WW CSSC Writer Wednesday | Blog the 9th: Affection for the Affected

Cosmopolis ? People talking in circles, a constant flow of (aural) information

David Cronenberg?s Cosmopolis is abrasive cinema, though not necessarily in the way you might imagine given the writer/director?s track record. By the standards of Cronenberg?s past efforts, even some of his more recent entries, the film is only mildly graphic* (again, that?s relative to a guy known for scenes like this).

What I found most provoking this time around is the nature of the language in the script, Cronenberg?s first writing credit since 1999?s?eXistenZ. Long monologues and dialogues spurt forth like the endless streams of financial data running on the video screens illuminating Eric Packer?s (Robert Pattison) stretch limousine. The screenplay ? adapted from Don DeLillo?s source novel ? is equally poetic and theatrical, a tough nut to crack for audiences, and presumably, the actors involved in the production as well.

Suffice to say, I loved the film and cannot wait to see it again. Along with the best of Cronenberg?s works, the threat of derailment on a narrative and structural level is part of what makes the film so exciting. No small feat for a script largely confined to the back of a stretch limo, however decked out it may be.

The reviews have been mixed, and if I were to make an educated guess, what?s turning people off to Cosmopolis is exactly what turned me on: the affected nature of the language. By largely sealing off the locations ? the limo, lunch counters, book stores, a barbershop ? Cronenberg forces the audience into the conversations. We burrow into the language of each interaction, which typically consists of Packer and only one other character.

Contrary to Alexander Mackendrick?s idea of triangulation ? a scene instantly becomes stronger/more interesting by adding a third character, even if that character never speaks ? Cosmopolis almost exclusively relies on one-on-one dialogues, or confrontations. Packer is a man who lives and dies by minutiae, so the specificity of each discussion cannot risk inclusion, save for a few notable exceptions.

Budd Wilkins, in his Cosmopolis review for Slant Magazine, likens the films pacing to that of the ?the screwiest of screwball comedies,? and Wilkins has hit the nail right on the head. His Girl Friday,?The Lady Eve, Philadelphia Story and all the rest of the screwball set hail from a period when Hollywood still fed off the aesthetics of theatre.

Thus, heightened dialogue was the norm. Now, the typical viewer has been conditioned to have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that doesn?t sound real ? ?real,? in this case, referring to the way people speak to one another in real life.

Which seems an awful double standard. If we go to the movies to see the fantastic, why shouldn?t we hear the fantastic as well?

In a recent interview with Cronenberg for Film Comment, Amy Taubin brought up the issues people had raised regarding the dialogue in Cosmopolis (see excerpt below):

TAUBIN: I don?t think it?s so much that people can?t follow it or can?t understand what?s being said as much as they think people don?t talk like that. But people in movies don?t talk the way people talk in life, even in movies that seemed realistic at the moment they were made.

CRONENBERG: They don?t. And why is that necessary? For me, the failing of a lot of movies is that the talking is exactly what people expect, even if you?re doing a period piece where people absolutely do not talk the way we talk now, or a sci-fi movie, where you?re imagining a future society?

Cronenberg goes on to note that all the characters speak in this strange vernacular because they come from the same world, or, ?cultural place, which is to say, the obsessive world of money and the currency market.?

Think of other contemporary screenwriters (or writer/directors) who are similarly charged with writing in heightened, or, so-called unrealistic speech: Whit Stillman, Wes Anderson, The Coen Brothers, Aaron Sorkin. These writers deal in very specific subjects, instantly identifiable groups of people whose manner of speech imprints and transfers from one member to the other.

Archeris one of the best examples out there for this type of groupthink writing. Across three seasons, the in-joking and closeness of the cast of characters begets a very specific pattern of dialogue. Each character has his or her own distinct personality, but the similarities multiply as the show carries on.

Though the manner of dialogue on Archer is far more colloquial than the style favored in Cosmopolis, there is, oddly enough, a shared idea between the two. Ideas and information penetrate the body and pass from one person to another, either from physical proximity or, in the cinema of David Cronenberg, an astounding myriad of other means.

We rub off on one another, no matter how distanced we try to appear.

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* Fair warning for those who have yet to see Cosmopolis ? it?s still got its share of grisly moments.

Currently residing in Brooklyn, New York, Zachary Herrmann started off writing entertainment journalism during college, interviewing a wide variety of personalities in film and music. He now works in Manhattan by day, and pursues creative writing in his apartment by night. In May 2011, he and his brother Jesse received top prize in the 2010 ? 11 Canadian Short Screenplay Competition for their short script, Elijah the Prophet. Through the summer and fall, Zach helped coordinate a Kickstarter.com fundraising campaign with director James Cooper and CSSC?s own David Cormican, successfully raising over $20,000 in production funds. The film wrapped shooting in April 2012, and is now awaiting the start of its festival run.

Source: http://www.screenplay-contest.com/2012/08/29/ww-cssc-writer-wednesday-blog-the-9th-affection-for-the-affected-speech/

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