CRASH (1997)

While Crash is finally respectable, we may never be

The 1990s may have been the golden era of the commentariat gravely asking in editorials and special reports, “How far is too far?” But so many of the films from that time seem deflated after losing the contexts they sprung from. Then there’s Crash. Unlike other transgressive movies of the era, David Cronenberg’s adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel about the collision of sex drive with four-wheel drive has only grown in both esteem and prescience. In its own cold, metallic way, Crash continues to tell us about ourselves and where we’re going. Despite being a teenage Ballard obsessive, I hadn’t revisited Crash until last year and was stunned at the precision of the film, and the still intense sexual content. Emily Schultz had never seen it before, making this a perfect pick for Cinema Dirtbag.

As it turns out we both have very personal stories to share about Crash, including that time we almost got in a car accident with Cronenberg.

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Brian J Davis: I am at an advantage here. You’ve never seen this film, and J.G. Ballard was for me probably what Tolkien was for you growing up. So ask me anything.

Emily Schultz: Let’s start with the basics. When you saw the film what was your reaction? Being a Ballard fan.

BJD: Besides that story of what happened in the theater?

ES: We’ll get to that story! And also the time we almost had a car accident with David Cronenberg.

BJD: I didn’t like this film the first time! While watching it I couldn’t suppress the visuals of the novel in my mind. Ballard is not a very emotive writer, to say the least, but he was incredibly lucid and visual. Ballard himself thought this film was better than his novel and having seen this a couple of times in the last few years, I now agree. It’s stunning and the thesis of this movie is only getting more correct.

ES: I can see how you managed to have a theater “experience” with this movie — I mean it’s the first 10 minutes and we’ve seen three sex scenes and all these people talk about are their orgasms.

BJD: If you think your friends’ polycules are too much, be thankful they’re not crashing cars…yet.

ES: I’m quite shocked by this movie already. And by all that light traffic in Toronto.

BJD: Here’s Ballard’s point. In the early ’70s, he saw how technology and media was starting to alienate us from our bodies, and culturally he saw this in advertising: how cars and sex were being combined. Think of Helmut Newton’s infamous Citroën ad. The car crash as sexual climax was Ballard’s way to open everything up. The violence would break through the alienation.

ES: I remember the first time I understood that the word “sexy” actually referred to sex, the act. It was when I was 10 and saw an ad featuring a woman wearing leather on a motorcycle. It just clicked for me.

BJD: Maybe a couple of things clicked for you with that.

ES: Very true!

BJD: You shared, so I’ll share my story of getting it on in a theater during Crash. And I will do my best to protect the identity of the other person— they’re kind of famous now. First, this is the important part of the story: I was at my peak transgressive, more alternative-than-thou stage, but I brought the most normal person I knew to see Crash, and I do remember wondering, how is this going to go? We’re watching it and I’m like, I’m not connecting with the film but slowly I realize that Crash is, completely unexpectedly, driving my date into such a state that by the final reel way too much is happening in the theater, and it was definitely finished in the car afterwards and…wait for it…that was in the parking lot of a mall.

ES: You were still young though, like 19 or 20?

BJD: Don’t try to defend me. There’s no sandpaper strong enough to smooth that story out.

ES: Where would you rank this with Cronenberg films?

BJD: Again, as I’ve revisited this movie it’s now up there with The Fly or Dead Ringers, and maybe his best. But what’s interesting is you would think this had been some long gestating passion project for Cronenberg, but he was relatively unaware of Ballard. It was really producer Jeremy Thomas’s project. And there is a great, idiosyncratic documentary out now that I recommend, The Storms of Jeremy Thomas. But both of them are absolute gear heads.

ES: Now let me tell our Cronenberg story. Okay, it was our last day of living in Toronto before moving to New York.

BJD: We were living in a warehouse across the street from Deluxe, the film lab.

ES: We were walking past the parking lot and I have to say, this was completely our fault because we probably were arguing about some travel detail, and not looking. Then this outrageous silver sports car—

BJD: I described it at the time as an Italian Batmobile.

ES: It stops just in time before hitting us. Thank God there’s a great driver. But we all look at each other, very Canadian and apologetically, and then I realize, that’s David Cronenberg in that car. The day I’m leaving Toronto and it’s David Cronenberg!

BJD: And I look at David Cronenberg and I swear he and I had the exact same thought at the exact same time, which was: Damn that would have been ironic because he/I directed the movie Crash.

ES: There’s a lot of realizations in the moment you’re about to be hit by a car. I know!

BJD: I do think that this is some of the best usage of 1990s Toronto in a film. The east side is still the east side, and all this concrete brutalist scenery is shot in North York. It’s all soulless expressways and towers. That Toronto turned about to be the perfect Ballard city.

ES: What I find interesting about James Spader and Holly Hunter, having been in the same accident and now meeting at the junkyard and being turned on, is this idea that your most traumatic experiences could emerge as a part of your sexuality. That is brave storytelling.

BJD: You’re absolutely right—that very contemporary idea is why this film has had a reputational rebound, because it continues to speak to us. It had its defenders at the time and won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes but the press, especially in the UK, loathed it and its US release was delayed by a year of just ratings battles.

ES: Where is Holly Hunter in her career at this point?

BJD: I believe she went right from Home for the Holidays with Robert Downy Jr., to Crash. And that, kids, is called range. Roger Ebert had the best compliment of Crash. He said it was as if an AI looked at our culture and determined we like cars and sex, and outputted this film for us. And that is down to Cronenberg’s obsessive detailing in this film and the way scenes are built so coldly and logically. This is not a verbal film; it could almost work as a silent film.

ES: So they’re joining this sort of underground club that recreates famous celebrity car accidents?

BJD: Just think of it as Crash Club.

ES: Got it.

BJD: I do wish there was more of this celebrity obsession material from the novel. Spoiler alert that Elias Koteas’s character dies in a crash…at the end of a movie called Crash. Grow up people. But in the novel his character Vaughan dies while trying to crash into Elizabeth Taylor’s car and that was probably too high a legal bar for the film to suggest. Fair enough, but the ending does lose some conceptual power.

ES: Can we talk about Elias Koteas?

BJD: The Canadian DeNiro.

ES: He’s great in Zodiac. But I think the first time I was aware of Elias Koteas was in Some Kind of Wonderful.

BJD: And he was in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the same time as being in early Atom Egoyan films. My favorite Koteas performance is as the DJ in Exotica. We should continue this “Toronto Ennui” series, and do that film next.

ES: I probably wouldn’t have been able to watch Crash in 1997. I was happier with, like, Go Fish.

BJD: This cast doesn’t sound like it would work on paper: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Rosanna Arquette, Deborah Unger. But they do, and they’re great. I think because as performers each has this slightly off-kilter quality that makes it work.

ES: This is really sinister: Spader is watching his wife’s car being crashed into by Koteas. It’s like a cuckolding with cars. And now they’re racing through Cherry Beach.

BJD: With wantonly displayed Ontario license plates. This film is openly Toronto…except for this scene. I know this only bothers me but the translight outside their condo set is totally New York City.

ES: I’m too busy watching this extremely explicit sex.

BJD: I mean it really does capture couple talk well and you know it’s a good scene when Emily is absolutely speechless.

ES: I’m almost starting to get bored with how much sex there’s been.

BJD: That’s part of it. The film wants to have the numbing effect of too much sensory input. But I also suspect that the next time I see you in a car you’re going to be revving the engine for an extra minute more than you need to.

ES: Should I tell my story about being hit by a car?

BJD: Yes and—I’m asking this merely because Crash is currently playing in front of us—was it sexy?

ES: It actually was bonding. I had been out with an ex-boyfriend, and we had discussed a lot of the things that had happened in our relationship. We were quite drunk and had completely come to peace about everything. We were crossing the street and a car was making a left-hand turn. We didn’t see him. The next thing I knew I was on the pavement looking at my friend and one of us asked, Did we just get hit by a car? We both blacked out on impact. The car hit me, and he blacked out on impact from the force with which I hit him.

BJD: Oh wow. And the driver of that car was Denis Villeneuve?

ES: No! It was a car of college kids. But the amazing thing is nothing happened to us! We were fine. We did go to the hospital and get x-rays. My knee hurt for a month but that was it.

BJD: I find it so interesting that your car accident had this emotional dimension to it. That’s not that far away from this film.

ES: It changed my life because I really took a serious career turn after. I remember right before the car hit us, we were talking about, of all things, Who was that Christian metal band that dressed in yellow and black?

BJD: Stryper!

ES: Right? And what if my final thought on Earth was something so stupid? So I started writing my first novel that month.

BJD: I think one of the magnificent things about the movie is the tone—it’s sustained from beginning to end. It’s almost if you’re watching the movie with a concussion, in terms of how slow and methodical it is. It’s a consistent wobbliness.

ES: I don’t know if I like like this movie. I’m only morbidly fascinated with it. I mean, this is a great scene in the car wash.

BJD: This is literally why we do Cinema Dirtbag. We watch films in such an open and experimental way that when people ask us for simple film recommendations, we kind of choke up. Like, Really? You want to know what we’ve been watching? It takes some explaining so we started a newsletter instead.

ES: Oh what just happened?

BJD: Vaughan crashed, off screen. Which was probably both a stylistic choice, and to save money. And again, one of the only flaws in an otherwise fantastic adaptation is that his ending in the film lacks the power it has in the novel.

ES: Now James Spader and his wife are chasing each other. Notice they never wear their seatbelts?

BJD: That’s kind of like going raw for them.

ES: Now he sent her car down a hill.

BJD: Consensually.

ES: One flaw with this final crash scene is this. Where are the dozens of Canadians trying to out-helpful each other?

BJD: James Spader hasn’t blinked for a whole minute while he’s seeing if his wife is dead or not. And it’s not concern, it’s excitement. That is some acting. And it’s very much Cronenberg’s ending—something that would be very difficult to convey in a novel.

ES: I do get this ending. When I got hit by that car, I suddenly had an awareness of death that I had not had before I was 27 years old.

BJD: So a traumatic experience can become part of you in a way not entirely negative?

ES: True, but I don’t think I needed to have sex after getting hit by a car.

BJD: Don’t knock it till you try it! Which is what I think the tagline of Crash should have been.