I saw David Cronenberg give a live interview 10 years ago, fresh from undergrad and very needy. When I snatched the Q&A mic from the moderator, I believed I’d cracked the new flesh. I wanted his opinion of my essay on how he eats, since his movies' surrealist hinge was often tasting, eating, and eventually digesting. But what I said was:
Can you talk about mouths? Everyone writes about how you’re all eyes and vaginas, but I think you’re a mouth guy. I read Bataille and he’d think you’re a mouth guy. Please talk about it.*
Cronenberg demurred. He had just made Cosmopolis and wanted to talk about cars. Crestfallen, I wouldn’t watch a Cronenberg movie for years (except Possessor). But I watched Crimes of The Future recently, a great little comedy about an insular art community (think Waiting for Guffman with erotic surgery). It’s also got to be his most mouth-movie yet. Don’t believe me? Feeling peckish? Here are some of my favourite meals from Cronenberg’s films that you’ll never see on Binging with Babish:
Buckets
Crimes begins with a kid eating a plastic wastebasket. Perhaps the prop department didn’t want to cut the actor’s mouth open, but its material looks tender like an Eva Hesse bucket, toxic to us but the kid happily nibbles at it like a caterpillar. His poor mother. This scene would usually end the first act, but Cronenberg drops us right in the water. Everyone’s weird already.
Plastic Candy
The kid’s father stalks around the film gnawing on plastic candy bars like hardtack. He’s got a synthetic digestive system but doesn’t have the taste for the future he’d give his son. He’s the film’s John Kellogg, he’d never put sugar on his cornflakes. But Viggo Mortensen’s Saul Tenser—the artist of pain sitting in his wiggling spider-seat (patented) to induce swallowing—discovers satisfaction with his first bite. Everyone on art-school island’s been yammering aesthetics for years but Mortensen finally gets the taste.
Steak
The Fly’s about becoming a perfect stomach. I’ll get to that. It’s also about the danger of teaching our machines to taste for us. Geena Davis is biting her real husband Jeff Goldblum’s shoulder and talking about how the flavour of baby flesh drives grandmothers crazy, and Jeff’s Seth Brundle gets the bright idea to teach that to his telepod. Before his organs fall off, he gets started by giving away his tongue and transforming a perfectly good steak into a “synthetic” one. Geena’s Ronnie Quaife knows. There’s no substitution.
Your rival’s foot
So once Brundle’s taught the telepod to taste and give birth to himself, all that’s really left is digesting things. Parable of automation? Maybe. It’s the “talking asshole” routine from Naked Lunch, Brundle’s been made redundant. When he does a vomit drop onto Ronnie’s despicable ex’s loafers, that’s pure ressentiment. Look into the Brundlefly puppet’s eyes, it’s consumption without taste.
Guns
Max Renn feeding a gun to his tummy mouth in Videodrome and Ted Pikul crafting a pistol from his teeth and a mutant salamander in eXistenZ are both compulsive and gross moments. The former plays it kinky and the latter goes for laughs, but they’re both continuations of Brundlefly’s inside-out digestive tracts. Sometime between eXistenZ and Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg’s opinion of digestion really softened.
Mugwump juice
When you’ve achieved impeccable writing, that Sweet Smell of Success, your typewriter tubes a little milky reward into your mug. Being productive feels nourishing, and even if all the euphemisms for morphine Peter Weller ingests in Naked Lunch turn Bill Lee into William Burroughs—a real bad character—there’s nothing like positive feedback.
Cake and orange pop (no ice cream)
Dead Ringers is Cronenberg’s best film, absorbing ‘til the end—and what an ending! When Jeremy Irons’ Bev rips the cake for his twin Ellie with his bare hands, it’s a moment Cronenberg won’t hit again till Mortensen chews the plastic. Then strung-out Ellie cries for ice creeeeam and it’s devastating. I wouldn’t eat anything else on this list. But after watching this at 2am, I walked across Belleville, Ontario to the only 24h grocer for all three treats. It was not as good as the film, I wasn’t a kid anymore.
*as I remember it
I saw David Cronenberg give a live interview 10 years ago, fresh from undergrad and very needy. When I snatched the Q&A mic from the moderator, I believed I’d cracked the new flesh. I wanted his opinion of my essay on how he eats, since his movies' surrealist hinge was often tasting, eating, and eventually digesting. But what I said was:
Can you talk about mouths? Everyone writes about how you’re all eyes and vaginas, but I think you’re a mouth guy. I read Bataille and he’d think you’re a mouth guy. Please talk about it.*
Cronenberg demurred. He had just made Cosmopolis and wanted to talk about cars. Crestfallen, I wouldn’t watch a Cronenberg movie for years (except Possessor). But I watched Crimes of The Future recently, a great little comedy about an insular art community (think Waiting for Guffman with erotic surgery). It’s also got to be his most mouth-movie yet. Don’t believe me? Feeling peckish? Here are some of my favourite meals from Cronenberg’s films that you’ll never see on Binging with Babish:
Buckets
Crimes begins with a kid eating a plastic wastebasket. Perhaps the prop department didn’t want to cut the actor’s mouth open, but its material looks tender like an Eva Hesse bucket, toxic to us but the kid happily nibbles at it like a caterpillar. His poor mother. This scene would usually end the first act, but Cronenberg drops us right in the water. Everyone’s weird already.
Plastic Candy
The kid’s father stalks around the film gnawing on plastic candy bars like hardtack. He’s got a synthetic digestive system but doesn’t have the taste for the future he’d give his son. He’s the film’s John Kellogg, he’d never put sugar on his cornflakes. But Viggo Mortensen’s Saul Tenser—the artist of pain sitting in his wiggling spider-seat (patented) to induce swallowing—discovers satisfaction with his first bite. Everyone on art-school island’s been yammering aesthetics for years but Mortensen finally gets the taste.
Steak
The Fly’s about becoming a perfect stomach. I’ll get to that. It’s also about the danger of teaching our machines to taste for us. Geena Davis is biting her real husband Jeff Goldblum’s shoulder and talking about how the flavour of baby flesh drives grandmothers crazy, and Jeff’s Seth Brundle gets the bright idea to teach that to his telepod. Before his organs fall off, he gets started by giving away his tongue and transforming a perfectly good steak into a “synthetic” one. Geena’s Ronnie Quaife knows. There’s no substitution.
Your rival’s foot
So once Brundle’s taught the telepod to taste and give birth to himself, all that’s really left is digesting things. Parable of automation? Maybe. It’s the “talking asshole” routine from Naked Lunch, Brundle’s been made redundant. When he does a vomit drop onto Ronnie’s despicable ex’s loafers, that’s pure ressentiment. Look into the Brundlefly puppet’s eyes, it’s consumption without taste.
Guns
Max Renn feeding a gun to his tummy mouth in Videodrome and Ted Pikul crafting a pistol from his teeth and a mutant salamander in eXistenZ are both compulsive and gross moments. The former plays it kinky and the latter goes for laughs, but they’re both continuations of Brundlefly’s inside-out digestive tracts. Sometime between eXistenZ and Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg’s opinion of digestion really softened.
Mugwump juice
When you’ve achieved impeccable writing, that Sweet Smell of Success, your typewriter tubes a little milky reward into your mug. Being productive feels nourishing, and even if all the euphemisms for morphine Peter Weller ingests in Naked Lunch turn Bill Lee into William Burroughs—a real bad character—there’s nothing like positive feedback.
Cake and orange pop (no ice cream)
Dead Ringers is Cronenberg’s best film, absorbing ‘til the end—and what an ending! When Jeremy Irons’ Bev rips the cake for his twin Ellie with his bare hands, it’s a moment Cronenberg won’t hit again till Mortensen chews the plastic. Then strung-out Ellie cries for ice creeeeam and it’s devastating. I wouldn’t eat anything else on this list. But after watching this at 2am, I walked across Belleville, Ontario to the only 24h grocer for all three treats. It was not as good as the film, I wasn’t a kid anymore.
*as I remember it