With his new film, "Existenz," Cronenberg centers on a reclusive but highly influential video game designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is trying to run from a $5 million bounty placed on her head by a pseudo-fundamentalist organization called the "Realist Underground." In this ambiguous, near-future environment, she enlists a greenhorn security guard (Jude Law) to delve into her ultra-advanced virtual reality game and uncover the plot against her.

"Existenz" is characteristic of Cronenberg's "mature" period -- replete with intellectually rigorous and witty interrogations of consensus reality, a bustling cast (old hands such as Ian Holm and Willem Dafoe meet Canadian up-and-comers Sarah Polley and Don McKellar), and beautifully chilly cinematography -- and at the same time indulgent of his more visceral, gooey predilections. As in most of Cronenberg's work, the psycho and the somatic conflate by film's end and a hybrid reality emerges.

Salon Arts & Entertainment met with the always urbane Cronenberg at the Prescott Hotel in San Francisco.

Maybe I was reading too much into it, but --

You can never read too much into it.

-- could Ted Turner be part of the Realist Underground from "Existenz"?

He definitely is. I mean, you're reading too much into it in that I wrote "Existenz" before I made "Crash". So you have to realize that. And it didn't change to accommodate him -- I guess I could have invented Ted. You could anticipate someone like Ted, even if you didn't experience Ted. It's tempting to make it be a reaction in some ways to "Crash" but it isn't really.

A few years ago you conducted an interview with Salman Rushdie where you of course discussed his experience with the fatwa, but also the idea of a video game being elevated to the level of an art form. How did those ideas develop as you worked on the screenplay for "Existenz"?

Basically what happened was that it was first about the fatwa and then about the game. I suppose I sowed the seeds of the destruction of the other movie -- the one that was just about the fatwa. The structure is still there; the underpinnings are still there. We still have an artist on the run for her life because she has a hit order placed on her by fanatics or opposition of some kind.

But once I decided to make her a game designer rather than a movie-maker or a writer, then it became a science fiction movie. When I started to write the script I wanted to play the game. [At first] I thought we wouldn't ever play the game in the movie. I thought it would be very elegant, and they'd talk about the game, you'd see them playing the game, people would talk about why the fanatics would want to kill them because of the game, but you would never see it.

But then as soon as I was writing, I wanted desperately to play the game. I wanted to know what it was, how it worked, what technology and hardware there was for it. I figured that the implications of it would be significant as well, for the sort of themes I was developing. And as soon as I did that the whole focus of the piece shifted away from the fatwa. Maybe it's for the best, but there is that other movie to be made.

And then you had to find the interface for the game and the players -- humans have to adapt part of the game hardware, and the game has to become organic.

That became a question of my understanding of what technology is, and my use of special effects as imagery and as metaphor. I think it probably came out of -- and this is just me being able to now articulate what I was originally only intuitive about, I'm really being a sort of a critic of my own movie -- but I think it had to do with my understanding of technology as an extension of the human body. I found a way to put that metaphor on screen in a literal way, which pleases me because I like to find imagery that has metaphorical value. That's probably why I'm drawn to inventing new things. New creatures, new technologies and stuff. Because then it's imagery that has no connections with anything else for people, except my movie. So then you can kind of control the meaning of those images more finely.

Regarding special effects, there's a minor slew of VR movies coming out now -- "The Matrix" and "The Thirteenth Floor" -- but what is notable about "Existenz" is that it's not really an effects movie in the traditional sense. There are mutant amphibians and a fleshy game controller, but there's a conspicuous absence of digital imagery. Was that a deliberate choice?

Well it was on one level -- that stuff dates very quickly. My effects guys certainly offered the same sort of Gap commercial-type technology, where everything is frozen in midair. But freezing things in space and time doesn't have a place in this movie. So I really sidestepped all that and invented my own technology, my own look.

Creatively, none of that [effects technology] interested me, so with "Existenz" I'm going after the essence of things that do. I wasn't naive when I decided that I wouldn't have it in any "Blade Runner" city of the future, because that's what everybody expects. I have no computers, and I have no computer screens in the movie. I have no screens at all -- I don't even have TV sets in the movie.

I did have that disconnect, I felt while watching the movie that something was flying under the radar.

There are also no sneakers, no running shoes in the movie. And there's also no jewelry or patterns on the clothing -- no plaids. And no mirrors. It's my attempt to dislocate the audience without being really obvious about it, and it's also an attempt to not have to deal with stuff that doesn't interest me. I'm not really interested, for "Existenz" anyway, in creating details of a future world and so on. To me that's just a waste of resources and energy. And I insist on being very tightly bound to what is interesting to me and focus very intensely on that. It's kind of a simplification -- perhaps that's some kind of a modernist, as opposed to a post-modernist, approach to movie-making.

When it came to writing the game into the script, did you do research by spending a lot of time with game programmers, or trying out the newest VR hookups?

No, no -- I didn't have to really because I was already really interested in that stuff. I played "Myst" and I played "Gadget," which is a Japanese game that people thought would be huge here. I played "Mech Warriors II" or something. But mostly it's my son who plays the games and I look over his shoulder and we discuss it. I'm curious: I look up stuff on the Internet about what games are being developed and how, and how many polygons closer to reality we're getting and all that stuff.

You're considered an ur-cyberpunk filmmaker --

Yes, I've read that.

Do you feel constrained by genre expectations?

I know that "Videodrome" is mentioned in "Virtual Light," William Gibson's novel. And I know that he and other people have said that my movies are inspirations to them.

There are a lot of plot parallels between "Existenz" and "Videodrome." Aside from the medium itself -- VR games as opposed to television -- what distinguishes these movies on a philosophical level?

I can't even discuss "Videodrome"; I haven't seen it in 15 years. I'm serious; I'm not being evasive. Of course I remember it, but it isn't right up front, and it wasn't in my mind when I was writing this, even though there are obvious connections. But as I say, that stripping away of things includes not worrying about movies you have made yourself, or what people might think, or how they connect them or [do] not connect them. It wasn't in my mind at all making this movie. My opinion of how this one would connect to that one is probably -- definitely -- not more valid than yours would be. And since I haven't seen that other movie for a while, it's probably less valid. Unless you haven't seen it for 15 years either.
salon.com | April 29, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -