While Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg is reluctant to give a label to the kind of actors he prefers to work with, he acknowledges that there is common bond shared by most of the performers he seeks out for his films.
"I've often thought that if you put all of the actors I've ever worked with into one big room, it would look like some weird family reunion-not that they look like each other, exactly, but they look related somehow," explained the Toronto-based writer/director of such distinct films as Dead Ringers, The Dead Zone, The Fly, Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, Crash, and such early horror work as Shivers, Rabid, Scanners, The Brood, and Videodrome.
Continued Cronenberg during a recent interview: "I think there's a real personal, subjective texture or tone that I'm looking for that's very hard to articulate-you know it when you see it, but you can't really say what it is. Is it that they bring a lot of depth to a role? A lot of suggestiveness? A lot of "provocativeness,' so that it goes beyond their screen presence? I think it is something like that, but that's not saying a lot. It's hard for me to tell, but I do find myself attracted to certain actors."
Those "Cronenbergian" actors include Jeremy Irons, Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, James Woods, Holly Hunter, James Spader, Christopher Walken, and now Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law, who star in Cronenberg's latest work, eXistenZ, a futuristic thriller set in the world of high-tech games. The film also employs the talents of Holm, Willem Dafoe, and Sarah Polley.
Cronenberg, intentionally or not, seems to bring out something never before revealed in his actors-sides of them that have either been overlooked or lay dormant, which not even the actors are aware they possess. Audiences are never quite sure what to expect in a Cronenberg character, and that is exactly what is so exciting about the performances in his films.
Back Stage West: Is there a typical way that you cast a project?
David Cronenberg: In my early days, I had such an open acting call because we couldn't afford anybody and I was shooting in Montreal, where the number of English-speaking actors was very limited. We literally had signs out on the street. That was not something I want to go through very often.
I don't feel that I have to see thousands of people for a role. I would if I still wasn't finding the right actor. But when you're casting somebody like Jennifer Jason Leigh-I met her and we talked about it. That was my audition. That was her audition of me, as well. I could imagine up to a point what she could do with the role and I had enough confidence in her that I didn't need her to read.
Some actors are very reluctant to read. They feel there's enough of what they've done out there that a director should be able to tell. But, in fact, sometimes I've asked well-known actors to read; I basically say, "Look, it's my failure of imagination. I'm having trouble imagining you in this role. I need to be convinced that you can do this." For smaller roles, I have a casting person, Deirdre Bowen, whom I've worked with for many years. She understands my tastes very well and so will filter out a lot of people. I know this is aggravating to actors, but you only have so many hours in your life that you can do this.
Deirdre is so good in terms of knowing what I like. For example, if an actor gives a very studied reading, she will then ask the actor to do it in a completely different way, to see if they can change their performance. I don't want somebody who only has one performance for that character, because it's an organic process. Things change while you're shooting. The dynamics among the characters and the cast and the movie itself change. So you need someone who really has a lot of different performances in them. A surprising number of actors can't do that. They have one good performance for any given character, but they really can't modulate it in a major way. So I look for that versatility.
BSW: I would imagine that versatility you speak of came in handy during the shooting of this film, which requires each of the actors to take on more than one personae.
Cronenberg: It was part of the game of this movie. In fact, Jennifer is really required to give five performances at once in any scene, so that when you see the movie again, you see a different performance. You see all those undertones-and yet the first time you see it, you must not see those undertones. It's a very unique kind of acting problem that is required in this movie. That's one of the things I knew Jennifer could do because I've seen her do it many times. I've seen her give all those different performances.
And one of the reasons she was desperate to do this movie is that I think she could see that it would bring things out of her, whether I was doing the bringing out or not. She was going to be forced to do some things maybe that she hadn't had to do before.
BSW: How do you begin to direct an actor?
Cronenberg: It depends on how big the role is. For some actors, the first time you see them is in wardrobe when they're trying on different clothes and that reveals a whole lot-their response to what they're wearing and their attitude to it really tells you a lot about them as actors. And the same for makeup and hair: I immediately get a feeling for whether they've got a very distinct idea about the character, because that's the first thing that they have to work with. And so very often the makeup trailer or the wardrobe truck is where I first see actors in secondary roles. You can launch a discussion about the acting and the portrayal from any place, and very often it's there.
Now if it's Jennifer and Jude, as in this movie, we met and had discussions before we ever got to the production. And in fact, they wanted to do some rehearsals. I always resist that, but even when an actor asks to rehearse, it's not a real rehearsal; it's really just to read the lines and get to know each other. That's what Holly Hunter was saying with Crash. I was saying, "You know, Holly, I don't really want to do a rehearsal," and she said, "Oh, David, come on. It's just so we can get to know each other." And I said, "Oh! Well, in that case, no problem." And she was right. With Crash, that was a crucial thing because the actors not only had to trust me, they had to trust each other.
And so with Jennifer and Jude we did do some readings and it was very revealing. For example, Jude read his role with his natural East London accent, and I immediately felt that that was not going to work with this character for me. That was really the beginning of my thinking about accents for the movie, because that was not really in the script-the whole playing around with accents.
Then we would talk about what things meant-what the dialogue was meant to convey or not convey. But it was just the three of us in a hotel room, basically-nothing more formal than that and very comfortable. And also I realized immediately that the chemistry between Jennifer and Jude would work. You don't often get a chance before you've hired the people on, especially if they're the leads, to get them together. I've never done that thing that people do sometimes, which is to have readings, like a play. I've never done that. I'm sure it's revealing, but to me it's what you do on the set that counts. Anything else does not count.
I am willing to, if actors need it, give them stuff. They all work differently. I don't try to tell an actor how to do things, unless it's maybe a very young, beginning actor or somebody who's a non-actor. Then I will do things, like almost give them line readings or really talk to them about how to do stuff. But my assumption always is that a professional actor has already learned about himself. I'm not going to tell him how to change his process.
BSW: What do you expect of an actor when he gets to the set?
Cronenberg: I don't care how they arrive at it, because as I say, they all have their own approach. Some actors love to steep themselves in research. It makes them feel secure. And by God, when I gave Jennifer existentialist texts to read, she somehow managed to incorporate them into her performance. That's an amazing thing for an actor to be able to do.
Now, Willem Dafoe and Ian Holm didn't want to do research. They had smaller roles, obviously, but they wanted to play the moment directly. As long as I'm seeing what I think should be there, it doesn't matter to me how they do it.
But one thing I do-and I've never had any reason to change it-is provide a very safe and protected environment for my actors. I'm not confrontational. I don't yell and scream. I don't believe in humiliation. There's a huge potential for humiliation on everybody's part on a film set. I don't like it. There's a lot of respect and a lot of humor-a lot of just normal human interaction. To me, that's the environment that I work best in, and it's an environment where you can make mistakes and you can try stuff that's silly and doesn't work and you're not punished for it. You go on to the next thing.
BSW: Have you always felt comfortable working with actors?
Cronenberg: When you're starting out as a director, actors are sometimes your enemies, and it's because you don't realize each other's realities. Actors don't understand the pressures you're under in terms of time, especially when you're starting and you've got a low budget and a tight schedule. The actor says, "What if I say this line standing up over at that window?" and you internally go, Oh my God! Then I have to re-light and it's going to take a half an hour and I can't! You don't want to tell the actor that, so you make up some excuse why that character couldn't possibly go over to the window, when, in fact, what I would do now is just say, "Here's why I can't do that," and I would explain to them truthfully why I think it's great idea but we can't do it. Then the actor, I've found, will work in a completely collaborative way.
When I first started, I thought you couldn't be honest with actors. Then I realized that an actor can be your ally in the fight and is not on the opposite side of the fence. Even though they're very interested in protecting their own character and doing things with their own character, they can still be your ally and collaborator.
That was only enhanced when I started to act myself [in such films as The Fly, To Die For, Extreme Measures] and realized what the difference was. Even though an actor in a scene is only about 10 feet away from the director, you could be on alien planets. A director is kind of disembodied-nobody cares if he's got a cold sore, or if he's got a cold, or if he's having a bad hair day. It doesn't matter as a director. As long as you can say, "Action!" and "Cut," people think you're there. For an actor, it's completely different. An actor is totally body. Of course they're obsessed with their hair and their makeup and their clothes. Those are the tools that they have to work with. Once you understand that there are huge areas where your interests completely intersect, those are the areas in which you can collaborate.
BSW: Did you reach a point working when you knew you were really comfortable with actors?
Cronenberg: Well, it's hard to tell, and why it's hard to tell is because originally I didn't have a lot of input into the scheduling, because I didn't understand it. You have to realize I had done some underground films and then suddenly I was surrounded by crew and people that I didn't even know what they did. I didn't know what a production manager was. I didn't know what an assistant director was, and I had to sort of fake it, and I had 17 days to do it because that was the shooting schedule of my first movie. So gradually, I would get a schedule and say, "OK, we've got the 10 pages in the first two hours of the morning and then we go and crash the car in the underground garage, and then there's the scene where the bug comes out of the mouth, and then there's the explosion, and then we shoot the security guard."
I literally could not spend much time directing the actors. I couldn't do a lot of setups because I had to do that 10 pages in two hours. So I could only be so good with them. There were only so many takes we could do and so much direction that I could actually give them. We couldn't get involved in an elaborate choreography which requires more coverage.
Gradually, though, I realized that I must have input into the schedule. I would learn how many pages of the day I was comfortable shooting. As my career advanced, I could actually control that and I could have input into what the budget was and say, "If I can't have X number of days to shoot these pages of script, I can't do the movie. So either you find more money or we don't do the movie." It seems like the budget shouldn't affect how you direct actors, but it has a very direct effect on that, because I can factor in working with actors.
Here's how I like to work: I come on the set in the morning and have nobody else there but me and the actors, and then I like to work out the scene, block it in great detail as though it were a play almost. I want an hour and a half to do that. And then my cameraman will come in and we'll talk about how we might shoot the scene as we've blocked it, and then I might change the blocking a little bit to accommodate visual parameters. That is how I work now. The acting gradually worked in with the budget and scheduling and my understanding of how I worked best.
BSW: Asking a filmmaker if he has a favorite film is like asking a parent if he has a favorite child. But let me ask you this: Are there particular performances that you've directed which do not cease to amaze you?
Cronenberg: It's so strange. When you're working on a movie bit by bit and piece by piece, in a way everything is amazing when it works. I mean, it would be easy to say Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers. I think it is an amazing performance, knowing from behind the scenes how impossible it was to do that, and yet he did it. The complexity of the split scenes and doing his dialogue-recording it and then playing the other twin with an earpiece so he could hear himself doing the dialogue and having to time the second half of the performance, having the motion-control cameras moving and making noise and knowing we would have to loop it afterwards, and still making both performances in one shot be alive over the three days it took to do that one shot... That is a marvel.
At the same time, I felt that it was marvelous what he was doing in M. Butterfly, and it was quite a different challenge. There are times when an actor is saying a line of dialogue and I almost answer them, thinking they're just talking to me. It's so real that I forget that they're actually doing the dialogue. I mean, it happened with Jimmy Woods. It happened with Chris Walken. It's happened with a lot of people. That's always lovely. Those are secret little magical moments. It doesn't necessarily mean that that moment is a superb moment on screen; it just lets me know how amazing the actor is in the way that he inhabits the character.
So I'm being evasive, but only because it's in a way an impossible question. Let me state further that although there can be wonderful moments on screen, shot by shot by shot-you're manufacturing shots and you can forget about the magic of the way it's all coming together. It's a measure of everybody's professionalism in the way that you can forget that stuff. You want to forget it. Sometimes you don't realize how great a performance is until you're in the editing room and you really see the subtleties and the details, especially when you're shooting out of sequence. It's often not on the set that you realize what a wonderful performance you have. BSW
