Cronenberg & Shore "Fly" into Hollywood
Howard Shore’s opera The Fly, based on the 1986 film directed by David Cronenberg (itself a remake of the 1958 film starring Vincent Price and Al Hedison), will open in Los Angeles next month. In honor of the event, the American Film Institue is hosting a screening of the film in Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome on Wednesday, September 3 at 8:00pm. This will be a brand new print of the film, and Cronenberg and Shore (who are in town for the opera) will be on hand to answer questions before the screening.
The film is part of the AFI’s Director’s Screenings. The AFI’s page aptly describes this film:
THE FLY is an extraordinary example of Cronenberg’s particular brand of “body horror”; flesh transformed by disease. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is an eccentric scientist, whose experiments with teleportation go awry, leading to one of the horror genre’s most disgusting and gory physical transformations. Ultimately, David Cronenberg’s version of THE FLY – based on a short story by George Langelaan and the 1958 film that starred Vincent Price — is a dark romantic tragedy about the wasting away of a brilliant man who mutates into an insect as his loved one looks on helplessly.
The opera version of The Fly will have six performances only at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, beginning on September 7 and running through the 27th. The Fly made its debut on at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. Cronenberg himself directed the Paris stage production, with Placido Domingo conducting the orchestra. David Henry Hwang (whose M. Butterfly was turned into a film by Cronenberg) supplied the libretto. Shore, of course, scored the film version, from which he sampled a couple of themes. Other veterans from the film on board for the opera include creature effects designer Stephan Dupuis and costume designer Denise Cronenberg. Sets are by Dante Ferretti (SWEENEY TODD), lighting by A.J. Weisbard.
The ArcLight Cinema’s Cinerama Dome is located at 6360 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood CA. You can purchase tickets for the screening at the ArcLight’s website.
