The image that stays with me from 1999's Existenz is the bioport, the spinal orifice, that Cronenberg creates for the game-player - in a moment of libidinous madness, Jude Law penetrates Jennifer Jason Leigh's bioport with his tongue rather than the game. It's disturbing in the way only Cronenberg can be. I tell him it doesn't seem right - I watch it and find it a turn-on. "Well, of course. An orifice is an orifice. The sexual aspects of it are pretty obvious and the psychology of orifices does involve sexuality of every kind. Every orifice has come to have its sexual use, including ears, noses and everything else. So why would this new orifice not have its sexual aspect? Of course it does. So, to me, I'm just revealing things that are there to be revealed."
The film critic Alexander Walker famously condemned Crash, about a group of people turned on by car crashes, as being "beyond depravity." What did Walker mean by that? "I have no idea what he meant by that." He wears "beyond depravity" as a badge of honor, though. "I was pretty proud of that, and quoted it many, many times."
Crash, released in 1996, is the most obvious example of how his movies force us to examine, as voyeurs, unpalatable desires.
He refers me to the throat-cutting scene in Eastern Promises and explains how its inspiration is rooted in the modern fundamentalist world. "You watch a beheading by several priests all shouting and it looks absolutely like a gay gang rite. I think there's a huge homoerotic element - not necessarily homoerotic, when you're stoning a woman to death, there's a heteroerotic element, too - in that that's very disturbing. I think those people doing that would be shocked that you would suggest such a thing, but to me it's obvious. And I think it needs to be addressed. I don't think you can cover it up with religiosity and self-righteousness because you're actually beheading this person whose arms are tied behind his back and he's on the floor, and you're sitting on top of him. What is that? It's very perversely sexual. I think it's evident."
Cronenberg has never belonged to the elliptical school of filmmakers. If there's an eye-gouging in the script, we can be sure we'll get to see it. You seem to do violence with such relish, I say. "That might be you projecting on to me. No, no, there's a cinematic joy because I'm creating something that looks real and it's horrific." Hmm. "In A History of Violence," he continues, "I'm saying you shoot somebody in the head, you've done a lot of damage to a human being by doing that, and I don't want to let the audience off the hook. If they enjoy that, then fine, that's good, then they should know that about themselves; that they might not mind shooting a bad guy in the head, even if it was pretty horrific and disgusting and repulsive and hard to look at. When I showed that movie in the States, some journalists said, 'No, that's great, I love that, good for him.'" Funny, everybody gets off on Cronenberg's sex and violence except him.
There is an old story that, after watching Cronenberg's early films, Martin Scorsese said he was terrified of meeting him. I ask if it's true. "He did say that, yes, because he saw Shivers and Rabid. When he told me that, I said, Marty, the guy who made Taxi Driver is afraid to meet me! I'm afraid to meet you!" Did he like the idea that Scorsese was scared of him? "I did, but it's kind of weird because I expect straight citizens to confuse the artist with his art - they think if you make violent films you must be a violent person. What bothered me was that another filmmaker could make the same mistake."
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