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David Cronenberg Quotes

David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian filmmaker. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infection, technology and the intertwining of the psychological with the physical. In the first third of his career he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction films such as Scanners and Videodrome , although his work has since expanded beyond these genres.

Cronenberg's films have polarized critics and audiences alike; he has earned critical acclaim and has sparked controversy for his depictions of gore and violence. The Village Voice called him "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world". His films have won numerous awards, including, for Crash, the Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, a unique award that is distinct from the Jury Prize as it is not given annually, but only at the request of the official jury, who in this case gave the award "for originality, for daring and for audacity".



Wikipedia  

✵ 15. March 1943   •   Other names David Paul Cronenberg
David Cronenberg photo
David Cronenberg: 19   quotes 2   likes

Famous David Cronenberg Quotes

“If you’ve ever sat in a room with twins, immediately you’re forced to deal with this confusion. You’re afraid to call them by name because you’re afraid you’re going to get it wrong. At first being a twin is a source of power, you can switch, you can fool people—but then it becomes a vulnerability because people confuse you when you don’t want them to. The famous story of the twins who were both spanked when either one of them did something wrong because the parents wanted to make sure they got the right twin. So that would immediately make each twin totally responsible for the other one’s actions and therefore would make you want to control the other twin’s actions. It gets quite twisted and the confusion of identities becomes quite intense.”

David Cronenberg

“We've all got the disease - the disease of being finite. Death is the basis of all horror.”

David Cronenberg

on mortality

“I'm always working on the same thing, the creation of an identity. It's mysterious: We think identity is genetically given, but I believe there is creative will involved with the decision of who we are going to be. All my movies are concerned with this.”

David Cronenberg

Cronenberg: An intellectual with ominous powers http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/arts/19iht-dupont.html (May 19, 2006)

“Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.”

David Cronenberg

Source: Cronenberg on Cronenberg (1997), Ch. 5

“Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.”

David Cronenberg

Source: Cronenberg on Cronenberg (1997), Ch. 1, P. 7

“Omnisexuality is the term that I use in Hysteria. There seems to be a strain of pure sexuality that can embody itself in any possible way, female, male, something else. This is the first time I’ve ever articulated this, but I think I’m most interested in that essence of sexuality that seems to be able to take many forms but has still a specific feel and tone to it that we all recognize. You can’t really define it as male or female. I’m very fascinated with the way in which maleness and femaleness is specifically physical. but not necessarily purely sexual. There is a difference amongst all those things. This takes you right back to the mind/body schism that I go crazy with all the time.”

David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg Quotes about thinking

“We are confused and bemused, and think that it’s a momentary delusion that will soon dissipate, leaving our lives to continue as they were.”

David Cronenberg

"The Beetle and the Fly," http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/01/17/the-beetle-and-the-fly/ (January 17, 2014)

“I think all my movies are commercial. That's my delusion. I thought 'Naked Lunch' was wildly entertaining, so what do I know?”

David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg's Body Language http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/magazine/18cronenberg.html?pagewanted=all (September 18, 2005)

“I'm an atheist, and so I have a philosophical problem with demonology and supporting the mythology of Satan, which involves God and heaven and hell and all that stuff. I'm not just a nonbeliever, I'm an antibeliever - I think it's a destructive philosophy.”

David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg's Body Language http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/magazine/18cronenberg.html?pagewanted=all (September 18, 2005)

“I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.”

David Cronenberg

Source: Cronenberg on Cronenberg (1997), Ch. 4

“Anytime I've tried to imagine squeezing myself into the box of any particular religion, I find it claustrophobic and oppressive. I think atheism is an acceptance of what is real.”

David Cronenberg

on religion

David Cronenberg Quotes

“Technology has really taken over evolution. We’ve seized control of evolution ourselves without really quite being conscious of it. It’s no longer the environment that affects change in the human body, it’s our minds, it’s our concepts, our technology that are doing that.”

David Cronenberg

Videodrome commentary track
Context: Technology isn’t really effective, it doesn’t really expose its true meaning, I feel, until it has been incorporated into the human body. And most of it does, in some way or another. Electronics. People wear glasses. They wear hearing aids that are really little computers. They wear pacemakers. They have their intestines modified. It’s really quite incredible what we’ve been able to do to the human body and really take it some place that evolution on its own could not take it. Technology has really taken over evolution. We’ve seized control of evolution ourselves without really quite being conscious of it. It’s no longer the environment that affects change in the human body, it’s our minds, it’s our concepts, our technology that are doing that.

Change

“Dolphins read each other’s emotions by sonar and it’s the inside of the body, the configuration of the viscera, that lets dolphins know whether the dolphin they are meeting is tense or happy. Their emotions are much more connected with the insides of each other’s bodies. We don’t have that. It’s like denying 90% of what we are physically, not knowing it.”

David Cronenberg

Bomb Magazine http://bombmagazine.org/article/1160/david-cronenberg, Bette Gordon.

Reading , Happiness

“All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true.”

David Cronenberg

As quoted at "InFuze Magazine" http://infuzemagazine.com/?p=130 (14 Dec 2011)

Life , Youth

“I know that many artists feel that they are frauds - that's part of the pleasure of creativity.”

David Cronenberg

Cronenberg: An intellectual with ominous powers http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/arts/19iht-dupont.html (May 19, 2006)

Pleasure , Feeling , Fraud , Parting

“The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.”

David Cronenberg

As quoted in "interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/CBC Radio program Q," http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2012/06/07/david-cronenberg-on-cosmopolis/ (7 June 2012)

Love , Death , Art

“Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.”

David Cronenberg

on man's relationship with technology

Home

“Everybody has antennae. Some people mute them. If you're an artist, you enhance them.”

David Cronenberg

on being an artist

People

“The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting.”

David Cronenberg

on mainstream Hollywood films

Problem

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