Spider News
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08/23/02 Latest News on Spider Spider will have its North American debut in September at the Toronto Film Festival. Reports have it releasing sometime after the first of the year 2003. Ralph supported Spider at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and is expected to make his usual appearance at the Toronto Film Festival. Spider Opens at Cannes/ Reviews 5/23/02 Spider Trailer at Cannes Film Festival Site Here's the link to view the trailer. Also available if you go to the day of the screening, there is a press conference with Cronenberg where he talks about Ralph's acting process,etc. http://www.festival-cannes.com/films/fiche_film.php?langue=6002&id_film=3101990 Bug repellent The Toronto filmmaker told a Cannes Film Festival press conference that slime-spewing or blood-oozing images were neither necessary nor desirable for this film. "I am very misunderstood -- that's why you thought I would like them," Cronenberg said just before Spider, which stars Ralph Fiennes as the mentally and physically defective anti-hero, played in the official competition last night. Some of Cronenberg's past films -- his early horror movies and later fantastical projects such as The Fly, Naked Lunch and eXistenZ -- are alive with grotesqueries. So is the Spider novel by British writer Patrick McGrath (who spent a decade working and writing in Canada, including a stint in service at the Penetang Mental Health Centre). McGrath's first draft of the screenplay contained scenes of blood spurting from a potato and a scramble of creepy insects to indicate how the schizophrenic saw the world around him. 'FANTASTIC' None of that belonged in his picture, Cronenberg said. "I really felt that this is a different kind of film and I would rather use wallpaper -- rather than insects -- to give you the interior of Spider's mind. I mean that literally, because the wallpaper is fantastic. It is real English, damp, mouldy wallpaper imported (to his film sets in a Toronto studio) from London. "I thought: Why not do it with acting? Because we had some good actors ... That purity, that distillation of experience down to the most basic, intense density. That's where I thought the movie should go." Cronenberg, who cast Miranda Richardson, Gabriel Byrne and John Neville to work with Fiennes, also thought Spider should go into competition at Cannes --contrasting with Atom Egoyan's decision to keep Ararat out of the awards race. 'MOST FUN' "I was desperate to have this film in competition," Cronenberg said. "That's where the most fun is, let's face it. The truth is that it's a game ... There is no way to compare two good films that are completely different. How can you say one is better? "So it's a game -- but it is a very exhilarating game. It is very exciting and it gives the festival a sharpness and an edge." Cronenberg said it is a reward just to be selected to be one of the films in competition at Cannes. "That is a victory in itself. To be in competition validates your film in a way -- then everyone wants to win the Palme d'Or -- for sure." The Palme d'Or goes to the best film, as judged by the nine-member jury headed up this year by David Lynch. A prize would be great for a small film like 3, Cronenberg said. "Spider not being 3, you need something to introduce your film to the world!" As for Egoyan's decision, Cronenberg said it made sense to him. "I can absolutely understand why Atom would not want his film (in competition)." He said Ararat "is a very special film to him, much more overtly political than anything he has done before, and, as he said, probably more than he will ever do again." (More on Cannes 2002 and David Cronenberg)
AP By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press CANNES, France (May 21, 2002 3:20 p.m. EDT) - David Cronenberg's new movie marks something of a departure for him: It has no special effects, no gruesome physical transformations, no science-fiction elements in the story line. "Spider" is dark, but it's also restrained, considering it's a thriller about a schizophrenic who's obsessed by his mother's murder. The focus is on psychology. People are talking about "Spider" in Cannes because it's a U-turn for the director, who made "The Fly" and "eXistenZ" and who has a reputation for shaking up the film festival on the Riviera. In 1996, Cannes audiences booed and walked out of "Crash," the Canadian director's twisted movie about lovers who get turned on by car crashes; then it won the Jury Prize. And when Cronenberg headed the jury in 1999, people were shocked by its choices - such as giving top acting prizes to people who had never acted before. "I'm very misunderstood," Cronenberg said at a news conference, joking about his unusual choices. "I know some people see this as quite different from my other films." Still, Cronenberg's not turning his back on the genres that made him famous. "If the next movie I do requires a lot of effects and violence or gore, I'll do it," he said. Though "Spider" revolves around a murder, it doesn't focus on the act of violence. Cronenberg says he kept paring down the script to focus on the acting. When Patrick McGrath adapted his novel "Spider" for the screenplay, Cronenberg asked him to leave out some of the more gruesome details. Ralph Fiennes plays Spider, a schizophrenic Londoner who's just been released from a mental institution. Handsome Fiennes is transformed for the part: His hair is constantly sweaty, his fingernails are cracked and dirty, his eyes are watery and eerily vacant. The British actor met with schizophrenics in a London clinic to prepare for the part. Spider spends most of his time wandering through deserted London streets, moonlit gardens and underpasses. He scribbles unintelligible code in his diary and combs through trash cans looking for bits of twine, which he uses to build elaborate spider webs in his apartment. Back in his old neighborhood, Spider starts visiting his childhood haunts. In flashbacks, he watches himself as a child and sees his father (Gabriel Byrne) kill his mother (Miranda Richardson) with a garden spade, replacing her with a prostitute from the local pub. Richardson is great as Spider's warm, doting mother. She also plays other
characters in the movie - saying which ones would spoil the surprise ending.
The gore might be gone, but Cronenberg has found other ways to startle
moviegoers. USA Today Ralph Fiennes plays Spider, a just-released mental patient who tries to recover traumatic memories of his childhood when he returns to the East End of London. The movie also stars Gabriel Byrne as Spider's father and Miranda Richardson as his mother. Cronenberg's film is being hailed as a model of restraint, in spite of its extreme subject matter, surprising many here who expected that the filmmaker would have been attracted to the feverish hallucinogenic visions described in the book. "Patrick's first draft did have voice-over narration and insects,"
says Cronenberg. "I really felt that this was a different kind of
movie, and I'd rather use wallpaper than insects to give you the interior
of Spider's mind. I mean that literally, because the wallpaper's fantastic,
especially English damp moldy wallpaper imported from London." From Freya on the Fiennes Forum, an excerpt from the Times (London I believe): The Times has a brief review of Spider in today's Cannes roundup: ********************************************* It was roundly booed at the press screening for being too gloomy and depressing, but it's still a magnificent study of memory and madness. Ralph Fiennes gives a fantastic performance as a muttering schizophrenic who is released from a mental institution and put up in an East End boarding house run by Lynn Redgrave. But his delusional account of the past returns to haunt him. What's missing is why Fiennes should think like this. He's too barking to explain. Perhaps that's the point. You can taste the blood, sweat and tears that went into the method-making of this 1960s period piece, but the desire to film this novel by Patrick McGrath is a mystery. ***************************************
Spider Finished Shooting 2/4/02 From UK genre magazine Shivers Influences: "A major influence on Spider is Carol Reed's 1946 masterpiece Odd Man Out (about IRA man James Mason on the run against the unforgiving landscape of Belfast)…There was this whole Samuel Beckett feel to Spider, the isolation of the main character, the paring down of the world around him to just an inch off his body…Nabokov and Beckett are influences even if both are artistically poles apart. At one point I was considering doing Spider's hair like Beckett's…That Beckett type atmosphere permeates the Spider script for me and had an appeal to explore it." Ralph Fiennes: "Ralph Fiennes was (already) attached to the project…that was a major attraction…it was so obviously made for Ralph…(he) is the only actor who can play a disconnected character, who at the same time generates empathy and sympathy in the audience. Spider is a character that seems transparently obvious but is profoundly complex, vunerable, gentle, yet extremely dangerous." The Script: "It was written in a sparse, cinematic way…the novel was very neo-gothic and I took all that out of the script…Patrick (McGrath) rewrote his original draft for me. I got rid of the voices…there was too much voice over…now I have the grown Spider observing his own actions in the past. It's a bit like what I did with Christopher Walken's character in The Dead Zone. Him being in his own visions wasn't in the Stephen King novel. Here that was a vital part of the structure and it felt comfortably familiar because of the Freudian explanation that we are all spectators to our own past." Effects: "I'm delighted that Spider contains minimal amounts…there will be a CGI gasworks added because the structure's metal frame resembles a spider's web…he's fascinated by cobwebs…the dialogue was the most important part of it. I didn't want effects getting in the way." Miranda Richardson: "Miranda is so damn good at changing
her personality that I might as well have hired two actresses because
she is so marvellous." Another article about Spider, source unknown: David Cronenberg has wrapped shooting in London, Eng. on his latest psychological thriller of disturbing repute. Spider, which shot for three weeks overseas, is now gearing up to cross the Atlantic to begin its final five-week shoot in Toronto. A $10-million Canada/U.K. coproduction, the film, produced by Cronenberg, Catherine Bailey and Samuel Hadida, is based on Patrick McGrath's (The Grotesque) 1991 novel, which the author also adapted for the screen. Set in East End London in the 1970s and the present day, the film tells the story of a deeply disturbed young boy named Spider who sees his father brutally murder his mother and replace her with a prostitute. Convinced he will be murdered next, he hatches an insane plan that ends in tragedy and lands him in prison. Years later, the adult Spider is released into a halfway house where he stops taking his medication and spirals into a fresh state of madness. Cronenberg is collaborating once again with his team of Genie Award-winning talent, including cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, editor Ron Sanders and costume designer Denise Cronenberg. Pebblehut Productions president Marilyn Stonehouse is the Toronto shoot's production manager. Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient) stars in the title role of Spider, with 10-year-old newcomer Bradley Hall playing Spider as a young boy. Other cast include Miranda Richardson (Chicken Run), Gabriel Byrne (Enemy of the State), Lynn Redgrave (Gods & Monsters) and John Neville (The Fifth Element). Spider is financed by Capitol Films, Artists Independent Network and Grosvenor Park, as well as Metropolitan Films and Helkon SK, which is distributing the film in the U.K. Alliance Atlantis' Odeon Films has all Canadian rights to the film. Luc Roeg is exec producing. The film wrapped in London Aug. 18 and shoots in Toronto Aug. 22 to Sept. 22." Of interest is the decision to update the setting of the film to the 1970s and the present day. The novel is set in pre and post war London and this time setting is crucial to the climax. Possible bugetary restrains meant that recreating the period was too expensive or it may have been an artistic choice. Either way the climax will certainly be different from the novel. The surprise addition to the cast is Gabriel Byrne, who like Cronenberg, was at one point also involved with the (thankfully) doomed Basic Instinct II project. In answer to earlier speculation it appears there will be few effects shots in the film which is being sold as a "personal, earthy, Freudian" psychological horror in the mould of Dead Ringers. Spider Shoot-article from http://www.blue-bottle.co.uk/Cronenberg_news.htm Spider is a U.K./Canada copro that filmed in and around London for three weeks in August, primarily for exteriors, and then shifted to Toronto's Cinespace Studio 1 for five weeks of interiors. Production designer Andrew Sanders (The Sheltering Sky, Sense and Sensibility) has done a remarkable job of recreating the dingy, claustrophobic London halfway house of the script inside the studio. The set is constructed of removable walls and ceilings, and its interconnected rooms include stairways and a foyer.The detail is meticulous, down to the wallpaper and chipped paint, and you can almost feel the grime. On this, the 22nd day of the 42-day shoot, Suschitzky and crew set up for a shot in Spider's cramped room, when Cronenberg enters the studio, casually dressed in Dockers, a T-shirt and running shoes. A fan of technical toys, he carries a digital still camera, documenting the production for his personal archive. Both he and Suschitzky admit to jetlag, which Cronenberg combats with multiple cappuccinos, and both nap after lunch. Exhaustion coupled with the comfort level enjoyed by the crew make it an oddly low-key set, belying the Freudian psychodrama in the film. Among the technicians on-hand are staff from William F. White, which supplies both equipment and technical advice. Fiennes and Richardson next arrive, relieving stand-ins who have patiently stood on marks while Suschitzky finessed the lighting. Fiennes, in character, looks disheveled and disoriented in a rumpled old trench coat, while Richardson is equal parts matron and trollop in a tight black skirt and cardigan over an open white button-down shirt molded by a peculiarly pointy brassiere. In the scene, Richardson, playing Spider's interpretation of Mrs. Wilkinson, corners Fiennes in his room, looking to take away his keys. She frisks him tauntingly. The atmospheric scene, which in the video monitor is colored predominantly by dingy greys, is illuminated by a series of lamps, including the soft source Kino Flo 4BANK Select System. Suschitzky, acting as his own camera operator, shoots the characters from a high angle behind foreground ropes strewn web-like around the room, suggesting the arachnid reference of the title character. After a couple of takes, a frustrated Cronenberg, sitting alone in front of a monitor and listening on headphones, finally says, "Cut - this shot is not working." "We can either go closer or further away," responds Suschitzky. "Let's go closer," Cronenberg says. Fiennes walks over to the director to discuss the problem with the shot. Meanwhile, Suschitzky lines up his Panavision Panaflex camera for a lower side-angle two-shot that emphasizes the scene's erotic tension, and asks for input from Cronenberg, who approves. Fiennes' face is dark in the shot, with the primary illumination on Richardson's face and spots on the wall behind. In the subsequent take, Richardson is standing too far to the right of the frame. "Peter, it kind of ceased to be a two-shot," Cronenberg says. But the next take is a good one. Suschitzky then moves in for close-ups and the actors run through the entire scene again, but with the camera on their mid-sections, and then, on their feet. In between takes, Cronenberg insists Spider is a film of nuances. Familiarity helps the cinematographer and the director to solve problems this efficiently. "We find it very easy to decide what to do with a scene," Suschitzky says. "It happens quite quickly, because we have a kind of shorthand, and the amount of talking we have to do is minimal. We watch rehearsal and then talk about it and get straight into lighting it out and finding the angles." Suschitzky hails from the British system, where he reportedly was the youngest-ever DOP to shoot a feature, the 1966 WWII fantasy It Happened Here. And in the U.K. style a cinematographer is often referred to as the "lighting cameraman." However, working with Cronenberg, Suschitzky believes his role isn't so restrictively defined. "I like to think it's more organic, because I often have something to say about the framing as well," he says. "On this picture, for instance, I'm doing a lot of the framing myself. David will give general indications where he would like the camera, but after that, I think I'm able to do quite a lot." If Suschitzky exerts an influence on what is often considered the director's domain - composition - Cronenberg has the background to add more input to the cinematography than most directors do. Moviegoers might not know it, but Cronenberg was both director and cinematographer on his University of Toronto shorts, some of his early features, and projects he did for television. (In fact, he functioned as writer and editor as well.) Although Cronenberg has shot at least part of all of his films in Canada, Suschitzky has worked here, in the U.K., and in Hollywood as well. Circumstance had kept him from shooting in his home country for 19 years until production on Spider began, but he soon remembered why he didn't miss it. "The way of working there is not as good as here," he says. "We have wonderful crews here with a 'can do, will do' attitude, and I can't say that about my experiences in England. In Hollywood, it also works extremely well, but it doesn't tend to be quite such a relaxed and friendly atmosphere as on David's films." Ralph Fiennes On Set -Empire Online The unusually temperate weather has hardly been conducive to filming a miserable, wet London afternoon. But that hasn’t stopped director David Cronenberg from trying. Braving the balmy sunshine, Cronenberg took to soaking Ralph Fiennes with sprinklers while shooting scenes from his new thriller Spider. On set with Lynn Redgrave, a bedraggled Fiennes hunched his shoulders against the ‘downpour’ and strolled slowly down a residential street, looking up at doorways while checking the house numbers against a soggy scrap of paper. Finally locating the right address he made a weary knock on the door before being invited in by a cautious Redgrave. Cronenberg repeatedly doused the street in water from a huge tanker and towering sprinklers throughout the scene, rushing back behind the camera to shout “action!” whenever the sun briefly disappeared behind a cloud. Spider is a psychological thriller, which sees Fiennes trying to reassemble the fragments of his after his premature release from a mental institute. Fiennes struggles to discover the truth about his past and the death of his mother (whose nickname for him was Spider) while keeping a slender grip on his own sanity.
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