Cronenberg and Ballard: Talking Crash 1996

[@graceb697]

Anyone else have a crush on Cronenberg please tell me I'm not alone in this

[@MaryWild]

100% relate. I fancy David so much...

[@lastanzadelcinema]

I have a CRASH too 😂

[@kismet1656]

As a gay guy I'm very into him...

[@MatteBlacke]

Yeah. He’s one of those directors that can scratch an itch that maybe the viewer didn’t even realise existed.

[@unknowndes1re]

I get it

[@HuskyProductions585]

The car wash scene is a masterclass like Ballard said. Best sound design ever! Turn it up loud and enjoy! Love you David!!

[@tednorton5150]

the Foley work when Elias appears chewing gum and in the Car Dealership is designed for one purpose and that purpose is in your pants. LOL. Mission Accomplished for me. LOL

[@anaprabelo]

It sounds like he's discussing the movie as a fan, not that it is his own movie and that is so awesome. Quite pleasing to hear him speak.

[@gilesbeattie5988]

Same is true of Ballard, I love how enthusiastic and deferential he is about Cronenberg's adaptation

[@george4830]

I really imagined that Cronenberg would be a more spikey and difficult conversationalist, him and Ballard have such an interesting communicative dynamic! Two fantastically skilled and imaginative artists

[@JohnnyOstentatious]

Wow, I could listen to Ballard all day.

[@ajs41]

I love this interview with him from 1977. So prescient. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nKvSia2CaqqDbqc

[@moeezS]

When I saw Cronenberg at a Cosmopolis Q&A, I was surprised by how hilarious he was and it seems he's always been like that! This conversation is so cute which is a nice contrast from how dark and messed up the material is.

[@MikelGCinema]

Cronenberg's face when he listens about David Lynch's Blue Velvet....

[@landofthesilverpath5823]

Crash is an interesting movie. But Blue Velvet is one of the greatest films ever made.

[@RichardLewis-n8v]

They both are.

[@bartekpodogrodzki6057]

What a great disscussion. David working with such a heavy subjects always finds lightness and humour in it. What a great mind.

[@jovanabackovic]

Thank you for the upload. It’s such a great insight into both of their minds and everything they’re saying is still extremely relevant today.

[@francoramazani]

Thanks for this -- fascinating stuff. Cronenberg is so articulate.

[@freddybeer]

He's smart as a whip! If you haven't, read the Faber and Faber book Cronenberg on Cronenberg. He talks all sorts of subjects with such rationality and logic, it's mind blowing!

[@arifaristiana2525]

Yes. Very edifying listening to him talk.

[@arifaristiana2525]

@@freddybeer ive been meaning to read that forever!

[@sg639]

I realize that the author and director had been doing press together for some time prior to this conversation. However, there seemed to be such a profound difference between the way the two men understood this story that one could imagine they'd never spoken at all. Cronenberg betrayed real disenchantment at the outset concerning the cautionary tale remark. Maybe he felt Ballard had somehow disavowed the text. I saw this film many years ago, but what I remember most was a meditation on the cyborg and the oneric desire to fuse flesh/body with machine. Too bad Jean Baudrillard wasn't asked to join this discussion.

[@MatteBlacke]

It’s interesting how there can be a book and an interpretation of that story which results in a film and then the interpretation of that story also has a number of different interpretations.

[@cinematographos]

thank you very much for sharing!

[@kismet1656]

Great to see the film, read the book, and now hear this conversation. I've never heard Ballard's voice before, he sounds exactly like the stereotypical Brit in my head. (By the way, Cronenberg being Canadian got muddled with the book in my head, and I thought it was set in London Ontario for the first half 😭lol) Thank you for the upload!

[@CarbonaraLad]

jdjejdjjs that’s so true, i had to remind myself that it wasn’t Canadian any more

[@tednorton5150]

Cronenberg mixed the residual curiosity from this film and his fascination with body dysmorphism and man=machine melding when he did Cosmopolis and you REALLY need to see that film because everything in global and us politics right now is predicted in elements of that film.

[@PulseCobra]

Just a great conversation. Thanks for posting.

[@tedbunny1487]

The movie is perfect as it is. It’s like a piece of poetry to be enjoyed and interpreted. I get the feeling that a voice-over could have helped the movie to reach a bigger audience.. Just a “crazy” and stylish voice-over. Maybe to increase the film’s inaccessibility. They could have released two versions.

[@vladmaterial]

I disagree. It's the kind of movie that either clicks with you or it doesn't.

[@landofthesilverpath5823]

I don't think it's poetry. It's an intense look at compulsion in human psychology for sure. But it's not a "beautiful," film.

[@AnandVenigalla]

@@landofthesilverpath5823if the Modernists have taught us anything, “poetry” doesn’t quite have to have the beauty of a Keats to be “poetry.” So Crash, in its abrasive intensity, is poetry in its own right

[@MatteBlacke]

“Crashes: the sequel” Which is about the sexualisation of emotional disturbance of the consequences of computer crashes and also the sexualisation of the consequences of the emotional disturbance of computer crashes and of course the sexualisation of emotional disturbance of the consequences of computer crashes.

[@zetetick395]

The film ends with the Blue Screen of Death of the collective unconscious. - Keplunk. 💬

[@Pre_industrial]

Cronemberg at 2022 looks like an older Chris Moltisanti.

[@JeanAriaMouy]

Thank you youtube for existing.

[@cartoonvandal]

Ballard was bang on about the upcoming defeat of those vile Tories 🤣

[@jzocchio]

narcotized is really a nice word

[@GiantBoarMonster]

Both two very funny witty guys there.

[@arifaristiana2525]

i wish he'd elaborated more about what he was experiencing during reading AP!!

[@forgottenmedia5172]

Aura potentissima!

[@michael-oy7rt]

37:46 he's not lying

[@patrickmccormack4318]

When art mirrors reality, reality is madness?

[@tednorton5150]

It took me forever to divine the "subject " of this movie and it really is the culture of reckless sensation . Period. You can relate it to voyeurism and exhibitionism and the KARdashians or simply to heroin chic. It's not necessarily a judgement but a STUDY.

[@tednorton5150]

and a chief point is how METICULOUS lovers of "reckless" sensation actually are. hence... reckless ? again. not a judgement but a STUDY.

[@rickartdefoix1298]

Did not like Balla0rd's novel Crash. Neither think no one could say he liked it. Think Ballard wrote that to create a bit of a scandal and become widely known. Ballard was a clever writer and liked a lot some of his Short Stories in Billenium, Terminal Beach and Vermilion Sands. Also read and liked his High Rise. But about Crash, what's its meaning? Obviously every life is a process of self destruction, which is about what the characters are doing in the novel. You could say it also deals about the couple enjoying their suffering. And in this sense it would also deal about masochism and its pleasure. Then the relation between tanatos and sex. But being all this matters interesting ones, they aren't enough to make the novel an interesting enough work. The Cronenberg movie is just quite disgusting and boring. Though I liked Scanners, The Fly and A Violence Story. Cronenberg can be quite good, though he not always is so good. As every artist he has good and not so good works. Ballard is one of my preferred authors, inspite of Crash. Crash maybe suffers about a lack of plot. It may also dealt about how far to mithify some people, could lead you. Reminding his characters are recreating the way some movie icons died. Through their car crashes. We have to always demitify, that's clear. So, finally, I stick to my idea, Crash, though dealing with interesting stuff, is not a good novel. Its lack of much plot and/or action, makes it as boring as the Cronenberg movie. Cronenberg should better turn Wasp, of Erik Frank Russell, into a movie. He has there excellent material to go on with. Wasp deals basically about paranoia, but has plot and action enough to do a great movie. That would make us think a lot, besides. Anyway, both Cronenberg and Ballard are very good artists, indeed. 🤗👍

[@SN-pr2xc]

The novel of Crash totally transformed my outlook on the world and what fiction was capable of doing.... still love the book to this day and consider it strongest of Ballards novels next to Atrocity Exhibition

[@rickartdefoix1298]

@@SN-pr2xc Could you explain why? 🙄

[@SN-pr2xc]

@@rickartdefoix1298 guess i just read it at the right time. the world and ideas ballard presented, with this creepily distant objective scientifc lens despite the obvious horrors involved, was really mind expanding to me. It seemed like the author/narrator was approaching a non-human perspective in the same way scientific writing does. And i like that Crash, alone of his works, offers no clear meaning. It sort of stands alone as a confrontation in and of itself. The ballard book i really couldnt stomach was unlimited dream company... all the descriptions of assault and depravity seemed less tolerable in that book for some reason to me. Also i appreciate your post btw and dont think your opinion is wrong or anything, its a divisive book

[@rickartdefoix1298]

@@SN-pr2xc Thanks. Though it doesn't explain much about why and how Crash changed your outlook about life... 🙄😳

[@SN-pr2xc]

@@rickartdefoix1298 oh haha. It changed my world outlook a lot yes. For one thing i saw something that i had thought of as nuetral or banal, car crashes, as actually being something very strange and scary in their frequency and their particularity to our automobile obsessed culture. It also showed me how seemingly bleak material settings (the loveless marriage, the grim London/Toronto freeways and carparks) can be highly potent imaginative dreamspaces. It made me realise that fiction could transform the world around me, however grim, into something with creative potential.

[@James-z5p3y]

Interview goes nowhere.

[@vladmaterial]

It’s just a talk, as the title says.