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AUTEUR OH DEAR
by Daren Foster

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DAREN FOSTER PODCAST - Debating the career of Atom Egoyan

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AUTEUR OH DEAR
by Daren Foster

***Atom Egoyan and his 3 fans celebrate his 25 years of filmmaking.***

Staring out from the cover of a recent issue of Playback (Canada’s Variety minus the zippy alliterative headlines) is the mug of filmmaking icon Atom Egoyan. Knuckles on temple to strike a modified Rodin’s The Thinker pose, this is the picture of the pensive, oh-so-serious artist who’s been making feature films now for 25 years. 25 years! Really?! If the man possesses any self-awareness whatsoever, he must get down on his knees and pray each and every morning in complete and utter thankfulness that anyone’s allowed him to make another movie after his 1984 debut, Next of Kin, let alone build a filmography over a quarter of a century.

You see for me, the face of Atom Egoyan represents the face of a failed Canadian film industry. After he had made his first tolerable film, The Sweet Hereafter in 1997, a waggish friend of mine said that only in this country would someone be able to make 5 unwatchable, self-important, heart-stoppingly boring movies before he finally made one that didn’t cause mass comatose-ness in audiences. Wait a second, you’ll impolitely interrupt, what about Michael Bay or.. that guy who was once married to Geena Davis. No, not Jeff Goldblum. The director guy. Nordic looking.. Reny Harlin, yeah. What about them? Well, at some point they made money for studios. If and when that stopped happening, the powers that be stop letting them make movies.

But not Atom Egoyan. His films never make money largely because, in a firm grasp of the obvious, no one watches his films. He is beloved by few outside of Wim Wenders, other equally and rightfully obscure Canadian filmmakers, and this country’s arts funding agencies. The man has built a public persona as That Guy Who Makes Films Nobody Watches. Yet he is allowed to continue making movies even after 25 years of making movies that nobody sees. Isn’t that a definition of the word ‘crazy’; doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different outcome?

Perhaps those involved in getting movies made in this country aren’t hoping for a different outcome. How else to explain feting a filmmaker for a career spanning 25 years with 10 feature films that an overwhelming majority of the Canadian movie going public could not even name a single title? Even his best known, and the one that garnered him Oscar nominations for directing and adapted screenplay, The Sweet Hereafter, managed to only scrape up a total of six million dollars at the North American box office. And if mentioned by name, it will elicit a look of vague recognition on the face of the average audience member and a mumbled, semi-apologetic reply of, well, I always meant to see it but..., trailing off in a disinterested silence.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not equating boffo box office with high quality filmmaking, the line of logic that measures worth by cash. There are plenty of people making movies out there who ply their trade sadly (sometimes happily) and inexplicably in ill-deserved anonymity, always struggling to put the financing together for their next project. Setting aside non-English speaking types where that well runs deep, I’m thinking of names like John Sayles, Jim Jaramusch, Hal Hartley, Todd Haynes, Darren Aronofsky. Most of these guys, like Egoyan, operate at best on the periphery of the mainstream, not always delivering cinematic gold but at least contributing the occasional movie that breaks out of the art house ghetto and strikes a chord with a devoted following of people looking for something other than the latest sequel/prequel/reboot of a creaky franchise.

Brother From Another Planet. Eight Men Out. Lonestar. Stranger Than Paradise. Down By Law. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. The Unbelievable Truth. Trust. Simple Men. Far From Heaven. I’m Not There. Pi. Requiem For a Dream.

Chances are most of you will have heard of or seen a handful of these movies. Now try this list: The Adjuster. Family Viewing. Speaking Parts. Exotica. Felicia’s Journey. Ararat. Even The Sweet Hereafter if I hadn’t already mentioned it twice here. Aside from the hardest core cinephiliac, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if those names were foreign to a vast majority of even dedicated filmgoers.

Yes, yes. Canadian movies face huge obstacles trying to break wide. Most notably, it is shockingly difficult for home-grown films to be seen by those even wanting to see them because there is precious little control over screen distribution in our own country. The catch, though, is that by continuing to make such audience unfriendly films like Egoyan’s, there’s no demand for more Canadian movies.

Even when he’s given the opportunity to reach out to the mainstream like he was with Where the Truth Lies in 2005, Egoyan delivered a critically drubbed bomb, translating a $30 million budget into a miniscule one million dollars at the box office. A career killer for many directors (anybody hear much from Michael Cimino after Heaven’s Gate?) but Egoyan lives on. Amazingly, the man’s made 2 more films since then with seemingly no repercussions to such flat out failures.

I have a theory as to why that is. In the wake of the great tax credit windfall that swept through the Canadian film business in the late-70s and early-80s in an attempt to develop a viable, native industry, various levels of government paused to rethink the strategy. While the orgy of filmmaking certainly strengthened the below-the-line, production side of the business, the real winners were American B-movie producers who were essentially being paid to make films in Canada. Thinking that bringing the likes of Porky’s and Prom Night to screens wasn’t money well spent, funding agencies did an aboutface and began looking for more personal, esoteric, art house films that would better represent the notion of Canada.

Enter the aesthete, Atom Egoyan.

Propelled forward by an overly protective, anti-Hollywood crowd of critics, proclaiming that this is how Canadians make movies, Egoyan ventured from one unwatched film to another, never having to justify his creative decisions or accept any blame for not putting bums in the seats. By the time Exotica gained him any sort of traction with what might be considered a critical mass of viewers, he and his backers were 5 films in and the time to reassess and cut their losses had passed. Too late to admit that the wrong horse had been backed, everyone plunged ahead. Another decade-and-a-half and 5 films later, we’re here, celebrating 25 years of filmmaking failure masked as a happy milestone.

Atom Egoyan is often paired with David Cronenberg as the brothers-in-arms, in the good fight for Canadian film survival; the godfathers of the country’s independent spirit. From my perspective, I can’t think of two more disparate entities. A good chunk older than Egoyan, Cronenberg toiled away for years in the low, low budget sci-fi/horror realm, learning his craft and developing his personal vision within the confines of a well established genre. By the time of his 25 year retrospective, Cronenberg had films like Dead Ringers, a remake of The Fly and Naked Lunch under his belt. None of these would be considered pure mainstream tastes but they were films that showed Cronenberg as a creative force who fleshed out a body of work that transcended his personal idiosyncrasies, tics and the narrow confines of his original filmmaking vision. Egoyan has displayed none of that growth. His 25 years of making films should be cause for consternation rather than celebration.