Body work - interview with author J.G. Ballard and director David Cronenberg - Interview

ArtForum, March, 1997 by Andrew Hultkrans

AH: What made you recognize that It might be an obvious fit for you?

DC: It was one of those strange moments of epiphany. I was talking to Jeremy Thomas, one of my producers, a couple years later - we had just finished Naked Lunch (1991), and he said to me, "We should really work together again. Is there something you're passionate about, something that you've always wanted to do?" And I said, "Yeah, I think we should do Crash." And until I actually uttered those words, I had never consciously thought about it. Jeremy went on very excitedly, saying, "I actually optioned that book in 1973 when it came out. It's amazing that you should say this. I couldn't get it off the ground. I know Ballard - I'll introduce you." I was thinking to myself, "Why did I say that?" [Laughs]

But I realized that the book had somehow started a process in me that was important enough to complete by making a movie. Suddenly all the ties to the film were there. Eventually, after procrastinating (in the way that writers do) in writing the script, I started to feel that all the necessary connections - those strange, mysterious tissues that bind you to something - were healthy and working.

AH: You successfully adapted what was considered an ostensibly unfilmable book in Naked Lunch. Crash was also considered unfilmable, and yet you brought it off again. What were some of the particular challenges In adapting Ballard's novel, as opposed to Burroughs'?

DC: I did think, at first, that I might have to do the same thing that I had done with Naked Lunch, which is to do a kind of a construct, rather than a direct attack on the book itself. I had done some wide reading around Ballard, and about Ballard - and, of course, I had met him. But when I started to write the script, it actually distilled quite directly into a screenplay.

AH: It's rather faithful, actually.

DC: The only thing that I did was to add the last scenes to the movie. I originally ended it more or less where the book had ended, which was with Ballard reclaiming Vaughan's car, and anticipating the future, but not really describing it. And we all felt, finally, that there was one more step to take, and so that last scene is the major addition.

AH: You have a special relationship to cars yourself. You're an amateur race car driver. I was wondering how your feelings about the implied eroticism and the danger of automobiles has changed over the years, before and after encountering Crash.

DC: Well, I really had to suppress that part of myself. I mean, in the sense that the movie is not at all a car-enthusiast movie.

Even my appreciation of the James Dean 1955 Porsche and the '63 Lincoln, which is as close as I come to the enthusiast part - really comes from a different place. What's important is the iconic value of those cars. The only overlap was in logistical terms, when I had to talk to the stuntmen about how we would do things. I had a good understanding of cars, car dynamics, and crashes, having experienced them myself. But the meanings of the cars, and the experiences of the characters, were quite different.