Naked Lunch turns 50 on Friday. “It’s a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift’s Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect,” William S. Burroughs told Jaguar Magazine in 1996, full interview reprinted on Stop Smiling Love this quote too: “I think if a writer is not endeavoring to expand and alter consciousness in himself and in his readers, he is not doing much of anything. It is precisely words, word lines, lines of words and images, and associations connected with these word and image lines in the brain, that keep you in present time, right where you are sitting now.” (If you’re in Chicago, celebrate the novel’s birthday by paling around with terrorists and the actor who played Burroughs in Cronenberg’s film.)
Haven’t seen it yet, but from this review, Pontypool sounds like the best movie of 2009: “one of the most original and freakily disturbing films of Canadian origin we’ve seen since David Crononeberg first sent Shivers up our spines….[like] Night of the Living Dead re-conceptualized by William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard while all three of you were on bad, scary LSD at a semiotics seminar whose keynote speaker turned out to be a zombie-Hunter S. Thompson.” (via.)
“Someone suggested to me that most of my characters are victims of this desire to change the body. I disagree. I’m not interested in victimization – I’m interested in will” – David Cronenberg in a 1997 Wired magazine interview with R. U. Sirius, talking about Crash.
“People don’t pay enough attention to the body. My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There’s nothing else, and when we die, that’s it. No afterlife. I’m very anti-religious because religion tends to disembody you. There’s an emphasis on your spirit, or where you’ll be when your body’s gone, and that’s misleading. ” – David Cronenberg in an interview with Defamer, explaining also how he is “lazy” and of the two, David Lynch is “way weirder than I am.” (via.)
When I first read this headline I thought Twin Peaks was getting a musical theater treatment (it isn’t, but The Fly is.) The article instead mentions the enormous impact Angelo Badalamenti’s score for the TV series had on shoegaze musicians like Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Massive Attack, and many others. But Lynch was a Cocteau Twins fan long before he started the series. The article also mentions Mysterious Skin, one of my favorite movies (and books!) as another example of successful use of atmospheric shoegaze music
Possession
Poor Sam Neill, Always the cuckhold, isn’t he? (In The Horse Whisperer, Yes,The Piano, Sleeping Dogs, Restoration, Dead Calm, etc, etc… He’s been in at least 400 films, so there’s going to be some repetition, but still, what is it about this poor man?)
Well, I like you, Sam Neill. Especially in Possession.
The 1980 film by Polish director Andrzej Zulawski begins like a traditional art film, with Fassbinder-like bright colors and hysterics. Sam Neill’s character discovers his wife, played Isabelle Adjani, is having an affair. He starts seeing a ballet instructor who is also played by Adjani, and the story continues using borrowed plot furniture from science fiction and horror — clones, serpents, slashings. Zulawski uses pulp elements as substitutes for emotions, like Cronenberg’s The Brood. It isn’t science fiction and it isn’t a horror film: it’s about the dissolve of a marriage, and the exaggerations — the overacting, the violence, the blood, the chaos — externalize emotions running high. One reviewer calls it “Grand Guignol.”
Adjani won the Best Actress award at Cannes, and it’s no surprise. Her freakouts are total adolescent in decadence. Just watch:
Just as memorable is her sex scene with a octopus-like creature, (it was banned in the UK as a “video nasty.”) The serpent was made by Carlo Rambaldi, (who did the special effects for Spielberg’s E.T.).
There are a couple of reasons this film hasn’t got the Cronenberg-sized audience it deserves. First, Zulawski hasn’t made a film in nearly ten years, and this is his only English language film. Secondly, it was badly butchered when it was first released here. Existing VHS copies are missing about 40 minutes of footage. The cut was to market it as part of the 80s junk drawer Italian horror craze — barf bags were distributed at American screenings. Horror fanatics who hate art films won’t like it, and those with strictly pretentious taste are sure to despise it. Thankfully, these binary distinctions are no longer as relevant — the art world includes some of the most voracious consumers of horror film.
I first found a copy of it at Borders about five years ago. It came as a set with a Mario Bava film. It’s no longer in print. Right now, the DVD is $50.00 through Amazon’s sellers. But there is good news: La Femme Publique (”The Public Woman”) will be released by Mondo Vision this year. If they continue releasing Zulawski’s other films, he may finally get the recognition he deserves for this incredible film.
The Human Canvas (via): a documentary about artists who cut themselves in performance. I’m surprised how many people incorporate this in their acts. Rather than shocked, I’m usually bored by it. There’s one film that explored the topic well — In My Skin — and the cutting was all simulated. Actress/director/writer Marina de Van made a film as good as anything by David Cronenberg or Michael Haneke. I am so happy to see she has a new movie coming out.
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