The Cronenberg Thread

(xpost) Forgot all about that--more than cameos, he actually starred in a big-budget movie.

Amy Taubin, by the way, is Cronenberg's #1 critical supporter--he's always been an automatic Top 10 inclusion for her any year he has a film out. (Taubin and Taubin's Screen Test for Warhol were in the VU documentary.)

He’s had Canada play the US plenty of times before — that excerpt reads to me like he’s saying he used the light and streets they were shooting on to play the deliberately unspecified future setting, but maybe not.

Rex and I on the same page.

That is not something someone should ever boast about in print.

Rex Reed means as much to global film culture as Barry Norman

xp sic

yeah, i agree it's very ambiguous - i definitely didn't notice it while i was watching, and i'm still curious what taubin thought were suggestions that it was the Aegean coast specifically.

We're going around in circles on three different things at once.

1) He's a poor excuse for a film critic. (True.)

2) Who in the world is Rex Reed? (He's very famous.)

3) Because he's a poor film critic, anything he says about David Cronenberg must be wrong. (No--he's absolutely right in making fun of that "From the mind of..." nonsense.)

xp there's Greek language signage in at least one scene.

I think Cronenberg has earned the right to use "From the mind of..." as he did write the screenplay!

I like "From the mind of" only because, cheesy as it is, it evokes an earlier method of advertising films that I thought had fallen out of fashion in the wake of the current bludgeoning-pop-song-overtop-bludgeoning-images style.

The Suicide Squad was advertised as From The Horribly Beautiful Mind Of James Gunn, the Crimes marketing are really sleeping on a chance there

(xpost) Very old-fashioned, I'll give you that (guessing Kubrick was the first director who would have been been given that treatment in a trailer). Besides Cronenberg and Lynch, I think I've seen it used with De Palma. You can almost predict whether a director sees himself as a "From the mind of..."-type. (I can't imagine a female director okaying that, which is 100% a compliment.) "From the mind of James Cameron"--sure. "From the mind of Terrence Malick"--probably. "From the mind of Martin Scorsese"--don't think so.

Sorry--it's just a construction that pushes a button with me, like the director's announcing that he's a true visionary, and you just might not be visionary enough yourself to keep up.

"From the mind of Martin Scorsese"--don't think so.

Again, he hasn't solo written a script for any of his films since Who's That Knocking at My Door

I get that. It is pompous as hell--just maybe in a way that I miss?

Also, didn't know James Gunn (or rather, the studio) was trying to pull that auteurist shit. A counter to Scorsese's critiques of superhero blockbusters, I imagine.

from the ass of Tim Burton

(xposts) Is that the determining factor then--only people who write their own scripts? When I mentioned Kubrick, I wouldn't doubt that it started with 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, and those are adaptations. (Or Barry Lydon, or The Shining, or Eyes Wide Shut.) I always thought it more to do with the idea of the director creating his own recognizable world--with art direction and ways of moving the camera and such. And ego. I'm not saying that Scorsese wouldn't be a director where they'd use that in a trailer, just that I can't see him going along with that. For all I know, he has on occasion. Hitchcock was a total "From the mind of" guy.

I guess you can't say "From the mind of Stanley Kubrick, by way of Stephen King (who doesn't really like this, by the way)."

I could 100% see David Fincher trying that bullshit.

Directors should go back to starring in trailers for their own films. My fave example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwX8NiXv9Hw

"who is that silver fox lesbian? - oh"

Agree!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjXmLrR6uWQ

Would love to see Cronenberg introduce his films in trailers--he's always a great interview.

yes I like Cronenberg interviews as well, and he doesn't come across as pompous at all. Which is why I wouldn't take "from the mind of" in that manner at all.

Considering Cronenberg's very Castle-like hyping of the outrageous content of his latest, this would have been a great way to go.

Hitchcock and DeMille did it too (think the Castle clip rips off from the Psycho trailer. Must have been others--Welles?

My point is that you're casting a lot of good and bad faith on directors who might not even have control of how they're being represented in trailers, clem.

next you're going to tell me that the pitchfork writers don't have full control over the ratings of the albums they review!

I get it, Cronenberg rubs you the wrong way and Scorsese is a dude. That doesn't necessitate a 1-on-1 correlation with how they're being marketed -- which isn't to say that those promotional teams aren't picking up on cues from auteurs' reputations, etc.

the worst would be if newspaper writers didn't have control over the headlines of news articles

Can't wait for studios to roll out A-B trailer testing.

You're right, the directors may not have anything to do with it. I'm working from the assumption that at a certain level of control over your films--Cronenberg, Scorsese, Lynch--that also extends to the trailers and advertising campaigns. Which may be an incorrect assumption.

They've started this new thing the last couple of years--especially with superhero films--where it's not really a trailer, it's short interview clips with the director and cast interspersed with clips.

I really hate those.

Heck, don't forget that Tom Cruise introduces "Top Gun 2." In theatres now!

"From the mind of ..." is kind of quaint, like how they used to have "Steven McQueen IS ... Bullitt."

The "IS"--ubiquitous in the '70s. Why didn't they haul that in too for Crimes? "Viggo Mortensen IS Saul Tenser." That's like box-office gold.

Saul Tenser is such an excellent name

drifting off topic but just have to say my least favorite version of this was during the apatow bro-comedy era when they would try to make the producers seem totally cool and chill by saying "from the dudes who brought you ___"

From the mind of your friend across the street, your neighbor IS an up and coming auteur

"An Andrei Tarkovsky Joint"

Just remembered the most "From the mind of" director working today, and sure enough...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYy7igKD21A

Some stank bullshit from

this holiday season, from the second cousins who brought up your ex-wife again, an overcooked piece of fish is stuck to the pan

the trick is to keep extending this out until nearly every sentence evokes ridiculous film trailers

I want a "This summer..." from-the-mind-of-Mike Matheny trailer from KM.

I apologize for all this frivolousness. We can talk about organs and incisions if you'd rather.

lol, i can't bear to contemplate the mind of matheny for one second more, i am at my lifetime limit!

from the pancreas of your mom, a funeral you thought you had a good excuse to miss

Somebody really should use "from the ass of" though.

I don't recall hearing about many times directors had control over adverts and posters unless it was low budget stuff. I've long wanted a return to those old trailers with the director in them.

Hitchcock and DeMille did it too (think the Castle clip rips off from the Psycho trailer. Must have been others--Welles?

“Tube socks! Tube socks! Three for fi’ dollars!”

lol at the "these snozberries taste like snozberries" dude from Super Troopers in the Devil trailer

Very chilly and cold (quite a low budget on this one) but it keeps you at arms length so you can grapple with concepts like how will our bodies evolve in a dying planet. The Cronenberg movie it reminds me the most of is Crash. I'll give it a 8/10

i saw the trailer for that one m-night movie DEVIL in a theatre and yknow it was exciting and kinda scary and lots of heavy breathing and panicking and quick shots of scary things happening in darkness, and the audience sat in polite fear, and then it said

FROM THE MIND
OF M NIGHT SHYAMALAN

and the entire theatre as one burst into laughter

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Saturday, June 1, 2013 5:00 AM bookmarkflaglink

when I saw that trailer a bunch of kids behind me started booing and I wanted to hi-five them