By Canadian filmmaking icon David Cronenberg is, like so many others it seems this weekend, attending the Marrakech Film Festival in Morocco and participated in a Q&A session.
During this he spoke about one project that got away from him – popular 1983 drama “Flashdance” – a film he ran away from deliberately even as those involved desperately wanted him for the gig.
Indeed, Cronenberg was seemingly the first choice to direct. At the time he’d had several cult hits under his belt including “Rabid,” “The Brood” and “Scanners”. That’s when “Flashdance” producers producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer set out to land him to direct. He tells Variety:
“You might be amazed [Simpson and Bruckheimer] were totally convinced that I was the right one to direct. Really, I don’t know why [they] thought I should do it, and finally I had to say no – I said to them, ‘I will destroy your movie if I direct it!’”
After he passed they went to Brian DePalma who also passed and opted to make “Scarface” instead. The producers ultimately settled on Adrian Lyne who was mostly known for TV at the time and then went on to great success post “Flashdance” with erotic thrillers like “9 1/2 Weeks,” “Fatal Attraction” and “Indecent Proposal”.
Cronenberg meanwhile delivered the one-two punch of “Videodrome” and “The Dead Zone” in 1983, helping carve out the body horror genre which led to his iconic works like “The Fly,” “Dead Ringers” and “Naked Lunch”. Cronenberg says of his reputation:
“[My work has been] attacked for being horrible, decadent and depraved. All of which are good things. I called myself the Baron of Blood. But at least I didn’t say I was the King – I was very modest.
It was early on he came to a conclusion that defined his work – the “idea of genre was a way of selling a film”. He could basically make an art film or really downbeat drama, and by making it a genre work he was “in some ways protected” because audiences were more accepting.
He says “The Fly” remake, which is essentially “three people in a room with a baboon,” is a good example of this:
“It’s really the story of a beautiful – and very tall – couple [that] meet and fall in love, and then he contracts a horrible wasting disease and he slowly dies. It’s not a very uplifting if you say it just that way, but when it becomes a sci-fi movie, a horror movie in which there’s a telepod that transports people through the air, that suddenly becomes bearable. It’s still a romance and still a tragic story, but not as heartbreaking in a way.”
Cronenberg most recently directed “The Shrouds” and was repeatedly showing up on screen playing Dr. Kovich in “Star Trek: Discovery” in its third through final season earlier this year.
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