Tom Shone
A Very Odd Beast
One of David Cronenberg’s favourite poems is The Flea by John Donne:
‘Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee.’
It is an idea that would appeal to a film maker who started his career with a film, Shivers, about sexually transmitted parasite slugs, and whose most recent film ended with the death of two gynaecologist twins. For Cronenberg, the idea of two bloods mingling is no mere conceit: in
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