Cronenberg talks about the long-gestating “Crimes of the Future,” its underlying themes, the difficulty of financing challenging films, as well as his stance on streamers and  U.S. politics.

Shooting was very delightful and it really worked very well, but it was very hot there. At one point,  there were fires… I remember the fires and the smoke. You couldn’t breathe.

Mood of the end of the world?

It was perfect for the movie, but not for making it easy to shoot. But we kept shooting anyway and finally it worked out. It was a mixture of Greek crew and a Canadian crew, and that mixture worked really well. We really ended up having great affection for each other.

Initially planning to shoot in Toronto?

I had written it 20 years ago thinking of Toronto, my hometown, but as it turned out, it was never going to be possible to shoot in Toronto because of money. So we looked around the world to see what cities were offering rebates or government assistance or investment and to our surprise, Athens, which had never done this before, both the city and Greece, the country, were very aggressively pursuing productions, wanting productions to come to Greece, and they offered 40% investment.

Location’s impact on the the film?

It brought the texture, the sea, the light, the graffiti, all of that is in the film. And I love that. I embraced Greece and Athens totally, and so did the actors and the crew. We weren’t trying to make it look like North American city because from the way the script is, there’s possibility for strange, interesting changes being this kind of alternate universe of some place. It could be Toronto 200 years from now or something.

In the opening scene, a child is murdered by his mother 

It’s not shock scene. It’s a crucial event that is the motor of the whole movie, but it’s done with some beauty and emotion. There’s lot in the movie that is like a Greek tragedy, and it’s not just because we’re shooting in Greece, the birthplace of tragedy but because it’s in the script.

Existential themes?

I’m not really saying anything in the sense of message or warning or prophecy. That’s not what happens.  I’ve had these images in my head, these characters. There are some things that I find disturbing, some things that I find very beautiful and strange. And so I say to you, the audience, I’m going to show these things to you and see what you think and see how you react, because I don’t have answers to questions and I don’t have an agenda that I’m trying to place with an audience. This is not a political film in the sense of there is the element, for example, of climate change. It’s technically a big part of the movie, but this is not a climate change movie. It’s not like DiCaprio movie warning people about climate change. But if you’re not interested in that, it doesn’t mean that the film is of no interest because it’s only a small part of what the film is about. It’s a love story as well, but  very strange love story.

Script written more than 20 years ago?

It’s amazing, but the funny thing is, and I’ve said this before, but when you’re directing, it doesn’t matter who wrote the script. You are trying to make the script work. Even if it’s your own script, it’s as though it’s somebody else’s script. I often say ‘who wrote this? how did he or she manage to write this stupid thing that I can’t actually make happen? We have to change it!’ And if it’s my script, I say the same thing I tell the actors, ‘ignore the stupid, crazy screenwriter! Just pay attention to me, the director!’

Changing the script?

The script did get transformed by the fact that we were shooting in Athens. It did get transformed by the fact that I had actors that I didn’t know I would have.  I hadn’t worked with Viggo when I wrote the script, so I never had him in my mind for role. The script gets transformed when you’re making the movie. But that always happens. So it didn’t really matter that it was written 20 years ago and it didn’t really matter that it was written by me.

Improvisation on set?

No, nobody improvises in the sense of dialogue. I don’t ask my actors to be screenwriters. That’s really special talent. Very few actors have that talent of improvisation. John Cassavetes used to do that, but the whole movie has to be set up for improvisation. But what we do is I work with the actors on the choreography of the scene. I ask, ‘How do you move around the set? Where do you say the dialogue?’ And so there’s a big collaboration with the actors that way in the choreography and the way the lines are delivered. And that’s why I never do storyboards, because there’s a lot of young directors who do it, who love storyboards.

Working with Viggo Mortensen for the third time?

When you get Viggo, you don’t just get an actor, he’s director now. He’s actually directed me as actor. He made a film called “Falling,” which he shot in Toronto and I am acting in one scene. It’s fun to reverse roles. But Viggo is also a poet, a musician, a publisher, photographer. We really collaborate in many ways, but mostly still because he is an actor.

The movie stars Lea Seydoux and Kristen Stewart

Well, if you work with an actor and you find that they’re really quite brilliant and I think both Lea and Kristen actually are, then you feel they can do many different things and you might immediately consider them for other roles, because if you work together well and you enjoy working with each other, then why not work with them again?

Issues financing the movie?

I talked about this long ago with Scorsese, who is a friend, everybody who thinks that Scorsese could have anybody or any budget. It’s not true. It’s a fight, a struggle, and it changes. Right now, if you’re doing a film with Netflix, then you don’t have to worry about money because Netflix has lot of money. But if you’re doing an independent film and you don’t have Netflix, then it’s a struggle. It took three years to put together the financing even if we had this cast. Money is hard to find. People are afraid of investing with the way the world goes.

Going straight to streaming?

I’m pretty sure we did talk to Amazon and Netflix, and it was not a project they wanted to do. I really was very interested in the whole Netflix streaming phenomenon, definitely. But I think they’re still very conservative. I mean, I think they’re still like a Hollywood studio. I thought maybe they would be different. The difference is that Netflix can show very interesting streaming series from Korea, from Finland, and they say it’s a Netflix original, but it isn’t really — it’s something they have acquired. But I think when it comes to their actual production that they do themselves, they’re very conservative. I think they think in mainstream terms, that’s my experience with them anyway.

Working on series with Netflix?

I tried and we got to two episodes, and then they decided not to do it. And I was disappointed because I was interested in streaming in cinematic terms. I thought that would be a very interesting experience for me as a writer, as a creator, and then also as a director. And maybe I’ll have that experience one day, but at the moment, it’s still on movie making, not filmmaking. So the project that I was talking to Netflix about, it will be feature film instead.

Project expanding on his book ‘Consumed’

I don’t have a screenplay yet for that, but I will be writing that. At the moment, the other project, which is called “The Shrouds,” would come first. We’ll have an interesting announcement to make about it.

Why Netflix passed on it?

It’s not so easy to get a series with Netflix. In fact, it seems that it might be easier to get an independent film made if it’s of a certain type. I’d say maybe a film that isn’t the conservative kind of movie as Netflix would like.

Optimistic about future of independent cinema?

I think they are because they have to offer you something that Netflix can’t offer you. And that is what freedom is what they’re offering. In a way that was true with the Hollywood studios. Mostly, they were very conservative mainstream. Things haven’t changed as much as people thought they would. Netflix has certainly affected the movie industry and the exhibition industry with cinemas. Cinemas are dying, frankly. There will be theaters, but there won’t be many of them, and they will be showing niche films because otherwise they’ll just be showing Marvel superhero movies.

Your film might spark walkouts at Cannes

I said some people in town will walkout and Twitter went crazy and people said “we don’t want to see a movie where the director thinks we’ll walkout.” I wasn’t saying that everybody will walkout. The audience in Cannes is very strange. It’s not normal audience. A lot of people are there just for the prestige or for the red carpet. And they’re not cinephiles. They don’t know my films. So they might be walkouts, whereas normal audience would have no problem with the movie. Who knows? But certainly a lot of people walked out when we showed Crash.

Boring movies?

It doesn’t make me sad. The worst thing is if your movie is boring and I’ve been some screenings in Cannes where nobody walked out, but nobody cared about the movie either. That would be very depressing.

Unlike “Crash,” this film doesn’t have much sex

That’s right. It does have sex because surgery is the new sex. So I say it’s very sexual, but it’s not sexual in the way most people think of sex. Some people like to watch the surgery channel on TV. If you go on YouTube, you can see endless surgeries.

How is that sexual?

That in itself isn’t, but I’m talking about different kind of human beings in my movie, which you’ll see where because of certain changes to the human body as it evolves, old things that we take for granted, like food, the way you absorb food, the way you digest food, the way you eat, the way you have sex. It’s sort of meditation on what those changes might be and how those things might change. It’s slightly satirical in the movie, but not completely, because the actors play it straight. They play it like it’s really happening to them. And the emotion is real, even though what’s happening is very strange.

Sexuality has become complicated

It’s complicated, political, difficult, anguish-ridden.

Living in some kind of dystopia?

Well, in many ways, yes. Not exactly as featured in some movies. Not that landscape, although if you’re living in Ukraine, that’s a dystopia for sure. But there are some very strong dystopian elements in the sense that people are dissatisfied and depressed and unhappy and searching for things that they can’t find and searching for relationships that they can’t create and just the things that were relatively simple in the past.

Supreme Court wanting to overturn abortion rights

That’s unbelievable. But I have to say the U.S. is insane right now. In Canada, we live on the border with them and we are not the same. We see the U.S. and we think these people are crazy bringing religion into their politics. You expect that with ISIS or with the Talibans. You don’t expect it in democracy. The whole Trump thing was a disaster. He was a joke. and most of the senators are lunatics. They’re mentally defective. This is unbelievable stuff. The fact that Trump might come back and has supporters. I’m sure he’ll try to run again for President. And yet we prefer U.S. to Russia, which is a different kind of disaster. So dystopian times on many levels, actually.

Is it inspiring you?

In some ways, no. And yet I am fascinated by spies and politics. There have been many great novels and movies made about those things. I’ve done a little of that with “Eastern Promises” and “A History of Violence” and the whole phenomenon of creative paranoia. People are so desperate for truth that they invent their own. They want to know what’s really happening.

Body horror pioneering director?

That’s not my description, but now everyone is talking about it and saying that I’m the father of body horror. I think it has actually a very long history of maybe 5,000 years. I did see “Titane” but don’t think of myself as genre filmmaker. I think of genre as marketing tool. But it doesn’t help me as filmmaker to know that. Is “Crimes of the Future” a body horror movie, or is it science fiction movie, or is it just horror movie? None of that helps me make the movie so I don’t have to think about it.

Are there any young filmmakers that are promising?

Julia Ducournau for sure. But I don’t necessarily see all the films by the young and hot filmmakers so I’m sure they’re a lot. During the pandemic I actually watched a lot of TV series. I really liked “The Bureau des Legendes,” I thought it was beautiful series but there’s been many. You can see series displacing cinema even on Netflix.

Passing on opportunity to direct “The Return of the Jedi”?

I do love science fiction and graphic novels. But as a director it’s different. The Star Wars story. This is a long time, long ago. I’m in my house in Toronto. The phone rings. I’m in my kitchen. The guy says, “I’m from Lucasfilm. Are you David Cronenberg?” I say, “yes.” He says, “George Lucas is wondering if you would be interested in directing the next episode of Star Wars, ‘The Revenge of the Jedi’”(It was originally called “Revenge of the Jedi,” but since Jedi warriors do not do revenge they called it “Return of the Jedi”). And I said, well, I don’t usually do other people’s material. I only did movies that I wrote. So immediately he hung up on me. I was also asked to direct “Top Gun” and  “Flashdance.”

Any regrets?

“Top Gun” was about American military stuff. It’s true that I like machines, I like cars, I like airplanes. But it just wasn’t something I was interested in to direct. Directing takes at least two years of your life. If you watch it, it takes two hours. So that’s the difference.

Expectations from Cannes?

I know from being the President of the jury that you cannot anticipate anything. Rosetta was the film we chose for the Palme d’Or and it was big scandal. I won’t get into it. That’s a whole other story.

What’s your best Cannes memory?

With A History of Violence, we got 20 minutes standing ovation. It was very exciting. We didn’t win anything, though.

Serbian director Emir Kusturica presided over the jury

Yes, and they had a press conference afterwards and someone said, “From the reaction of the audience, this was very popular film. How come it didn’t win any prizes?” And he said, “Well, if it had been a genre film festival, it would have. Yes.” And if it had been true, there would be no point in having genre films in competition, if you’re ruling them out automatically. Later, “Titane” won the Palme d’Or and films like “Shape of Water” won prizes, so obviously genre films have won prizes at big festivals.

Gentle person with wild ideas?

I am a gentle person. But I just look at the world and this is what I see!