The Nature of Subcultures
Another interview with Cronenberg puffing ‘A History of Violence’, with a different take on ‘Crash’ - Q: When Crash came out, a lot of people took it literally and thought it was stupid — how can you...
View ArticleThe Killer Inside: Ballard on Cronenberg
From the Guardian, Friday September 23, 2005 “David Cronenberg’s films are full of images that make us recoil in horror. But what we are really trying to hide from is the whole messy business of being...
View ArticlePervscan on Crash
Over at the esteemed Pervscan, they’ve picked up on the story we posted here, about Cronenberg’s film Crash being broadcast across English waters, and have answered my question, “Hands up who thinks...
View ArticleCronenberg in Crash Naming Furore
According to the New York Post, David Cronenberg, director of Crash, has this to say about the title of Paul Haggis’s new film, Crash: I thought it was very disrespectful, not just to me, but to J.G....
View ArticleJ.G. Ballard's Medical Fetish
What we’ve hinted at on Ballardian (ie JG Ballard’s Enlargement Phalloplasty; Why I Want to fuck John Howard), some people have ‘examined’ (ooh, err…nurse!) in a…ahem….’full frontal’ (ooh, vicar!)...
View ArticleCrash Bonsai Revisited
Porn sites love Ballard; I swear our site statistics turn up the oddest links. Enough to make a clean-living chap like me faint from shock. A hardcore fetish site called Goregasm linked to our ‘JG...
View ArticleCrash Wins Best Picture Oscar!
He may have missed out for History of Violence, but he did win for Crash…. In a huge Academy Awards boilover, we witnessed a rare victory for auto-eroticism and body horror, so let’s hear it for David...
View ArticleContrite Haggis Backs Down Over Ballardian Naming Furore
Perhaps wary of David Cronenberg’s veiled threat to snare him in a bear trap and skin him alive for dissing JG Ballard, Paul Haggis, director of the ‘other’ Crash, has this to say after his Oscar win...
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"Thirsty Man at the Spigot": An Interview with Jonathan Weiss
by Simon Sellars Victor Slezak as ‘T’ in The Atrocity Exhibition Ballardian presents an exclusive interview with Jonathan Weiss, director of The Atrocity Exhibition, the film based on the J.G. Ballard...
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JG Ballard: Autopsy of the New Millennium
JG Ballard expert Rick McGrath reports on a Ballard exhibition to be held at Barcelona’s Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona from July 2007 (they’ve resisted the temptation to call it ‘The...
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'No-One Dances in Ballard': An Interview with Mike Ryan
by Simon Sellars I think I’m the only person I know who doesn’t own a record player or a single record. I’ve never understood why, because my maternal grandparents were lifelong teachers of music, and...
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Critical Mass: Sound, Story and Music in David Cronenberg's Crash
As part of our Ballardian Music series, Cat Hope looks back at Howard Shore’s soundtrack for the David Cronenberg adaptation of Crash. —————————————————————————————————————- Cat Hope is an Australian...
View ArticleAtrocity Exhibition/Throat Sprockets
Thanks to TimC for pointing me towards this very positive review of Weiss’s Atrocity Exhibition film, published in Sight & Sound. Interestingly, the fellow who wrote that review, Tim Lucas, also...
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'When in doubt, quote Ballard': An interview with Iain Sinclair
Interview by Tim Chapman Iain Sinclair at the Barbican. Photo: Tim Chapman, © 2006. Iain Sinclair has been acclaimed as one of Britain’s most visionary writers and as an incomparable prose stylist. His...
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Inter-Porn Symp
Over at k-punk a few months back, Mark posted a radical thesis that positioned Basic Instinct 2 as the unofficial sequel to Cronenberg/Ballard’s Crash: [Catherine] Tramell returns in the second film...
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David Cronenberg’s Alien — Novelization by J.G. Ballard
———————————————————————————— Lyle Hopwood uncovers a lost Ballard work, apparently the only surviving fragment from JGB’s novelization of David Cronenberg’s film of Alien, before the studio infamously...
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The Politics of Enthusiasm: An Interview with Geoff Manaugh
by Simon Sellars Photo by Emiliano Granado. Used with permission. Geoff Manaugh is a writer and essayist whose work has appeared in Contemporary, Space & Culture, Blend, Lumpen, Inhabitat,...
View ArticleGerund Hunting: Amis vs Ballard
In an extraordinary, microcosmic review (behold: “the Amis full stop makes itself felt”; “these particular gerunds…allude to the male jaw”; “that dismissive ellipsis”) of Martin Amis’s new book, House...
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Collapsing Bulkheads: the Covers of Crash
by Rick Poynor ‘Missing the point’: (detail, Livre de Poche edition, 1973; design: Atelier Pascal Vercken). NOTE: This is an edited version of an essay published in Designing Pornotopia: Travels in...
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Ballardian Cinema: The Business of Strangers
Still from The Business of Strangers (dir. Patrick Stettner; 2002). During my search for ghosted Ballard film productions — vapourware movies based on Ballard books — it struck me that I should...
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Ballardosphere Wrap-Up: Part 6
+ IDEAL, RADIANT In his excellent paper, ‘Ballard’s Banlieue Radieuse’, delivered at the Ballard conference, Owen Hatherley locates JGB’s Vermilion Sands stories as a vision at right angles to the...
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UFOpunk: Mac Tonnies' Strange Blue World
Mac Tonnies is a Kansas-based writer of post-cyberpunk science fiction (recently published by the redoubtable Rudy Rucker). He’s also the author of the book After the Martian Apocalypse, a speculative...
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Crash! Full-Tilt Autogeddon
CRASH! (1971) from sdicht on Vimeo. by Simon Sellars CRASH! (1971) Director: Harley Cokliss | Writer: J.G. Ballard Starring: J.G. Ballard & Gabrielle Drake I wasn’t satisfied by just writing SF...
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Iain Sinclair's Ballard Biography
I reread Iain Sinclair’s BFI book on Cronenberg’s Crash recently as research for my article on the Crash! short film. I have to say I am amazed the BFI ever agreed to publishing it in a series about...
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Dream's Ransom: Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun
Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun (more at YouTube.) by Pedro Groppo EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987) Director: Steven Spielberg Screenplay: Tom Stoppard, based on the novel by J.G. Ballard Starring:...
View ArticleCrash: It's that Low Mechanical Hum in the Background
The resonance of Crash refuses to dissipate. Firstly, John emailed to inform me of a new Washington Times interview with David Cronenberg, in which the Baron of Blood makes this rather curious remark:...
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Jeff Bartlett: Man for Our Times
Some people get their kicks from braving a mob of blood-crazed shoppers to attack the nearest mannequin. But if that doesn’t appeal, why not exact virtual revenge? Keith emails to inform of one of the...
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Cronenberg Still Rages
From the New York Post: David Cronenberg, director of the smash “Eastern Promises,” is still mad at writer-director Paul Haggis for naming his 2005 Oscar-winning racial drama “Crash,” just nine years...
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Grave New World: Introduction, Part 1
A-bomb explosion, Bikini Atoll, 25 July, 1946. I’m a scholar, I teach Brit.Lit. professionally at the University of Warsaw. My PhD (1999) was on Angela Carter and it got me a job there as assistant...
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'Meet you all the way, Rosanna yeah'
How strange is this: Rosanna Arquette, and Crash, popping up in all sorts of places. This film, Ballard’s story, still packs a powerful psychological enema. First up, Maxim Magazine, anointing the...
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J.G. Ballard: The Visual Tribute
As promised, to mark HarperCollins’ Ballard design comp, here’s a selection of visual art I’ve come across, all directly inspired by or referencing themes in Ballard’s work. Note the prominence of The...
View ArticleCome in no. 27, your time is up
The Times has a list of the Greatest British Writers Since 1945. Ballard’s in there at no.25 no. 27, where he is appraised like so: With Empire of the Sun (1984), the fictionalised account of his...
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‘You are Hochhaus!’: Ballard in Berlin
Image from Hochhaus, © Paul Plamper & Niklas Goldbach, 2008. An Interview with Paul Plamper and Niklas Goldbach by Dan O’Hara In July on the roof terrace of the Ludwigsmuseum, the major museum of...
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'Accident' or 'Vulva'? The battle for your Ballardian dollar
Two readers, Alf & Peter, wrote in separately with news of ‘Accident: A New Fragrance for Women’. As the punchline says: ‘Accident. New fragrance for women. Fragrance strip: The unique fusion of...
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Ballard/Noys/Fisher
Ben Noys has recently published two academic articles on Ballard’s work, both of which can be found online in some form. Included is an update of a specific piece of his that I posted here on...
View ArticleOn the phone to Ballard
It’s good to see the Guardian’s online columnist Danny Leigh get behind our Ballardian Home Movie Competition. As Danny rightly points out, there’s loads of potential, despite a few people elsewhere...
View ArticleSimon Brook's Minus One
MINUS ONE (1991) Written & directed by: Simon Brook. Based on the short story by: J.G. Ballard. Produced by: Susanna Virtanen. Music: Joshua Zaentz. Starring: Alfred Hyslop, Paul Ravich, Earl...
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'The Crashman': An Experiment in Applied Internet Ballardianism
“The Crashman”: An Experiment in Applied Internet Ballardianism. by the Crashman. ABOVE: ‘White Bird’ by the Crashman. ‘XB-70, Tu-144: White Bird Must Fly, or she will crash’. From the moment Blake...
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1971: Year of the Drake
From outer space to inner… LEFT: Gabrielle Drake in UFO. RIGHT: Ms Drake in Crash!. Pringle: [In Crash!] you were playing opposite a professional actress, so it wasn’t as though it was purely a...
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The Car that Ate Bournville
Above: the offending vehicle. The Zodiac 3000 exhibition in Birmingham, dedicated to and inspired by Ballard, has already drawn first blood, severely disrupting the stasis of surrounding Brum...
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Coming Never: Richard Gere as Blake
ABOVE: Richard Gere as Blake: more vapourware… None of my books are being made into films at the moment, all is quiet. A lot of Philip K. Dick’s books have been filmed; they fit the American mood. His...
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Rick McGrath's Letter from Barcelona: The Exquisite Corpse, An Autopsy of the...
Rick McGrath’s Letter from Barcelona: THE EXQUISITE CORPSE: AN AUTOPSY OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM by Rick McGrath ABOVE: Rick talking to CCCB Director-General Josep Ramoneda on opening night. Photo by...
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Unique visual complexities: A review of Grande Anarca
GRANDE ANARCA (Italy, 2003) review by Jamie Sherry ABOVE: Grande Anarca, part 1 (2003; dir. Alvise Renzini). Runtime: 18 mins Voice: Ermanna Montanari Sound: Davide Sandri Music: Egle Sommacal Editor:...
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In Defence of the Virtual: A Secret History of Ballardian Film Adaptations
by Simon Sellars Originally published in the Norwegian-language magazine Vagant, May-August 2011, pp. 10-11. It appears here in English for the first time. In 1986, Christian Bale, as a child actor,...
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J.G. Ballard Live in London
Photo by Simon Sellars This transcript was first published in Sub Dee Magazine (no. 5 Summer 1997), a print project I was involved in long before Ballardian. At the time, J.G. Ballard’s career was in...
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High-Rise: Wheatley vs Cronenberg
ABOVE: Trailer for High-Rise (2016), directed by Ben Wheatley. ABOVE: Opening sequence to Shivers (1975), directed by David Cronenberg. High-Rise, Ben Wheatley’s much-anticipated adaptation of the...
View ArticleApplied Ballardianism forthcoming from Urbanomic in 2017
I’m excited to announce that my book, Applied Ballardianism: A Theory of Nothing, will be forthcoming from Urbanomic in late 2017. The publisher’s page for the book is here, and Urbanomic’s blurb is...
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From Shanghai to Norwich: An Interview with Jeannette Baxter
J.G. Ballard, in 1960, posing in front of his ‘experimental billboard fiction’. On 5 May 2007, ‘From Shanghai to Shepperton: An International Conference on J.G. Ballard’, apparently the first-ever...
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‘Kafka with Unlimited Chicken Kiev’: J.G. Ballard on Cocaine Nights
I phoned J.G. Ballard at his home early in September 1996, shortly before the publication of his novel, Cocaine Nights, the murder mystery set in the Costa Del Sol, whose ‘detective story’ format...
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‘Crash Talk’: A Q&A with David Cronenberg and J.G. Ballard, London, 1996
Transcribed by Mike Holliday The following ‘Guardian Lecture’ took place on 10 November 1996 at the British Film Institute, London. The first U.K. screening of Crash had taken place the previous...
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