David Cronenberg is such an interesting director. I loved seeing him at the Academy Museum, talking about his film eXistenZ, which was crazily inspired by a clandestine meeting with the celebrated author Salman Rushdie in London, which directly influenced the creation of his sci-fi thriller.Let's go over the details and how a character's gender swap made everything click into place.David Cronenberg on ‘eXistenZ’Have you ever wondered where a director's inspiration comes from? Sometimes, the most unexpected real-life events can spark the most creative ideas. For Cronenberg, it was meeting Salman Rushdie in London, while Rushdie was living under a fatwa, a death sentence, issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.Basically, people wanted to kill Rushdie for his work. Security was paramount, and their meeting was shrouded in secrecy. Cronenberg recounts his surprise when a London police officer, tasked with his security, hailed a regular taxi to take him to Rushdie's hidden location.And that sparked Cronenberg's storyteller genes. He knew this could lead him somewhere. Cronenberg thought: what if a video game artist, a creator of virtual worlds, was the subject of a fatwa? This became the central premise of eXistenZ, which follows Allegra Geller, a game designer who is hunted by assassins while her latest virtual reality game, "eXistenZ," is being tested.When Cronenberg started working out the initial script, he wanted a male protagonist. But the deeper he got, Cronenberg felt the story wasn't quite working. It was only when he made the pivotal decision to change the lead character to a female...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Today