‘Something must have gone wrong with us': David Cronenberg and Howard Shore on four decades of body horror

The Guardian

17-03-2025

What would having sex in a car crash sound like, as music? What about a gynaecological exam performed by identical twins, or a man's transmogrification into a grotesque human-insectoid hybrid? These are just some of the challenges faced, over more than 40 years and upwards of a dozen films, by the composer Howard Shore as part of his long collaboration with the director David Cronenberg. Shore, 78, may have won three Oscars for the magisterial sweep of his Lord of the Rings score, but it is his work on the 81-year-old Cronenberg's notorious body-horror movies, from The Fly to Dead Ringers and Crash, that is most indelible. Those last two films will be screening this month as part of a wider tribute to Shore's work at the London Soundtrack festival, where the composer will appear with his director-collaborator for an onstage conversation. Ahead of that encounter and the release of their next collaboration, The Shrouds, the pair sat down to talk about their long, bloody body of work.
You're both from Toronto, but how did your paths first cross?
Howard Shore We had multiple friends in common, and we were introduced by [artist] Stephen Zeifman, another one of us Toronto men. But I'd already seen David around town on his motorcycle, a gorgeous Ducati. I'd see him driving around in this beautiful leather motorcycle outfit. As a kid, 15 or 16, you'd notice someone like that rolling around your neighbourhood.
David Cronenberg I used to race motorcycles while wearing a one-piece red and white leather jumpsuit. This was in the 80s. I've got photos.
Did you feel an instant connection on your first encounter? DC Absolutely not. [Chuckles] No, we were friends right away. Howard and I mixed together very naturally. We were local, we knew each other, we were making inroads into film. It doesn't always work, coming from similar backgrounds, but it did for us. The rest is history.
HS I knew David's films from midnight screenings, underground film festivals I'd go to around this time. I'd scored one film, and then I worked up the guts to ask him if I could work on The Brood. He was generous, as he's always been. He took on a young composer without a lot of experience.
How do you two get on the same page, creatively? After so much work together, is there a close alignment from the start in your early meetings, or are you still finding the vision together each time?
DC We don't really talk a lot! We've got a shorthand, maybe it's telepathy. On The Shrouds, we barely talked at all. We didn't see each other. And yet what Howard did for the movie was perfect, so beautiful. And I'm lazy enough to be happy with this system. Movies are collaborative, which means that the more geniuses you surround yourself with, the less work you have to do.
HS We talk mostly before the recordings, then a little more afterward. Sometimes, we'll create things in the overdub. We did that on Naked Lunch, overlaying two pieces just to see what it would sound like and going: 'Hey, that's interesting, what just happened?' After the fact, some of those surprises give you the best results.
DC Early on, we developed this idea that a music track can do more than emphasise what's already there. I'm seeing so many Netflix series, for example, where the music is just pounding, pounding, pounding all the time, telling you what to feel. People might just be having lunch, and it's pounding in the background. We felt that you can do more than say: 'This is a scary scene, so we'll play scary music.'
HS You play to the subtext of the story. You need to broaden the frame. What you want isn't just in the middle, it's on the margins, in the fringes, all around the frame. Once I see a cut, it becomes intuitive. I feel what I need to create, really.
You both stuck together after you started working together, right up until The Dead Zone. Was there a reason that you went in another direction, David?
DC This all had to do with one guy in the music department at Dino De Laurentiis's organisation [which produced the film]. He felt that Michael Kamen was a lovely guy, and because he had some connections with Pink Floyd [Kamen oversaw the orchestral arrangements on Pink Floyd's The Wall], the guy was mesmerised by that. He believed that would be good for the movie – which it turned out not to be, at least not the Pink Floyd connection. It didn't make much sense. This was one of the few times I've been muscled out of my first choice. I've evaded it for most of my career, but every now and then, influences creep in from the outside. Michael was great, he did a great score, but I still wonder how you would've done it, Howard.
And Howard, your first film scored without David was Martin Scorsese's After Hours. How did that come about? Was it difficult to work without the collaborator who'd been a constant for you?
HS David actually introduced me to Martin Scorsese. Marty was interested in David's films, knew his work really well, and they'd started corresponding. Marty invited you to New York just to talk and spend some time together, right?
DC His mother made dinner for us.
HS We had pasta with Mama and Papa Scorsese, and that's how I met him. Though I guess the story really goes back to the Brill Building. Marty was cutting there with [his longtime editor] Thelma Schoonmaker while I had a studio in the Brill Building, and I met the film's star, Griffin Dunne, in the elevator. Suddenly, next thing I know, I've agreed to work on the film.
Howard, do you have a favourite of David's films? And David, same question for Howard's scores.
DC Well, Crash and Dead Ringers! But Howard, you were going to choose some films to show, right? The festival asked you?
HS I never got that email.
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DC Well, you should let them know.
HS Eh. Those are my favourites, too. I'd add Naked Lunch and The Fly, because The Fly was our first symphonic score, and Naked Lunch because we got to work with Ornette Coleman.
DC I've told this story before, but there's a scene in The Fly where Jeff Goldblum's walking down Yonge Street, about to go do the arm-wrestling bit, and the music is huge, orchestral. And Mel Brooks, who produced it, asked: 'It's just a guy walking down the street, why's it got to sound like this?' And I said: 'Mel, this is a man going to meet his destiny.' And he accepted that we were right.
On Dead Ringers, I remember listening to the tape Howard sent me in the car on a drive from Toronto out to my place in the countryside, and I was almost in tears by the time I arrived. It was so emotional, so overwhelming. I remember that so clearly. And this was only a preliminary version!
HS I'm interested in this dark emotional world. I don't know why, but so much of my music goes through this world. I still haven't quite figured out why I go there, but I've tapped into it a lot of times. I'm comfortable there.
DC It must have to do with our upbringing in Toronto. It must've been terrifying.
HS Something must have gone wrong with us.
You know, when [Life Is Beautiful director] Roberto Benigni came to Toronto, he said that coming to the film festival here was very frightening to him, because he only knew the city from my movies. He figured it must be a scary place. Howard's a big part of that.
The inaugural London Soundtrack Festival (19-26 March), features Shore and Cronenberg in conversation and a Gala concert at Royal Festival Hall on 22 March. The Shrouds will be released later this year.