David Cronenberg's "Crash"
January 4, 2025 4:44 PM   Subscribe

Beyond the bounds of depravity: an oral history of David Cronenberg’s Crash (4K restoration trailer - technically SFW, but, you know...)
Ballard again: “Human beings have a terrible temptation to imagine a happier past.” But Cronenberg's Crash will not allow us to engage in any such delusional project. Even now that its ticking engine has cooled, its upturned wheels have ceased spinning, and its mangled frame is partly grown over by the grass of the intervening decades, it remains exactly as fascinating, salutary, and instructive as a spectacular wreck on the side of the highway, and just about as lovable. - The Criterion Collection
The Reshaping of the Human Body by Modern Technology: The Evolutionary Eroticism of David Cronenberg's Crash
posted by Lemkin (30 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ah, yes. Ballard's migration from hard science fiction to what can best be described as social science fiction. I admire the film, but as Ebert noted, it is essentially pornography custom-made for an audience that doesn't exist.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 5:00 PM on January 4 [9 favorites]


Lemkin, I am using your film posts on the blue as examples in a question to MeTa I just posted re: FanFare, lest you feel called out

Sorry to "shit up" this thread, I come in peace

For the amount of engagement I got for this I totally see where you're coming from
posted by ginger.beef at 5:32 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]


I remember seeing this in the theatre with a male friend from grad school whom I frequently argued with. We had a sibling-type relationship and despite our clashes, liked each well other enough to go to movies together. We both liked Cronenberg and JG Ballard, so we were like, sure, why not, and went to see Crash without knowing much about it. SO UNCOMFORTABLE. We were both fairly silent afterwards, unusual for us. One of the few times I saw my friend at a loss for words.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:41 PM on January 4 [5 favorites]


I admire the film, but as Ebert noted, it is essentially pornography custom-made for an audience that doesn't exist.

Here's him and Gene having a slap fight over it.
posted by Lemkin at 5:45 PM on January 4 [2 favorites]


I was a big fan of Cronenberg back in college: Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers. Somehow I managed to convince a half-dozen girls from school to go see Crash. A few were taking film classes and were okay with it but some of their tag along friends should never have seen that movie. Hopefully [looks towards camera] their scars have healed.
posted by furtive at 6:22 PM on January 4 [10 favorites]


Cronenberg, more than most contemporary filmmakers, seems to have pretty distinct periods/eras in his body of work. I think Crash is the end of a distinctly queer, literary, dark, hallucinatory period that begins with Naked Lunch; after this, there's a pulpy throwback to his earliest films (Existenz), and then a new cycle of gritty social realism that begins with Spider, but has its roots in Crash. I've always seen it as most interesting as a turning point (one of many) in his work; taken on its own terms, it's a weird, cold movie I don't find terribly relatable, but maybe I need to check it out again.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:25 PM on January 4 [4 favorites]


Ballard, who loved the movie, wrote this in his introduction to the novel:
Do we see, in the car crash, a sinister portent of a nightmare marriage between sex and technology? Will modem technology provide us with hitherto undreamed-of means for tapping our own psychopathologies? Is this harnessing of our innate perversity conceivably of benefit to us? Is there some, deviant logic unfolding more powerful than that provided by reason?
I think these are good questions.
posted by Lemkin at 6:42 PM on January 4 [10 favorites]


I suppose we could apply the same criteria and thesis to perhaps the steam age.

Jimmy Stewart as Edward Roby racing his Phaeton to you know. Edwards is the kind of man who puts his horses away wet.

"Look, Brutus, Wilma and I have just got to get to that show"

his pocket full of dancehall silver, Edward checks his six as the storm approaches.

"oh Mary mother of..."

he saw the junction box and the Red lantern by Davies switch house, grabbing the handle with such force, the whip socket broke clean off...

Roby didn't hear the Bell or a whistle, because there wasn't any.

Edward G. Robinson as Bigilu Sparks.

"He was trying to get over the track shee ta see his girl across the way shee, see that, OHHHY shee. No naked lunch for Ed."

(special guest appearance by Sean Bean as the conductor)
posted by clavdivs at 7:06 PM on January 4 [6 favorites]


I was a fan of both Ballard and Cronenberg, but I bounced off of Crash, even though Cronenberg's adaptation actually follows the novel's plot line closely. I just thought the characters seemed oddly flat and it doesn't quite gel. (I liked his version of Naked Lunch, which somehow works in spite of being un-film-able.)
posted by ovvl at 9:24 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]


JG Ballard is one of my favorite writers, and I particularly love his mannerist phase, when his writing seemed more experimental, like a form of prose poetry, which reached its apex in The Atrocity Exhibition. But Crash, which I first read in French translation, then in English, was also a key text. Most people who know JGB know that he had his own car accident(s), which led to Crash and Concrete Island, and that he staged a gallery exhibit featuring a crashed car, echoes of John Chamberlain's sculpture. And Crash was (ahem) a seminal text for a whole generation of punk and post-punk artists, with the concrete highway overpass becoming a recurring motif, from Catherine Opie's photographs to musicians like Robert Rental and the Normal (Warm Leatherette, later covered by Grace Jones) and John Foxx (Underpass).

This is a long-winded way to say that Crash came with a heavy visual baggage, which explains why the book was considered by some to be un-filmable. There had been some attempts to evoke it, some even "starring" Ballard, and they had a look of 1960's crash-test footage, which was appropriate, as Ballard's writing of that phase had a strong affinity with British and American pop-artists, from Richard Hamilton to James Rosenquist or Robert Rauschenberg. (Hell, the Crash antagonist's obsession with colliding into Elisabeth Taylor made you immediately imagine an Andy Warhol print).

So, it was hard for me to imagine Crash being filmed other than in stark B&W and with a Brutalist architecture in the background. When Cronenberg, who was praised at the time for filming the unfilmable, placed it in a more contemporary, Toronto-like context, it was a surprise, to say the least. And his casting choices! Elias Koteas made a brilliant Vaughn (the antagonist), while James Spader (who is a brilliant actor most of the time) made a surprisingly clean-cut James Ballard (was JGB flattered by the choice?). Deborah Unger had a thankless role as Catherine Ballard, having to remain unscrutable despite all the groping. Maybe Cronenberg asked her to evoke Ballard's recurring motifs, "the planes of her face formed a neural interval, like the angle between two walls"....

I initially saw the film in a small theatre in the Quartier-Latin, the kind of movie theatre that specialises in "art" films. It was not well attended, but there was a sense of quiet concentration, like everyone there had read the book or was a film buff, what with the Cannes festival.

Much as I love Cronenberg (especially his more baroque work, from Shivers to Videodrome, Existenz and Dead Ringers), I always felt that his rendering of Crash came up short, even if it came closer than anyone else ever could have done. Perhaps it was unfilmable after all, and Warm Leatherette's lyrics were the closest one could come? (Plus, with all due respect to critics like Ebert, there is nothing wrong with a pornographic take on Crash, after all, this the whole point. Just ask Vaughn....)

From The Atrocity Exhibition to Crash, High-Rise, to later works like Super-Cannes and Kingdom Come, Ballard remained convinced that exploring one's psychopathology was the only sane response to our increasingly cold, technological world and the increasing social unrest behind our veneer of civilisation. As he wrote somewhere, "the music from the balconies was overlaid with the sound of sporadic acts of violence"....

Between Brexit and the Pandemic, what he would have made of the last few years! And who would be the film-makers to bring it to our screens?
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 9:28 PM on January 4 [14 favorites]


And who would be the film-makers to bring it to our screens?

Julia Ducournau.
posted by mykescipark at 9:42 PM on January 4 [2 favorites]


Come to think of it, there is something distinctly Ballardian about Cronenberg films like Shivers, Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Crimes of the Future (especially the early version) and Stereo. Those are all movies where people living in so-called civilised, educated and affluent environments give in to their perversions and pathologies.

And Crash has a number of very Balllardian scenes and imagery, from Holly Hunter's sexuality of medical prostheses to Vaughn wiping his hand on the back seat of the car. Brrr.... no wonder Mr Ebert was aghast!
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 9:46 PM on January 4 [2 favorites]


Bookpilled, one of the most interesting reviewers of science fiction, just did a review of Crash. I liked the film, but haven't read the book. This review made me add it to my list of books to read.
posted by bigZLiLk at 9:54 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]


PPS. One is also struck by the affinity between Ballard and Cronenberg, both in terms of their public and their private persona. Both were revered (and feared) for the uncompromising and challenging materials they put out, yet both were - deep down - devoted family men with an educated, somewhat mainstream background. They probably both must have chuckled when they thought how the public viewed them....

The two linked articles are great, thank you so much for that, Lemkin!
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 9:59 PM on January 4 [1 favorite]


I've had no success finding this online, but I recall reading an opinion piece by David Cronenberg published in Toronto's Globe and Mail (approximately 1977-1980?). His landlady knew he was a film maker — but after she had seen one of his films (Rabid?) — she had him evicted.

He expressed some resentment about this, and felt his rights as an artist to create controversial work were not being respected.
posted by rochrobbb at 4:52 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]


I remember seeing this in the US on its initial release and when I was going home, I have to say, it felt like all the cars had a LOT of personality.
posted by rmd1023 at 5:41 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]


The special jury prize for “daring and audacity” was so spot on. Watching it again last night after making the post, I kept marveling, “They actually did it. They took this very transgressive property and gave it to the only filmmaker who could do it justice and he went all the way with it.” I think the film would be valuable for that reason alone.
posted by Lemkin at 6:41 AM on January 5 [4 favorites]


Big fan of Cronenberg. Watched it last year, thought the scene that made it X-rated was incredibly hot. A+
posted by sibboleth at 7:30 AM on January 5 [2 favorites]


The only film that I wish I had seen at a drive in, with a date in my passenger seat and a long drive home to look forward to after the credits rolled.
posted by hoodrich at 8:20 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]


Here's him and Gene having a slap fight over it.

The thing I noted in that clip is Gene's arguing seems to have a subtext that he's upset that the movie didn't get him turned on.

I finally saw this last year while following along with the You Must Remember This podcast's "Erotic 90s" series. (Lots of "further reading" links in the show notes on that page.)
posted by dnash at 9:24 AM on January 5 [2 favorites]


Always happy for a reason to repost this banger.
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:38 AM on January 5 [1 favorite]


Good readings, Lemkin. I remember hearing about Ted Turner's antipathy at the time, which helped explain the movie's very limited US release. I didn't know about Coppola's dislike.

I, as serious Ballard and Cronenberg fan, saw it opening night with a friend who knew the book and with a crowd who seemed to have no idea what they were in for. They were largely silent and trickled out during the runtime. Afterwards I drove my friend home. Driving was... more interesting than ever or since.
posted by doctornemo at 11:06 AM on January 5 [3 favorites]


There is a beautiful 2017 hardback Collectors Edition reprint of Ballard's Crash that I recommend. As well as the completed text, it has several pages of corrections and redrafts which gives an insight into the composition process (and a handful of essays and contemporaneous short stories, but it's the work-in-progress stuff that's thrilling.)
posted by deeker at 1:17 PM on January 5 [3 favorites]


Order placed, thank you deeker!
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 1:35 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]


I think the film would be valuable for that reason alone.

I do agree, the comportment of writing, directing and producing under cronenberg could not really be a better choice. casting James Spader was a plus. There's not much ambiguity when it comes to the visceral aspects of the subject matter pertaining to how it's conveyed on film.

It's interesting because I don't think voyeurism is part of the watching process or central thesis to the film. It's helpless observation rooted in the arrangement of tragedy.
posted by clavdivs at 1:51 PM on January 5 [2 favorites]




I saw this movie at some point and I sincerely have no idea why. I am not at all into arty, challenging films and nothing about it seems like a thing I would have wanted to watch. I am assuming it must have been in the DVDs by mail era because I am pretty certain I didn't see it when I was 19 and it first came out. Maybe I just wanted to watch a movie set in the same boring party of Toronto I lived in?
posted by jacquilynne at 4:02 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]


I saw this opening week and it was the most walked-out on movie I've ever been to, before or since; truly a treasured memory. Surprisingly there was no riot, unlike at the screening of Pink Flamingos I saw that same year where a huge CENSURÉ PAR ORDRE DU GOUVERNEMENT DU QUÉBEC interrupted The Very Famous Final Scene and everyone went bananas.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:18 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]


This is one of my desert island movies. I've only watched it a handful of times, and I want to save it so any reviewing keeps its potency. The most important detail here is that I first watched it a few short months after a devastating car wreck in 2001. I cannot believe I survived. My car was torn apart in a line that ran between the front and rear seats and folded in half like a taco. When the inertia ran out and all the big pieces stopped hurtling, My car was locked to the car that had hit me: our driver's side windows were pressed against each other and we were facing opposite directions. Each of us was gripping the steering wheel hard, panting. We slowly turned to look at one another and stared silently, wordlessly sucking in air, for what felt like minutes but was probably no more than 30 seconds. "You OK?" "Yeah, I think so. You?" We slowly, slowly started to move, unbuckle, stretch and bend and try to figure how to get out of our destroyed cars. We were on the approach to the I-30 bridge across the Arkansas River on the North Little Rock side. I was coming wet on I-40, he was driving east on I-40. As those two feeder routes turned to merge into the single stream of bridge traffic, the spare tire he was driving on popped right off and all of his momentum sent him spinning into the approaching direction of traffic. The angle of this movement was so perfectly aimed that he missed the last barrier by an impossible inch and slammed into my car, with each of us going at full speed in almost perpendicular directions. I walked away with a broken jaw (that I wouldn't notice for a couple of hours of adrenaline) and a permanent inability to be comfortable in traffic.

THIS IS A LOT OF BUILD UP to say that; after that accident, I had a lot of trouble driving because the anxiety and panic would creep up any time I had to merge into the insane cacophony that is high speed American interstate traffic. At the time, I was 20 or 21 and didn't really have the vocabulary to express this feeling. But in this movie, one character says to another as they look out over this kind of high-speed, crowded car traffic, "Were they always going so fast?" And I thought, OH MY GOD, YES, THAT'S IT! It was as if the insanity of that crash suddenly (and permanently) re-tuned my senses to be unable to ignore how FAST cars are always going.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:43 AM on January 6 [9 favorites]


I'm a huge fan of Ballard and Cronenburg, and I admire this film, but I find the book deeply unpleasant. Not to say that I think it's a bad book, but it just gets under my skin in a way that few books do and makes me feel bad about humanity. (I feel like a lot of Ballard's works are designed to make you feel bad about humanity, but for me few of them succeed at it as well as Crash.) The last time I reread it I thought I'd be fine with waiting another ten years or so before I ever read the words "binnacle," "pubis," or "chromium" again.

The adaptation seems about as good as you could hope for, but I always felt like the movie's sex scenes were missing the clinical detachment and anomie that were the hallmarks of the book's.
posted by whir at 3:09 PM on January 6


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