Atom Egoyan on Casting Colin Firth, Kevin Bacon and Alison Lohman: “I think in each of the cases I wanted to import an aspect of these actors persona and then kind of flip it on itself. Colin is like this Darcy-like character, very charming and civilized and polite. And that becomes part of his screen persona as Vince Collins, but then it’s kind of turned on its head.
With Alison, I just love the fact that she’s actually 26 years-old but everyone thinks she’s [younger]. She plays these innocent childlike figures, so I thought it would be very interesting to use her actually, but to also use her persona at the same time. And that way kind of redefine, completely redefine, how she is in people’s imagination. That was really thrilling and I thought she’d surprise a lot of people. I like surprising people, I suppose.
And Kevin, again, has this sort of image of being dangerous and kind of impulsive, and that’s a thing that he uses as his persona for Lanny Morris. But again he’s, in fact, the most controlling and the most superego-like character of them all, in terms of his meticulous attention to controlling every aspect of that act. Also he’s someone I think… Kevin joked to me that someone once said he’s the most un-Jewish person. He’ll never get to play a Jew. It’s so interesting to put on brown contact lenses and take away those trademark blue eyes, those piercing blue eyes, and sort of see what you end up with. I think it takes a while for people to try to figure out what is it about Kevin that looks so different in this movie. It’s just the simple eye color – the fact that his eye color has changed.”
On Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as a Comedy Team: “There’s this thing that happens when you have 200 paid extras who are cheering you on and making you feel as though the act is the best thing that they’ve ever seen. I think it’s sort of accelerates…they feed off of that vibe. I mean, that was one of the most magical moments of the filmmaking, was to see how real that act became.
It was tightly scripted but then the great thing is when you have a script, you can then kind of move out from there. Like something like Colin’s monologue after he beats the man, that’s completely improvised. He just sort of came up with that on the day of shooting.”
Atom Egoyan on Directing the Sex Scenes in “Where the Truth Lies:” Egoyan said he directed the scenes “by being as clear as possible about what they’re about to embark on. By showing them images and drawings and also making sure that everyone is completely comfortable with where they have to go, and that they’re absolutely no surprises at the last moment. That’s the key to directing sex scenes. You don’t sort of throw in something at the last moment. I think that can really disturb people and flip them out.
First and foremost, they have to identify why those scenes are important to the film. You know, why dramatically those scenes are essential, and then to relax as much as possible. I think what happens when there’s nudity on set is that once people are on set, it’s actually a lot more comfortable than when they think about it beforehand (laughing). I think people get most nervous when they’re imagining what it would be like, as opposed to what it’s actually like when you’re there. Especially when you’re dealing with professionals and you’re dealing with people who are performers.”
Alice in Wonderland in “Where the Truth Lies:” The Alice in Wonderland character was in the novel but Egoyan says he had to tone it down when he adapted the story for the screen. “It’s all set in Disneyland and there’s this whole alternate world to Disneyland where there’s this series of kind of passages and back alleys and private clubs within the rides themselves, which Rupert swears is true. It actually did happen. But we would never get permission to shoot there, of course, so we kind of had to modify.”
Egoyan says he would have loved to include the scenes from the novel in the film but there’s no way Disney would have ever granted him permission. “It would have been very cool. I don’t think Disney would have granted us the rights (laughing). I think we can take that as a given.”
