With its graphic
depiction of a subculture that eroticizes car crashes,
J.G. Ballard's 1973 novel Crash has in the past often been
thought of as unfilmable. But now it has been brought to the screen by David
Cronenberg, a director who himself at one time thought the movie couldn't be done.
Cronenberg, whose past works includes "Dead Ringers," "Videodrome," and "Naked Lunch," was first exposed to the book ten years ago when it was sent to him by a journalist.
"She sent it to me, with a letter saying 'I think you should make a movie out of this,'" he explains ."I don't think I read it right away. I'd heard about it, but hadn't read anything of his. I started to read it, and it was really so extreme and intense that I have to admit I put it down after I'd only half finished it and didn't pick it up for another 6 months. After I'd finished it, I thought 'there's no way I'm going to make a movie out of this.'"
A few years later, Cronenberg was talking to producer Jeremy Thomas about possibly doing a film together.
"And I said 'yeah, we should do Crash,' and I totally surprised myself when I said that because I thought I was just making it up to have something to say but didn't realize that I was serious," says Cronenberg. "Obviously, it had been kind of peculating and cooking away to the point that I thought yeah, I could do a movie and did want to. And Jeremy was completely freaked out because he was like 'well I optioned that book when it came out in 1973 and I wasn't able to get it made and I know J.G. Ballard, I'll introduce you to him.'"
Cronenberg didn't really know how he wanted to approach the project until he started working on the script. He says that once he got started, it wasn't a difficult film to write. There were some changes made, including an additional scene at the end (which Cronenberg says Ballard loved), but the director says that any modifications were made "to bring out what I feel is implicit in the book, rather than trying to make it into something else."
During the making of "Crash," there were no discussions between the filmmakers and Ballard. Cronenberg met with the writer once, and Ballard was at the Cannes premiere, but that was the extent of his involvement.
"It was great to have him at Cannes, because he's been a great enthusiast and big supporter of the film," explains Cronenberg. "But he didn't really have much to do with it. He's not a screenwriter, and he knows that. He really thought that Jeremy and I were the best ones to do it.
"He had had the experience of reading a couple of other scripts that had been written based on his book, and he said they were quite awful. One in particular was quite a Hollywood version set in LA. It was an attempt to make it a Hollywood movie, he said that was by far the worst. But I never read those. He was just delighted by my script, so it's been quite a delight."