Quirky Cronenberg

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This summer, the world lost two of its greatest directors — Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni — on the same day. David Cronenberg, in the District to promote his new film "Eastern Promises," says both men certainly influenced his work.

"They were part of that late '50s, early '60s wave when there was a genre called the Art Film with a capital A," Mr. Cronenberg says. "That was very important to me."

There are plenty of good directors still working, and promising newcomers pop up all the time. Yet, says Mr. Cronenberg, "what seems to be very difficult is for someone to have consistency, to make film after film after film that really is unique, that has a voice that's recognizable."

The director is too modest — too Canadian, perhaps — to point out that he himself is one of the best examples of a singular filmmaker whose clear vision is all over every film he's made.

Mr. Cronenberg, 64, quickly established himself as the director of thoughtful horror and sci-fi films, such as 1983's "Videodrome" and 1986's "The Fly," that explored what it means to be human. His masterpiece might be 1988's "Dead Ringers," in which Jeremy Irons gave two tour-de-force performances as twin gynecologists whose close but warped relationship is derailed by a woman. The director also made headlines with his controversial 1996 adaptation of J.G. Ballard's controversial 1973 novel, "Crash."

However, he achieved perhaps his biggest mainstream success with 2005's "A History of Violence."

He reunites with that film's leading man, Viggo Mortensen, for the Russian mafia thriller "Eastern Promises," due in theaters today.

Yet Mr. Cronenberg — whose pale, striking blue eyes belie his twisted visions — didn't write "Eastern Promises." "Dirty Pretty Things" screenwriter Steve Knight did. Mr. Cronenberg, in fact, hasn't scripted any of his films since 1999's "eXistenZ."

"I'm just very lazy and screenwriting is very hard," he laughs. "You'll notice there are a lot of directors — Brian De Palma, Coppola — who started off writing their own screenplays because often it was the only way they could get to direct and that was certainly true in my case. It was the screenplay that was the attraction, not me as a director."

A screenplay can take a year or two to write, and there's no guarantee you'll get financing to make it. So "when your career as a director has some momentum," it's "very tempting" to agree to direct a script you like, he says.