The whole Crash thing has been very annoying. I've let Haggis know that as well. It's not a legal issue; it's an ethical issue. And also I think it's just plain stupid.

It is specifically American, ... but that's not to say it's not universal. And I'm not fudging it. It is a parable of art that, to be universal, you must be specific. Otherwise, you are just talking about an abstraction. So you have to talk about a particular person and a particular place. Specificity is the essence of art. But it doesn't mean it doesn't have universal resonance.

So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses.

[Even though he did not originate the story, Cronenberg does feels connected to it in strange ways -- as he does to all of his film projects.] They're all highly personal, ... I didn't write the script of Spider, either. It was based on a novel (and someone else wrote the script). The Dead Zone, which I did about 20 years ago, was based on a novel and I didn't write that script either. Now, in each case, I'm very involved with the script and, in the case of this movie, I did do a rewrite myself.

We are working with the authorities... it is a complex issue of legal processes... not only do the bodies have to be legally released from Bahrain, but there has to be someone in the country its being flown to, to accept it.

This is the one legal issue that was a big thorn in Microsoft's side and most people were led to believe is that this would drag on and on and on.