Cronenberg Returns

Okay so he may have never left, but tomorrow his film opens "History of Violence", and the word is that it's really good. Hype or truth you'll just have to see it to find out, but Cronenberg has been a big influence in my development as a filmmaker. His films are visceral, and yet they have a point to them. In my teenage years I saw his films such as "Rabid", "The Brood", and "Scanners" and ate it all up. To put it mildly Cronenberg was not for the timid. I remember when a magazine called "Cinefantastic" came out and he was on the cover. I ate up the article and read and re-read the article inside promoting his film Scanners. It was there that I saw a picture of a young Cronenberg filming something with an actor in a bath tub. "From the Drain" was one of Cronenberg's earliest films when he was a student, but I became fascinated with the idea of going to school for filmmaking. I eventually did, and Cronenberg was one of the filmmakers who for better or worse got me hooked on the world of filmmaking. I also became fascinated with the world of 16mm film production. I had always used Super-8 or even 8mm, but never 16mm. It was only in film school that I began to pick up my first 16mm camera and actually shoot some shorts. I loved the width of the film. No more squinting at little super-8 frames. No more mickey mouse editors. Now I was working on flat-beds, and movieola's. This was the big time, and when I heard that George Romero edited in 16mm, and that the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was filmed in 16mm I knew that this was the professional leagues. It was then that I wanted to make a feature after doing several shorts, but it took a long time to get from here to there, and a lot has changed over the years. New technology, and different distribution arena's have popped up. To say it was better then then now would be wrong. A lot has changed, but the way you tell a good story hasn't, and that's all that counts. I was trained in the technical way of making a film, and I am pretty good at that, but now you need to know a lot more such as marketing, sales and sell through. All things that you pick up through time. Seeing Cronenberg reminds me of the simple days of saying "hey! gang let's get together and shoot a film". In a way it hasn't changed, but it's gotten a lot more serious, but still that can do spirit still exsists in me, and sometimes it is as simple or as complex as I make it out to be.