Cosmopolis is Cronenberg's adaptation of the 2003 novel of the same name by Don DeLillo.

When Luke suggested this movie, I was very interested in talking about it because I'd seen it twice before, but not recently.

Certain images from this movie have stayed in my mind, although I don't think the movie has ever quite got its tender

hooks in me because I think it's David Cronenberg's most challenging film. For me, at least,

it's his coldest to the touch, which is saying something. It's very deliberately unengratiating.

I think it's got Cronenberg's hardest protagonist, which again is really saying something. Watching it again,

I was struck with admiration that somebody could raise $20 million to make a movie this

stubbornly unlovable, all but guaranteed to lose money at the box office. I think you really

enjoyed watching this movie, Luke. I had a strange reaction to it. I love

thinking about this movie. I know I'm going to love talking about this movie. The experience of

sitting and watching this movie, I have always found distinctly unpleasant. And I still feel

that way. I'm curious what your reaction to the experience of watching this movie is.

Well, you're right that I really did enjoy it, and this was my first time seeing it, though I don't entirely disagree with what you say.

I mean, I think challenging is a good word.

This is a film where characters often speak in kind of long, didactic monologues, and, you know, a line can be spoken without really having

anything to do with or, you know, bearing no direct relation on what was said previously.

Cronenberg said in an interview in film comment that the dialogue in DeLillo's novel is what

attracted him to this project. He says, I love the way it shot off in so many different

directions at once, and that it was so strangely mechanical and dehumanized and yet so

obsessive and passionate underneath. So much of human discourse is like that. The human reality

is buried under the grammar and technology of language. And I think the dialogue more than anything is what I bounce off of in this movie.

I feel myself going insane when I listen to these characters.

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