
Necrophilia Variations
|
Necrophilia Variations is Supervert's new book about death, desire, and deviance. Read sample chapters of this literary monograph on the erotic attraction to corpses or order your copy now! |
Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish
|
Reviewers are raving about Supervert's book Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish, calling it "brilliant," "seductively nasty," and "one of the most astonishing books to come out in years." |
Horror Panegyric
|
Horror Panegyric is a limited edition hardcover including Supervert's essay on the notorious Lord Horror novels of Savoy Books, as well as excerpts from the hard-to-find novels. |
Electronic Library
Essays |
Shockwave |
Necro Enema Amalgamated
Surveys
Looking for Porn?
Supervert does not make porn but the pervy nature of its work leads people to look for it here. So if you want babes or whatever, this is good porn.