INSIDE VIDEODROME: David Cronenberg’s Mind Over Matter

INSIDE VIDEODROME: David Cronenberg’s Mind Over Matter

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TOBY GOLDSTEIN

David Cronenberg doesn't look like the kind of guy who'd make movies about people's heads being blown up, a man's innards becoming the convenient repository for hallucinogenic videocassettes, or a woman waking up from surgery with a full-size ravenous sexual organ under her arm. In fact, the boyish-looking 39-year-old director of those sequences—in Scanners, Videodrome, They Came From Within and several other chillers, wouldn't want to see any of his horrific visions happen in real life. But, he explains via phone from the small-town Ontario set of The Dead Zone—his next film—perpetually facing the demons in movies is one way to conquer the fear of getting out of bed in the morning.

"Well, I'd like to come to some sort of resolution between life and death that is positive," says Cronenberg, attempting to explain the "death is life" attitude which pervades many of his films, particularly the latest, Videodrome. On the surface an adventurous tale of sleazy cable-TV pornographer Max Renn (James Woods) who gets emotionally and physically enmeshed by a pirated torturama show that's a little too real, Videodrome ultimately raises serious questions of whether media life might be preferable to day-to-day biological existence.Jn other words, what's more real, a trusted televised announcement or our easily deceived, so-called conscious minds?

"Johnny Carson could've died three years ago," says Cronenberg, only half joking. "Who would know? Haven't you ever had an occasion where you'd be watching someone on television and you'd say, 'Hey, is he still alive? Didn't he die last year?" Thinking about being a citizen of this land of perpetual reruns, I scarily consider the possibility that, like Videodrome's media professor, Brian O'Blivion, our very own president is long gone and reaching us in a series of prerecorded tapes. Face it—most politicians' broadcasts are nothing but issuespeak responses to crises that regularly recur. Now that we're all completely paranoid, let's continue...

Cronenberg's fascination with the media's long arm—in part stemming from his origins in the land of Marshall McLuhan, the key communications theorist of our time—leads him to excitedly consider just how extensive its reach may be. "Imagine a war that's fought only in the media sense. A country could fight very successfully, win a brilliant victory, have world opinion totally on its side and never have to send a soldier into the field. Just to do it totally through the media. Stage little things to be videotaped and sent around the world." Now, if we could just get the U.S. and Russia to agree to tough it out over a hot game of Missile Command, what a better world it would be.

Naturally, James Woods has got to be encouraged into his fascination with the "videodrome" programming by a seductive partner. Going on the same instincts that have made him the standout critical favorite among horror film directors, Cronenberg tested Blondie's Deborah Harry for the key role of Nicki. Those who've always wondered what about Deb has kept Chris Stein's fire lit for a decade will understand as they watch her sensual portrayal of radio therapist Nicki, a girl who likes to have her body abused when she's not counseling suicides. Recalls Cronenberg, "I saw her in Union City, then she came up to Toronto and auditioned for me, and I liked her very much. Even though she was very inexperienced, I was willing to take on the responsibility of trying to guide her through the parts she didn't know."

The director insists that Blondie's sexgoddess routines had absolutely nothing to do with Deborah's winning the part. "The S&M gear that Blondie always used seems very cartoony. I mean, my daughter, who's 11, is into Blondie... and I thought that Videodrome was somewhere else quite entirely." Let's put it this way—once you've seen the film, Blondie's "In The Flesh" will never sound quite the same.

By making his next project Steven King's best-selling The Dead Zone, Cronenberg will likely have more commercial exposure than ever before. With luck, it will not change his distinction from the pack of rip 'n' tear theme filmmakers. For so many schlockmeisters, horror movies are simply a sequence of one mutilation after the next, except that the girl who doesn't put out usually gets to live. Cronenberg, however, is out to try and understand what fear, or pain, or death really means. He's not set up for exclusive instant gut-grabbers, though they do occur. His movies don't have neat little endings, but leave their audiences deliberately confused about who exactly won a particular battle, and at what cost —much like real life.

"If you simplify things to the point where everything's tied up neatly," believes Cronenberg, "you can get that on series television. I think movies should do more than that."