Atom Egoyan

“Wings of Desire. I have this, I’m not going to take it, but there’s an incredible story about this because this film changed my life. Wim had won the Grand Prize at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal in 1987. My film Family Viewing was an honorable mention. When he got up to the podium to actually accept his award, he had heard my film because it was announced before his prize, and he gave me his check for $5,000, and it was this huge, overwhelming, public event, and it changed my life. Suddenly it got all sorts of attention. I was completely stunned that he did that. And then I went back to Toronto, and I went to my local bank, kind of trembling, to cash the check, and I went to give it to the teller, and she took it and she looked at me and said, “Are you Wim Wenders?” Because obviously on the check that the festival gave him, it’s to Wim, not to me. And I realized I couldn’t cash this check. So if you look closely, this is actually a check to Wim Wenders. And I just thought, “Okay, that’s it. It’s worthless.” I still hold it. It was never cashed. However, the festival did reissue a check to me, and… Anyway, so this is for… I’m gonna put this back because I do have this already. But the story was worth telling.”

“So this is one of the most amazing movies, Fat Girl, and it’s also crazy for me because my wife, Arsinée Khanjian, is playing the mother of the two sisters in this. And for those of you who have seen this brilliant movie, the last half hour is so tense, but it became more tense for me because there’s this drive in a car, and I heard from Arsinée that there was no camera rig. Basically, she was driving the car with the cast in the car, and there was a camera mounted on the hood, but she was actually negotiating this crazy traffic. If you remember those moments with the trucks passing in and out, that was just Arsinée driving. If you’ve ever been in a car with Arsinée, that makes it even scarier, because she’s a very aggressive driver. And I just couldn’t believe that that’s how that was made. But this is a brilliant movie.”

“I have not seen Working Girls since it first came out. I remember this being a really powerful film for me. I remember it… It was so unlike anything I had seen. So this is Lizzie Borden, and it had a big influence, I think, on Exotica, probably, just in terms of the tone of it, the coolness of it, I guess, the emotional coolness of it. I felt it was something you wouldn’t have been able to do if it was being made as a commercial film. So this was really, really important.”

“So we were talking before about Catherine Breillat and danger in cinema and pushing things and this is certainly a film that really pushes things. This is by Liliana Cavani, The Night Porter, and an absolutely fearless performance by Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde. Deeply problematic, probably, and once upon a time you could make these types of movies, and you got to make them because no one would be questioning your sincerity and they would be trusting you, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons, but we’d be having all of those conversations. So this is also a really good memento of that time.”

“This film by Nicolas Roeg, Walkabout. There’s just an incredible energy that this film summons. The first part of it where the father… Do you give away the plots for these movies? Maybe. I don’t know, but there’s a whole spirit to what’s happening here. And the intersection between civilization and Indigenous culture, which I think is really important. This is a film about the collision of those two value systems, and it creates an erotic energy. Now, when I say erotic, I don’t just mean because it’s sexual. Erotic energy for me is also about this notion of a vacuum, where there’s an emptiness that needs to be filled, and that feeling of it being filled creates this energy, which is erotic tension, actually. So this is dealing with that in a really ambitious way because it’s about the collective emptiness of commercial capitalism, really. And the first 20 minutes makes that abundantly clear. When the film ends, you’re devastated by the opportunities that were afforded to us by a contact with nature that Indigenous cultures gave and that we sort of abandoned for more material, capitalist pursuits. This sounds like a lecture, but this film is super important to me. It was a defining film when I was a kid.”

“Michael Haneke. So I also have a story, and I brought some props about this. I got this fax sometime in the ’80s. This is from Michael Haneke. He’s asking me how I got the video effects in my second feature, Family Viewing, because he wanted to use that texture on Benny’s Video. So that’s kind of crazy. And I also– So he’s asking me how I did it, he’s thinking that there’s some complicated process I was using, but actually all I was doing is, I had a cable in my VCR, and I was kind of pulling it in and out to get this grainy effect of the video coming in and out of focus. So I wrote him back and I found this, it was taped to the back of the fax from Michael Haneke, is my response. So I’m really looking forward to rewatching the whole film.”

“Oh, wow. Oh, man. This is one of my favorite films. This is Pasolini’s Teorema. This is probably the high point of this entire visit. So I’ve just been kindly offered to swap out my single version of Teorema with the box set. So this is even more exciting now. Wow. Okay. Thank you so much. I’m trading this in. Now I get to have The Gospel According to Matthew, which is probably one of the most incredible fusion movies of all time, in terms of style, in terms of actually dealing with the notion of Christ’s energy and his compassion and openness. It’s an incredible movie. And I also get to rewatch Medea and… Wow, great. Okay.”

“So I’ve just been given the best gift ever. This– I thought the Pasolini box set was going to do it for me. This is it! This is the complete Bergman. Wow. This is the filmmaker that, if you are interested in the interior landscape of our psyche and the fullest exploration of where that can take you in the cinema form, this is the crown jewel. This is the best. So here I am, I’m just gonna walk out with… I’m just gonna finish with these two things. Two box sets by… I’m kind of overwhelmed. Thank you.”