Love it, loathe it or just go "Huh?" but the jury at Cannes probably got it right when they awarded "Crash" a prize for "audacity." (In a further sign of that nutty French brand of respect, Cronenberg was jury foreman at last spring's festival. "I just about fell over," he told Maclean's magazine.)

For those who were unaware of it, Ted Turner is not French. As the owner of Fine Line, the company with U.S. rights to "Crash," Turner held up stateside release of the film for months while loudly decrying this new attack on American morals (alas, despite Robert Fulford's best efforts it was already too late for Canada).

"At a certain point," the director said in "Cronenberg on Cronenberg," "I realized that what I liked about the classic filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s, like Bergman and Fellini, was that you entered a world of their own creation when you went to see their films. That world was consistent from film to film."

Rent Cronenberg's most recent film, "eXistenZ," and the world you enter is immediately familiar -- weird, yet familiar. In some ways "eXistenZ" feels like a step back to the B-movie feel of earlier Cronenberg movies -- a lighter (for him) and more coherent reinterpretation of "Videodrome." But as Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law disappear into the maw of an all-enveloping video game, any regular Cronenberg watcher will recognize the turf.

Cronenberg listed his own themes to Rodley as: "Disintegration, aging, death, separation, the meaning of life. All that stuff." He has spoken of a pool of imagery and metaphor that he draws from repeatedly, and in fact there's no mistaking certain Cronenbergian touches. Typical is the organic gun from "eXistenZ," constructed from the flesh and bones of an exotic meal and using teeth for bullets. Likewise the "eXistenZ" game pods, not constructed but hatched from amphibian eggs -- players do not so much switch them on as excite them by rubbing fleshy nipples. It's reminiscent of the bug typewriters in "Naked Lunch," which become orgasmic when a choice phrase is typed, which in turn is reminiscent of God knows how many other of the director's trademark visions.

That these cinematic nightmares contrast mightily with the man's placid exterior and staid domestic status (his sister, Denise, does costumes for his films and his daughter Cassandra, a second unit and assistant director, has helped Dad behind the camera on several) is not lost on Cronenberg. "The reason I'm secure is because I'm crazy," he told Rodley. "The reason I'm stable is because I'm nuts. It's palpable to me."

Aside from being one of the most articulate directors around -- "Cronenberg on Cronenberg," compiled from interview transcripts, amply demonstrates the point -- Cronenberg seems to maintain a playful sense of humor about his work. He helped promote a Canadian cable channel's week-long celebration of his movies by taping a spot in which he is seen phoning the station to complain about his disgusting films. Cronenberg also dabbles in acting, in his own movies and those of others (he's the assassin in "To Die For"), and journalism -- "eXistenZ" was inspired partly by an interview he did with Salman Rushdie for Shift magazine.

Long dogged by critics, Cronenberg rejects claims that his work exhibits misogyny and sexual disgust (although he doesn't disagree with his pal Martin Scorsese who, having read many Cronenberg interviews, told the director that he obviously doesn't understand his own films).

"You make a movie to find out what it was that made you want to make the movie," Cronenberg told Rodley.

Many would be afraid -- be very afraid -- to hear the answers.

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