Atom Egoyan

In galley form through my agency.

This came out of the blue. It was a junior person at the agency who thought I would respond to this material and I certainly did. But it was not the traditional type of book I’m presented with.

Yes, think that it’s the most heavily scored film I’ve ever made. I was dealing with different periods of music that I adore. I adore music from the early 70’s like progressive rock, jazz influenced artists like Santana and Funkadelic. All of the Enoesque Roxy Music influences and then going back to the jazz stuff with Mingus and then this Bernard Herrmannesque noir string section. All that was just a thrilling part of the filmmaking process and being able to have access to those different styles and finding a way of amalgamating them and using them was a really exciting part of the project.

It’s revenge, but it’s also an ode to a certain time because I think popular culture is something that defines everyone to some extent. Our relationship to it and our obsession with it and the way we project ourselves into celebrity and our disillusionment with that are huge themes in any North American life. I remember as a kid waking up Sunday morning and seeing the tail end of a telethon and going, “Oh my God. While I was sleeping, they were entertaining.” There was something mythological about that. I wanted to create a world where we were transported back to a time when we could idolize our celebrities without this degree of scrutiny, yet deal with that moment where our understanding of our own power as viewers to go further in our curiosity. In the early 70’s there was this advent of new journalism where the journalist could really invest themselves into a story. I think that had a huge profound change on the way we view these structures. That was what was exciting about this movie to me. It looked at both celebrity in the 50’s, where there was this degree of control that a celebrity had over their life and then it looked at a time when they were losing that as well.

Maybe it isn’t so much revenge but an examination of what makes them have such a powerful hold on our imaginations and subconscious. That whole idea of the Alison Lohman character as a young girl adoring these two guys, then later on, wanting to reveal who they really were. It’s natural impulse. I’m always seeing those stories of cross generational situations where someone who you might have adored as a parent figure suddenly reveals themselves in a different light.

I can tell you the precise moment. It’s when I convinced my dad to take me to San Francisco to go to Carlos Santana’s vegetarian restaurant because I adored Carlos Santana. I fully expected that Carlos Santana would be at the restaurant and that I’d meet him when he would serve me some vegetarian dish. I remember just waiting there all day long. It just wasn’t going to happen. Then I think it was a year later going to see Led Zeppelin and being in the crowd. At one point, I was sure that Robert Plant was staring right at me then I realized that when you’re on the stage and there’s all those lights on you, you can’t see anyone in the audience at all. We all project a relationship especially when we’re younger with celebrities that can’t really sustain itself. It’s just delusional to an extent.

It’s just shocking and totally comprehensible. Isn’t it crazy?

Yeah, it’s been kind of the most ridiculous process. I fully expected it to be R-rated.

The MPAA is not based on any particular code. It’s based on the feeling they get as they’re watching the movie. So I think that it’s a combination of the ménage a trois scene being a master shot combined with it being famous actors in a situation that makes them feel uncomfortable. It seems to be transgressive to them because otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. We did appeal it but it didn’t get overturned.

She’s just fascinating to me because she’s 26 years old and she always plays people 10 years younger than her. Alison had to play someone who is both innocent as a child and also play herself as a young adult. She was really the only person I could imagine playing this.

I sort of cast them both together and just prayed that they would actually be able to make the act real. That was the greatest sort of surprise and delight of the whole experience to see that act come together.

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. The most audacious aspect of the film was trying to construct two entertainers at the peak of their popularity who didn’t actually exist.

No, the book is very much based on Martin and Lewis. I wanted to reinvent that because it was very distracting.

Once you make it clear to the actor what the parameters of a scene are and you talk about why the scene is necessary, as long as there aren’t any surprises then there’s no reason to be uncomfortable. It’s like any dramatic scene. I think where people get flipped out is when an element is introduced at the last moment that they were not expecting.

I think that an erotic or a sexual scene conveys something essential about the character’s makeup such as the way they approach intimacy. So the possibilities of what we can learn about that character are fascinating to me. Since I’m curious about the people I’m depicting, I have to be curious about the way they approach intimacy and sex. I like working with actors who are also curious about that as well. They are really interesting scenes though I don’t know if they require any more concentration than any other scene, but they are certainly an incredible way to explore aspects of the character that wouldn’t be revealed otherwise.

I like mystery. I like being in a space where you’re trying to understand and put things together. In a film like Where the Truth Lies, it’s constructed in a more classical way where you know there’s been a death and there are a number of possibilities and explanations and you’re trying to figure out which one of them is true. In a film like Exotica, the murder is not as important as the aftermath. Or films like Sweet Hereafter or Ararat, it’s not as classically constructed. In this particular film, it’s set up in such a way that you are expecting certain answers and certain points.

Oh yeah. I’m really involved in that. I’m writing the books for them and right now we’re doing this major production of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung in Toronto. We’re also opening up a new opera house next September.

No, I don’t.

I like writing so I’m writing right now. It might be an original script but you never know when someone’s going to present you with a book or a script that completely surprises you, which is what happened with Where the Truth Lies.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck