in Antiviral, so what did you tell him in terms of how this movie needed to look? Well, we spent a really long time before pre- production actually talking about it and talk- ing about films that we might want to, not reference directly, but [take inspiration from]. We went through the entire script scene by scene, made a theoretical shot list and talked about what we wanted the light- ing to be and the palette to be. We sort of came up with this idea that it would be com- pletely white – whiteness in the production design and also in the light. The original plan was to have no yellow light in it at all and just have a very cold, white light to work with, but then just for practical reasons we had to reconsider.
There’s both a cosmetics counter look, but also that sort of antiseptic medical feel to it. Is that what you were going for, or was there something else to it? Yeah, absolutely, I mean there are a few things – one is that it has this medical qual- ity in it and I like the idea of having this very pristine surface level on which the film works, like a very clinical aesthetic, but then having all of this bodily stuff underneath the surface that kind of relates thematically. You know, the idea that celebrities exist as this ideal and these kind of icons, but then be- neath that there are human beings that are sort of, in some way, removed from the icon, from the cultural construct. And so we reit- erate that in the film a little bit. ... Also, just having that really white clinical look was a good way of controlling the frame. Like, if you have an entirely white clinic and then you have celebrity faces on the walls, it re- ally draws your attention to those faces, you know? Or, there’s a blood theme that runs throughout the film, and red pops against white really well, so I think it draws the eye to the blood and really emphasizes the as- pects that are in colour.
In terms of the visual style, there’s defi- nitely some Stanley Kubrick in there, and
a gaunt virus peddler who, unbeknownst to his co-workers at the ultra-sterile Lucas Clinic – which offers designer celebrity diseases to a public whose idol worship has be- come its own sickness – smuggles the company’s wares onto the black market. Secretly enchanted by a famous starlet himself, he shoots up with a virus that has her laid up, only to discover days later that she’s succumbed to the bug. Syd must then sleuth out a cure to beat certain death as he visibly deteriorates against a backdrop of bi- ological skullduggery and corporate intrigue. Needless to say, the role would be demanding for even
J
a seasoned thespian, never mind an actor whose first credit dates back only as far as a bit part in 2007’s No Country for Old Men. Calling on a crackling phone from a “shitty motel in Austin, Texas,” Jones is initially cryptic about the inspiration behind his first starring role. “It’s difficult to answer to it,” he replies in the same
slow, croaky voice that gives Syd the air of a man haunted by something unexplained. “I can remember certain things but not really. You’re not there, that’s the thing sometimes. You’re just not there! Something else is. The character’s there and that’s when you’re succeeding in the art form, I think... when you’re not there.” It’s a chilling admission from the 22-year-old actor, who
not only seems much older than his years but also as far removed from his Hollywood counterparts as Antiviral is. As Syd, Jones is absolutely magnetic; his heavily freckled complexion, fiery hair and dead stare something of an im- perfect contrast to the scrubbed veneer of most of Cro- nenberg’s film, particularly as he plays up Syd’s diminishing physicality, a feat that required him to give himself over to the body horror. “In every scene, I’m either cold or in pain, and always hungry,” he reveals. “These
Viral Marketing: Syd shows a prospective client Lucas Clinic’s range of designer diseases, and (left) artificial human meat for sale at the deli.
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UDGING SOLELY FROM CALEB LANDRY JONES’ TIGHTLY CONTROLLED PERFORMANCE IN ANTIVIRAL, YOU’D EXPECT HIM TO BE NOTHING SHORT OF INTENSE.
In Brandon Cronenberg’s astonishingly ac-
complished debut feature, Jones (The Last Ex- orcism, X-Men: First Class) plays Syd March,
physical things can be a crutch when it comes to acting – you can’t use them all the time – but I had no idea of how else to do it. And you have to do something amazing! [Laughs] It can be a rock in your shoe, it can be punching things ’til your knuckles hurt – I did that a lot – it could mean pinching yourself ’til you bleed, little things like this.” According to Jones, Cronenberg cast him based on his
audition tape for another movie (for which he wasn’t hired), and he steers away from hypothesizing about what the first-time director saw that made him perfect to play Syd. Prodded, he reluctantly allows that perhaps the in- tensity of the character was a good match for his own, even if he can’t necessarily pinpoint the root of it. “It comes from inside, it comes from the past, I’m not
sure,” considers Jones. “I think everybody carries around a great deal of pain with them. And acting is that instinct. Yet, you don’t have to feel it. I believe it was Lon Chaney who said that as long as the audience believes, then you’ve done your job.” Thoughtful though he is, Jones himself doesn’t quite
understand what comes over him when he’s performing. And anytime he attempts to explain it, well, the conversa- tion just gets spooky. “The whole film frightens me,” he admits. “I was scared
to death of every scene. I read [the script] twelve or thir- teen times before we started shooting and it’s not until the night before sometimes that you do a scene and go, ‘Wow, if you’re gonna make it real, you have to do this, Caleb, you can’t go around it. … It’s in those moments when you’re doing it and you’re not even aware of it, you’re just doing it. And afterward, you don’t know what it was but you know that it’s done, because some- thing is gone. Something’s lost.”
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