| Release Dates - Theatrical |
|
| Canada - Oct 7, 2005 | Germany
- Feb 2, 2006 |
| US
- Oct 14, 2005 (NY/LA) |
Austria - May 11, 2006 |
| UK - Dec 2, 2005 | Brazil
- July 28, 2006  |
| France
- Jan 4, 2006 |
|
| Release Dates - DVD | |
| US/Can - Feb 28, 2006 (Reg 1) | UK
- May 1, 2006 (Reg 2) |
| France - June 22, 2006 | Germany - Jul/Aug 2006 |
| Brazil - September 22, 2006 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Colin
Firth Vince Collins |
Kevin
Bacon Lanny Morris |
Alison
Lohman Karen O'Connor |
Rachel
Blanchard Maureen O'Flaherty |
| Maury
Chaykin |
. . . . . | Sally
Sanmarco |
| David
Hayman |
. . . . . |
Reuben |
| Sonja
Bennett |
. . . . . | Bonnie
Trout |
| Kristin
Adams |
. . . . . | Alice |
Where the Truth Lies is a sumptuous and seductive film noir that explores the dark, decadent side of fame, fortune, and success. Set in the seemingly innocent 50’s, the film centers around legendary showbiz duo Lanny (Kevin Bacon) and Vince (Colin Firth) America’s most beloved entertainment team. When a dead beauty turns up in their hotel suite after a top-rated televised performance, their reputations are sullied but, thanks to rock-solid alibis, neither is charged with a crime. With their friendship and partnership in tatters, they manage to salvage separate careers. Years pass, with neither speaking to the other, or to anyone else, about the girl’s mysterious death.
In the far less innocent 70’s, up and coming writer Karen O’Connor (Alison Lohman) decides to turn this cold case into a hot story and begins to ferret out the facts behind this fabled showbiz split. Her investigation leads to involvement with both Lanny and Vince and what she finds is a serpentine, shocking tale of talent and treachery, love and lust, buried truths and betrayed trust.
[click for larger image]
| Kevin
Bacon sings, he dances, he talks (Empire, 11/05) |
Atom
Egoyan talks noir (Empire, 11/05) |
| Rupert Holmes on writing (Deirdre McGill, CSdaily, 10/21/05) |
Kevin Bacon talks about Where the Truth
Lies (about.com, 10/14/05) |
| Egoyan on Where the Truth Lies (comingsoon.net, Edward Furman, 10/13/05) |
Kevin Bacon
reveals Where the Truth Lies (comingsoon.net, 10/11/05) |
| One on one with Atom Egoyan (about.com, 10/10/05) |
Does 'Truth' lie with author or director? (Peter D. Kramer, The Journal News, 10/9/05) |
| Chasing
the buzz of NC-17 (James Adams, Globe and Mail, 10/6/05) |
Critically
injured (Sarah Rowland, Montreal Mirror, 10/6/07) |
| Secrets
and lies (Deidre Swain, NOW, 10/6/05) |
Bacon, Firth
defend sexy Egoyan film (Bruce Kirkland, Toronto Sun, 10/5,05) |
| Toronto's Rachel Blanchard exposed (Bruce Kirkland, Toronto Sun, 10/5/05) |
Truth about sex (Bruce Kirkland, Sun Media, 10/5/05) |
(Sydney Morning Herald, May 5, 2006, by Mary Colbert)
The unthinkable has happened: British actor Colin Firth is talking about "shagging". Mr Darcy, shagging?
The heart-throb of millions of female viewers of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice and the Bridget Jones's Diary movies is expounding on the explicit sex scenes in his latest movie, Where the Truth Lies,
In Atom Egoyan's film we see plenty of Firth, who first sent a wave of hysteria across the globe as he emerged from a lake in a dripping wet shirt and breeches.
In Where the Truth Lies, adapted from Rupert Holmes's noir crime thriller, Firth plays the pill-popping, sex-driven Vince Collins, one-half of America's hottest showbiz musical comedy partnership of the 1950s. In one scene, Firth has a threesome with fellow comic Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and a hotel maid (Rachel Blanchard), who is later found dead in their hotel suite.
"Safety in numbers," Firth says. "Actually, I was saved by Kevin's butt." He grins across the table at Bacon, so renowned for his cinematic bed forays that detainees on a US witness-protection programme complained online "that his dangling member gets into far too many movies. Somebody should talk to him about it."
"What do you mean?" Bacon says. "You showed up late that week after I'd done most of the hard work."
Firth: "I hadn't been filming the week that some solid shagging took place between Kevin and various women, so by the time I showed up there was no interest at all. The crew were so sick of the sight of his butt and mine offered nothing new. People make a lot of the sexual thing but that's really only one more weird thing we get to do."
Egoyan's film is a far stretch from his last one, Ararat, about the genocide of Armenians. The director's mandate was that the sex be sensual and unbridled.
"A role like that usually isn't a huge stretch for most actors," Firth says, who admits it was a refreshing change from the recent spate of romantic comedies. Was it an escape from typecasting for the theatre-trained thespian?
"Not necessarily," Firth says.
"They came to me quite late in my career and are fun, but the appeal was the character's inherent darkness and, of course, the opportunity to work with Atom."
Firth and Bacon's comic duo are loosely modelled on the lives of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Egoyan suggested Firth aim for a mix of David Niven and Rex Harrison. The story moves between the '70s, when a young investigative reporter attempts to ferret out the repercussions of the murder on the duo's private and professional lives, and the subsequent break-up of their long-standing partnership.
Where the Truth Lies focuses on a complex exploration of celebritydom's underbelly. The film also gives the actors a canvas to improvise their own comedy and verbal jousts as well as sing.
Amend that to singing for one.
Bacon claims Firth hired a singing coach, only to be told his forte lay in the verbal thrusts.
For Firth, the drawcard lay in his screen persona's dark psyche.
"Vince is a very bleak character to portray. Playing him was a real stare into the abyss, actually. To desperately need your celebrity fix and yet have it as part of your burden must be a kind of hell.
"Rather than just playing a psychopath or mass murderer, it was interesting to play someone who is apparently what you expect me to be, and then take off the mask to reveal something darker."
Firth adds that depression is one of the least socially permissible things for human beings. "It is still considered very antisocial and shameful.
It used to be sex. But that's still a very private matter. Loneliness, fear and insecurity are much more so."
(Nov 2, 2005)
Only minutes after Cristi had gone inside to introduce his film, Canadian arthouse powerhouse Atom Egoyan arrived, ready to share with a London audience his latest thriller Where The Truth Lies. And audiences might be surprised by the turn he has taken towards conventional genre filmmaking. "The moment that I decided to tell the story, I realised that the scale of it had to be different, and that a number of films that were an essential part of my cinematic upbringing that I hadn't really had the opportunity to homage to," Egoyan explained. "I wasn't aware necessarily of it being a bigger film, rather that I needed a certain type of canvas in order to make it convincing. And it also needed to have a certain pace, as well. You had to believe that you were in the world that they were talking about."
The first obvious difference for those familiar with the director's sparse, enticingly cryptic work, is the addition of voice over—and plenty of it. "Yeah, but the narration is in itself suspect… I'd come to realise that some of my favourite films have narration, and in my memory they didn't seem to. These films like Double Indemnity, or again Sunset Boulevard, where you have two sort of shifting narrative positions. Voiceover to me is very challenging, and I think that often it's used to explain things or to render the obvious, but in this case, it's essential to the psychological construction of the piece, because people, while they're telling us something, are not necessarily telling us what's going on, and we have to connect the dots."
 For a larger image, go to Gallery
|
The film suffered a minor
setback in the US recently, being slapped with an NC17 rating. "It was
just because of the sexual nature of the material that we had a lot of
problems with the censor board in the States, but that's rapidly
falling behind, so I don't think it's going to be a problem anywhere
else. And it's an odd film, I'm realising, because it has commercial
draws, but it is quite demanding as well. I love the way it's being
marketed here, which is the poster, because it seems to be much more
in-keeping with the tone of the film. I think that in North America we
were playing it as a film noir, which probably is more esoteric." For the fans of Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Alison Lohman who missed out on a seat to last night's screening, Where The Truth Lies is currently scheduled for a UK release from December 2nd. |
(New York Daily News, Oct 9, 2005, by John Clark)
A couple of cool-looking guys enter a hotel suite and sit down opposite each other. They might be taken for swingers, except Kevin Bacon's hair is Shaggy Rock Star and Colin Firth's is Shaggy 1970s. They are not drinking highballs. They are not smoking cigarettes. They are not even hitting on the pretty publicists in the room.
"It's called acting," Bacon says of their characters and their relationship in Atom Egoyan's new film, "Where the Truth Lies." A scathing look at showbiz corruption, it opens Friday.
Bacon, 47, and Firth, 45, play partners in a popular '50s lounge act—not unlike Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin—who are being profiled in retirement by an enterprising reporter (Alison Lohman). The focus of her story is the discovery of a young woman's body in their hotel suite years earlier.
Although they were absolved of any wrongdoing, her death seemed to have broken up the act, which is glimpsed in bits and pieces throughout the film. Bacon's character is the cutup, the clown. Firth is the straight man, the guy who reels him in, though unlike Martin, he doesn't sing.
"I was gearing up for it," Firth says. "I took some singing lessons. And I opened my mouth, and Atom promptly said, 'That's not going to happen. We love your voice, but maybe we could use some of your English wit.' He had doubts about it from way back. For starters, we weren't going to be doing the Italian-American crooning thing."
Egoyan, who adapted Rupert Holmes' book, says he was trying not to invoke Lewis and Martin because it would be "distracting." That was one reason why he cast Bacon and Firth, who don't really suggest a lounge act at all. After all, Bacon is a character actor best known for giving tightly wound performances in such films as "Apollo 13," "Mystic River" and "The Woodsman." Firth is a serious English actor and sometime heartthrob ("Pride and Prejudice," "Bridget Jones's Diary") with a dry, clipped delivery and a crisp manner.
"I wanted there to be a chemistry between how those two are perceived in our culture and then transposing them to this other culture," Egoyan says. "The pairing makes you cock your eyebrow and at the same time is intriguing at some level."
The model for Firth was not Martin, but urbane English actors like Peter Lawford and David Niven. Bacon's character might be antic in the Lewis way, but unlike Lewis there's an edge to him—"untethered, in a sexual way," as Egoyan puts it. "An erotic undercurrent."
Having established the characters, the filmmakers had to come up with an act. Though Bacon plays with his brother in a band called the Bacon Brothers and Firth joined a R&B group when he was a teenager, comedy took precedence over music.
"Part of the day would be spent thinking about the act," Bacon says. "Eventually we brought the band in and had rehearsal space. It was a little frightening because I kept thinking, 'We need to get a choreographer, a music director, a comedy writer.' And Atom kept going back to wanting it to come from us. Ultimately, in a very short time, we had something going for the little bits that are seen of [the duo performing] in the film, just because we were forced to."
It helped that the two men liked each other. "We didn't know each other [before the shoot]," Bacon says. "But I think we have pretty similar sensibilities. Even though we live on opposite sides of the pond, we live similar kinds of lifestyles." (For starters, both are married with children.)
Egoyan, 45, also did his bit by creating environments—a club, a telethon studio—so believable that the performers believed them. He even hired a professional laugher to react to their jokes.
"Something about being given that microphone and if you're dressed right and the spotlights are on you, how can you not play that stuff?" Firth says.
Some of what they did was improvised or scripted from improvisation, including a scene in which Firth delivers a frenzied, Benzedrine-fueled monologue onstage (after beating out a man's brains offstage because he made an anti-Semitic remark about Bacon's character). This is one of the longest glimpses of their act. The idea was to give the audience just an idea of what they were about, since more would be another distraction. But according to Bacon many such scenes were cut.
"There was quite a lot of your rear end that didn't make it either," Firth says, needling Bacon.
"There's enough of my rear end already," Bacon replies.
They are referring to the nude orgy scene they did with actress Rachel Blanchard that earned the film an NC-17 rating, which Egoyan thinks had as much to do with who was doing it (major actors) as it did with what they were doing (a homosexual act). The movie will be released without a rating.
"It made me uncomfortable," Firth says of the scene, kidding Bacon some more. "It was closer range than you'd want to get." Then he adds, almost seriously, "You've got all of this technical stuff about hiding parts. That's a feat in itself, depending on what your body parts are like."
At this, Bacon just smiles.
(CTV.ca, Oct 4, 2005, by John McKay, Canadian Press)
The opening shot is of a live television show of the 1950s. The backdrop says it's a telethon for polio, and a bandy-legged comic named Lanny is goofing around onstage. Oh, the movie audience thinks, this is a thinly disguised imitation of the Jerry Lewis telethons. Then Lanny's urbane partner Vince appears, a cigarette, a drink and a dame in hand. OK. So this is the telethon if Lewis and Dean Martin had never broken up and were doing these charity broadcasts together. Later, a young woman, very naked and very dead, is found in Lanny and Vince's hotel suite. Shades of the notorious Hollywood party scandal that brought down 1920s screen funnyman Fatty Arbuckle at the top of his game, even though he was acquitted of any crime.
The plot of Atom Egoyan's film Where the Truth Lies, which opens in theatres Friday after screenings at the Cannes and Toronto film festivals, is poised at a critical junction in modern history. Lanny and Vince part ways and the film narrative revisits them semi-retired some two decades later in the 1970s as an enterprising reporter tries to dig up the never-talked-about events—including the murder—that led to their breakup.
Although based on a novel by Rupert Holmes, Egoyan's screenplay deliberately backed away from what were much more overt parallels in the book to Martin & Lewis, Rowan & Martin, the Smothers Brothers or any number of showbiz teams of the day. But not, the filmmaker says, out of any fear of legal action. "No, but it was very distracting,'' Egoyan says. "It's one thing to read that, but it would have been very distracting to model the act after Martin & Lewis directly.''
British actor Colin Firth, who plays Vince Collins, agrees. "If you're going to base it on somebody real, what the hell are you going to do as an actor? I mean, are you going to play Jerry Lewis and call him Lanny Morris? And then imply that he got involved in some kind of scandal like this? It would be a dramatically and completely inconsistent thing to do.''
Instead, Where the Truth Lies offers a melange of familiar showbiz imagery—stars who have one image onscreen and another backstage, rubbing shoulders with mobsters rat-pack style while everyone looks the other way, and with sycophants willing to do what it takes to preserve a carefully fabricated celebrity image.
And then there's a sea change. Sometime after the Watergate scandal, the once cosy relationship between public figures and the media that covered them disappeared. A new breed of investigative journalist began to look for ways to tear down the very gods they had earlier helped create. And Lanny and Vince get caught unawares in this change, stumbling into a different era, as Firth put it.
"America went through a period. There had been a president assassinated again, there had been the civil rights movement—the women's movement, the peace movement were all exploding. And I think people were ready to call their heroes and leaders to account.'' Firth says the instinct to create our gods and then seek to humanize and ultimately destroy them is especially prevalent in his native England. "It's as if you need to bring them down closer to you,'' he says. "That's why we need to give them feet of clay, why we need to deconstruct them . . . photographing them with a bad hair day.'' He says that wasn't done years ago, when the public would not want to see Jean Harlow without her makeup.
Egoyan also found the idea of the telethon compelling and appropriate. "It's the ultimate expression. If a celebrity is a god, it is the most superhuman thing that a celebrity could do, is entertain till they drop from exhaustion.
"So you have this one event that is so scrutinized, set against this other event happening in a hotel suite that no one sees.''
Kevin Bacon, who plays Lanny, sees another duality in the story, that of stars who want the glory of fame but don't want to surrender their privacy. "There is this odd sort of addiction to it (fame),'' he says. "You walk down the street one day and nobody asks for your autograph and you think, `Oh, it's over! What happened?' ''
Bacon indicated he handled his own dilemma with fame by having other outlets—performing in a band, for example—so that his film career didn't define his life. But Lanny and Vince, he said, had only each other, and when the fame was gone they were left lonely and vulnerable. "Vince is desperately unhappy, (and) I don't see Lanny as someone who is at peace with that whole thing.''
Up-and-coming Canadian actress Rachel Blanchard, who plays the young woman who allows herself to be seduced by her heroes and ends up a corpse, says some young celebrities just aren't prepared for the buildup and the subsequent attempts to tear them down, and she doubts it's a life for her. "I'll never be a huge celebrity,'' she declares flatly. "I probably wouldn't like it.'' She says she would prefer to be an actor, like Bacon and Firth, not a movie star.
(The Look, Fall 2005, by Amy Verner)
Beth Pasternak weaves her way through
time, sourcing early 20th-century Armenian textiles for Atom Egoyan’s
Ararat and recreating 1950s suits for his new film, Where the Truth Lies, starring
Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Alison Lohman.Was it difficult to jump between the ‘50s and the ‘70s for Where the Truth Lies?
For some reason, the last three films I’ve done [Where the Truth Lies, Ararat and A Home at the End of the World] have been multi-era movies. I seem to have a knack for them. This time, it was a challenge to find styles that I thought the male characters were going to mature into. A lot of the initial ‘50s fittings for Kevin didn’t suit who he was inside, so I tried styling from Elvis—the rockabilly look of wearing black T-shirts under white jackets—and that really clicked. For Kevin’s character in the ‘70s, I thought of jean jackets and a lot of neckerchiefs. I used Faye Dunaway’s look from the film Network for Alison Lohman, because she was playing a news personality.
Is there a difference between costumes and clothes?
Everything actors wear is a costume. For Where the Truth Lies, all the suits were tailor-made. And the fabric is always the most complicated and challenging part of doing a period film, because the fabrics don’t exist anymore. So the suit fabric was brought in from London because of its high count of mohair. I’m really about doing it head-to-toe—from the socks to Kevin’s emblem ring we had made for him.
How much do you collaborate with the art director and the production designer?
We usually compare our research. For this film they really wanted to do an orange wall in Kevin’s ‘70s office, but it turned out that Alison was already pre-fit to wear an orange dress for the scene. It worked out really beautifully. They ended up doing the orange wall with her in the foreground wearing orange, and it was stunning.
How do you factor in undressing on camera?
It’s really important that an actor feels comfortable. We did a couple of ingenious things on the film, where, if the men were nude, we designed flesh-tone bags for their genitals. We ended up calling it the Bacon bag.
But what about the unbuttoning of dresses or how easily a shirt comes off?
There has to be breakaway clothing. Everything is rigged, because, chances area, when you’re undressing in front of the camera, something will screw up the scene. It’s your obligation to make sure that nothing goes wrong. There’s no such thing as wardrobe malfunction.
(FLM magazine, Fall 2005, by Atom Egoyan)
When I promised my producer that I would deliver an R-rated version of my latest film, Where the Truth Lies, I signed the contract confident that this wouldn’t be much of a problem. Even though the script had several scenes that seemed sexually explicit, I also realized that careful framing and editing could solve any obstacles.
Or so I thought.
The big problem that I encountered was that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is very concerned about the depiction of thrusting. A few thrusts would be allowed, but anything more might land the picture in the dreaded NC-17 category. The challenge became how to choreograph extended scenes of sexual activity without seeing the prolonged thrusting associated with the act.
The obvious solution used by countless films is to frame the actors’ heads and shoulders as their lower bodies thrust. This efficient method effectively frames out the offending area, allowing the viewer to concentrate on the actors’ faces as they stare at each other blissfully thinking about the nice feelings their unseen groins are producing. Occasionally, the director will then cut to a wider shot, but this is never more than a few thrusts, and it usually finds the actors’ bodies covered by a sheet.
The problem with this solution was that it didn’t convey the feeling that the sex scenes in the movie were supposed to express. One of the lead characters in the film—a hugely popular entertainer, played by Kevin Bacon—recounts his sexual exploits like he was an actor in a porn film. I needed these scenes to feel lurid and unbridled. The traditional ‘head and shoulders’ framing wouldn’t work. I wanted the sex to feel raw and exposed.
I’m convinced that the best way to shoot a sex scene and make it seem real is to use a master shot—an uninterrupted sequence with no cuts. I wanted to see the bodies. The overwhelming challenge was how to show two (and in this case even more) people having sex without depicting the act of thrusting.
By its very nature, sex needs thrusting. More specifically, one part of the body must be in some form of friction with another. This isn’t a very romantic way of thinking about it, but then again the MPAA isn’t a very romantic organization. Their job is to count thrusts, and then decide—depending on the number—who should see the film. Nice work if you can get it.
The two male leads are popular entertainers in the fifties. The idea of tantric sex, or anything involving sexual activity in a semi-comatose position, was not a possibility. As the deadline approached for filming these scenes, I began to panic. I resorted to playing with dolls, trying to figure out angles and configurations. Finally, in total defeat, I approached my producer and confirmed his worst fears. It was impossible to show a sexual act of longer than a minute (one scene involved two pages of dialogue) without resorting to some form of thrusting.
And with this decision, we veered our film into NC-17 territory. To this day, I sometimes wake up in a sweat, thinking of other ways the scenes might have been filmed. Errant pieces of furniture, masking piston-like body parts. Tasteful cut-aways to trains, tunnels and collapsing chimney stacks. A lamp falling over at the beginning of the scene, rendering the screen black. All of these solutions bordered somewhere between the coy and the ridiculous.
The sex scenes in Where the Truth Lies are essential to the dramatic and psychological construction of the film. They are playful, transgressive and even traumatic. Like most sex scenes, they involve issues of intimacy, love, power, desire, escape, anger, ambition and a thousand other emotional configurations.
They are also, thankfully, completely uncompromised
(CanWest News Service, Sept 25, 2005, by Jay Stone)
The movie crew is having lunch—guys dressed like 1950s mobsters have lined up for chicken wraps, extras in double-breasted police uniforms are talking on cellphones—and Kevin Bacon is talking about hemorrhoid medicine. The windows of the elegant Royal York Hotel ballroom in Toronto are practically rattling with his cries for Preparation H.
Bacon, dressed in the style of a post-war lounge singer, is talking about celebrity and how it relates to Where The Truth Lies, the Atom Egoyan movie that comes out Oct. 7. Bacon plays Lanny, half of a vaudeville act with Vince (Colin Firth), who become involved in a murder mystery when a woman is found dead.
At $25 million, it's Egoyan's biggest-budget film to date. (In its sex scenes, especially a menage a trois, it is also Egoyan's most erotic film, and the movie has been given a restrictive NC-17 rating in the U.S.)
Cult of celebrity
At its heart it has the same dark concerns—including the cult of celebrity—as most of his movies.
"It's very enticing to feel that you do not have to follow some of the rules," Bacon says, referring to both the fictional Lanny and himself. "In little ways, I don't. I don't have to stand in line at restaurants. People give me s--- for free."
"It's true," says Firth. "You get treated with deference. It cuts you through bureaucracy.
"At the same time, there's certain things you don't want to be seen buying at the pharmacy."
This delights Bacon. "Believe me, it's happened to me many times," he says, recreating the scene in both his own voice and the brassy New Yawk of the clerk. "Excuse me, what aisle is the Preparation H ... 'Joey! Where's the ... Oh my God! It's Kevin! The Preparation H!' I can't tell you how many times."
Does he get the Preparation H for free at the check-out?
"They administer it," deadpans Firth.
It's a great act with ideal chemistry, although Egoyan said he cast Bacon and Firth because of the contrast in their personas.
Superstar a favourite
The new movie is a film noir, a form Egoyan says he has always loved, with elements of music, which also engages him. Even knowing that, it is surprising that one of his favourite films is Jesus Christ Superstar.
"I would ascertain that Jesus Christ Superstar is the most exciting movie ever made," he says. "I love it. When I bought a DVD player it was the first thing I rushed out to buy. And I was very happy to watch it and rewatch it many, many, many, many times."
Where the Truth Lies concerns two competing narratives, and asks the question, "Who has the right to tell our history?" a concern that Egoyan says occurs in all his films.
This time, Egoyan is aiming for a broader audience than he gets with art-house fare including Exotica or The Sweet Hereafter.
"That's a natural consequence of working with a larger budget," he says. "When you're dealing with a budget like this and you're dealing with subject matter like this, you realize you have a potential to reach a much wider audience. "
(Globe and Mail, Sept 8, 2005, by Gayle MacDonald)
You'd think people would know the guy.
But there's Atom Egoyan—one of Canada's most talked-about filmmakers—walking around the set of his new movie, Where the Truth Lies, with a name tag that says in big, bold, black letters: ATOM.
And below that, he's sporting another plastic I.D. badge that clarifies the matter to anyone who didn't catch his identity the first go round, this time with surname, too: ATOM EGOYAN.
Why, pray tell, is this bespectacled film auteur wearing two tags at the same time? Simple, really. They were a gift. From a well-meaning manager of Toronto's Royal York Hotel—where Egoyan's shooting his murder-mystery starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon. The man found out that Egoyan, decades before he became film famous, spent many summers sorting laundry and bussing tables at Victoria's Empress Hotel, near his boyhood home.
To commemorate the director's lowly servitude at a sister hotel, the Royal York manager made up the pins. And Egoyan—bless his heart—is dutifully wearing them.
"All CP hotels smell the same," says Egoyan, taking a good sniff of the ballroom in which we're currently ensconced while the cast and crew break for lunch. "They smell like laundry rooms." (The Royal York and The Empress are both now part of the Fairmont Hotel family, but were formerly part of the Canadian Pacific empire.)
Set to make its debut in North America next Tuesday at the Toronto International Film Festival, Egoyan's $30-million, NC-17-rated film has already set tongues wagging because of a healthy helping of explicit sex (there are threesomes, twosomes, in various gender pool configurations).
But this is months before—the film's in embryo—and on this particular overcast Sunday, Egoyan is trying to nail a tame scene that involves a fifties-era press conference, set up in a Royal York ballroom currently filled with male extras in tailored suits and Brylcreem, and women in poodle skirts, pointy-bra twin sets, and Barbara Billingsley waves in their hair.
As is his fastidious way, Egoyan is doing take after take to make sure the lighting, placement of extras, even the facial expressions of his two male stars is just so. Composition, he explains, is key.
"There is a pace the film has—and needs to have—that may be different from some of my other work," he says. (Where the Truth Lies jumps constantly between two distinct time periods, the fifties and the seventies.)
"There are different undertones [to each decade]," Egoyan adds. "At this point, it's difficult to know what the alchemy of it all will be. But that's one thing that is so exciting. So after you do the shoot, you go into the editing process where you try to juggle all these different times. Everything in the late fifties is shot with beautiful diffused light. And it has a very specific tone—a softer focus—that is in sharp contrast to the mid-seventies, which is very hard-edged, and played quite realistically with a straightforward approach." The speech is vintage Egoyan—art-house alchemist.
In recent months, film buffs have made quite a fuss about the fact that Where the Truth Lies is, by far, Egoyan's most commercial film yet. And while the director admits it's a departure from his more boutique-film fare (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Felicia's Journey), he says this movie is still true to themes he likes to explore—how love can lift up and also shatter souls; how people masquerade their feelings in public but drown in them at home; how every human action creates a ripple effect that can be inconsequential or catastrophic.
"When I read the book"—the film is based on Rupert Holmes's novel—"I was really excited at a popular level," Egoyan says. "I've always loved noir. I've always been drawn by this notion of moral corruption and people trying to navigate their way through that. And I felt in reading this story that there was a real possibility of using a tonal palette to tell a story that could reach a much wider audience. It's a film that is going to be as complex, on some levels, as anything I've done," the director promised.
"But it also has this world of popular culture. At its core, it's the very emotional telling of a marriage. Because ultimately, this film is about the breakup of a professional marriage between these two men [Firth and Bacon] and the reasons behind that, as well as the stories the public is allowed to have access to and the ones that we'll never really know."
Set in the golden age of the TV telethon, Bacon and Firth play one of the hottest show-biz duos in the late fifties: the ebullient, obnoxious American Lanny Morris (Bacon) and the genteel, stiff-lipped Brit, Vince Collins (Firth). They are the best of friends. They are chronically horny. And they are adored by all (except the husbands of the girls they pick up).
But when a naked woman turns up dead in the bathtub of a swank New Jersey hotel, the lads' lives—and livelihoods—are turned upside. The act breaks up. Then 15 years later, a nosy journalist (Alison Lohman) appears on the scene, and tries to unravel the mystery of the dead woman—and why the two men split. The film also features Rachel Blanchard, David Hayman, Maury Chaykin and Sonja Bennett.
Egoyan says the film tries to pull the curtain back on the paradoxical nature of show business—on one hand highly visible, but also extremely insular. Full of extreme beauty and extreme ugliness. "I've never really dealt with notions of popular entertainment or popular culture, but I do have a very strong sense of the almost mythological status that we attach to celebrities.
"Every culture has had a need for mythology, has had a need to present certain human beings as being transcendent or having powers beyond the realm of the normal. In our culture, I mean it's banal to say, but clearly that's what we believe. And the reason we create, maintain and nurture celebrity is because we need to believe that those are the people who have that power, have that magic. It's something we create. But it's also something that we very consciously destroy. So this is a story about that ascent and that downfall."
The show-biz act choreographed in the film is no Laurel and Hardy routine. In fact, there's no entertainment partnership to really compare it to. Here, Bacon plays a brash song-and-dance man, who likes to compliment women on their cup size (C and D are preferred) while belting out Louis Prima tunes, modified to sound burlesque and a bit rock 'n' roll. Firth's character doesn't sing or dance, but classes up his pal's debauched act with his dry, witty repartee and banter.
Casting the two male leads was a challenge, Egoyan says. "We wanted to create a totally new act . . . and the only way I felt comfortable being able to do that was to find actors who were prepared to use their personas in the act itself. So Colin has this patina of civilization. English manners. Fair-mindedness. He contrasts with Kevin, this nascent, more impulsive, kind of dangerous, erotically charged figure."
As an added bonus, Egoyan adds, both actors were prepared to go "to some pretty extreme dark places."
In the film, performing, popping pills and sleeping with women are both Vince and Lanny's favourite pastimes. But by the time the characters grow into the seventies, Lanny's still getting by quite nicely, while Vince is not. Firth says the thing about his role as Vince that interested him most was "the loneliness and decline of the character. I think there's something desperately, desperately sad about this guy," says Firth, in a 1950s black suit, with bow tie askew.
Bacon describes his character as a guy "who had a certain rhythm in his life," adds the actor, who plays in a band, The Bacon Brothers. "Atom and I really wanted to play into the cocky, wiseass, ugly American. Just what an American can represent to the rest of the world sometimes—not polite—well not as polite as people are in Canada."
Like Egoyan, both actors also were intrigued by the crass side of celebrity and stardom and, as Bacon puts it: "The fact that celebrities tend to live by a different sort of moral code than the rest of the world, which is supported and encouraged, every step of the way."
Asked if his celebrity status makes him feel able to do whatever he wants, Bacon smirks and treads carefully. "I feel it's very enticing to feel like you don't have to follow the same rules as everyone else," he offers in his deep baritone.
Firth agrees: "That's true you get treated with deference by certain people. It cuts you through bureaucracy, you know?" But then Firth points out an obvious drawback. "There are certain things you don't want to really be buying at the pharmacy. Guys can dine out on what they sold you forever."
Then Bacon, slipping naturally into his rabble-rouser role, adopts a Southern shop-clerk voice. "You want to know what aisle has the Preparation H? Louise, where'd we put that Prep . . .? Oh my God, it's Kevin Bacon. He wants the Preparation H! And it's on the front of The National Enquirer the next day."
"But you do get it for free when you go to the checkout," quips Firth. "And they offer to administer it for you."
Where the Truth Lies was shot over 10 weeks, in Los Angeles, London and Toronto. Besides the Royal York, Egoyan also used The Carlu, and the Valhalla Inn off Highway 27, which was turned into the Blue Grotto Nightclub. "The only club in town that actually has a [glass-sided] swimming pool built into the wall," adds Egoyan. "They closed it off because it wasn't considered politically correct, but we reopened it. It was fabulous."
Lunch is over. The fake press conference calls. Egoyan straightens his name tags and heads back into the ballroom. On the way he smiles at a few bellhops (more extras) who are snoring in the hall awaiting his cue.
(PRNewswire, Aug 23, 2005)
THINKFilm announced today that the company will appeal the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) "NC-17" rating of the suspense filled mystery, Where the Truth Lies. Academy-Award-nominated writer-director Atom Egoyan will speak on behalf of the film at the upcoming appeal. An "NC-17" rating from the MPAA restricts access to the film to audiences under the age of 17. An appeal date is being set.
THINKFilm chairman Robert Lantos, who is also the film's producer, notes: "Where the Truth Lies is a sophisticated and intelligently provocative film. The NC-17 rating will unfairly limit people's access to it because of the number of theaters in America which will not play an NC-17 rated film. This film stars some of the most talented actors in the movies today, is based on a popular mainstream novel and is written and directed by a filmmaker known for his artistic integrity and achievement. The film has not encountered this kind of restrictive rating anywhere else in the free world. Only in America will many be deprived of access to it."
The film tells the story of what happens during a minage a trios [sic] that leads to a girl's death and it is the minage [sic] a trois scene which has yielded the NC-17 rating. Continues Lantos, "This scene is done using a single sustained mastershot in order to allow the actors the most conducive environment for intimacy and intensity, and in order to best communicate what happens in the film's pivotal scene. It cannot be cut without compromising the central scene of the narrative and thus rendering the mystery of the film incomprehensible. It remains more than a bit absurd to me that this scene would garner an R if shot exactly the same but from just torso up, but becomes an NC-17 because the mastershot reveals full bodies."
In Where the Truth Lies, based on Rupert Holmes' acclaimed novel of the same name, Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth star as Lanny Morris and Vince Collins, the country's hottest entertainment duo. Lanny and Vince are knee deep in all the wealth and power that comes with such fame. That is, until a beautiful girl (Rachel Blanchard) turns up naked and dead in the pair's hotel suite after a night of wild partying. Years later, an intrepid reporter (Alison Lohman) sets out to discover what happened that night, only to be lured into the seductive games of these men.
The film received its world premiere at Cannes this year and will have its North American premiere as an official gala of the 2005 Toronto Film Festival. Where the Truth Lies marks the sixth collaboration between Atom Egoyan and Golden Globe nominated producer Robert Lantos. The film is scheduled to be released on October 14 in New York and Los Angeles, with a national expansion on October 21.
(indieWIRE, Aug 23, 2005, by Eugene Hernandez)
[...] Asked how this rating would hinder the film's release, ThinkFilm's head of theatrical distribution Mark Urman told indieWIRE that whatever the outcome of the rating situation the film would ultimately be fine.
"When a film has this restrictive 'NC-17' rating, or no rating, a lot of the bookings are on a case by case basis. It slows things down and complicates things. But, one can still play a lot of venues, and the film is not salacious or otherwise beyond the pale, so I expect the exhibition community to take it in stride and to book it without hesitation."
In the case of "The Aristocrats," the recent ratings controversy that lead a mainstream theater chain to ban the movie fueled greater media attention for the film, which could also be the case with the Egoyan movie, agreed Urman. "It could indeed help," he said, "The film is sexy, but it is also mainstream and very classy. This is not '9 Songs' and it's not 'The Dreamers'." It's Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth after all! So it may be restricted to grown-ups, but it won't be confined to the margins that those other films were."
At the film's Cannes debut, insiders buzzed that the film's racier bits might land the movie an 'NC-17' from the Motion Picture Association of America. Urman explained that Egoyan trimmed the movie after the fest and he expected the film might get an 'R' rating. While some studios and Indiewood companies will not release films rated higher than an 'R', an independent company without corporate pressures can opt to release a movie unrated.
ThinkFilm plans to open the Egoyan film in New York and Los Angeles on October 14th, followed by an expansion into top markets around the country a week later and Urman says he personally feels the movie is suitable for a 17 year-old. "I think it can stand alongside an R without blushing," Urman explained, adding" The plot and the psychology are too complex for anyone who isn't sophisticated, so we're really splitting hairs about 17 vs. 18, but it's not a film one would see many 13 yr-olds frequenting. That said, a stupid 40 year old may come for the sex, but will have trouble with the mystery and the milieu!"
(The Hollywood Reporter, Aug 22, 2005, by Gregg Kilday)
Call it a case of ratings interruptus.
ThinkFilm said Friday that it plans to appeal the NC-17 that the MPAA Classification and Ratings Administration has awarded Atom Egoyan's "Where the Truth Lies."
The only problem is that, according to the MPAA, the group hasn't officially published the movie's rating yet, and no appeal date has been set.
Based on a murder mystery by Rupert Holmes, "Truth" concerns an investigation into an unsolved murder that marred the career of a '50s stand-up comedy team (Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth). The film includes a ménage à trois sex scene involving Bacon, Firth and actress Rachel Blanchard that many observers expect will result in an NC-17, which would make the movie off limits for viewers younger than 18.
In addition to restricting the audience, the NC-17 tag also reduces a studio's ability to market the movie, with some newspapers refusing to publish ads, and some theater owners refusing to screen such movies.
According to sources familiar with discussions between CARA and the director, Egoyan has trimmed several scenes to the point where they would earn the less-restrictive R rating but that the ménage à trois scene remains in NC-17 rating territory according to CARA. "Our understanding is that you must first accept the rating, which we did Thursday, and then you can request an appeal," one source said.
When journalists queried Egoyan about the movie's possible ratings difficulties at a media luncheon at this year's Festival de Cannes, the director said: "I guess I'm naïve. I really had no idea it would be a problem. I just heard the deciding factor could be thrusting. Apparently, anything over three thrusts and you're in trouble. Well, nobody told me. I didn't even do covering shots, so there's nothing I can cut away to. This is what you get."
ThinkFilm chairman Robert Lantos, who also is the film's producer, acknowledged the challenge in reshaping the scene in question, saying: "This scene is done using a single sustained mastershot in order to allow the actors the most conducive environment for intimacy and intensity and in order to best communicate what happens in the film's pivotal scene. It cannot be cut without compromising the central scene of the narrative and thus rendering the mystery of the film incomprehensible. It remains more than a bit absurd to me that this scene would garner an R if shot exactly the same but from just the torso up but becomes an NC-17 because the mastershot reveals full bodies."
Added Lantos: " 'Where the Truth Lies' is a sophisticated and intelligently provocative film. The NC-17 rating will unfairly limit people's access to it because of the number of theaters in America (that) will not play an NC-17-rated film."
Egoyan will speak on behalf of the film when an appeal is scheduled.
The film is to be released Oct. 14 in Los Angeles and New York, with a national expansion Oct. 21.
(NY Daily News, Aug 14, 2005)
Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard have a wild ménàge à trois in their new film, "Where the Truth Lies." But how much of their three-way will you get to see?
Director Atom Egoyan and ThinkFilm execs are wrestling with the MPAA ratings board over whether the film should get an NC-17 or the preferable R.
Word is the ratings sheriffs have gotten hung up on four scenes in the movie, based on Rupert Holmes' novel about a journalist trying to find the truth behind the breakup of a famed comedy team years before. A lesbian sex scene—featuring a woman dressed as Alice in Wonderland—was less troubling than Blanchard's trifecta romp with Bacon and Firth, who play the comic duo loosely based on Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. The next morning, Blanchard is found dead in the hotel room.
The "Sweet Hereafter" director writes in SLM magazine that the MPAA is concerned with "the actual number of thrusts seen." Before shooting his actors, he recalls, "I resorted to playing with dolls, trying to figure out angles and configurations." But in the end, he couldn't disguise the sexual mechanics.
"I needed these scenes to feel lurid and unbridled," says the Oscar-nominee and four-time Cannes Film Festival prize winner.
Having promised producer Robert Lantos an R, Egoyan has continued whacking away at the offending scenes. But one insider tells us, "The mystery of the girl's death hinges on that scene. If he cuts any more, the audience won't know what happened."
ThinkFilm is due to get a verdict on the latest edit this week. If the NC-17 sticks, the company could appeal, or it could release "Where the Truth Lies" without a rating, as it did with its raunchy comedy "The Aristocrats."
It's safe to say the movie is a departure for Blanchard, that sweet girl from TV's "7th Heaven." She admits her boyfriend "cringed" when he saw her triple-header—partly because "he would suffer endless taunts of 'One degree of Kevin Bacon!'"
(Sunday Times, July 17, 2005. by Garth Pearce)
It is going to be a year of big movie performances by unknown actresses. They have all been hovering below the radar, but a feast of film-festival previews, from Cannes to Venice (next month), is announcing their arrival....Here is the rundown of who, why and how they are making it.
Why now? A standout performance as the victim of a threesome that haunts the careers of a top 1950s comedy duo, played by Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon, in the forthcoming Where the Truth Lies.
She says “I got so caught up in the key scene, I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I have Kevin Bacon on top of me.’ My character is very driven, and it is always interesting to play people who keep pushing until they get what they want.”
They say “Rachel gives a dynamite performance,” says Firth. “If this film was going to work, the audience had to believe the relationship between her, Kevin and me. She oozes natural authority.”
(The Hollywood Reporter, July 14, 2005, by Anne Thompson)
ThinkFilm and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have finalized a deal with producer Robert Lantos of Serendipity Point Films to release Atom Egoyan's mystery thriller "Where the Truth Lies" in the U.S. and Canada. The deal was announced Wednesday by ThinkFilm president and CEO Jeff Sackman. Lantos also is chairman of ThinkFilm.
ThinkFilm will distribute the film and handle television sales in North America, with home entertainment being handled by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Egoyan directed "Where the Truth Lies" as well as adapted Rupert Holmes' novel. The film stars Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a young 1950s comedy team who split after a girl (Rachel Blanchard) turns up naked and dead in their hotel suite. Alison Lohman plays a journalist who investigates the duo 20 years later.
The film premiered as a Competition entry at this year's Festival de Cannes and will receive an official gala presentation at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.
"We are looking forward to celebrasting with everyone at the Toronto film festival in September," Sackman said.
ThinkFilm will open the movie in limited release Oct. 7 in New York, Los Angeles and other major markets.
(Globe and Mail, May 14, 2005, by Liam Lacey)
The phrase "where the truth lies," with the pun intended, could be the title of almost any Atom Egoyan film, from Exotica to The Sweet Hereafter to Ararat, with his characteristic emphasis on investigations, competing narratives and different perceptions of events. It happens to be the title of his stylized, often sexual new film, an adaptation of Rupert Holmes's novel about a 1950s nightclub duo who split up the night after a dead girl was found in the bathtub in their hotel suite. It's also about the determined young journalist trying to unlock their story in the early 1970s.
Budgeted at $24-million (U.S.), it's easily the most expensive film the Toronto-based Egoyan has done, and as producer Robert Lantos said frankly, it's aimed at an audience who may never have seen an Atom Egoyan film. The cast includes Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a Martin and Lewis-style comedy team, with Alison Lohman (Matchstick Men) as the young writer.
Where the Truth Lies is a lush-looking film, shot in Canada, Los Angeles and studios in England, with echoes of classic Hitchcock pictures such as Vertigo, both in camera movement in certain scenes and musical score. While Holmes's novel was linear, Egoyan has typically Atom-ized the narrative, moving back and forward, with alternative accounts of events eventually converging at the end.
Initial reaction at yesterday morning's press screening was mixed to Egoyan's backstage drama.
In particular, there were doubts about Lohman, who seemed kind of adolescent to be a crack journalist even in 1972; the same actress plays herself at age 12. She's also in sexual scenes that led one journalist in the press conference after the screening to question whether an actress so young needed to be protected. Lohman, who is busy shooting another movie, wasn't there to answer the question. Egoyan said the actress's quality of innocence and vulnerability is essential, because it makes her eventual ability to turn the tables against her aggressors that much more powerful. People were "unnecessarily worried that she was exploited. Actually, she's 26 years old."
The sex scenes, Egoyan added, were essential because he wanted to portray a world where the entertainers' lives appeared to be "unbridled. They have all the drugs they want, all the sex they want. The sense of going too far is essential to the piece. . . . I wanted the sex scenes to be as vivid and corporeal as possible."
While the sex scenes earned a lot of discussion, Egoyan pointed out that Where the Truth Lies may also be his goriest film, though no one in the press questioned it. Vince (Firth) is the gentlemanly partner who has a vicious off-stage temper; at one point, he leads a rude patron backstage and beats his face to a bloody pulp.
Obviously, the Firth role was cast somewhat against type, and an Englishwoman asked the actor if, after being known as a "rather nice romantic hero," he minded playing a "pill-popping, oversexed bisexual."
"It's a role that's not really a stretch for most actors," Firth answered.
Egoyan asked Bacon and Firth to come up with their own idea of the comedy duo and they rehearsed for several days—not, said Firth, to create a polished comedy routine but to evoke the relaxed camaraderie of two long-time partners. Initially, Firth thought he might play the actor as an American but, he said, the national stereotypes worked better: "the English schoolteacher and the American unruly adolescent."
Much of the story revolves around the cost of fame, and the difference between celebrities' personas and their private lives. Bacon pointed out that the idea of celebrity and authenticity is contradictory. "Whenever you're doing press interviews or press conferences, and journalists are trying to get at the real you and you're pretending to offer them the real you, it's kind of an acting exercise."
(Toronto Sun, May 14, 2005, by Bruce Kirkland)
The sexiest film so far in the Cannes Film Festival comes from—surprise!—Canada. It is Toronto filmmaker Atom Egoyan's film noirish drama Where The Truth Lies, which made its debut last night in competition.
But Egoyan does not think the film is salacious or excessive, despite nude scenes involving Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard in an orgy, Bacon and Alison Lohman in a night of passion and Lohman in a steamy lesbian encounter when her character is high on drugs.
"It is an essential part of the film," the analytical Egoyan told a Cannes press conference yesterday. Egoyan, who has dealt with overt human sexuality before in films such as The Adjuster and Exotica, said he intensified the sex in Where The Truth Lies because he wanted to show how his two central male characters—played by Bacon and Firth—were locked into a self-indulgent lifestyle as a comedy-musical act which had thrust the men into stardom in the 1950s.
"I wanted to create this world that was kind of intoxicating and I also wanted to show the difference between a sexual gesture that was born of a real intimacy—say with Alison and Kevin because she was with this man whom she idolized—as opposed to these scenes which were quite staged."
Those "staged" scenes include a sequence in which Bacon, Firth, Blanchard and three hookers are involved in a wild night that leads to the mysterious death of Blanchard's character, the central plot hook of the film noir story.
Egoyan said he shot these scenes show how sex was used "to either manipulate people or to make someone believe something that didn't happen. It was just part of the world of the movie and I wanted it unbridled. I wanted it to feel that anything could happen, that these people could take any amount of drugs they wanted, they could have any amount of sex they wanted, that nothing was holding them back."
Egoyan said he is mystified that so many people are reacting so strongly to the supercharged sexual content.
"It's really interesting to me how people respond to the sexuality but not to the violence." In one scene, Firth smashes an anti-Semite's head into the floor after the man had hurled a racist comment at Bacon, who plays a Jew.
"No one evens talks about that," Egoyan said. "That's the most gory scene I've ever done and people don't have a problem with that. But it's weird. We're really kind of obsessed."
Egoyan said he never concerned himself with censorship when shooting the film, which he said is impossible to cut.
"I have a great producer (Toronto movie mogul Robert Lantos) who doesn't make me have to think about censors, you know. I mean, we probably have issues but we're both pretty firm, so to speak, what we want the film to do."
Lantos said yesterday that he does not think the censors will have a real problem because the sex is not really that graphic.
"It's a testament to the effectiveness of those scenes that they are being labelled graphic because they're not graphic. They are steamy and obviously they work because you think they're graphic. But there is nothing that you can see in them that, technically, would get this film in trouble with any censors. And we don't expect to have an NC-17 rating (which is a curse for any film) in America and it would be extraordinary if we did get that. This is a film for adults and was always intended as a film for adults."
Bacon said he had no problem with the sexuality or the nudity and finds it odd that other people do.
"One of the things about the movie is that, when we have sex, we're naked and that's what kind of flips people out. Sometimes personally, I leave some of my clothing on but usually, I don't know about the rest of you ... (grinning, he leaves the rest of the sentence unsaid). To me, I think the sex in the movie is incredibly appropriate and the way it is done is very specific to the story telling."
Blanchard, a Toronto-born actress who sees Egoyan's film as her serious breakout film, is seen both naked and sexualized, and naked and dead in Where The Truth Lies. No problem, she said in an interview yesterday.
"I felt really uninhibited doing it. I also felt really protected. I felt really comfortable with Kevin and Atom and Colin, because it could have been a really uncomfortable experience. I've worked with some directors where, even just standing there in a dress, you felt really violated. (With Egoyan), I felt really safe. I felt really well respected. I think it's the one time where nudity made sense."
Producer doesn't want Egoyan's film to be censored
(Variety, May 13, 2005, by Elizabeth Guider)
Robert Lantos, the Canadian producer of competish entry "Where the Truth Lies," said he would not allow Atom Egoyan's sexually explicit pic to be cut by the MPA ratings scissors—as the sex scenes are integral to the story.
Egoyan's time-jumping tale of a famous Hollywood break-up has already been sold widely except for the U.K. and the U.S. where, Lantos said, he is beginning negotiations "now," and might conclude within days. The pic had a budget of $24 million.
"I believe it's a film that's accessible to a fairly wide adult audience," Lantos told Variety at a press lunch Friday, the day the pic screened in Cannes. He said he'd want it to be released in Canada and the U.S. in October or November.
Lantos, who has a history of making provocative, upscale movies and has worked with Egoyan on several movies, said that at this stage in his career he wanted his films to score with the widest audience possible.
"If we're going to that much effort (to make the film), I want it to be seen," he said.
Pic starts Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth and is based on Rupert Holmes' eponymous best-seller.
"Where the Truth Lies" was test-marketed in the U.S., in places far from Manhattan and Los Angeles, and the reactions, Lantos admitted, were skewed. "A number of folks over 40 walked out. It was clearly an age thing. The younger people, who may never have even heard of Egoyan and don't go to movies because of directors, clearly liked it," Lantos said.
"Where the Truth Lies" does have a fall-back in the U.S., in that Lantos is half-owner of ThinkFilm, and could presumably go that route if no other offer satisfies. Lantos said he wouldn't "rule that out," but that Think really isn't set up as yet to handle the wider release he envisions for "Truth."
(CBC Arts, May 13, 2005)
At a Cannes Film Festival news conference after the debut of Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies, much was made of the film's explicit sex scenes, which include nudity, a threesome and a lesbian encounter.
The Canadian filmmaker and the two male leads, Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon, all took turns Friday defending the steamy scenes in the film, adapted from Rupert Holmes's novel, about a popular 1950s-era musical comedy duo who live in a whirlwind of sex, alcohol and drugs until a scandal forces them apart. Two decades later, a young journalist interviewing the duo begins to unravel their dark secrets.
At the news conference, Egoyan faced questions about why he took the sex scenes so far and heard comments that there was more sex in this film than in all of his other works combined. In response, Egoyan wondered aloud why viewers were focusing on the sex but ignoring the extreme violence in the film. In one scene, for example, Firth's character viciously beats a heckler.
"It really is interesting to me how people respond to the sexuality but not to the violence," the director said at the news conference.
"No one says that it goes too far when he's bashing his head against the floor. No one ever talks about that. That's the most gory scene I've ever done, and people don't have a problem with that. It's weird. We're still really kind of obsessed about sex," he said.
Perhaps it was the frank manner in which Egoyan portrayed the duo's scenes of debauchery that disturbed some people, Bacon suggested.
"Sex is oftentimes all right to see as long as the participants are clothed, or some sort of piece of furniture is put in the way of the nudity. ... One of the things about the movie is that when we have sex, we're naked," he said. "That's what kind of flips people out, which I don't understand. ... It is unfortunate that people find that so disturbing. To me, I think that the sex in the movie is incredibly appropriate."
Some questioned whether Firth sought to break from his image as the stoic but dashing hero of films like Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones's Diary with his role as a "pill-popping, over-sexed bisexual."
"It's a role that is not usually a stretch for most actors. To play 'Lord of the Manor of Derbyshire' [from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice] requires more research. I feel comfortable in this sort of a drama," he said. "The romantic comedy genre arrived late in my career and took me by surprise. ... I'm always surprised when that's what I'm always associated with."
Though he said he never thinks about censors, Egoyan acknowledged that the film, which some have called his most commercial venture yet, will probably run into some issues over the sex scenes. "But we're pretty firm with what we want the film to do.....I do think it's essential to the story "
(May 13, 2005)
Kevin Bacon on the development of the comedy duo: “With Colin being British, when we got to Canada we just started to think about how that might be and how we could have the button-down British guy and the ugly American and the contrast of that. I looked at a lot of Martin & Lewis, also a lot of the Smothers Brothers, Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy...”
Colin Firth on their comedy act: “It was hugely dependent on spontaneity and our relationship. I was very tempted to go for this role as an American as written in the book, but it was irresistible the advantages in keeping the Englishness, both as an act...and in my character's behaviour off stage. We tried to make a virtue of the contrast so the cliché of the Englishman is the formal schoolmaster if you like, and the cliché of the American is the unruly eternal adolescent. ”
Rachel Blanchard on her script: “Once I have completed a scene, I have a hard time remembering what was on the page, because it's almost like a dream. You have a hard time separating the two, what really happened and what was there originally. ”
Atom Egoyan on the dark side of the film: “I think that as dark as the film is, it ends with a tremendous beam of light, that the decision she makes is very optimistic. I think that in a lot of the films that I have done, the characters go to very dark places to find something that provides some hope. ”
Atom Egoyan on the quantity of nudity: “That sense you feel as the viewer, that it's going too far, is absolutely essential to the dramatic intention of the piece. The viewer has to experience a sense of violation. I wanted to create this world that was intoxicating. I wanted it to be unbridled...nothing was holding them back. I have a great producer who doesn't make me think about censors, but we probably will have issues.
It's really interesting to see how people respond to the sexuality and not the violence. That he's going too far when he's bashing the guy's head against the floor. No one ever talks about that. That's the goriest scene I've ever done. ”
Atom Egoyan on style and noir movies: “I revisited a lot of noir movies and it seems to me that the defining aspect of noir is not any particular visual style but the sense that the character is dealing with the notion of fate. That is what defines noir. All these characters think they have a machine figured out and will be able to control things, but in fact it's all illusion. I love then the way the viewer becomes implicated in the noir.”
(Toronto Star, May 6, 2005, by Peter Howell)
"Stop reading it right now!" Atom Egoyan commands, only half in jest.
"I thought I purchased every copy of the book in the city!"
I've just told him I've been staying up late with Where the Truth Lies, the Rupert Holmes novel the Toronto writer/director has adapted for the screen. It's a thriller—and a real page-turner—about two showbiz legends, an unexplained death and unearthed secrets, set in the 1950s and the 1970s.
Egoyan's movie by the same name is heading to the Cannes Film Festival next week, where it will compete for the celebrated Palme d'Or, along with fellow Torontonian David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. But what each filmmaker really wants is to have his work taken on its own terms.
Egoyan is worried that the book lovers might object to some of the artistic liberties he's taken with Where the Truth Lies. He's made significant changes to the dynamics between main characters Lanny Morris and Vince Collins, a comedy duo played by Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. He's also dropped certain scenes and added a new subplot. It's what filmmakers do. Movies are a different medium from books, and people who expect a visual form to be exactly like a written one are bound for disappointment. Egoyan frets nonetheless.
"I'm glad a lot of people aren't familiar with the book yet," he says. "My purest experiences are when I go into a movie with no expectations. To me, Where the Truth Lies is just a great piece of drama."
(April 19, 2005)
Where the Truth Lies was announced as an Official Selection of the prestigious 58th Cannes Film Festival and in competition for the Palme d'Or, its top award. The 12-day festival (May 11-22) is a launching pad for films from around the world, usually made outside the Hollywood system, that often go on to be hits with audiences and critics.
The heavy hitters will be back on the Croisette next month, according to Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémeaux, who said, "This year, there is a return to a certain classicism, the great auteurs, many of whom have already been in the competition."
Egoyan will go head to head with fellow Canadian director David Cronenberg, who also has a film in competition. Both Egoyan and Cronenberg had films at Cannes in 2002. Cronenberg's Spider was in competition, however, while Egoyan's Ararat was not. Cronenberg also entered Crash in competition in 1996 while Egoyan entered Exotica in '94, The Sweet Hereafter in '97 and Felicia's Journey in '99. The last time two Canadian filmmakers were in competition was 33 years ago, in 1972, says Stephen Lan, a spokesman for Telefilm Canada.
In the Globe and Mail, Egoyan, "described it as 'amazing news that both films will be there. I'm never blasé about this. The festival is very, very stringent and this is never expected.' Egoyan, who is still in post-production on his film, said it will be 'very, very tight' to have the film ready for the May deadline. He describes the film as having film-noir elements and said he studied the genre extensively, especially with an ear to the use of 'conflicting voice-over' and for stylistic accuracy in the film's two time-periods, the 1950s and the 1970s.
Among the acclaimed directors bringing films to Cannes this year are Lars Van Trier, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, Wim Wenders, Michael Haneke and Amos Gitai. Woody Allen's London-set film Match Point will be shown out of competition.
The actress on preparing for her first nude scene and being in a Bacon sandwich
(Premiere, March 2005, by Rachel Blanchard)
There comes a time in every actress's career when the question of nudity rears its head. For me, it was when I joined Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies, in which I play an aspiring 1950s journalist who has a life-altering experience when she ends up in a threesome with two celebrities (played by Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth).
I
had to break it to the relevant parties that their daughter/girlfriend
was going to be on the big screen, in the buff. My parents did their
best to pretend I hadn't told them, and my boyfriend cringed. Not only
would he have to watch me get it on with two men, but he would suffer
endless taunts of "one degree of Kevin Bacon."Nudity clauses were drawn up—the important stipulation being that my dressing room come supplied with a bottle of merlot. Suddenly, I was getting a merkin ("an artificial covering of hair for the pubic area," according to my dictionary). I was waxed, moisturized, wearing a fluffy bathrobe—and standing face to face with Firth and Bacon.
The ease of shooting in the nude is dependent upon one's director. In this regard, I could not have been luckier. Oh yeah, it doesn't hurt for your costars to be incredibly sexy. Maybe I didn't need that bottle of wine after all!