♪
NARRATOR:
The camera adopts a subjective point of view
as a hand enters the shot, lower frame right, to draw the curtain aside.
Revealed within, like lifting a veil of memory,
is a flashback into Spider’s childhood.
The camera bears witness to events
by positioning Spider twice within a frame,
so that we see the same person simultaneously remember,
observe, and manipulate his past.
But Spider’s memory of viewing – like all memories –
does not always present a reliable version of the truth.
MRS. CLEG:
SPIDER: [MUMBLES]
DAVID CRONENBERG: Wait, the curtains are moving, so let them settle.
You are in Spider’s head when you’re watching the movie.
It’s definitely a subjective film. It has scenes of adult Spider
being in the same room as the young Spider in his memory.
It’s a very visual, cinematic way of delivering the effect of memory
and how we return to it and how we live in it, but almost as an observer.
There are many wonderful connections with Freud
and Freud’s theories of memory and how we are observers to our own past,
as well as participants at the same time.
- Roll it. - Rolling. Everybody quiet, please.
DC: Action!
MRS. CLEG:
SPIDER:
RALPH FIENNES:
with his mother. As he grew up
and became sexually aware
of himself and from there, sexually aware of other people’s sexuality,
specifically his mother’s, this is what started to turn him inside out.
You know, the idea that he had this close,
innocent relationship with his mother,
then it has become corrupted,
and this awareness of sexuality has been as it were
the engine for his imagination.
MR. CLEG:
DC: Bradley, lean against that side for a second. I want to see what that looks like.
Hmm. That has a charm to it.
PATRICK MCGRATH:
both of whom are, to a large extent, projections
of a small boy who cannot really do other than
see women as either angels or whores.
DC: O.K. Actors acting!
MRS. CLEG:
PM:
recognize that his mother has an existence with his father
that he has no knowledge of, that he can’t get any access to.
They have a sexual relationship, they have an adult relationship,
which creates a great many problems in the disordered psyche of this little boy.
- Cut!
BRADLEY HALL: Walter, the take's spic and span! [LAUGHTER]
PM:
his mother from this perfect ministering angel
into this great rampant, blowsy hooker.
RF:
Since he’s been a boy of ten or eleven.
And in that time, I think, what he’s remembered has become embellished
and expanded.
DC: Can you see him? CREW: Do you see him?
RF: I can’t see him. DC: O.K., we should put him where he could be seen.
RF:
And I think in order to not face that,
he’s had to create this other unhappy childhood to protect himself.
He’s the victim. He’s trying to repress
something appalling that was done to his mother.
But what was done to his mother isn’t quite what Spider’s created.
DC: “Ahh!!!”
Like that? Something like that? Can you do that? I mean, really...
saying it, not like... But, you know, like, really...
Really, shriek it out. Don’t hold back.
Let’s see what you got. Action!
BOY SPIDER:
CREW: Cut! [LAUGHTER] Alright, so, John can you do me a favour and put that chair...
CAROLYN ZEIFMAN: Why don’t you try one, David?
DC: "Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!" Not as good as Bradley.
One of the things that drew me to the project
is the old Hollywood idea of identifying with the lead character.
The difference between the Hollywood version of that and my version of that
is that it’s a strange internal metaphorical identification.
In other words, my background is not like Spider.
I don’t live like Spider. I’ve never been in prison.
Nonetheless, there’s something very universal about Spider.
It’s the old 20th century alienation.
The difficulty of creating yourself as a human being in society.
To illuminate what is universal,
you have to have a character, often, that pushes to extremes.
- And roll it. - Rolling.
PM:
One of the points one can make with a film like this
is the suggestion that this could be any of us.
That there is no moral responsibility or guilt associated
with spiraling out into psychotic territory
in the way that Spider does. It is well within the realms of human experience
that this illness or disorder would take a perfectly ordinary childhood
as Spider has and turn it into this nightmare world of paranoia,
and violence and twisted sexuality.
BILL CLEG:
Please for God’s sake, help me!
You did this! You did in your mum!
PM:
with some bizarre creature from some alien world here.
We’re talking about a human being who has had the appalling misfortune
to become severely disturbed by a very common mental illness.
- Cut! - Cut it, please!
♪