The Cronenberg Thread

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

I finally watched CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

I was relaxed and locked-in enough to just absorb everything as it was happening, and all of the plot threads kind of coalesced into a whole about five minutes after it ended. For a film that's visually and audibly rich, there's a sparseness to the plot and you're clued in to what characters were really doing only as the movie ends

watching rabid cz it's on mubi and i never saw it till now

this is excellent, poo to the h8as

lol the grotto scene

good movie

[THE FLY] It's like a B horror movie given new weight by Cronenberg, and for what it is it's very well done...Yet on its own it has no real vision—nothing that lifts it out of the horror-shock category. (1986)

— pauline kael bot (@paulinekaelbot) September 11, 2022

A timely bump; I finally saw Dead Ringers (presented in association with the National Gallery of Art exhibition "The Double: Identity and Difference in Art since 1900"). The audience was full of giggles; I don't know whether it was an attempt to cope with the tension or because the film looks so supremely lol 80s.

Two women of a certain age right behind me could not stop talking about their gynecologic histories. I'm wondering if there's a story in generations of women whose medical issues doctors denied and dismissed somehow rebounding on them.

From Danielle Burgos' Screen Slate write-up of Greenaway's A Zed & Two Noughts (which I love)

"Greenaway claims after he presented A Zed & Two Noughts at TIFF, David Cronenberg “sat me down in a hamburger bar and questioned me for two hours. .‌ . . Eight months later he made a film called Dead Ringers (1988), which is about twinship, mutilated females, and human mutation.” Evolution and mutation are two sides of the same coin, it comes down to whether the change proves advantageous. Despite their commonalities, there’s no mistaking the films. Though Cronenberg isn’t traditional by Hollywood standards, his codependent character study spiced with taboo is a straightforward three-act narrative using the same visual grammar as D. W. Griffith. A Zed & Two Noughts is as much a film as “a film”, the first embrace of cinema qua cinema from a self-professed fine artist stepping beyond his early-career formalism to explore the medium on its own terms."

Just seen Crimes Of The Future and liked it a lot. Barely anyone there and... a general question about cinema releases. The buzz about this film was months ago and I thought I had missed it until my brother spotted it in the "currently showing" listings.
I feel like films have had fairly uniform worldwide releases for over a decade and it wasn't until Green Knight that I started noticing films being months apart in different countries. Is this a recent change or has nothing changed really? Just seems like a really bad idea to start showing a film in some countries well after all the American screenings buzz is gone, because I don't think I'm alone in missing films because I don't know if or when it's coming around here. There's never enough films I want to see to keep up with the weekly local cinema listings.

Just saw Crimes of the Future. I thought it was fascinating (and at times weirdly funny). Lots to think about. Kind of reminded me of Naked Lunch, in some ways, at least in passing. Or at least how I remember it.

Great score