Crash

by David Cronenberg, J.G. Ballard

Presents the screenplay of the film, based on J.G. Ballard's novel of the same name, about the adventures of a married couple in a future world centered on the automobile and on multi-lane freeways

Genres: Film, Fiction

67 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director and occasional actor.

He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical.

In the first half of his career, Cronenberg explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction, culminating in his visceral and emotional remake of The Fly (1986), with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, followed by Dead Ringers (1988), with Jeremy Irons in the lead role.

Cronenberg has worked with Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen in A History of Violence (2005), Eastern Promises (2007), both crime thrillers, and period drama A Dangerous Method (2011), also with Michael Fassbender (Promotheus)and Keira Knightley, and Twilight star Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis (2012) and Maps to the Stars (2014), also featuring Julianne Moore.

Consumed (2014) is the first novel by Cronenberg.

Reviews

[Adam]

Enjoyably bizarre and obsessive. Unlike the novel, the screenplay is so short (fewer than 80 pages) that the themes don't have a chance to get redundant or boring.

[Holly]

The conversation that Cronenberg’s Crash has with Ballard’s original material is mark of an exceptional adaptation.

Ballard’s depersonalised insular schizophrenic ‘cautionary tale’ about the extremities people will seek to find even microscopic satisfaction, is transformed by moving image into a personal, romantic observation of a niche sub-culture seeking a revolution of affect in a cold, distanced world.
Couldn’t have had a better filmmaker adapt this, fits so perfect into Cronenberg’s filmography.

The script is so stripped back n economic..
Most of the dialogue is one line, where the descriptions/action borrows heavily from Ballard’s articulation of automobile similes
eg
“Below it, the traffic moves sluggishly around the crowded concrete lanes, the roofs of the vehicles forming a continuous carapace of polished cellulose.”

The James Ballard character is just as much Cronenberg situated in his own narrative, as Ballard was, naming him after himself. James Ballard comes to signify Cronenberg’s own exploration of techno-mutilated bodies in search of a profound eroticism, that his films were working towards.
would say that Crash was definitely his most personal film, until the release of Crimes of the Future.

[ꕤ lindsay]

had to read this for my writing class and it didn't teach me how to write a screenplay but ☝️ it did teach me how to be horny about vehicular manslaughter. so i think that's a win

[Jevron McCrory]

A rare film of remarkable disturbing power, the bare bones of the script as stark and revealing as the subject matter.

Crash isn't for everyone. It should come with a boldly underlined cautionary warning. It does disturb me. I do wonder why someone would want to write about this, let alone make a film about it, but the power, quality and sheer class of the art speaks for itself.

One of my absolute favorites.

(And did I mention my copy is hand signed by David Cronenberg himself? No? I'll have to remember that....)

[Jamie Grefe]

An incredible meditation on the vapidity of sexual worship via car crashes and airplane hangars.

[milly]

this script is sterile in many ways, as clear as its meant to be, but it offers much more intimacy than we get in the film.

i love the movie. it's one of my favorites (though as my favorite cronenberg? i'm not sure...) and i rewatch it... all the time. i also love the book -- just a little more. my biggest issue in the film is that the intimacy is so here-and-there! for a novel that is so vile and disgusting and built on not just man-woman relationships, not just man-to-man... but lesbian relationships as well! so much so that the end scene is much bigger and more grand! so much so that renata is a central character to catherine -- almost as much so as james is!
reading the book AFTER watching the movie made me imagine that an adaptation of ballard's novel WHERE the lesbian relationships are discussed, AND where there is much more intimacy, was thrown out the window! and could never be done!

but lo and behold cronenberg, who is on-off good, somehow wrote up all the theme-strengthening scenes.... and then.... cut them.... for no reason! so much of the movie is lost because david cronenberg -- who is supposedly a nasty, putrid, horrible lover of horror and blood and EROTICA -- cuts it out!

i did like the script cause it's short and good and leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but imagine my shock reading this (in class) at the mention of renata, and not just the back of her shirt that we see for half a second in the film.

[mason j]

one of the best films ever made