Total Recall is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s classic blockbusters, but it went through many different incarnations before the Paul Verhoeven epic. At one stage David Cronenberg was attached to write and direct, and as great as the Verhoeven movie is, it’s impossible not to lament what Cronenberg could have done with Martian mutants and memory implants.
It turns out, we may have gotten to see Cronenberg’s Total Recall after all. His 1999 film Existenz dealt with virtual reality and biological devices that plug into users’ bodies. Cary Granat was COO of Dimension from 1995 to 2000. He suggested that Existenz, which Dimension released in 1999, might have utilized Cronenberg’s early Recall ideas.
“He was very frustrated because he had such a strong vision of Total Recall that he never got to made,” Granat said in a phone interview promoting his latest movie Welcome to Mercy.
“So I think he wrote Existenz not to be Total Recall, but because he had so many fantastic ideas about his vision of the future and where things went.”
In Existenz, a group of strangers test out a virtual reality game, and as it continues the players have trouble determining what is the game and what is real. Sort of like how Total Recall leaves you wondering whether it really happened or was just the memory implant he ordered (it’s totally his memory).
“I had the very tough role when I was the executive there, I was President of the studio, this was my first encounter with David Cronenberg, my first film with him, when you write a set of notes to David Cronenberg, right?” Granat recalled. “You can write a set of notes to Kevin Williamson and he might send you a one-page thing. I had no idea what to expect sending a set of notes to David Cronenberg, nor did I even feel qualified to give notes to David Cronenberg. Every line of the notes, David wrote back a response that was the most thoughtful response I’ve ever gotten from a director ever in the history of Hollywood. For every sentence, he must’ve had a 2-3 page response. As if the greatest college professor of film of all time took your notes and decided to write a dissertation of why your notes were wrong. I’ll never forget looking at what he sent back. It really shed a light on the question of what is our role as a studio executive? What’s our role really meant to be and what’s the role of the filmmaker? The best films that have been made are films where the director went off and expressed their vision and people supported it. They weren’t films by committee. Reading this tome of a response was the greatest thing ever to remind everybody why we love film, why we love directors like this.”
Granat’s new film Welcome to Mercy is in theaters Friday.