David Cronenberg on ‘Cosmpolis’ and Rob Pattinson

NY Mag recently sat down with David Cronenberg to talk his latest project A Dangerous Method, Cosmpolis and working with Rob Pattinson.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview :

You’ve finished shooting Cosmopolis, which you wrote, based on the Don DeLillo novel about a 28 year-old billionaire’s one-day odyssey across Manhattan. What was it about it that made you think, Okay, this is the next film I’m going to make?

I really have no idea other than I thought the dialogue was absolutely incredible. Don DeLillo, whose work I had known before, but I didn’t know that book, he has a tone, there’s a special kind of dialogue he has that’s really — it’s like when you see a Harold Pinter play and people talk about Pinteresque dialogue. It’s studied. It’s stylized. But somehow it’s also incredibly real. It’s interesting, because you know when you write a script — I did write the screenplay for it as well, based on the novel — and when you write a screenplay, it’s odd, the only stuff that you write that actually gets directly onto the screen is the dialogue. All of your descriptions and so on, which in a novel you worry about the literary style and your metaphors and all that, but in a screenplay that’s all irrelevant. That’s just very mundane and pragmatic. But the thing that really ends up exactly the same way onscreen is the dialogue. So as I say, it was really the dialogue, and the way it was delivering in Cosmopolisthat made me think this should be a movie.

What was it about Robert Pattinson that made you think he was the right guy for the lead?
He’s the right age. He looks right. He looks good in a suit. He looks like he could be a young, tough, billionaire. And I’ve actually thought he was quite a good actor who was very underrated in a similar way to Keira Knightley, I think, when I was thinking of her forDangerous Method. Both of them have had great financial success and are stars based on franchises, but of course to do that you have to have a kind of screen charisma, you have to have a presence, which you can’t buy or create; you either have it or you don’t. That doesn’t mean you’re necessarily a good actor, though. But you have at least that. I looked at all the stuff that he’s done, and I thought he’s a really good actor. And then I spoke to him, and thought not only that, but he’s a really smart actor. And he’s funny, and he’s very sweet. That’s when I tried to convince him to do the movie, which he was a little afraid of, just because I think he doesn’t know how good he is, basically. And I think now that he’s done the movie, he’s starting to understand how good he is. Because he’s terrific.

And was he a fan of your work?
He knew my work, yeah. What’s interesting, too, about Rob is that he’s very well educated in terms of movies and movie history and foreign films. On the set, he and Juliette Binoche were talking about the most obscure French films and stuff like that together. He really knows his stuff. And yet, as I say, he’s a completely down-to-earth, sweet guy. Lovely to work with. And very funny.

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