Atom Egoyan expected his latest film to place him firmly in the mainstream, but the US certification board decided otherwise, he tells Donald Clarke
There's a great trivia question in here somewhere. Who connects The Piña Colada Song, Krapp's Last Tape and Jerry Lewis? Why, Atom Egoyan, of course. The fiercely intelligent Canadian film-maker, whose version of Krapp was one of the highlights of the Beckett on Film series, has just directed a movie based on a highly fictionalised treatment of the relationship between Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin by one Rupert Holmes. Yes, the same Rupert Holmes who sang The Piña Colada Song.
Where the Truth Lies - also the title of Holmes's 2003 novel - has not been greeted with universal praise. Many critics, primed to expect highbrow fodder in the style of earlier Egoyan films such as The Sweet Hereafter or Exotica, seem to have been taken aback by the new work's more mainstream intentions. The picture is, in fact, an agreeably gripping murder mystery featuring fine performances by Kevin Bacon (less frantic than Lewis) and Colin Firth (more English than Dino) and gorgeously lush photography by Egoyan regular Paul Sarossy. What more could you want?
Some of the criticism has focused on Egoyan's decision to distance his anti-heroes from Lewis and Martin. Whereas the film allows Bacon and Firth to develop an original comic double-act, Holmes's roman à clef presented characters that looked and behaved very like the legendary entertainers.
"Oh yes it is completely explicit in the novel," Egoyan, the spit of a younger Alan Rickman, says when we meet up at the London Film Festival. "It was, I think, ultimately distracting. You kept wondering, when reading the book, whether this or that might have happened. It opened up a whole set of questions that were unnecessary."
The decision to drop any attempt at impersonation allowed Firth and Bacon to enjoy turning themselves into cabaret performers.
"Yes, they enjoyed creating an act that didn't previously exist," he says. "You look at American culture in the 1950s and there were these British figures constantly around: Peter Lawford, Cary Grant, Noel Coward. They were very polished, very genteel characters. It was interesting to use that figure as the straight man against an impulsive unbridled proto-American."
EGOYAN, WHOSE BREATHLESS conversation betrays a formidably busy mind, is quite capable of offering counter-arguments to his critics in the press. But, sadly, no amount of wrangling, however articulate, could pacify the outraged decency monitors at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) when the film was submitted for certification.
Outraged at several, to these eyes, only moderately explicit sex scenes, the MPAA imposed a financially ruinous NC-17 certificate on the film (no one 17 or under admitted). "That cert is financial death," Egoyan says. "Many cinemas will not take the film. You cannot get advertising in many newspapers. It is a very serious thing in America. Kiss of death."
Weeks of cutting and re-cutting occurred as Egoyan and his editors, puzzled as to exactly what was being asked of them, toiled to produce a version that could play in Tuna Fish, Iowa. The most troublesome scene depicted a threesome involving Bacon, Firth and the young actor, Rachel Blanchard (once a star of the nauseatingly wholesome TV series, 7th Heaven).
"I am not being disingenuous when I say that I did not think it would be a problem with this film," he says. "We did try and accommodate them as much as we could. There were three scenes where we were able to cut quite a lot, but the threesome was a problem because it was all shot as one master shot. Anyway, we kept re-submitting it and we kept getting the same response. Then when I went to this final meeting I was told there would be 10 people in the room and there were 12. Two of them were members of the clergy."
The torrent of words stops momentarily while he casts his eyes to heaven and puffs with exasperation.
"There was a Catholic priest and an Episcopalian minister there," he continues. "They didn't vote on the final decision, but they were there for the preliminary conversations. When did this start happening?"
Alan Parker, when confronted with a similar problem over his film, Angel Heart, was asked to remove "thrusting". This seems to be a particular concern of the MPAA.
"There was a bit of talk about that, yes," he laughs. "So eventually, when it became clear that they just weren't going to give us the cert we wanted, we put all the material back in again that we'd cut. So the film is as it was now."
EGOYAN COMES ACROSS as a pretty determined fellow. It seems he has always been so. Born in Cairo to Armenian parents, both painters, he was brought to Canada when he was just three years old. Initially he was reluctant to acknowledge his origins and refused to speak the Armenian language. It was not until he was at the University of Toronto, where he studied international relations and music, that he began to wake up to his heritage.
While musing on the conflict between the Armenian and Turkish peoples, Egoyan recalls his experiences in Ireland filming the 1999 adaptation of William Trevor's Felicia's Journey.
"I remember directing Gerard McSorley as this hardcore nationalist figure, seeming like a dinosaur from another time," he says. "The character was talking about 1916 and relatives who had died for the cause. I projected a lot of that tension into the story and then, in the middle of shooting it, Omagh happened - and Gerard is from Omagh. You never know when history is going to start flying back at you with its agenda."
At the same time as he was hanging about the Armenian Society at university, Egoyan was coming to realise that cinema, rather than theatre, might be his true metier. Early films, such as Speaking Parts and The Adjuster, tended to be intellectually bamboozling and knotty in their plotting. More recently, The Sweet Hereafter (for which he received a best director Oscar nomination) and Felicia's Journey have brought him something like a mainstream following. Where the Truth Lies should have been his most financially lucrative film yet. Sadly, at least in the US, the MPAA saw to that. Does he despair?
"Oh, there was this incident with that film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin," he says, by way of answering in the affirmative. "Some of the people at the test screening took the studio to court to try and get some credit for ideas they had had. This one guy, a handler at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, ended up with a contract at the studio. When that happens, the cat's out of the bag. We just don't know what is to become of film-making."
There is a brief pause before the erudite monologue continues.
Where the Truth Lies is on selected release