CRITICALLY INJURED: EGOYAN ADMITS HE’S HURT BY RECENT REVIEWS OF WHERE THE TRUTH LIES
By Sarah Rowland

Montreal Mirror, Canada
Oct 6 2005

There are those who view Atom Egoyan as the golden boy of Canadian
cinema. After all, he’s been the darling of the Toronto Film Festival
for more than 10 years now, raking in award after award, only to donate
a big chunk of his cash prizes to under-funded Cancon filmmakers,
like Mina Shum.

But then there are those who see him as a pretentious art-pig whose
greatest talent is manipulating art councils for grant money. It’s
safe to say that Rick Groen falls under the latter category. Last
September, Groen wrote a catty review in The Globe and Mail that not
only slagged Egoyan’s latest film, Where the Truth Lies, but almost
every movie the man’s ever made.

“It was unbelievably painful- more so than those sort of things
should be,” says Egoyan, who, for what it’s worth, is one of the
nicest directors one could ever hope to interview. “When you get a
criticism of an individual film, you completely understand that some
people might not like that particular work. And you’re also able to
take solace in the body of work that you’ve done.” Not so here. The
article went on to compare and contrast Egoyan and David Cronenberg,
with the Crash director coming out on top.

“I think this false kind of competitiveness that’s been set up between
David and I is just ridiculous,” says Egoyan. “I adore David.

He’s my mentor. So it just seems odd that our two careers are lined
up. I mean, when David read it, he called me to say that he was
appalled.” According to Egoyan, this kind of destructive criticism
is very indicative of anglo culture.

“The evening that it came out, I was at a Unifrance function and
the ambassador was talking about how the new generation of French
filmmakers would make the old generation proud and I almost felt like
weeping because that doesn’t happen in English Canada,” he says.

“It’s like, ‘Let’s demolish whatever we build up just so we can build
it up again.'”

The Duke, the Empress and the Almighty

In the spirit of building up, Where the Truth Lies has gotten a raw
deal in more ways than one. Along with mixed reviews (as many have
already read by now), Egoyan’s murder mystery has also been unjustly
slapped with an NC-17 rating for a harmless threesome scene in a
hotel room. This is unfortunate for several reasons; most notably
in that all the controversy has overshadowed the actual movie, which
is an intriguing whodunit starring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a
Martin and Lewisesque comedy team. The duo split up at the peak of
their career after the body of beautiful young chambermaid (Rachel
Blanchard) shows up in their hotel room.

One of the film’s major themes is how we treat celebs like superior
beings. In his everyday Toronto existence-where the only attention he
gets is turning the occasional head-it’s hard for Egoyan to relate to
this kind of worship. But when he goes home to his motherland Armenia,
it’s quite a different story.

“We are like gods there,” he says, referring to himself and his wife.

“People stop in the middle of the street and look at you and
start crying. And in that particular culture, there are no physical
boundaries, so strangers are constantly touching, hugging and kissing
you. I didn’t like that. I think having people treating you as this
super human all the time would be an impossible way to live.”

Thanks to this taste of fanatical behaviour, Egoyan says he can better
understand Bacon and Firth’s characters, who spend a great deal of
off-time hiding out in their fivestar den of excess.

“I certainly see how a celebrity would need to have this one particular
space or zone where they feel they can escape from it all.” He can
also relate to being one of the people who dote on these privileged
individuals.

“I was a houseboy at the Empress Hotel when I was growing up in
Victoria. And it amazed me how much access I would have to strangers’
rooms. Just by delivering sheets or cleaning up a tray I could suddenly
walk into someone else’s life. I’ll never forget walking into John
Wayne’s room. It was just this weird thing for a 16-year-old to
suddenly have access to the great man,” he says before adding,
“And no, I didn’t have a threesome with John Wayne.”

Where the Truth Lies opens Friday, Oct. 7