Another brilliant video essay, and this one for my own pet favorite director! What else could I ask for? Maybe a single clip of Jeremy Irons as a geisha in M. Butterfly, but that's it. I especially loved the string of monolithic government/corporate edifices and the juxtaposition of glasses in Videodrome and Naked Lunch.

There are a few more Cronenberg films I have to ingest; "Dead Ringers" and "Rabid". I saw last night for the first time, "Scanners" and loved every second of it.

His skill as a director and vision as a creator go hand and hand more appropriately than most craftsman in the industry. I don't always connect, as I didn't with "Spider" or, surprising as it may sound "Videodrome" and wasn't the most thrilled about "Eastern Promises", but "eXistenZ" is incredible as are many others.

I've always loved his flesh as weapon motif.

Excellent stuff, once again Jim. May I ask what software you use for these great videos?

Great post Jim. I myself am not such a fan of Cronenbergs more recent work because I feel he is leaving behind what has made him such a visionary. And you've captured it perfectly in this video.

Great video essay, Jim. It's actually inspired a long-delayed post I've been wrestling with for a while now about images (or cinema) functioning as criticism. So myself and others discuss how criticism is in many ways a similar practice as that of cinema, but the reverse may be true as well.

Images abide by entirely different structures of meaning than do words (despite similarities), but this actually enlivens the criticism itself. Maybe it's a new kind of criticism.

And Piper: I could use that very same reasoning for explaining why I love his recent films so much. If you study the thematic and even compositional style of his recent films, you'll find a lot of similarities to his 70's and 80's work; only now he is ruminating on the very same themes with heightened reflexivity about narrative and cinema. I think his films are as provocative as ever and proclaim him as one of the most important filmmakers working today.

Jim, thanks for speaking at the Frye -- it was fun. I remembered afterwards that I saw my first Cronenberg film at a grindhouse in Times Square. Quite a journey from there to the Frye, huh?

I'm afraid that my complete and irrational fear of insects is keeping me from seeing "The Fly," though your video came close to convincing me otherwise.

Christopher Walken on the rollercoaster was from "The Dead Zone" which you didn't put in the list of films in the credits.

Which Cronenberg film had all the wax sculptures?

JE: You're right! Damn me. That was an oversight. I had it in there and then accidentally deleted the whole list and didn't proof myself properly when I had to do it again from scratch. The movie with the artwork is "Scanners" -- and the artist is the guy in the head who says his art keeps him sane.

Interesting montage. You aren't planning to something like this for David Lynch in the near future, are you?

...one "theme" (or perhaps obsession/fascination on Cronenberg's part) I'm most struck by most in this video is that of human biological change — or metamorphosis/mutation — acting as a visual/narrative plot device, perhaps even a MacGuffin of sorts, from which psychological or sociological change, the real thematic substance of Cronenberg's films, pours forth.

Even in a film as seemingly detached from these as Eastern Promises, we still see human biology and change at the forefront: Viggo's tattoos and physical trials and he goes deeper into the Russian mafia; the early death of the pregnant Russian prostitute and the resulting orphan; and Watts' own miscarriage. Lots to chew on!