David Cronenberg Discusses ‘The Brutalist’ Backlash

Canadian horror filmmaker David Cronenberg, known for pictures such as The Fly, Crash, Dead Ringers, and Eastern Promises, thinks The Brutalist was backlashed by the other Oscar nominees throughout the awards season concerning Adrien Brody’s Oscar win. When it was recently uncovered how Adrien Brody’s character in The Brutalist used AI assisted editing for his Hungarian accent, Cronenberg related this to his own editing by questioning whether Brody truly deserved his oscar.

Cronenberg and his long time collaborator, Howard Shore, were recently at the London Soundtrack Film Festival, where they discussed their collaborative work together. Cronenberg said,

“I must confess, there was scandal with The Brutalist. There was a discussion about Adrien Brody…but apparently they used artificial intelligence to improve his accent. I think it was a campaign against The Brutalist by some other Oscar nominees. It’s very much a Harvey Weinstein kind of thing, though he wasn’t around. We mess with actors’ voices all the time. In the case of John Leone, when he was being this character, this singer, I raised the pitch of his voice to sound more feminine and when he’s revealed as a man, I lowered his natural voice. This is just a part of movie making.”

Cronenberg has said how it suits him to never have earned an Oscar throughout his film career. He was quoted by saying,

“I’m Canadian…Oscars are an American thing.”