Time & Perspective Quote by David Cronenberg

Cronenberg, a director famous for turning bodily transformation into philosophy, is talking about a different kind of mutation: how the job itself keeps sprouting new limbs. The line reads like a mild production note, but the intent is sharper. He is naming the quiet industrial creep where “finishing the film” no longer means locking picture; it means feeding an endless afterlife of extras, explanations, and promotional self-narration.

The subtext is a critique of forced intimacy. DVD commentaries and “deleted scenes” sell the fantasy that audiences deserve access to the artist’s workshop, that every choice should be annotated, every scrap rescued from the cutting room. That pressure shifts the director from maker to curator of their own myth, obliged to justify decisions and perform authorship on demand. For a filmmaker like Cronenberg, whose power often lies in ambiguity and unease, that expectation can feel like a tax on mystery.

Context matters: he’s speaking from the era when DVDs and early web culture rewired distribution. Studios discovered that the “package” could be monetized again and again, and directors became part of the value-add. The web blog detail is telling: it’s not just bonus content, it’s ongoing presence. You don’t disappear into the next project; you stay online, narrating productivity.

What makes the quote work is its procedural language. No grand complaint, just a list. That’s the point: the expansion is normalized, bureaucratic, and therefore harder to resist. The horror, Cronenberg implies, isn’t cinematic. It’s managerial.