Filmmaking has become so expensive that when a studio back a filmmakers vision it becomes part of the legacy for the film. In 2025 it was a question if Sinners would make back its 100 million dollar budget (plus marketing) or the 130 million spent on One Battle After Another. There was the phrase “one for them and one for me”, but now if you have to smuggle that one for you into the one for them. You have to build a career simply to get ONE for you, and the art film with a limited audience seems like so long ago. I’m going back to 1991 when visionary director David Cronenberg raised 17 million for his adaptation of the unfilmable novel by William S. Burroughs.
Cronenberg turned out to be the perfect person for the job, folding in biographical details that inspired Burroughs to write the novel. Coming off The Fly and Dead Ringers, Cronenberg delivered a combination of those two tones. Surreal body horror to visually convey personal psychosis. The key Crew Member in this was Chris Walas, in charge of Special Creatures & Effects. Coming off an Oscar for The Fly, Walas helped design the typewriter that comes to life as a giant beetle, a giant centipede and the Mugwumps, humanoid insect-figures with long tongues, one of which also works as a typewriter.
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