DAVID CRONENBERG
David Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people’s fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical. In the first half of his career, he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction, although his work has since expanded beyond these genres. He has been called “the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world”. (More from Wikipedia)
I can’t explain why, but the purity and no-apologies tone of that quote from the Ugly about their rivals has really impressed me over the years. Many times I have thought to myself that if (God forbid) I found myself in the hands of a gang of terrorists, sharpening their knives to lop off my head, the first thing I would say when they turned the camera on me would be: “F--- the Viletones!” Assuming I got another shot at the camera, I would then say: “Death to Videodrome – long live the New Flesh!” (That’s a line near the end of one of my very favorite horror movies, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome).
(November 2011)
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My own Wikipedia handle is “Shocking Blue”, the name of a Dutch rock band that I have been particularly enamored with for several decades. “That is not the name I was born with, that is my Wikipedia name. Some day all of us will have special names,” as Brian O’Blivion might have put it; he is the “television prophet” who appears in the incredible 1983 David Cronenberg horror movie Videodrome that features among its cast members James Woods and Blondie’s Debbie Harry.
(August 2012)
