The Future Boy

Chris Cunningham

Words: Shari Roman
Photo: Kiino Villand

 Chris talks about the body of his work...

It all began in Lakenheath, Suffolk, where as a teen, Chris Cunningham began drawing and sculpting fantastic creatures in his garage. Obsessed by the confluence of human anatomy and robotic machinery ("pornography and technology," he laughs), Cunningham ditched art college and immersed himself in special effects and filmmaking. By the time he was 19, he was leading the FX crew for David Fincher's Aliens 3. In 1995, after working with Stanley Kubrick on A.I. (which Spielberg later adapted), he picked up his first camera, slipstreamed into the warped supersonic beats of Autechre and kicked open the doors of perception forever.

Cunningham's works -- from the auto-erotic robots for Björk's "All Is Full of Love" to the nakedly bloodied, battling bodies who inhabit his short film flex to the frenzied mob of genocidal children who wear the morphed, leering features of Aphex Twin's Richard James in "Come To Daddy" -- are bound by the viscera of the Cunningham manifest, a synchronization of sound and vision so tight, so strong, you can taste it with your skin, hear it with your eyes.

Today, from the relative safety of his London studio (with three new projects, including a feature, gearing up), the 31-year-old director continues to be the cheerful architect of an arousingly brutal and viciously beautiful vision, one that projects and reflects the deficient principles and morality of our time. "I am always surprised if anyone sees my videos," he comments. "I don't understand where they've seen them, because most of them have been censored or are for songs that don't get on the charts." Forget that. The future of filmmaking has no charts. But it does have Chris Cunningham. And we'll take that as an excellent sign.

We haven't seen much new work from you -- what have you been up to lately?

Concentrating on my home videos. I haven't done much public stuff at all in the past 18 months, except for the occasional commercial to keep my head above water. I feel guilty every time I do a commercial, because I want to keep the images and the ideas for myself.

Are you a gentle ruler on your set?

I don't think being aggressive with people gets you anywhere. It's a waste of energy. Sometimes, I think people get aggressive and angry because they haven't made enough effort trying to get that person to understand what they want. I have before. I have become so frustrated, and then sat down and thought, okay, I'll try again. And when people do end up getting on the same tip as you, it's really satisfying. In any case, I've come up with a solution.