Death becomes him: ‘The Shrouds' director David Cronenberg dips into the macabre

San Francisco Chronicle​

25-04-2025

David Cronenberg, a master of the body horror movie genre, is genuinely mystified at the sudden cultural conflict between his native Canada and the United States, two countries he loves with a passion.
The brouhaha was sparked recently by President Donald Trump, who has called for the U.S. to annex Canada as its 51st state and has instigated a trade war through actual or threatened tariffs. Cronenberg, whose dad was from Baltimore and therefore makes him 'half-American,' wasn't shy when talking to the Chronicle about the current adminstration during a recent visit to San Francisco to promote his new film ' The Shrouds.' He called Trump and his associates, including special adviser Elon Musk, 'strange' — and that's something coming from a director responsible for some of the weirdest movies of the past half-century.
But he has a message for those social justice warriors who are so angry at Musk, the CEO of Tesla, that they are selling the electric cars they bought from the company or are protesting at its dealerships: You can pry the steering wheel of his beloved Tesla out of his cold dead hands.
'I'm not selling. I do have a personal relationship with the car,' said Cronenberg, who is on his third Tesla and directed 'Crash' (1996), about people erotically attracted to car wrecks and sex in cars.
'It could be illegal in certain states. My car and I, we are a couple, and Elon has nothing to do with it.'
Whether entertaining a rapturous, late-night crowd after recent a sold-out screening of his latest film at the Roxie Theater or sitting for an interview with the Chronicle the next morning at the Hotel Drisco in Pacific Heights, Cronenberg is unexpectedly witty, given the tone of his films.
But make no mistake, the 82-year-old director and sometimes actor (a regular on 'Star Trek: Discovery') has been thinking a lot about death. His wife of about four decades, editor Carolyn Zeifman, died in 2017 and he's still grieving, which has led to his current film.
As part of the mourning process, he starred in a 2021 short film, co-directed by himself and his daughter Caitlin, called 'The Death of David Cronenberg,' in which he faces his own mortality.
Also, a spiritual brother — the filmmaker he calls 'the other David' — David Lynch, died in January at 78, which Cronenberg called 'a shock.' The two existential directors both came up in the 1970s and shared a Hollywood impresario who supported their distinctive visions in comedian and filmmaker Mel Brooks, who produced Lynch's ' The Elephant Man ' (1980) and Cronenberg's ' The Fly ' (1986) without taking official credit.
'Every day you look at the newspaper or go online and there's somebody your age who just died,' Cronenberg observed.
'The Shrouds,' which opens Friday, April 25, follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel, looking very Cronenbergesque with his tall angular figure and shock of gray hair swept back), a tech entrepreneur and widower who has developed GraveTech, which allows family members to observe their deceased loved ones' bodies as they decompose.
Karsh uses the innovation to watch his wife's body, with which he was obsessed. Played by Diane Kruger, she comes to him in his dreams. Kruger also plays his wife's sister, still among the living, and Karsh's AI bot and confidant, Hunny, who follows him everywhere there are screens, including in Karsh's Tesla.
For Cronenberg, an atheist who is a former car and motorcycle racer who doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs and who bicycles, walks and has lifted weights since he was 16, the human body is a temple. But it also is isolating and lonely. 'The Shrouds' director spoke to the Chronicle about how his films often centers around characters who transcend their bodies using technology, which creates chaos but also the hope for connection.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: You were famously in the mix to direct ' Return of the Jedi ' (1983), the last film of the first 'Star Wars' trilogy. How close did you come?
A: I got a phone call from somebody from George Lucas ' company and they said, 'George is interested in having you as director of 'Revenge of the Jedi.'' That's what it was called at the time, until they realized that the Jedi don't take revenge, so they had to change it. I said, 'Well, I don't usually do other people's material.'
They hung up on me because they didn't expect that kind of reaction.
Q: Yet the year 'Jedi' came out, so did 'The Dead Zone,' starring Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen, your adaptation of another person's work, Stephen King's novel.
A: Absolutely. The deal there was I could be very involved in the rewriting of the screenplay. There were five screenplays and one of them was by Stephen, and I had carte blanche up to a point to fashion it in my own way. I don't know if I would have had that with the 'Star Wars' thing.
Q: You directed and are credited as co-writer of 'The Fly,' the remake of the 1950s science fiction classic starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, which contains one of the great catch phrases of the 1980s that is still quoted today: 'Be afraid. Be very afraid.' Who actually wrote that line?
A: It was Mel Brooks. I had written a scene where the Geena Davis character says, 'Don't be afraid,' and Mel said to me, 'No, she should be saying, 'Be afraid. Be very afraid,'' and I said, 'Yeah, you're right, Mel.' I put it in the script, exactly as he said it.
Mel is a very literate, intelligent guy, and I really loved working with him.
Q: In your latest film'The Shrouds,' you open with Karsh on a first date a few years after his wife's death. Have you been dating?
A: I've had a couple of serious relationships since my wife died, and I'm single right now, so if any of your readers are interested, I am available. (Laughs) But they were good despite the fact that they didn't last long, because it let me know that I could have a relationship. I learned there is life after grief.
Q: Like all of your films, 'The Shrouds' could be classified as body horror. Why are you obsessed with the human body in your work?
A: I find (the body horror label) diminishes my intentions. It's a marketing question: How do we sell this movie?
Without maybe being conscious of it, all filmmakers are obsessed with the human body. The way (humans) perceive the world is different than the way your dog perceives the world or the way that spider over there perceives the world. Each one has its own reality and it's dependent on its body, its nervous system, the expanse of its life or the restrictions of its life.
As humans, we've never accepted our bodies as given. We tattoo them, we change them, we amputate them, we alter them for aesthetic reasons, for religious reasons, for political reasons, cultural reasons.
Q: Technology is also front and center in your films. Karsh's GraveTech and his AI bot; you can go back to your 'Videodrome' (1983, starring James Woods and Deborah Harry) which predicted our addiction to screens. Is the future scary or welcoming to you?
A: Technology is innately human, and I'm very comfortable with it. And of course, cinema is a very technological creative medium compared with painting or writing, so it's a natural thing for me.
I can make it very clear: Behind my ears is a set of new hearing aids that incorporate an artificial intelligence chip that's made by Phonak, a Swiss company. I'm looking at you through plastic lenses in my eyes because I've had cataract surgery. Without those, my career would have ended five or six movies ago. So that, to me, is innately what technology is best at, and it is part of being human.
Q: What about AI?
A: I'm not more concerned with AI than I am about nuclear power, frankly. It's something that we continuously deal with. Being the technological animals that we are, we are constantly coming up with possible planet destroying technology, one way or another.
So in each case, it's got the power to be amazingly wonderful and beautiful, and it always has the power to be hideously destructive. AI is just one more version of that. An unusual one, but one that's been anticipated in science fiction for a long time.
Q: What will happen to your body after you die?
A: There's a Walk of Fame in Toronto that's sort of like Hollywood's. I do have a plaque in the sidewalk, and at one point I thought that it would be great if I were buried under that, and that a plexiglass part of the pavement was put in so that people walking over could look down into the grave and see me there, decomposing.