Be THE FLY, Be very THE FLY

A perfect movie. No notes.

In my day job, I am a movie programmer. This is just a fancy way of saying that I pick what films get shown at the movie theater I work for. In March, I will have been doing this job under various titles - Creative Manager, Programming Director, Film Buyer, Artistic Director - for fourteen years. When I tell people what I do for a living, the top question I get (after “How do I get your job?” and “You get paid to watch movies all day?”) is “What’s your favorite movie?” The first two questions are not the easiest to answer (“Luck?” “Kinda, but also there’s a lot of spreadsheets.”). The last one, though, is a piece of cake. It’s THE FLY, specifically David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake.

I’ve hosted a weekly horror series for over a decade, so, of course, it makes sense to most people that I’d pick a scary movie as my favorite film, but here’s the thing - horror is not my favorite genre. Truthfully, I don’t have a favorite genre - I love masala cinema. Masala films, a term popularized in Indian cinema, are movies in which multiple genres are blended to create the cinematic equivalent of fusion cuisine. I like scary movies, but I prefer scary movies that are sad or funny or - best of all - all three at once. I love movies with unexpected musical numbers, ones featuring very funny performances in an otherwise somber character study, or movies that start as a crime film but become a science fiction noir. In other words, I love movies that aren’t constrained within the walls of a single genre. I want to go to a movie and laugh, cry, scream, and thrill. I’m too scared to ride actual roller coasters, so I am obsessed with films that serve as emotional roller coasters.

David Cronenberg’s THE FLY is a perfect example of Masala Cinema. The film begins in something resembling “in media res” - we join Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) and Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) in the middle of a conversation at an industry party. The chemistry between the two actors (real-life partners throughout the late ‘80s) is off the charts. We don’t know who these characters are and what they’re talking about, but we can already feel the sexual tension build. This will become important because THE FLY is, in addition to being about a dude turning into a giant mutant house fly, primarily a love story. More so, it’s a love story that requires the audience to believe that two characters who have just met and begun a steamy romance can, within weeks, share a profound connection that will be tested to its limits by the follies of man-made science.

There’s a scene early in THE FLY where Golblum’s Seth is trying to explain the difficulties he’s having in perfecting his teleporter technology to Davis’s Veronica, a science reporter. They’ve just had sex and some post-coital nibbling and discussion about the allures of flesh (Cronenberg characters must, by law, refer to “flesh” at least a dozen times per movie) when inspiration strikes Seth. His invention has mastered teleporting in-animate objects, but teleporting organic matter has proven to be messy, as evidenced by inside-out primates and artificial-tasting steak. Veronica’s cute aggression unlocks a realization in Brundle’s head: His computers don’t understand the poetry of flesh. They only speak in 0s and 1s and haven’t been taught to understand the complexity of meat.

In many ways, I feel this is symbolic of Cronenberg’s own career. His films before THE FLY are all incredible displays of body horror - sometimes nauseating symphonies of unexpected orifices and exploding heads. They are smart and heady and beyond the work of any of his contemporaries, but what they aren’t (for the most part) are emotionally rich melodramas. THE FLY, on the other hand, is downright operatic. And I’m not just saying that because it was later adapted into an opera.

In adapting the film (Cronenberg shares screenwriting credit with Charles Edward Pogue but has said in interviews that this is only a formality to honor Pogue’s initial contributions in breaking the plot - Cronenberg is responsible for 99 percent of the dialogue in the final film), Cronenberg unlocked the poetry of the flesh. More than any of his previous films, THE FLY thrums with heartbreak and passion. Characters babble Cronenberg-speak about plasma pools but also feel like real human beings whose story you’re rooting for. The body horror horrifies, for sure, but beyond any stomach-churning nausea that may come with seeing Brundle vomit drop, the impact that lingers the longest after the credits roll has to do with the human tragedy that unfolds between Brundle and Quaife’s relationship, not an arm being broken in a spectacularly gross way.

I can’t rewatch films like some of my friends do. I have to let movies simmer in their stew for a few years before I can revisit them, lest the magic dissipates upon rewatch. With THE FLY, though, I can watch the film repeatedly and never tire of it. It moves too briskly, flowing like a river. Every line of dialogue feels essential, but this is a movie that also coveys so much without a single word. When Veronica watches Seth first discover his supernatural strength after the transport incident in which he is genetically spliced with a house fly, we see her emotions bounce between fear, awe, and lust, tangling up in one another like the wires that live behind a computer desk. Davis’s acting shows us exactly what’s going on in her head without her ever having to say a word. Even the film’s frequent shots of computers computing drips with theatricality. Brundle’s computers don’t act like computers act. With their dramatic reveals of data - revelations blinking across the screen with all the tension of film composer Howard Shore’s pulsing horns - they are a Greek chorus singing the film’s warnings of what happens when man meddles too closely into God’s domain.

THE FLY is my north star in all things creative. It’s the pinnacle of art I will spend my entire career shooting towards and consistently failing to hit. It’s a perfect movie that we humans are simply too lucky to have been gifted in our lifetimes.

It doesn’t matter how many tariffs against Canada Trump rolls out; I will watch THE FLY for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. God bless David Cronenberg. He changed my life with one simple word: Cheeseburger.

(Pssst … live in Houston? You can see THE FLY on the big screen this Wednesday at 8:30 PM at the River Oaks Theatre)