Staunchly Canuck filmmaker David Cronenberg supports the idea of regulating the number of domestic productions showing on Canadian screens, as is commonly done around the world.

‘If Jack Valenti [president of the Motion Picture Association of America, and opponent of such a move] had his way, there wouldn’t be anything but American movies in the world,’ says Cronenberg. ‘If you have any sense of national pride, identity and independence from the American dollar, government protection and interference are definitely required. [Otherwise] the American machine will just run over everybody, and that day is fast approaching.’

What most troubles the Toronto director, who presents his latest feature Spider at a TIFF 2002 gala screening, is that with the Americanization of global cinema, personal films may very well vanish off screens worldwide.

‘It’s very hard to make a film that does not follow the Hollywood template,’ he says. ‘You have this strange phenomenon of people like Bertolucci and Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) possibly never making another film in their own languages. It’s got to be in English – ‘American’ English – and the concept of what a movie is and what it can do is very limited. So I do think it’s our right to interfere with that process if we want to have anything that we can call Canadian cinema.’

Spider, a majority Canada/U.K. copro, is a good example of the kind of movie Hollywood studios tend not to make. And it very nearly didn’t get made at all. The indie production changed financiers from U.S.- and U.K.-based Cobalt Media Group to London’s Capitol Films halfway through prep, in a situation even Canada’s master of the macabre deems ‘a nightmare.’

‘When we were shooting in England, we weren’t sure when we went to set that there was going to be a set,’ he recalls. ‘When we left England – we shot there for three weeks [followed by five in Toronto] – we still hadn’t paid any of the English crew, but they were so into the project that they bore with us. They’ve all been paid now, I hasten to add.’

The director believes that some of the biggest indie production difficulties arise when financiers start breaking down a screenplay.

‘A lot of people don’t know how to read a script,’ he says. ‘An artificial number comes up that says, ‘We can’t do it for more than this [amount].’ It’s artificial, except it’s real, because everybody accepts it as real. It’s called ‘existential banking,’ I think. There were all kinds of misunderstandings and mis-playings [on Spider], and then you’re suddenly with a group financing it, and if they make mistakes and their money disappears because the German market has gone down, then suddenly you’re riding a horse that’s dying underneath you. It has nothing to do with the movie. It has to do with world economics, the dot-com crash and God knows what else.’

While in the U.K., the Spider crew heard daily about productions on both sides of the pond going down before ever making it to camera. On the plus side, it made top technicians available to them. ‘It’s like being in a massacre and you happen to be the only one left alive,’ Cronenberg says.

But when the hell of indie financing was behind him and he got down to directing, Cronenberg remembered why he hasn’t made a Hollywood studio picture throughout his entire career. Of the Spider shoot, he says, there was ‘no interference, only support from all kinds of people – not just crew, but producers [who, aside from himself, included Catherine Bailey and Samuel Hadida]. There was intelligent, educated support and a fantastic tone on the set.’

Positive Cannes response

Jumping between a seeming ‘reality’ and the delusions of the title character, a London man released from prison after a childhood crime, Spider demands some work from the viewer. While the director acknowledges it is a challenging film, the positive press it got at Cannes gives him heart.

‘I don’t think I’ve gotten four good American and English trade reviews for anything I’ve done before this,’ he says. ‘And, personally, the response was great within the screening I was at, as was the reaction of people afterwards.’

Prior to Cannes, the film had secured distribution in Canada through Odeon Films, in the U.K. through Helkon SK, and in France through Metropolitan Filmexport. One of the few territories where the film hadn’t been presold, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the U.S. But that changed at Cannes when Sony Picture Classics stepped to the plate.

‘[The people at Sony] were a little worried,’ Cronenberg recalls. ‘It was the usual thing – one guy loved it, the other guys said, ‘We love it, too, but we’re worried about how to market it.’ And then they saw the reviews and the response at the main screening and realized that people do get it, and that dissolved their worries.’

While the director is relieved he does not have to focus on making sales at Toronto and that he and his collaborators will be at TIFF 2002 ‘for the pure pleasure of showing the movie in a wonderful setting,’ he won’t hazard to speculate on Spider’s commercial future.

‘I always think my movies are going to be huge hits,’ he says, laughing, ‘and I’m almost always disappointed. Spider’s release would definitely be like an art film. It’s obviously not a major release; it’s not a summer release.’

But it does have indie hit potential, if Cannes’ critical and audience response is any measure. Also on the plus side is the film’s impressive British cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne, Lynn Redgrave and John Neville, all of whom the director was able to corral on a budget of only US$8 million.

TIFF memories

Cronenberg, TIFF, and film production in Toronto have achieved international recognition concurrently, and so the director feels particularly close to the Toronto festival. TIFF has presented retrospectives of his creepifying oeuvre, he has programmed a sci-fi series for them, and he directed the short film Camera for TIFF 2000’s 25th anniversary Preludes series. But he cites Dead Ringers’ selection as the Opening Night Gala for TIFF 1988, the first time that honor had been bestowed upon him, as his most vivid memory.

He recalls scurrying about Roy Thomson Hall that night trying to ensure the stereo equipment that had just been installed was working properly. ‘That was the most maddening and exciting time, and that really was the major introduction of that film,’ he says.

Of course, TIFF’s opening night has traditionally been as much about partying as film viewing, and Cronenberg admits his chilling film was an unusual choice.

‘I don’t know if [TIFF] would do that again,’ he says. ‘But I actually got a great reaction from people. They were suitably depressed.’

And that might be why Spider, sounding in a similar key to Dead Ringers, lost out to Atom Egoyan’s Ararat as the TIFF 2002 opener. The director dismisses the rivalry between the two productions that was recently suggested in a local daily.

‘The fact that it’s not a competitive festival and guys are trying to make it competitive is counterproductive,’ he says. ‘It’s not like one film wins and one loses. If I didn’t have a gala, maybe I would be worried about it, because this is presenting the film to North America, so I would want a little bit of that pomp and circumstance. But aside from that, I’m delighted for Atom. Opening night has its own dynamics, and I just leave that to the festival.’

Cronenberg is currently working on his original screenplay for Painkillers, which, he says, concerns ‘performance art and artists of the future.’ The film was being developed for Scott Rudin (Changing Lanes, The Royal Tenenbaums), but the prolific producer eventually took a pass. ‘I think it was a little too radical for Scott,’ says Cronenberg, who subsequently sent the script to Serendipity Point Films’ Robert Lantos, with whom he had collaborated on Crash and eXistenZ, and who opted to reunite. Together they were able to pick up the project in turnaround from Paramount Pictures prior to Cannes.

‘I wouldn’t even dare to say it’s going to be my next movie or when it’s going to be, but it’s the only project I’ve got going that’s remotely close,’ he says. ‘It’s still an independent film and Robert has to go raise the money. There are many perilous times ahead, I’m sure.’

-www.spiderthemovie.com