Beauty Break: Carol Spier & Cronenberg

by Cláudio Alves

As far as I'm concerned, EXISTENZ has Oscar-worthy production design.

Over the years, David Cronenberg has unleashed unimaginable visions onto the big screen, stretching the limits of body horror along the way. In the week the underrated eXistenZ celebrates its 25th anniversary, I was reminded of one name that should be nearly as recognized as that of the Canadian director. After all, Cronenbergian wouldn't be the same without the contributions of Carol Spier, his hard-working production designer whose mind has birthed such sights as Videodrome's flesh-like walls and the ruined tomorrow in Crimes of the Future. This year, the duo's new collaboration, The Shrouds, will premiere at Cannes in the official competition. Maybe Spier could even take the festival's Technical Grand Prize. It'd be a nice change of pace since, despite her genius, the artist has rarely been recognized by awards voters.

With all this in mind, let's recall some of Carol Spier's greatest creations for Cronenberg's nightmare cinema. Here are ten highlights from their shared filmography and where to watch them…

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Almost There: Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly"

by Cláudio Alves        

Last week, you were asked to choose a horror movie performance to be analyzed in the Almost There series. From the ten possibilities, the pick was Jeff Goldblum in David Cronenberg's The Fly. Telling the story of a scientist who accidentally gene-splices himself with a housefly, the movie is the platonic ideal of body horror and probably the title most readily associated with the subgenre. Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis' makeup is justly legendary and won the pair an Oscar. One would think horror would be a mainstay in that particular category, but AMPAS rarely embraces it, even there. Hence why The Fly's awards success feels so thrilling. Unfortunately, it's also why Goldblum's transformative work was ignored...

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Horror Actressing: Geena Davis in "The Fly"

by Jason Adams

I think it was Roger Ebert who once said about Geena Davis she seemed difficult to cast in the movies as a normal human being because she always looked more like a Valkyrie come down from Valhalla than she ever did a simple waitress. And, Roger Ebert thinking with his hormones aside, he wasn't entirely wrong. For every Thelma there was a pirate, an assassin, a gigantic vampire countess waiting in the wings. Even in a reality-based movie like The Accidental Tourist it was her proto Manic Pixie character that represented a break in the mundane -- Geena Davis sweeping in always feels like an occasion!

That's why I think some of her absolute best work came in films where the reality rose up to meet her on her larger-than-life level. Her six full feet of rosy-cheeked goddessness needed a heightened world to roam most comfortably within, something like the afterlife wackiness of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, or as with today's subject, the deranged splatter romance of David Cronenberg's 1986 The Fly remake...

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Showbiz History: Super Remake, Early Franchise, and A Barrymore

10 random things that happened on this day in history (Aug 15th) as it relates to showbiz...

I am a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes...

1483 The Sistine Chapel is consecrated and holds its first mass at the Vatican. Remember that "anecdote" in Six Degrees of Separation (1993) about slapping the hand of god? What a fantastic play/film. Stockard Channing's nomination that year was so well-earned. In many years that performance would have been my gold medalist, but what a stellar Best Actress year 1993 was. Hunter, Bassett, Channing, etc...

1879 Future Oscar winner Ethel Barrymore (None but the Lonely Heart) born in Philadephia. She is one of only nine women to have ever been nominated for 4 Supporting Actress Oscars. We're discussing that list right now actually ...

1912 Amazing actress Wendy Hiller born in England on this day. She would go on to 3 Oscar nominations and a win (Separate Tables, 1958). On the same day in Pasadena...

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Long Live the New Flesh: David Cronenberg's Exhibition

It’s Amir here, reporting on a couple of films I saw at the David Cronenberg exhibition currently held at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. As the biggest Canadian director working in cinema today, the master of body horror is held in high esteem in national circles. This comprehensive tribute to his body of work is a tremendous showcase for a filmmaker whose work has done a major service to the Canadian film industry over the past three decades.  

Running alongside the exhibition that includes all things Cronenberg like film memorabilia, set props and a life-size mugwump, Long Live the Flesh also hosts screenings of the director’s films with lectures and Q&A sessions. I had the chance to attend two of these events: a screening of Naked Lunch introduced by David Cronenberg and his longtime producing partner Jeremy Thomas (Oscar winner for The Last Emperor) and my first big screen experience with his seminal science fiction film, The Fly, which was followed by a Q&A with the film’s Oscar-winning make-up artist Stephan Dupuis. Both conversations were illuminating though the films didn’t quite affect me in equal measure.

Naked Lunch, adapted from the William S. Burroughs novel of the same name, is one of the more personal projects in Cronenberg’s canon, born of his passion for the writer’s work. Cronenberg described the film as both a dream-come-true for allowing him the opportunity to adapt one of his personal favorite novels, but also one that made him extremely anxious as he felt the necessity to get the Burroughsian elements just right. Asked if adapting the supposedly unfilmable novel was a difficult task, Cronenberg referred to the project as one of the easiest screenplays he’s written for the way Burroughs’ prose and his dialogue transfers itself directly to the screen.

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