The new David Cronenberg movie, “Maps to the Stars,” takes place in Los Angeles. Some of it was filmed there, too—the first occasion on which the director, who seldom roams beyond his own back yard of Canada, has shot a movie in the United States. One scene unfolds on Rodeo Drive, outside a clothing store where a character has just spent eighteen thousand dollars. The sight of Cronenberg and his crew setting up there, in broad daylight, must have seemed not merely unsettling but, to any Hollywood residents who were passing by, downright unhealthy. I’m surprised they didn’t call the cops or, better yet, an epidemiologist. When the guy who made “Rabid” and “The Fly” turns up in town, there’s no accounting for the damage he might see, or show, or do.
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