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Apr 23, 2013 By Chris Tinkham Brandon Cronenberg

With his lanky frame, long sideburns, and piercings through his nose and left eyebrow, Toronto-based director Brandon Cronenberg looks like a rocker, someone who would blend in on the stage of a Warped Tour show, maybe a bassist for a band inspired by The Clash. His easy laughter and just-out-of-bed, surfer intonation belie the sinister tension of his feature debut, Antiviral, a film that’s disturbing enough to do the Cronenberg name justice. Brandon is the son of venerable director David Cronenberg, who explored the sick, twisted, and frightening in films such as Scanners, The Fly, and Dead Ringers.

Antiviral is set in an alternate present day where viruses from celebrities are bought by clinics and sold to fans who want to feel intimately connected to the objects of their desire. There are even butcher shops that grow steaks and meats from the muscle cells of celebrities in order to be consumed by fans. Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) is a salesman at one of the prominent clinics. He also works in the black market, smuggling samples of viruses in his own body. When he becomes stricken by a virus that has made superstar Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon) terminally ill, his only hope for survival is to navigate through an underworld of treacherous characters to trace the origin of the virus.

Under the Radar met with Brandon Cronenberg in Hollywood last November to discuss the conception and making of Antiviral. Cronenberg was in town for screenings of the film at the AFI Fest. Antiviral had screened at the Cannes and Toronto film festivals earlier in 2012 and now is available on VOD as a part of the IFC Midnight electronic film festival.

Chris Tinkham: I understand that the idea for this film came from when you battled a serious case of the flu some years ago. As you were in such a miserable state, how did you get the idea of people wanting to become infected with viruses?

Brandon Cronenberg: It was the nature of the fever dream I was having. I was getting really obsessive about the physicality of my illness and the fact that I had something in my body and in my cells that had come from someone else’s body, and how that’s a sort of weirdly intimate thing if you look at it that way. When you’re having a fever dream, you start—or I start—getting really obsessive in an uncomfortable way. After I got better, I was trying think of maybe a character who would see disease as something intimate, because that idea struck me as interesting. Then I thought that a celebrity-obsessed fan who wants Angelina Jolie’s cold as a way of feeling physically connected to her is not totally implausible. And, the fact that it’s not totally implausible is kind of strange to begin with, and so it developed from there into a metaphor I thought was interesting, for discussing that culture.

Syd March, played by Caleb Landry Jones, standing before a billboard of Hannah Geist (played by Sarah Gadon).

What made Caleb Landry Jones right for the role of Syd?

He’s a really good actor [laughs] more than anything else.

Was there something you were looking for prior to meeting him?

Caleb has some physical qualities that are, of course, useful, because he’s pale and the fact that he had red hair—and there’s a sort of red and white color theme to the film—were both interesting. But more than that, when we saw clips of things he had been in, he has that hard-to-articulate, fascinating quality that some actors have that make you want to watch them, and that’s really exciting and rare. He’s a nuanced, physical actor, which we needed as well. But it’ s mostly that he’s fascinating to watch, and for a character who is in every scene and is in almost every shot, we needed someone who could be really captivating and interesting.

And Sarah Gadon has become somewhat of a Cronenberg regular.

Right! [Laughs]

Did you meet her as a result of her working on your father’s film?

I saw her in A Dangerous Method, and I thought she was great, which is one of the reasons I was so interested in having her in this film, but I didn’t meet her on that shoot. I didn’t meet her until after we had sent her the script for Antiviral.

And when you sent her the script, you had the role of Hannah in mind for her, but she wanted to play a different one?

Yeah, she wanted to play Levine. She said she really liked the script.

She knew that she had been sent the script for the Hannah role?

Yeah, she knew it was the Hannah role. She said she didn’t see herself playing that sort of icon. She wasn’t sure about that but she really liked the story, and so she wanted to play Levine. The first time we really sat down and talked, I was there to convince her to play Hannah, and she was there to convince me to let her play Levine. She had a lot of interesting arguments for why she would make a good Levine, and if we’d had endless time, I might have auditioned her for Levine. She said she would do an audition just to see what that was about, but the thing is, we had a really good Levine already, and she was perfect for Hannah, and we were running out of time, and so fortunately she eventually saw it my way.

I read that Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was not so much an influence on this film, but it made a strong impression on you. What was it about that film?

It wasn’t just that. It was 12:08 East of Bucharest and that whole Romanian new wave. It’s a really fascinating type of filmmaking that they’re involved in, very naturalistic and yet not really natural in some ways. I just happened to be very interested in it at the time, and even more than that, I’d say [Giorgos Lanthimos’] Dogtooth. It’s so good. That film and his film Alps, that he did after it. Dogtooth is totally brilliant. Alps is also great, not quite as good. We got very excited during pre-production watching those with Kareem Huseein, our cinematographer, and [first assistant director] Rob Cotterill. Those films, but in particular Dogtooth, we got very worked up about.

What was the first of your father’s films to make a major impression on you?

The only film of his I really saw for the longest time was Fast Company. When I was a kid, I watched Fast Company quite a bit. But I didn’t really see his other films until later in life, sort of my late teens, early 20s.

Was it inevitable that you would become a filmmaker and that your first feature would be of the twisted variety?

I don’t think so. I really didn’t like the idea of getting into film for the longest time, because people approached me with those preconceptions, or they assumed I must love film and must want to be into film, and it was very obnoxious, so I took great pleasure in telling them that I didn’t like film at all and didn’t have any interest in being a filmmaker, and “screw you.” [Laughs] But yeah, I guess at a certain point that seemed like a bad reason to avoid something that was potentially interesting.

What’s next for you? What are you working on?

I’m writing something else now, but I’ve been kind of caught up in supporting this film. I did a three-week festival tour in October. So, I’m working on something, but I don’t have anything interesting to say about it yet. But I hope to be able to direct it in the next year or so.

Are you interested in moving away from sci-fi/horror? Or again, as you said, is it not a good idea to make such decisions based on preconceptions?

I think it’s not a good reason. I’ve always had this in my life, but I knew, going into film, people would be especially interested in comparing me to my father. So, I sort of made a conscious decision, when I decided to get into film, that I would, as much as possible, not think about his career when deciding to make my own films. Because, trying to not do anything that he does, first of all, is very difficult. People talk about him as a horror director, but he hasn’t really done horror in a while. He’s really evolved as a filmmaker. So, to do nothing that touches on any of the films he’s done would be very hard, ‘cause he’s had a very long evolution. But also, defining myself in opposition to his career would still be defining myself by his career, and I don’t think I could work from an honest place if I did that.

ifcfilms.com/films/antiviral