Cronenberg (pt. VI)

Naked Lunch

Cosmopolis

Happy practically Friday the 13th and happy blood worm moon, dear reader! We covered the Oscars chaos and the recent death of a Hollywood legend (no more Hollywood legends are allowed to die unless they’re Woody Allen or Roman Polanski, please :)) and now it’s time to get back to our regularly-scheduled programming. My favorite way to shake off the stuffy awards hangover and the most consistent topic featured on this blog is one of my favorite freaky filmmakers, who is about to celebrate a birthday: David Cronenberg. Throughout his time on Earth, David Cronenberg has unleashed some of the most bizarre and bewitching films that this critic has ever seen. His direction, writing, casting, aesthetics, and symbols always make an iconic impression—from his gross-out body horrors to his haunting modern dramas, I can’t help being captivated by their abject beauty and grotesqueness. The wild, weird, unfettered sense of wonderment that is present in a Cronenberg film defies genre, form, and expectations. Even a well-studied fan like myself cannot avoid the delirious and delicious surprises that come with the Cronenberg experience. Regardless of how his odd tastes sit on your tongue, you cannot deny the courageous innovation and creativity and horniness he infuses into each of his projects. I am committed (addicted?) to seeing all of the films in this audacious auteur’s ouvre, so let’s celebrate his upcoming 82nd birthday by watching some hand-picked, wholeheartedly-weird, Cronenbergian cinema.

Up first is a rare Cronenberg adaptation of a book, but because Cronenberg is a freak, he wouldn’t adapt just any old novel, but an “antinovel” of the “Beat Generation” by William S. Burroughs. This book was considered so obscene and controversial that Burroughs—and several other acclaimed writers of this era like Allen Ginsburg, John Ciardi, and Norman Mailer—had to defend the book’s literary merit in a landmark censorship trial. The 1959 novel is titled Naked Lunch, and since it is described as an experimental, non-linear antinovel with themes of dystopian science fiction, addiction, sadomasochism, and body horror (including a famous description of a man's talking anus taking over his body) Cronenberg (or maybe Brian Yuzna) really does seem like the best director for the job. In 1985, Cronenberg, his producer, his editor, the literary executor of Burroughs’ estate, and William Burroughs himself met up in Tangier, where they viewed some of Cronenberg’s films—and Burroughs allegedly stated that Cronenberg was the only one who could properly adapt this story. David Cronenberg’s 1991 adaptation of Naked Lunch opens with a colorful title sequence and some loud, disorienting jazz music that becomes a staple of this movie. We’re shown two quotes: “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” and “Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat; The Mark inside…”, by Hassan-i Sabbah and William Burroughs, respectively. The year is 1953, the city is New York, and we are introduced to a nicely-dressed exterminator named Bill Lee (Peter Weller), whose bug-killing is halted when he realizes he’s out of bug powder. A victorious swarm of gigantic roaches is one of the first things we see in this film, and it is hardly the grossest, strangest thing we get to witness. We then cut to an automat, where Bill’s friends are debating the ethics of being a writer, and giving Bill a hard time about his sudden lack of bug powder. When Bill gets home, his wife Joan (Judy Davis) is shooting up Bill’s bug powder like it’s heroin, explaining how she gets a very “literary high” from it—“A Kafka high… makes you feel like a bug.” This prompts Bill to say “I thought you were finished with doing weird stuff”, to which Joan replies, “I thought so too, but I guess not.” Suddenly, Bill is being taken to the police station for narcotics possession. When Bill explains that it’s just bug powder, the cops decide to leave him in the interrogation room alone with a large pile of the powder, and one gigantic, disgusting bug to see if the stuff really works. The bug starts to consume and bathe in this chalky, yellow powder, but then it begins to speak, “Hello, I have arranged this whole thing just so I can speak to you. I am your case officer. Your wife is not really your wife, she is an agent of Interzone Incorporated and you must kill her.” It’s less startling than you might think when this gargantuan bug starts talking, not just because it’s a Cronenberg movie, but because this puzzling conversation feels like the first normal one Bill gets to have. Well, “normal” might not be the right word, but it’s certainly stimulating, and leads Bill on a psychedelic journey that transcends time, space, and all rational thought. To try to summarize the film from this point on would be a Herculean effort that I am too verbose to manage, but this surrealistic, anxious, queer, drug-fueled adventure was far more fun than I thought it’d be. Naked Lunch is swarming with enough bug imagery to make my stomach turn, but in typical Cronenbergian fashion, the practical effects and visual elements were increasingly cooler and too compelling to look away from. Selfishly and pretentiously, I enjoyed the fact that this is a film about a writer, at war with other writers, with the machines and typewriters used to write, and with the act of writing itself. Early on, Bill says that he gave up writing when he was ten because it was “too dangerous”, and as silly as that may come off, I’ll be damned if Naked Lunch doesn’t spend its next two hours proving just how accurate this statement is. And because Cronenberg has a sense of humor and a self awareness in his approach to filmmaking, the masturbatory act of discussing one’s own writing process is depicted quite literally in this movie—with all of the phallic and vaginal imagery one comes to expect from this creator. Between the bugs and the disorienting jazz music, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get into this film, but Cronenberg has never steered me wrong and Burroughs’ writing and life is just a fascinating subject to tackle. After seeing Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of Burroughs’ book Queer, but especially after watching this film, I am beyond intrigued by William Burroughs and his mythic life. Burroughs killed his wife then fled the country, which ultimately liberated him to start pursuing gay lovers and begin writing in a significant way. Naked Lunch is not a straightforward adaptation of the novel, Cronenberg himself even said that “a direct adaptation would’ve been far too expensive and would be banned in every country in the world", but it feels instead like a confluence of Burroughs’ absurd style of storytelling and this man’s real, lived existence. As headass and confusing as all of this may sound, I actually really enjoyed Naked Lunch, and I was positively transfixed by Peter Weller’s numb, apathetic, resigned-to-his-fate performance. He had a dry, dedicated delivery of every single line that was just intoxicating and hilarious to me. The film also stars Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Nicholas Campbell, Michael Zelniker, Joseph Scoren, and Roy Scheider, as well as some other isopodic, creepy-crawly creatures I’ve yet to mention. There’s not a moment you can look away from this film, because you might miss a weird, gross sex scene or weird, gross bug-turned-machine or a weird, gross typewriter that looks like an alien head drawn by the animators of Rick and Morty. I, too, find the act of writing something new to be kinky, and to share this vulnerable writing with anyone else feels like the most intimate thing you can do—and Naked Lunch expressed this sentiment with magical, mushy, ease.

Naked Lunch was full of too many profound lines to list, like “America is not a young land, it is old and dirty and evil”, but tonight’s next film had so many faux-profound lines that I could hardly process each one over the sound of my own laughter. Based on Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name, Cronenberg’s 2012 film Cosmopolis imagines a young, ambitious but suspicious Robert Pattinson as Eric Packer: a 28-year-old billionaire and “currency speculator” who spends most of his time inside his giant, state-of-the-art stretch limo as it meanders around Manhattan. Eric just wants to get a haircut, but a visit from the President of the United States and the funeral of Eric’s favorite rap artist are causing quite the traffic jam all around town. Throughout the course of the undisclosed amount of time in which this film takes place, Eric has a revolving cavalcade of guests in his limo—his business partner (Jay Baruchel), his wife (Sarah Gadon), his art consultant/lover (Juliette Binoche), his CFO (Emily Hampshire), his systems analyst (Philip Nozuka), and his doctor (Bob Bainborough.) Pattinson plays this role with the devotion of a young, bright-eyed, art-film-hungry star on the rise, and his version of a Brooklyn accent proves that he’s always had an interest in playing goofy-voiced characters. It’s especially impressive that Pattinson took this on before he even shot the last Twilight movie—which shows that his priorities have always been straight. The conversations that take place inside this limo steadily become more tense, as Eric makes some poor trades, anti-capitalist riots begin to form on the streets, and he receives a credible threat from an unknown assassin. Cosmopolis also features Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Kevin Durand, Patricia McKenzie, as well as some of the most ludicrous, pseudo-noir-tough-guy lines of dialogue I’ve ever heard in my life. Lines like—”Do people still shoot at presidents? I thought there were more stimulating targets” and “I’m an American citizen with a New York set of balls” and “I like your mother. You have your mother’s breasts” and surely more insane lines that I missed because I was laughing too hard. All of the discussions of finances that went over my head and all of the erotic innuendos that I wish went over my head made this film feel like an episode of Succession on acid, or Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on Adderall. Cosmopolis was bad, but also super riveting, somehow. It’s crazy how I’ve wanted to see this movie for years but unintentionally waited until I was 28 and in need of a haircut, just like Robert Pattinson’s character. What would inevitably be obnoxious douchebag porn in the hands of any other director, is made stunning and funny and interesting through Cronenberg and his unique POV. And that’s the magic of this director: he can take a premise or a character that seems curated specifically for heteronormative, male audiences, then turn it all on its ugly head to make it grisly and grody and gay and great. I’m running out of Cronenberg movies to watch, so this 82 year old is just gonna have to keep working well into his hundreds just like Clint Eastwood. Thanks for coming along on another zany Cronenberg adventure, dear readers, I hope I didn’t ruin your (naked) lunch or spoil your day too much. Until next time, stay freaky, stay fun, stay… phallic? Idk. Toodles!