It is interesting to compare the approach of both filmmaker and author when the changes are so obvious.  To this point it has often been a case of lamenting elements of the novel that did not make the transition to the big screen – the inclusion of Elizabeth Taylor, the Road Research Laboratory sequences etc.  In this case however,  we see how Cronenberg was able to take a sequence from the novel and refine it, to discard superfluous elements and bring forward the essence of a section, accentuating its energy and power. 

This is also an example where the courser language and detail of the author's writing is made to give way to the censorial side of cinema, but without loss of  impact, indeed, perhaps cinematically it gains resonance.  While this sequence is far more sedate in the film version, it is also more beautiful, poetic, and poignant.   

In JG Ballard's text we find Vaughan and Ballard taking a break from driving.  Ballard has gone into a store to buy wine, and when he returns with his purchases he finds Vaughan talking to two prostitutes.  Vaughan sits in the back seat with one, with Ballard doing the driving accompanied by the other in the front seat.  It is the inclusion of this second prostitute where the book deviates with the film (or vice versa).   

The second prostitute sits in the front with Ballard, but his attention remains focused on the driving, looking into the back seat via the rear view mirror, and with the melding of the sex and the car itself.  He basically ignores the women with her hand in his lap, and never engages in sex with her.  Vaughan has supplied him with a woman, but also with the driving and just as importantly, a voyeuristic view into the back seat.  Ballard simply has no use for this female appendage groping at this thighs.

To refine this, Cronenberg does away with this second prostitute, instead correctly concentrating the scene where Ballard’s attention lay, on the actions of Vaughan.  It is difficult to see where JG Ballard was going with the scene he wrote, but whatever the intention or motive, Cronenberg’s approach is more eloquent. 

The sex here is a blending of a course stark exploration of this woman’s body, its flexibility in being posed in various sexual and acrobatic accident poses, and the relationship of all this to the car in which they’re moving.  Ballard’s reaction to it, and the way he abstractly uses it to turn the inside of the car into a kind of gallery of sexual possibilities, is where the heart of the sequence lies. 

Also prevalent in this scene, within the novel, is the use of Hash.  Vaughan rolls four cigarettes for each of them to use (Catherine had mentioned to Ballard that they needed to buy more for themselves a little earlier in the novel.)  The inclusion of drug use is much suppressed in the film, being included in a single scene where Ballard visits Vaughan’s workshop. 

One can only ponder why Cronenberg decided to downplay this habit, but on reflection it seems like a good idea.  Not because of censorious issues, but because constant drug use gives a far too easy explanation for all that occurs – “Well, they’re high on drugs, that’s why they do the things they do.”  This glib dismissal of the adventure would be too simple, undemanding.  It has been argued at such places as the Internet Movie Database that the film is somehow flawed without the drug use.  I disagree for the reasons given, the drug use, in today’s climate, has nothing to add, and gives too simple a let-out for those wanting to avoid delving for other meanings within Crash.

Vaughan himself is as much interested in how he can model this woman as he is the actual acts he will perform:  “As she drank he lifted her legs so that her heals rested on the seat, and began to move his penis against the skin of her thighs, drawing it first across the black vinyl and then pressing the glands across her heel and ankle bone, as if testing the possible continuity of these two materials before taking part in a sexual act involving both the car and this young woman.” 

It is the relationship between the inside of the car, and the various positions into which he can move the woman, that also fascinates Ballard.  In fact, it is so engaging that he doesn’t have time for his own woman:  “The blonde woman in the front seat offered me a drink from the wine bottle.  When I declined she leaned her head against my shoulder, giving a playful touch to the steering wheel.  I put my arm around her shoulders, drawing mechanically at the second of the cigarettes.  I waited until we stopped again, and adjusted the driving mirror so that I could see into the rear seat.” 

Ballard’s kaleidoscopic view of the actions on the back seat are illustrated adequately by JG Ballard’s prose:  “In the rear-view mirror I could see Vaughan and the girl, their bodies lit by the car behind, reflected in the black trunk of the Lincoln and a hundred points of the interior trim.  In the chromium ashtray I saw the girls left breast and erect nipple.  In the vinyl window gutter I saw deformed sections of Vaughan’s thighs and her abdomen forming a bizarre anatomical junction.  Vaughan lifted the young woman astride him, his penis entering her vagina again.  In a triptych of images reflected in the speedometer, the clock and revolution counter, the sexual act between Vaughan and this young woman took place in the hooded grottoes of the luminescent dials, moderated by the surging needle of the speedometer.” 

At one point Ballard realises that he can control the tempo of the acts in the back seat by speeding up and then slowing down the car.  Once he discovers this he plays with it, accelerating ever faster until Vaughan reaches orgasm.  

The sex in the car, and the way the car seems to play a role in the ménage à trois, runs alongside Vaughan’s desires to meld sex in cars with accident damage.  By positioning the girl awkwardly, he is having her act through past, or future, accidents:  “Later, Vaughan explored the possibilities of the car crash in the same calm and affectionate way that he had explored the young prostitute’s body.  Often I watched him lingering over the photographs of crash fatalities, gazing at their burnt faces with a terrifying concern, as he calculated the most elegant parameters of their injuries, the junctions of their wounded bodies with the fractured windshield and instrument assemblies.” 

I confess I’m in awe of how Cronenberg took this dark and dense text and synthesized it so beautifully with fewer characters, and within the confines of a film that must eventually make it passed a censor board.  Cronenberg managed to combine all elements of this into what appears to be a simple enough scene.  Aided by the astonishing soundtrack, the whole thing plays out in a cold by engaging way. 

So, on reflection, Cronenberg made the following changes to this sequence:  Rather than meeting outside a store, Ballard and Vaughan find the prostitute in a garage by the airport.  Rather than two prostitutes, there is only one.  There are no drugs smoked during this sequence.  There is no alcohol consumed in this sequence.   

One can only guess at why these changes were made.  It is probable that Cronenberg simply didn’t feel the second prostitute was necessary for what the scene was trying to do.  The change of location draws the characters back to a familiar setting, the airport car parks.  The lack of drugs and drink is probably a nod to good taste (and that’s saying something in a film such as this).  While the film managed to make an ample number of enemies on its eventual release, adding drink-driving to the mix would probably have pushed things over the edge.  For reasons mentioned earlier, it seems wise to have taken them out. 

Finally, Cronenberg takes a line of dialog verbatim from this chapter.  In one of the few flashes of humour he says, when addressing the prostitute and plucking some gum from her mouth:  “Let’s get rid of that – I don’t want you blowing it up my urethra.”