Body of Work: The Acting Career of David Cronenberg, Page 2

BODY OF WORK: THE ACTING CAREER OF DAVID CRONENBERG

HENRY & VERLIN (1996)

"Doc Fisher"

Remember that overwhelming demand in the mid-90's for a Canadian movie to mix together the most saccharine moments of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Boy Who Could Fly and Of Mice and Men? Wish fulfilled with Henry & Verlin, especially Of Mice and Men. I'm not even kidding - Gary Farmer's titular hulking simpleton literally strokes a rabbit at one point; if he could talk, I'm sure he wouldn't shut up about owning a ranch with a field of alfalfa. Since he can't/won't speak, he spends most of his time with his 10-year-old autistic nephew, who also can't/won't speak, and since Nintendo hasn't been invented yet the kid can't be enrolled in the Video Armageddon tournament in Los Angeles, so Farmer teaches him how to light fires and steal stuff and cozy up to Margot Kidder's one-legged prostitute who lives in a shed in the woods. For some reason, the parents disapprove.

Seven years of attending the Toronto Film Festival (where Henry & Verlin debuted in 1994 before getting a small release two years later), I've had to sit through several homebred Canadian movies during the slots lacking anything prestigious. And I can attest that, while mental illness is big among Canucks (Away from Her, Defendor, Cronenberg's own A Dangerous Method), autism is an even more popular topic, with the cinema of Canadia featuring more autistic characters than a Stephen King novel: Megan Follows in Under the Piano, Sigourney Weaver in Snow Cake, Kazan in Cube. Another thing I noticed about autism-based films in general is a common employment of the ampersand in their titles: Henry & Verlin...Mary & Max...Mozart & the Whale...The Fox & the Hound...Mike & Molly (you know, the movie where Elisabeth Shue is married to a fat policeman? She wants to be normal and he longs to be thin? Powerful, powerful stuff.) I thought Dominick & Eugene fell into this category until confirming that Tom Hulce is only mildly retarded in that movie.

That having been mentioned, I honestly can't remember which of the main characters in this movie is "Henry" and which one is "Verlin." What I do know is that, to make sure he had all grounds covered, writer-director Gary Ledbetter gave both of his characters mental disorders. Gary Farmer, having already nailed the role of charmingly dim-witted frivolous spirit as Philbert Bono in Powwow Highway, is the mildly retarded one who never talks. The kid is the autistic one who never talks. The townsfolk try to keep them apart because they think it's not safe for the kid to pal around with Farmer. They are absolutely right: for one thing, Farmer doesn't think to duck when he walks through doorways with the kid on his shoulders, so the kid constantly sustains head trauma when he whams his head and crashes to the ground. Goddammit, Henry! Or Verlin! The burning question the movie asks, a full five years before I Am Sam, is whether a man with a developmental disability can care for a child without being judged by the greater torch-wielding community. A burning question I want to ask is why a bunch of bigoted assholes gang up to assault Farmer, a mentally challenged individual, because they believe he assaulted the kid, a mentally challenged individual. If one mentally challenged individual harms another, wouldn't that work in their favor? I guess they just need an excuse to beat up Farmer without hear of repercussion.

I mean I get it, it's about outsiders finding each other and bonding, kind of like Nightbreed except Farmer never scalps himself and Kidder doesn't have quills on her boobs.

Set during the Great Depression (yep, Canada felt it too), this may be the only period piece Cronenberg has ever appeared in, which is the only notable aspect of his presence in this film. What can you say about D.C. agreeing to lend his features to this project other than that he's a sweet guy to help out his friend and fellow Canuck Gary Ledbetter. Adapting a series of stories written by his father, Ledbetter doesn't shy away from sentimentality, painting rural 1930's Ontario with soft focus lighting that makes it look like A River Runs Through It if it was made for the Hallmark Channel and actually having a local physician character named "Doc Fisher." Instead of just having Graham Greene play the doc, Ledbetter picked on Cronenberg to come in for two quick scenes in which he tells the parents there's nothing physically wrong with the mute boy, making his cameo kind of like Jack Nicholson's in TOMMY with less atonal speak-singing. Considering his appearance as a doctor in The Fly, Cronenberg's Doc Fisher seems amiable enough; unlike certain doctors he makes house calls and seems reassuring even though he clearly has no idea how to deal with an autistic patient. He's just a little too mellow for Cronenberg - I'm not saying he always has to play a bad guy, but since he kind of naturally brings on the creeps there should be some hint of maliciousness in the characters he plays. Another doctor, a less comforting but not necessarily evil one at the sanitarium where Henry and Verlin end up, would have been a much better part for him to play: they even made the actor look like Cronenberg:

Is it obvious I don't have much to say about this movie? Cronenberg being in it made me think of Zelly & Me, another forgotten, ampersand-utilizing period piece (Zelly being set in the 1950's) by a one-time director you've never heard of (Tina Rathborne) that features a much more famous director reputed for his freakiness (David Lynch) in a top-billed supporting part playing the straightest role imaginable. Obviously, Lynch got roped into appearing as Willie the chauffeur by then-girlfriend/Zelly star Isabella Rossellini (although it would certainly be interesting to learn the opposite was the case), which makes me wonder if Cronenberg was dating Margot Kidder at the time of H & V. She used to date Pierre Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister shouted out in To Die For, and Brian DePalma, so we know she's into Canadian celebrities and directors. Kidder's handicapped hooker with her wooden leg isn't quite as kinky as Rosanna Arquette's steel braced Gabrielle from Crash, released the same year, but I'm not saying abberant kicks couldn't be had with a conveniently-placed termite hole.

Watching the film's preview, I thought the voice of the narrator, who describes the movie as "a story beyond words," sounded suspiciously like Cronenberg. It would have been hilarious if he was the one delivering such sentimental narration over softly-lit shots of gently-swaying wheat fields and babbling brooks like he was Mark Elliot. But listening closer, it's definitely not Cronenberg, so I was disappointed on top of being pissed off that the 4 minute preview is literally the entire movie, including a Doc Fisher scene - I could have watched that and saved myself 90 minutes.

Glasses? Yes

Tie? Yes

Suit/vest? Vest

Shot in Toronto? Rural Ontario

Relationship to cast/crew: Ledbetter worked electric on Dead Ringers. Moonshine Highway, a television movie directed by Andy Armstrong (action unit director and uncredited stunt coordinator for Nightbreed) which was shot in Ontario and released the same year also co-starred Gary Farmer and featured a Cronenberg cameo as "Clem Clayton." (I couldn't track down a copy of it to write about for this article - hope that doesn't damage the credibility of the whole venture.)

Cronenberg movie closest to: Cronenberg doesn't cast kids too often, but child welfare is certainly the hot topic of The Brood. Candice Carveth is near-traumatized by the painful separation of parents Frank and Nola and subsequent assault by the titular squad of navel-less mutant dwarfs. Well-intentioned yet harmful Hal Raglan and his Somafree Institute aren't terribly dissimilar to this movie's sanitarium, except of course for the total number of mutant dwarf-bludgeoned kindergarten teacher corpses as a byproduct of treatment (The Brood: 1, Henry & Verlin: 0).

THE STUPIDS (1996)

"postal supervisor"

Here's a little film nerd trivia for you: what do the directors of Z, In the Hear of the Night, West Side Story, The Battle of Algiers, Naked Lunch and Bend It Like Beckham all have in common? Answer: Jenny McCarthy. Specifically, they all appear in The Stupids.

Apparently, Jeremy Irons felt so robbed of an Oscar nomination for his dual performance in Dead Ringers that two years later when he picked up the prize for Reversal of Fortune, he gave David Cronenberg a special shout-out in his acceptance speech. Cronenberg responded by reteaming with his leading men, this time utilizing only one Jeremy Irons in M. Butterfly. The results were less critically and commercially positive (even though it's a good movie). Point is, Cronenberg may err in judgement when desiring to repeat a positive filming experience - at least, that's the only reason I can think for him to sign on for a cameo in a movie called The Stupids, that he had a blast on set with Jeff Goldblum in Into the Night and decided he was up for yet another John Landis debacle.

But Tom Arnold is no Jeff Goldblum. Or, more applicably, he's no Dan Aykroyd, a fellow portly comic who appeared in Cronenberg's scene from Landis' earlier film. Aykroyd, a six-time collaborator of Landis', managed to stay away from The Stupids in a year that saw him mugging it up in such underwhelming efforts as Celtic Pride, My Fellow Americans, Getting Away with Murder, Feeling Minnesota and Sgt. Bilko. The following year he'd find redemption from this glut of stinkers that have since lapsed from audience memories with Grosse Pointe Blank, by far his finest late career role. The same can't be said for those involved with The Stupids, most of the main cast having since fled to harmless television appearances in fear that they'll invite the stink of The Stupids onto any big screen they happen to grace.

There's every indication that a successful comedy could have been carved from the serise of books written by Harry Allard and illustrated by James Marshall. I love Marshall, especially the Fox and George and Martha series, and together with Allard he created such classics as Miss Nelson is Missing! and I Will Not Go to Market Today (one of my favorite books to read to my daughter). I never really got into the Stupids books, but they were nothing if not conceptual: one book is based on the entire family thinking they've died because they wake up and all the lights are out. There are some attempts by the movie to replicate this more abstract approach to the depiction of a socially and culturally oblivious family with the apt surname of "Stupid," though for the most part it's firmly stuck in Baby's Day Out territory with Arnold's family head Stanley Stupid running afoul of a secret military weapons project, which leads to fluke escapes from one inept assassin after another. This approach wouldn't necessarily have been an instant dealbreaker - such 90's comedy hits as Dumb & Dumber and the Naked Gun series, not to mention forerunners like interminable line of Pink Panter titles, were able to milk the hell out of their hapless heroes' "dumb luck" stumbling upon hijinx (Stupids was no doubt chasing some of that sweet Dumb & Dumber money). But Landis' movie is just too lazy to even set itself up for failure.

For example: there's a scene where the Stupid children, searching for their nincompoop of a patriarch, have gotten into the office of a major newspaper. Rationalizing that the computer can find their father if they offer it a photograph of Stanley, they feed his image into the hard disk drive of the hull. Perfectly fine joke I guess, ha ha that's not how computers work. Yet somehow by inserting this piece of paper into a device that reads digital data, the result is that 1) the computer copies the image of Stanley into the headline of the front page banner the previous user was working on, and 2) all the rest of the computers in the office short circut with dramatic sparks and shutdowns as befuddled newspaper employees leap from their cubicles in shock and alarm. Now - what?? Where is the simple A to B logic that a hard disk drive acts as a scanner that automatically places an image exactly where it needs to go in the system when you jam it into a random slot? Even moreso, how does such an act fry all the rest of the computers in the office? There's a detached logic to it - misusing a computer causes a complete system crash like when Corey Haim hits his screen in License to Drive - but come on, jokes have to at least exist in the realms of probability in order for them to work. The screenwriter of The Stupids, Brent Forrester, wrote the flawless "Lemon of Troy" episode of The Simpsons and co-wrote (with Dino Stamatopoulos) "The Audition" and "Pre-Taped Call-In Show," both shoe-in candidates for the coveted distinction of greatest Mr. Show sketch of all time. It's typical of Landis, whose sense of comedy is forever stuck in the days of the 1920's, to not give a shit if his set-ups make any sense but it's too bad Forrester couldn't come up with a funnier payoff to an already labored build.

I mentioned earlier how the number of cameos in any given Landis film marks the director's level of insecurity. The Stupids, with eight director appearances, is certainly no exception to the rule, and also underlines another characteristic of Landis' insecurity: repetition. And I don't just mean the relentless amount of egotistical self-referencing (did I even have to look at Mark Metcalf's name tag to know that his character was "Colonel Neidermeyer?") Following Coming to America (which he self-references into a forced, albeit amusing, connection with Trading Places by having Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche reprise their characters), Landis would return to the well by doing another sketch comedy (Amazon Women on the Moon), another horror-comedy (Innocent Blood), another epic Michael Jackson video ("Black or White"), another Eddie Murphy vehicle (Beverly Hills Cop 3) and another Blues Brothers movie (Blues Brothers 2000), all more or less roundly rejected by audiences. His take on The Stupids taps into the same "pair/trio/family of boobs stumble into saving the world" basis of Spies Like Us and ¡Three Amigos!, complete with Spies' government/weapons intrigue. Of course the John Fogerty Rule dictates that any artist is welcome to return to the well in the latter stage of their career, but Landis exchanges any spark of originality for the comfort of in-jokes, reprocessed ideas and self-assuring presence of such luminary filmmakers as Robert Wise and Gillo Pontecorvo.

That said, Landis once again makes good use of Cronenberg, if you're willing to really delve into the nuances of a 30-second walk-on (in which Cronenberg doesn't even walk on, he's just sitting at a desk). The film's plot, if you can call it that, involves Stanley's belief that the postal service is part of a massive conspiracy to steal people's mail for an evil mastermind named "Mr. Sender." His suspicions are seemingly confirmed when he brings these concerns to his immediate supervisor, played by Cronenberg, and is promptly fired. Casting a creepy Cronenberg as such an innocuous figure as a mailman is fiendish on its own; having him represent the intangible corporate presence that runs the postal department (because really, who takes our mail? why do we trust them? what do they want from us?) is as perfect a use of his impenetrable reticence as channeling his professorial stodginess in Into the Night. Considering the suddenly sinister portrait of postal employees following incidents of disgruntled mailroom workers in the early 90's, you believe that a man like Cronenberg would have no trouble making his employees "go postal." So one thing you can say for Landis is he knows how to use David Cronenberg in any given situation.

Cronenberg has two lines: "Come in" and "What is it now, Stanley?" Both are about as funny as anything else in the movie.

Glasses? Yes

Tie? Yes

Suit/vest? No - standard postal uniform

Shot in Toronto? Yes

Relationship to cast/crew: Set decorator Carol Lavoie also did To Die For. Hairstylist Carol Marinoff was assistant hair stylist on Crash and Spider. Second assistant director Simon Board got his start as third assistant director on Naked Lunch and M. Butterfly; trainee assistant director Kerric Macdonald began her training on Trial by Jury. Fellow cameo-r/talentless hack Mick Garris (co-writer of The Fly II) had interviewed Landis and Cronenberg (along with John Carpenter) on a panel called "Fear on Film."

Cronenberg movie closest to: Cronenberg's only "family" entertainment - also featuring a dad, a mom, one boy and one girl - is A History of Violence, and the two film's cardboard-y portrait of a blissfully ignorant American family suddenly under threat in a small town is really not that different. The idea that there's something going on beneath the surface of Norman Rockwell-esque middle America is reflected in both Tom Stalls' dirty past and Stanley Stupid's belief in the conspiracy to steal unsuspecting citizens' trash and mail. For an unintentional emphasis on that connection, just check out the two mailboxes. And quality-wise let's be honest: the two movies hobble close to a pathetic dead last on both director's filmographies.

Combined Career Awards for Directors Cameo-ing in The Stupids:

13 Genies

1 César

1 Golden Lion

1 Palme d'or

1 Best Director at Cannes

1 Independent Spirit Award

2 Irving G. Thalberg Awards

5 Oscars

5 Oscar Best Director nominations

8 DGC Awards

2 DGA Lifetime Achievement Awards

1 Adult Video News Award

Combined Career Awards for John Landis and Jenny McCarthy:

1 Primetime Emmy

1 Daytime Emmy nomination

2 Razzies

7 Razzie nominations (including Worst Director for The Stupids)

EXTREME MEASURES (1996)

"hospital lawyer"

Well, that was quick.

So says Hugh Grant after being read the terms of his dismissal from Gramercy Hospital, where he works as a handsome ER doctor, by lawyer David Cronenberg. Grant's referring to his abrupt termination after having a giant bag of pharmaceutical cocaine planted in his apartment, but he might as well be talking about Cronenberg's appearance in the movie, which consists of him spouting off one extended bit of corporate legal talk where he strips Grant of his duties and credentials and threatens to deport him, all in one close-up before the plot moves on. So that's consecutive appearances where Cronenberg's got about a minute worth of screentime, has essentially one line (although here it's a long line) and plays an authority figure whose involvement leads to the main character losing his job, both heroes erroneously believing his firing to be the direct result of a massive conspiracy. The conspiracy actually exists in Extreme Measures, but we find out at the end of the movie that Cronenberg's lawyer and his fellow members of the disiplinary board weren't actually in on it. Which in retrospect must have made Grant feel a right nob for pointing fingers at the board members and accusing them of spiriting homeless men off the street and into secret labs for freaky medical experiments.

Directed by Michael Apted between the goofy Nell and the terrible James Bond outing The World is Not Enough, Extreme Measures is a two hour chase movie that shoehorns an argument re: the ethics of using human guinea pigs in radical medical experiments into its final 10 minutes. It opens with a bedraggled homeless guy running from pursuers, like Hard Target (the set-up was so similiar I wondered for a minute if they had even hired the same actor and had him wear the same outfit). He ends up in Hugh Grant's hospital but disappears while being transported upstairs, piquing Grant's curiosity. Having worked with ER doctors for several years, I can tell you that if a dead derelict fell completely off the map and the doctor wasn't required to follow up on the case anymore, he'd be more than content (I don't say that to be mean, they're just very busy people). However, Grant won't take no for an answer and turns gumshoe, his amateur investigation leading him to Gene Hackman's hot shot neurosurgeon using live test subjects to find a cure for paralysis, the kind of functional underground society of homeless people you only find in movies (of the non-C.H.U.D. variety) and the revelation that pretty much everyone (except David Cronenberg) is doing everything that can to keep his gorgeous lips sealed!

His main stalkers are David Morse and Bill Nunn as a fed and an NYPD detective named Burke & Hare (ha! nice one, Tony Gilroy) who've been converted to Hackman's cause (they both have relatives in wheelchairs). Some of the nicest moments in the movie are between these two reliable character actors - in one scene, they're going to follow Grant to another homeless guy who escaped, but Grant on his motorbike unexpectedly goes the opposite way down a one-way street. Morse and Nunn are forced to punch a u-ey and slam on the brakes when a garbage truck pulls out in front of them: Morse gets out and yells at the garbies, then frustratingly insists "I'll move it!" and gets into the driver's seat of the garbage truck. It's a weird moment with these characters where you really feel their frustration and annoyance at having to follow this oblivious doctor around. Also it's impressive that Morse knows how to drive a garbage truck (must be Character Actor Memory from playing a garbageman in some other movie - he must have, right?)

The way these two frame Grant makes no sense, however. They break into his apartment, toss the place and plant the drugs. The cops respond to a call about the break-in and, while they're waiting for Grant to return, happen to find the coke (there's some line about how it's legal for them to search the apartment if it's a crime scene or something). Why isn't Grant's immediate reaction along the lines of, "Uh yeah - my apartment was broken into. Remember, it's why you're here? So how is it not your logical conclusion that whoever broke into my apartment stashed the illegal drugs? I'd like you to please fingerprint that bag of pharmaceutical cocaine or find some other way to prove that it's mine, otherwise you can apologize and break that bad boy open so we can get the party started up in here." (Incidentally, uncovering the conspiracy doesn't clear him from the possession charge in any way, I wonder if he ended up having to go to jail for it?)

Based on a book by Michael Palmer, a second rate Robin Cook (ouch - that literally is the worst thing to be, isn't it?), the adapted screenplay is an early effort from Tony Gilroy, whose acclaimed Michael Clayton was all about the corporate world of lawyers and also employed two rogue hitmen following the handsome lead actor around, planting drugs in people's apartments and ultimately botching an assassination which uncovers the whole conspiracy. Makes me wonder if Cronenberg's character iworks for the same NYC law firm as George Clooney's - that would have made a funny in-joke cameo for him to be among the faces at Sydney Pollack's party. Beyond that, Extreme Measures is another case, like Henry & Verlin, of Cronenberg being cast in the wrong part. I guess if it was important to make the audience believe Grant's hospital was involved in all the bum-napping, Cronenberg's cold presence would be a good mislead, but it really doesn't matter that much. He would have been better utilized as a straight-up villain. There are a number of unethical doctors involved in Hackman's scheme, so even if Apted didn't want to cast Cronie as the lead baddie he should have at least been the one who tricks Grant into thinking he was paraplegic - let J.K. Simmons play the lawyer!

Not sure whether this has anything to do with anything, but it's interesting that Margot Kidder had her much-publicized manic episode where she disappeared for several days and turned up living like a derelict in someone's backyard around the time Henry & Verlin came out, and Hugh Grant got caught getting head from that hooker around the release of Extreme Measures. Just weird parallels to their respective films, Kidder struggling with mental problems in real life while Grant got involved with a street person in New York...maybe he should have told Jay Leno he was saving her from crooked cops who wanted to take her to a secret lab for non-consensual spine surgery. Right after the blow job.

Glasses? Yes

Tie? Yes

Suit/vest? Suit

Shot in Toronto? Yes, with exteriors shot in NYC.

Relationship to cast/crew: Special effects were by Dawn Rivard, who did Crash and eXistenZ; special effects coordinator Daniel White worked on eXistenZ and Spider. Dolly grip Hugh Brule was Best Boy on Naked Lunch. Stunt coordinator Rick Forsayeth did stunts for The Dead Zone. Danny Elfman did music for this and Nightbreed.

Cronenberg movie closest to: Radical surgery that leads to city-wide terror and a government cover-up has echoes of Rabid, although the attempts at cover-up and suffering of former patients more closely resemble the neuro-tampering hijinx of Scanners, with Gene Hackman standing in for Patrick McGoohan.

LAST NIGHT (1998)

"Duncan"

Last Night is by far the best film by another director to which Cronenberg has lent his acting chops, the only one that could be counted alongside several of his own movies as a bonefide masterpiece. The set-up is so perfectly simple: a "last day on earth" drama with no asteroids, no explosions, no newscasts of natural disasters across the globe, no last minute redemption. Just a story of a city of people who all know life is going to end in a few hours and how they decide to spend them. What makes it great is that writer-director-star Don McKellar depicts the characters' activities as almost completely mundane. People go to work. They hook up and have sex. Young folks rally together for a party at Nathan Philips Square. Sandra Oh has a really bad day where nothing works out right. A final visit to his childhood home is just going to bring up the same sort of familial resentment as any other visit on any other day for McKellar. ("Would it hurt you to play along just once?") The result is a movie that's more about people living than maybe any other movie I've ever seen, a non-specific snapshot of existence at a very specific time (the film is undeniable 90's) made profound by its distinct lack of profundity.

As Ian Loffill so beautifully summarized, the film quite unobtrusively observes how people cope with inevitable nonexistence, and what compliance and defiance in the face of a hopeless situation can bring out in people. McKellar's character is the film's most seemingly apathetic, as if denial over recently losing his wife has extended to an overall repudiation of what's going on. Callum Keith Rennie's successful bucket list of long-gestating sexual conquests make you wonder why such lofty ambitions never occurred to him prior to the safety blanket of an impending void. Arsinée Khanjian, crippled by despair on a streetcar, could be any clinically depressed individual who wakes up one day to find they can't get out of bed or open the door. Even more identifiably, Sandra Oh's justification for ending her own life just before the cataclysm is the same argument I've often considered when contemplating suicide (not my own suicide, just a rationale behind the concept in general), which is the need to control one's fate rather than giving it up to the indifferent design of the universe. To Oh, all that's important is that she maintain some kind of command of her station, a resolve that's frustratingly and sort of hilariously compounded by the events of her last day (car stolen/upended, husband refusing/unable to respond to her repeated calls, circumstances confining her to an unfamiliar part of town/apartment). Her refusal to accept death - with death - is a wonderfully perverse way of saying that if something terrible's going to happen to me, it's going to be on my terms.

The only character to actually die before the end of the world/movie is David Cronenberg's senior administrator of the gas company, apparently named Duncan. Duncan has spent most of the day at his desk in an empty office, moving down an alphabetical list of clients, calling them one by one and leaving the same friendly message assuring the customer that their gas will stay on to the very last minute of Earth's existence. McKellar couldn't have selected a more perfectly absurd task to demonstrate someone's benign duty to routine: Duncan's messages often echo through empty households

At the same time, it's the most modest rallying cry to let the world know he still exists, that what he does is going to matter right up until it doesn't anymore. Mentioned by Chris Funderburg in his 200 Days 200 Movies entry, his adherence to a position absolutely no one expects him to continue filling marks the difference between mindlessly attending a job from one day to the next and taking such pride in what you do that even something as ultimate as the end of the world doesn't make it less important, even though in just a few hours it will conclusively make no difference. And if that's the case, then why do any of us go to work any given day of the week? What's essentially human about tirelessly exerting one's self towards something so automated and impersonal? Is there any meaning in it to anybody else on the planet, or is the most effecting result something as slight as Sandra Oh bursting into tears while listening to Cronenberg's message on the answering machine and shaking off by surmising, "He sounds like a nice person. You can tell by his voice." Her non sequitur ends up being Duncan's inadvertent eulogy.

If Duncan's perseverance in reaching out and informing the city that their gas service will persist seems trivial (not to mention erroneous since the gas does indeed shut off, due to his co-worker abandoning her post to go lose her virginity), his death is presented as even more tragically inconsequential. Returning to his townhouse after completing the list of calls and clocking out at the office, he seems as determined as McKellar to ignore what's happening and enjoy a pint of strawberry ice cream (possibly yogurt?) by himself. He becomes so blissfully unaware of the escalating disorder outside that a sudden racket causes him to investigate, badly timed to put him directly in the sights of a thrill-seeker with a shotgun. The whole thing reminds me of Hollis Mason's home invasion murder in Watchmen, although in Mason's defense it was Halloween and he was expecting trick-or-treaters - Duncan leaves his door wide open when he flees back inside the house (I know Michael Moore claims Canadians don't lock their doors, but this is ridiculous). The intruder, dogged by his girlfriend who's trying to pull him back like he's a drunk frat boy about to vandalize a stop sign, obviously feels an inclination towards homicide the way Oh does towards suicide, demanding Duncan "Look at me!" Befuddled by the sudden danger, Duncan tries to keep his cool by staring down the barrel of the gun and calmly addressing his killer:

I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid of what you can do. You're the one who's afraid. You're the one who's afraid.

Duncan's assertion isn't very convincing, considering he's backing up as he's saying it. In an amazingly lighting transition, he backs up into a dark silhouette so that the form of his body looks like it was perfectly clipped out of the shot, a Hiroshima shadow burned onto the image denoting something that occupied that space at one point before being forcibly ripped from it. McKellar cuts away before the sound of the gunshot, returning later to the devastating scene of Duncan's eviscerated corpse with TV reports of "no major incidents" playing over it to underscore the insignificance of his murder to the remainder of the world. Duncan's abandoned dairy snack has melted all over the counter in a shot that recalls an earlier moment just before he left the office for the final time and tried a taste of his receptionist Donna's Minute Maid tropical punch, not realizing that she's been habitually spiking it for the last ten years. Sipping the Minute Maid and finding it bitter is Duncan's most unguarded moment, allowing himself (albeit incidentally) a personal indulgence in the work environment, even though he can't help making a quip about reporting Donna that causes her to tense up for a second - on any other day, he'd probably do it!

Duncan's message is played on an answering machine once more after his murder, suggesting that McKellar believes that a man's efforts, even in service of something perfunctory, can outlive him. It's a beautiful sentiment easily lost in a strain of beautiful sentiments - McKellar's interconnected narrative is so exquisitely unforced; it makes garbage like the non-Cronenberg Crash and Babel seem even more embarrassing. His casting of Cronenberg is remarkably instinctive: his lengthier, villanious roles in Nightbreed and Blood and Donuts (and later in Jason X) are predicated on his background as a horror director, whereas in this role you never would have thought this was the guy who ordered his effects department to put a talking anus on a typewriter. John Landis figured Cronenberg's voice could put people to sleep; McKellar knew that it could wake people up.

The film's under-two minute trailer (which bizarrely utilizes BTO's "Taking Care of Business" and gives away the fucking ending!) marks the only time Cronenberg's name has been announced as one of the film's stars.

Glasses? Yes

Tie? Yes

Suit/vest? Vest

Shot in Toronto? Yes

Relationship to cast/crew: Several of Last Night's cast - McKellar, Rennie, Sarah Polley, Kirsten Johnson - turned up in Cronenberg's eXistenZ the following year. Jackie Burroughs, the film's recurring crazy street jogger, played Christopher Walken's mom in The Dead Zone. Dead Ringers' Geneviève Bujold is also in the film. Michael Barry, the actor who kills Cronenberg, reunited with Sarah Polley in 2004's Dawn of the Dead, which also featured Cronenberg's Blood & Donuts co-star Justin Louis. The piano piece played by one of the characters was written by Howard Shore, Cronenberg's long-time composer (thanks, Ian Loffill - I never would have known that!)

Cronenberg movie closest to: Cronenberg's line about who's afraid makes you think of one of his most famous lines ("Be afraid - be very afraid"), but the way Last Night moves among the banal lives of different people in their own environment, including that of Rennie's sex maniac, recalls the ill-fated residents of Starliner Towers in Shivers, which ends with mundane apocalyptic implications. Co-star Sandra Oh has appeared on the cover of Canadian general interest magazine Saturday Night, the pages of which hosted Robert Fulford's infamous decrying of the tax shelter-funded Shivers, "You Should Know How Bad This Movie Is, You Paid for It." (Also I believe both films were filmed under the working title Orgy of the Blood Parasites.)

I'd add that the film's furtive glances at society casually falling apart at the seams appears to have influenced the way Cronenberg shoots the chaos outside Robert Pattinson's limousine, but to imply that Cosmopolis has any of Last Night's undemanding insight into city life or shares its genuine interest in human interaction wouldn't be fair to either film.

The same year, Cronenberg appeared as a psychiatrist in another Canadian film called The Grace of God, another one I couldn't get a hold of. Hopefully his shrink was more helpful to that film's lead character than he was to Boone in Nightbreed.

RESURRECTION (1999)

"Father Rousell"

In 1999, Russell Mulcahy reunited with Christopher Lambert for their only non-Highlander joint venture Resurrection, which so far as I can tell is the only Easter-based horror movie of note. I guess Critters 2 and Dead Snow would technically count, although they're just set at Easter time and aren't centered around it. Overall, I'd say Easter is one of the more neglected holidays to be depicted in films not set in Calvary in 33 A.D., its most famous contemporary representation arguably being when Jay and Silent Bob kicked the shit out of the Easter Bunny in Mallrats.

Whatever this movie's villain decided to give up for Lent, it probably wasn't mutilation: he spends the weeks leading up to Good Friday collecting body parts from victims, with which he intends to build his very own Cruicifed Savior ("Christ suffered on the cross - he wants his victims to suffer!") For rare public appearances he wears a faceless mask not unlike Cronenberg's burlap cover in Nightbreed, so when the filmmaker shows up as a Catholic priest from Lambert's past it's tempting to suspect he might be the one behind the unholy amputations until you realize it's too much a coincidence even for the writer of Body of Evidence. No, it's obviously the gaunt FBI profiler who offers his services to Lambert's Cajun cop yet is markedly missing a partner - jeez, didn't this dude see Die Hard? We all know supporting character feds come in pairs, who do you think you're fooling?

Most of the running time is devoted to the usual cop/killer/cat & mouse cliches: the noble hero who's struggling to get over a dead loved one, the angry chief who wants to pull him off the case (but who's really off HIS case - stupid chief!), the partner who gets put out of commission by the end of the second act, etc. But really Resurrection is a low budget Se7en, with an untraceable religion-themed serial killer who leaves no fingerprints! and is always ten steps ahead of those trying to stop him. Lucky for Lambert, this killer's more incompetent than Kevin Spacey: he comes after the hero's wife too, but accidentally kills the wrong lady (luckily he doesn't try the whole head delivery thing - it would have been awkward when Lambert opened the box and said, "Who's that??") Leland Orser, Lambert's partner, even played the traumatized wearer of the "knife dildo" in Fincher's film. He's spared such anguish this time, receiving instead the Dirty Harry Part 1 honor of merely being horribly maimed.

Like Fincher, Mulcahy's a former music video director yet for the most part doesn't over-stylize his serial killer thriller. What he does do is use some really bad handheld camera shots during scenes that don't benefit from being jarring or disorienting. It's bad enough when that kind of thing is done to highlight intensity - applied to two guys walking briskly down the street it just looks like bad filmmaking; more than once, I honestly thought the cameraman had slipped. This stylistic fumble doesn't do much to spice up the standard thriller, although it does feature a memorable climax in which the bad guy makes his way up to the hospital roof and dangles a newborn baby over the ledge in the pouring rain (pre-dating the Michael Jackson scandal by three years). There's also a scene where Lambert and Orser enter a crime scene centered around a decapitated body that made me realize something - when you think about it, the Highlander is pretty much a serial killer. He goes around town cutting off strangers' heads and getting off on it - any of this Easter Killer's trophies could very well come from one of Connor McCloud's "victims." There should be Mulcahy Super-Movie where Lamberton's cop from this one teams up with Denzel from Ricochet, the Real McCoy and the Shadow to take down the Highlander. Also the Razorback. With music by Duran Duran.

Cronenberg is basically the Bugenhagen, the Omen-esque religious background advisor who Lambert rebuffs when he stops by the house to offer solace over his dead son (the victim of a car accident in an unintentionally funny flashback) yet seeks when he needs quick footnotes on biblical references. Cronenberg's got the inside scoop on James and John, the sons of Zebedee nicknamed the "Boanerges" (sons of thunder), which leads Lambert to realize the victims all share names with the apostles, although I honestly can't remember if this information helps him stop the killer. Religion's something that's been largely absent from Cronenberg's catalog, Vaughan's cult of car wreck hedonists being about as close as he ever came to commenting on the subject. Yet he's credible as a guy who knows his way around Mark 3:17, smartly underplaying his part without drawing too much attention to himself, which is more than can be said for The Dead Zone author Stephen King's cameo as a priest in Pet Sematary.

Lambert's great as always. My favorite part of the movie is when he arrives at the end of a co-worker explaining how a friend of his was hit by a bus and laughs, thinking it's the punchline of a joke.

Glasses? Yes

Tie? No - priest collar

Suit/vest? No

Shot in Toronto? Yes (also New Orleans)

Relationship to cast/crew: Like Cronenberg, Russell Mulcahy was briefly courted to direct Total Recall. Robert Joy, who plays the killer, was Gary Farmer's brother/autistic kid's dad in Henry & Verlin. The ball-busting captain, Peter MacNeill, was Jayne Mansfield-obsessed Colin Seagrave in Crash and Sheriff Sam Carney in A History of Violence (he also had a small part in Rabid).

Cronenberg movie closest to: The Frank Dodd subplot of The Dead Zone, in which Chris Walken's Johnny Smith reluctantly lends his psychic powers to the local law enforcement in order to stop a serial killer who turns out to have been one of the cops all along.

JASON X (2001)

"Dr. Wimmer"

I discussed Jason Voorhees: Space Slasher extensively here, which you should read now while I'm busy reading this racing form.

Just a few more brief words on Cronenberg's brief appearance at the beginning of this movie. For those keeping track, this marks the third time Cronenberg is killed on screen, dying along with six military guys after being impaled midriff by Jason with a steel javelin (SPOILER for the first 10 minutes of the movie). He's been killed by a Nightbreed, a vampire and Jason Voorhees - we've never seen him get killed by a living human being, since only his dead body is shown in Last Night. Apparently to have a chance at killing Cronenberg without the camera cutting away, you have to have died and been brought back to life, although ironically he doesn't get killed in Resurrection. His own resurrection at the end of Nightbreed suggests that Dr. Decker will become a Jason-like slasher zombie - it's too bad Nightbreed's franchise prospects were quashed by bad box office and UberJason's bloodsoaked adventures in the 25th century continued only in comics and spin-off YA novels, otherwise there may have been crossover potential.

Of all the directors who've been killed in horror movie cameos - Jonathan Demme in The Incredible Melting Man, John Waters in Seed of Chucky - Cronenberg's demise is the most astral. Which isn't to say he's actually killed in space, as he dies in the present day (and I think on Earth, although it's not made absolutely clear). His scene's very X-Filesy, from the steely-blue lighting* to the large empty warehouse-type room and the secret government sci fi experiment shenanigans. He's sort of the Cigarette Smoking Man of the group, taking charge of this enterprise to discover the secret of Jason Voorhees' reanimation only to bite off more than he can chew in the form of a tall steel javelin he got in the way of. It's funny watching him run with those giant shoulder pads under his coat, and he pulls off the shocked expression very well. Thanks for showing up, Dave.

As I mentioned in our Horror Space Sequels article, Cronenberg directed a 1987 episode of the Voorhees-less Friday the 13th (technically called Friday's Curse in Canada). Titled "Faith Healer," it deals with a televangelist whose lame tricks are debunked by Robert A. Silverman, who also popped up in Jason X and, through appearances in Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Naked Lunch and eXistenZ (as D'aaarcy Naaaaderrrrrrrrr), can lay claim to the crown of "staple Cronenberg character actor." But the con artist comes upon a magic glove that gives him the power to cure people's afflictions for real - his first "heal" is none other than Lynne Gorman, Masha from Videodrome - although unfortunately he's then forced to transfer the malady to a third party, horribly deforming and killing them in the process. It's an involving enough episode, for what it is, and a worthwhile way for Cronenberg to spend his time between time masterpieces The Fly and Dead Ringers.

Glasses? Yes

Tie? Yes

Suit/vest? Suit

Shot in Toronto? Yes

Relationship to cast/crew: Isaac, who worked on creature effects for The Fly, was "project supervisor" on Naked Lunch and provided special effects for eXistenZ, apparently cited Cronenberg as his "mentor and idol." Jonathan Potts, who plays Professor Lowe, was a cop in Resurrection.

Cronenberg movie closest to: Cronenberg has yet to set a movie in space. The closest he came to directing a franchise sequel was turning down the offer to helm Return of the Jedi.

ALIAS (2003)

"Dr. Brezzel"

Between The Fly and A History of Violence, Cronenberg didn't direct a single movie that cracked $10 million at the box office. This may explain the large number of acting gigs in the early 90's - the man had to supplement his income somehow - and why he hasn't turned up in nearly as many roles since History's success. In the time since, Cronenberg has stuck mostly to television: he played a detective in the TV movie The Judge in 2001, appeared on something called Happy Town in 2010 and had a supporting role in the time travel TV movie Rewind last year.

Alias was the first real TV disappointment of my adult life. The first two seasons were lots of fun: double agents, fancy disguises, exotic locations, dubious villains, mystic artifacts (part of a mythology that would become progressively oblique and convoluted as the series progressed, not surprising given what we now know about LOST) and a pre-fame Bradley Cooper being beaten in almost every episode. In the middle of the second season, an episode that aired right after the Bucs' #1 ranked defense held off Oakland's #1 ranked offense in Super Bowl XXXVII (Gruden's revenge game) shook up the entire series. In a sleek 40 minutes, "Phase One" blew the she-spy's cover, shut down the criminal syndicate where all the central action took place, killed off a beloved character and replaced her with an evil doppleganger - it was the ballsiest move I've ever seen on a conventionally structured television series. Of course this was before the name J.J. Abrams meant "run for the fucking hills" - back then he was still just the co-writer of Gone Fishin'. Ultimately the show couldn't sustain such a radical revision: after a promising first half, the third season limped to an anticlimactic conclusion like a squirrel that had barely survived being run over by a humvee. The fourth and fifth seasons were so bad I couldn't even tell what the hell was happening. There's a lesson about writing checks your series can't cash - Alias couldn't cash in on the boldness of "Phase One."

Cronenberg showed up right about the time the show peaked; I haven't bothered to pinpoint its decline, but it had to have been some time right after his guest shot. Although the third season suffered from losing Lena Olin's Irina Derevko, the show's best character, it set up an interesting antagonist in Melissa George's insidious double agent Lauren Reed (a part that Katherine Heigl had unsuccessfully auditioned for). George had made memorable appearances in silent yet pivotal film roles, playing Wilson's dead daughter in The Limey** and "This is the Girl" girl Camilla Rhodes in Mulholland Dr., and has gone on to headline such above-average thrillers as Triangle and A Lonely Place to Die as well as enjoyable-if-disposable horror movies The Amityville Horror, 30 Days of Night and Turistas Go Home. The character was promising, but it quickly became apparent that beyond revealing her as a bad guy (SPOILER from 12 years ago) the show had nothing for her to do other than keep the its two leading lovebirds apart. She was mostly relegated to a few cold-blooded assassinations while the season's central mystery - what happened to heroine Jennifer Garner during a two year period that she was missing and believed dead - played out. Since Garner has no memory of what happened to her, they set up an appointment with controversial neuroscientist David Cronenberg.

Combining the Timothy Leary hippy drug guru with the amorous college professor, Cronenberg's Dr. Brezzel is living the high life in a secluded laboratory with frequently pantsless guest Kaya, a friendly student of his who "likes to hug." Having her clinging to him is a lot like the floozie he's got attached to his arm in his Trial by Jury scene, although this is the first time we've seen a Cronenberg-depicted character show any kind of obvious romantic interest in someone else (unless you believe Jodorowsky and want to count Craig Sheffer in Nightbreed). It's nice seeing him knee-deep in undergrad "appreciation" and tripping balls - we haven't seen him smile this much since To Die For (even though Victor Garber, Garner's very loving father, instantly disapproves and is repulsed by him). Like Robert Silverman's reclusive scanner, Brezzel is an eccentric artist and expert in an abstract field of pseudo-science magic he terms "memory retrival." After 18 months in traction following an MVA, the head trauma inspired the idea that "dreams are both a priori and a posteriori, dreams contain our memories, a shared reservoir" and that it was possible to consciously enter the subconscious since the mind can still establish transhistorical accounts of the real world through other senses. Mixing a synthetic and organic "cocktail" to convince the brain that it's experiencing the dream/memory, he hooks Garner to the monitor in order to put her "in beta" so she can retrieve the lost two years of her life, adding that there's a slight chance the waking dream might kill her.

What follows is...not worth detailing. 20 minutes of "trippy tv dream sequence" that doesn't even slightly resemble an actual dream. In other words, once Cronenberg's out of the episode it's pretty useless even though he provides occasional voice-over, coaching Garner during her dream state. While he's around there's plenty to enjoy, especially his enthusiasm for bacon (Canadian bacon?) This case of the munchies is even thematic, as he holds up the grizzled strips of "fake-on" (Canadian fake-on?) and explains that "We live in an age of simulations." I love a good food-based performance; he also snacks on barbeque chips while monitoring Garner's brain waves or whatever.

Cronenberg must have felt comfortable in this role since he spends most of the time giving Garner direction. The actual director of the episode describes Cronenberg as "subtly idosyncratic," was impressed by how quickly he learned the dialogue (basically the day before shooting) and how good he is at extrapolating (eXtrapolaTing?) and states the veteran filmmaker "wasn't the least bit interested in the directing," just there to do his part. And he does a really good job: this may be the deepest Cronenberg's ever gone into a performance. He's obviously having fun with the stoner comedy, but brings some serious intensity when things go wrong with Garner's treatment and her expertly revives her after putting her into v-tach. He gives it his all in his death scene the following episode, having been tracked down by evil henchman Mr. Sark and given so much morphine he basically trips to death, his eyes wide open in horror/ecstasy (which brings the number of times Cronenberg's been killed on screen to four, the times he's been murdered totaling five).

Cronenberg wasn't the first film director to appear on the show: Tarantino showed up in the first and third seasons to offer his typical rambling mental patient performance. Before it jumped the shark, Alias featured an inspired line of guest appearances and recurring actors including Terry O'Quinn, Gina Torres, Roger Moore, Richard Roundtree, Rutger Hauer, Isabella Rossellini, Griffin Dunne, Vivica A. Fox, Djimon Hounsou, Justin Theroux and Angus Scrimm. Even Richard Lewis and Ricky Gervais managed to be intimidating - they seem to have reversed that bit of stunt casting with Cronenberg, making him as unintimidating and indeed as goofy as possible. His freaky/creepy presence is typically what motivates his casting, so I have to give them credit there. Speaking of which, I can't believe Cronenberg hasn't turned up on Hannibal yet - it even shoots in Toronto, which suggests that either he's not interested in appearing on the show or they're waiting to offer him a really choice role.

Glasses? No

Tie? No

Suit/vest? No - pajamas!

Shot in Toronto? As far as I can tell the production was set in California

Relationship to cast/crew: Only that both Cronenberg and J.J. Abrams were offered the chance to direct a Star Wars movie - one said yes, the other said no. Abrams also got blurbed on the back of Cronenberg's new novel, issuing the recommendation/warning that "Consumed will, well, consume you."

Cronenberg movie closest to: The producers of the show probably thought of Cronenberg because of eXistenZ, his most recent film, in which players are neurologically linked to a set reality. But his cheery brain scientist reminds me of the grinning Barry Convex when he sets James Woods up with the Image Accumulator helmet at Spectacular Optical (or rather, sets Cronenberg up with the Image Accumulator helmet at Spectacular Optical), but before he shoves a pulsating video tape into Woods' hungry abdominal gash.

BARNEY'S VERSION (2010)

"O'Malley director #2"

Did you hear that Brett Ratner has signed on to remake March of the Anal Sadistic Warrior? Apparently he's got ideas about how Ben Stiller and Chris Tucker can add the missing ingredients to Matthew Barney's oblique experimental short film centered around fashion and performance art. I'm sure it will be fine, but ultimately I'll probably end up preferring Barney's version.

Oof - I'm winded from that gag. Let's move on. Internationally renowned Canadian directors flocked to the set of the first posthumous film taken from the work of Mordecai Richler, sort of the Philip Roth of the Great North whose The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (co-starring Joe Silver from Shivers and Rabid) and Joshua Then and Now (starring Videodrome's James Woods) were made into critically revered films by Ted Kotcheff. Kotcheff was a close friend and former housemate of Richler's, who also co-wrote the script for Kotcheff's film Fun with Dick and Jane. I had just assumed Kotcheff was Australian because of Wake in Fright, but it turns out he's a Macedonian Bulgarian born and raised in Toronto (good thing I found that out just before finishing my in-depth Ted Kotcheff biography!) In Barney's Version, Kotcheff plays a train conducter, possibly in tribute to that fateful train Gary Bond should never have gotten off in Wake in Fright.

Barney's Version was directed by Richard J. Lewis, whose previous film was K-9: P.I. (not to be confused with K-2 or K-19: The Widowmaker). Now I know, some of you might scoff at a DTV sequel to K-9. Some of you might not think it lived up to the reputation of the first DTV sequel to K-9, K-911. But both sequels were written by Gary Scott Thompson, alias Randy Scott Knobson, creator of the Fast and Furious franchise (as well as such DTV sequel classics as Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision).*** If you ask me, the producers should have played up GST's involvement, calling the movie K-9: Fast and Furry-ious. For his part, Richard J. Lewis not only directed K-9: P.I., he also played acoustic guitar on the soundtrack. So he's sort of like Satyajit Ray in that respect, contributing to the music for the films he directs.

Paul Giamatti of Thunderpants fame plays a putz who produces a soap opera, so David Cronenberg gets his second role as a director. Compared to the slick hot shot from Trial by Jury, here he's almost blasphemously clad in khaki and robbed of his trademark glasses, making him look older than ever. Atom Egoyan and Denys Arcand both appear looking like themselves, I don't know why Mr. K-9: P.I. felt like he had to pick on Cronenberg. But his scene's actually pretty funny - he's directing a cheesy love scene shot against an extremely phony airport background and has fallen asleep in the middle of a take, snapping out of it just in time to call "cut." Then he's confused as to why the actress is crying her eyes out after assuring a mountie that, "My airstrip is open to you anytime"; Giamatti reminds him that the girl's fiance died in a plane crash, but Cronenberg still doesn't see what the big deal is. (It's surprising that Egoyan and Arcand would show up for this film and not Last Night, which featured cameos from François Girard and Bruce McDonald on top of Cronenberg having a supporting role. Especially Egoyan, considering Sarah Polley, Arsinée Khanjian and McKellar were all involved...I guess it would have been right around the time Sweet Hereafter was stacking up awards and earning him an international reputation.)

Cronenberg's director might come off as insensitive, but every other character in this movie is damn near detestable. Either purposely so, like Minnie Driver's unnamed "second wife," a portrayal so steeped in naggy JAP stereotype it makes Macklemore look sensitive (at times the movie flirts with full-blown misogyny), or inadvertently, as is the case with Scott Speedman's annoyingly "liberated" curly-haired rogue of a best friend. As for Barney, he's just a hunched, unkempt, cigar-clutching sad sack of self-loathing, the worst embodiment of a "Giamatti-esque" character, and the movie dares you to hate him without realizing how easy it is. Even though he ditches his loving bride on their wedding day to catch Rosamund Pike at the train station and tell her he loves her before she's a gone girl, the movie treats it with "That's our Barney!" sentimentality. There's a subplot about him possibly murdering Speedman that's promising until it becomes obvious that Barney's innocent, so most of the two hour running time we're left with our hero acting like a world class schnook.

Other than offering homage to Richler, that esteemed Québécois man of letters, I wonder if an older Cronenberg was starting to feel an obligation towards his Jewish lineage. The year before had made the single-shot short film "At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World" for the anthology To Each His Own Cinema, casting himself as the unshaven, suicidal "last jew." The four-minute short has bearded Cronenberg sitting on a toilet in the bathroom of a run-down theater in front of an "AutoBio Cam" loading a gun and aiming it at different areas of his head as two voices provide sports coverage-type reporting on his imminent suicide. Because of the setting and the subject, it recalls serial killer Frank Dodd's similarly systematic suicide in a bathroom in The Dead Zone, with added ambiguous commentary. We learn from the broadcasters that Cronenberg's Hungarian Jew (he actually comes from a Lithuanian Jewish heritage) "used to work in film" before theaters around the world began disappearing, making rom for "better things," the one he's occupying now functioning for years in secret before being shut down. The unexplained eradication of Jews and cinema seems to be the director's way of lamenting the way films used to be made and how the political changes aren't of his own choosing (the final image makes it look like somebody else is shoving the gun into his mouth). The film came from Cronenberg's reaction after reading about the Hezbollah's mission statement: "It's pretty interesting to hear someone say our goal is to kill every Jew in the world wherever they are. That means me and my children. It does evoke a reaction."

As for Barney's Version, it swept up some Genies including acting awards for Giamatti (who also won a Golden Globe), Hoffman (beating out Callum Keith Rennie, who had previously won for Last Night) and Driver and one for the makeup (which also got an Oscar nomination). Cronenberg's been nominated for 8 directing Genies, winning a record 4.5 times for Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash, Spider and splitting the win for Videodrome with Bob Clark for A Christmas Story. He's never won a Genie for acting.

Glasses? No

Tie? No

Vest? Yes, but it's khaki

Shot in Toronto? Montreal (with exteriors in Rome and New York)

Relationship to cast/crew: Produced by Robert Lantos, Cronenberg's producer on Crash, eXistenZ and Eastern Promises. Cronenberg would cast star Paul Giamatti (who co-starred with Last Night's Sandra Oh in Sideways) in 2012's Cosmopolis. Atom Egoyan also had a cameo in The Stupids.

Cronenberg movie closest to: The uninteresting "what crime happened in the past?" mystery subplot and flashback structure make it closest to Spider, with the obvious difference being that Spider is an underseen masterpiece while Barney's Version is merely, and deservedly, underseen.

* Care of Derick V. Underschultz, shooting his only feature. He was a cinematographer for episodes of Robocop, F/X: The Series, Total Recall 2070, Transporter: The Series - apparently the guy just really likes lighting tv shows based on movies.

** Her character's equally sinister mother was played by Peggy Lipton, who in real life was briefly involved with Terence Stamp, George's "dad" from The Limey.

*** His wikipedia page also identifies him as writer of the "cult classic" Split Second. Now, Split Second has been a guilty pleasure of mine for over 20 years...however, I'm unaware of any cult surrounding it and have in fact never met a living human being who has any idea what I'm talking about when I start gushing about Split Second. Could a member of this alleged cult please contact me through the Pink Smoke, solongyoubastard@gmail? I want to be initiated into this cult of Split Second worshippers.

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