Atom Egoyan quotes

Atom Egoyan is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and producer, acclaimed for his thought-provoking and complex narratives. His work often explores themes of memory, identity, and alienation, making a significant impact on international cinema. He has received numerous awards and nominations, solidifying his reputation as one of Canada’s most influential filmmakers. Here are 31 of his quotes:

My parents taught me to believe that through the creative act, we're able to transcend and give a response to desecration.

Atom Egoyan

There is a certain moment in the film when the son is in the nursing home and he goes to the television and turns it off because he sees himself in the image.

Atom Egoyan

The father's greatest folly is that he believes he can be a much more simple person than he is; he is not really able to deal with his own complexity as a human being.

Atom Egoyan

I mean, if you are directing actors to do one thing and then directing them to do something else entirely because the one thing you wanted them to do may not work, then you are just shattering their confidence in the project.

Atom Egoyan

I think if you look at the themes that are presented in the film, some are inherently social, and I think that any film which deals with the family is dealing with the smallest social unit in our society - and in a sense it is a question of scope.

Atom Egoyan

Right now my career is totally schizophrenic, because when an American production like Hitchcock Presents asks to see my work I would never dream of showing them my independent films.

Atom Egoyan

The film camera's ability to physically move through space, not zoom through space - every time we have a video camera the movement is through zoom; every time we have a film camera it is a physical movement.

Atom Egoyan

I wanted to make sure that the environment of the shooting itself was not that controlled, and the way to go about that course was to work with as small a crew as possible.

Atom Egoyan

As a producer, I think one of the most important decisions you make is not necessarily the material you are working on but the production apparatus that you choose to develop the project with, and that determines what funding you go to, it determines many factors.

Atom Egoyan

When you're working with a smaller budget I suppose one of the things that has to be in your mind when you are writing is that you have to keep the characters down to a minimum.

Atom Egoyan

It is about this very abstract sense of displacement that he feels the moment he turns off the television.

Atom Egoyan

That's a very odd notion because it involves seeing money up there on the screen - if something cost $5 million to make, they want to see that $5 million up there.

Atom Egoyan

I think the situation in Toronto is such that there are funding organizations which make it easy for a film to raise more money than it needs and very often that works against a film.

Atom Egoyan

It is not as though the process of production holds any mystery for me, I know exactly what it involves and I know the predominant concern in shooting one of those things is production values - or as they would say, seeing it all up there on screen.

Atom Egoyan

Working on the themes I was interested in, through the context of a particular family, was a very economical way of dealing with a lot of the issues I was concerned with.

Atom Egoyan

The whole film is about people being convinced that they can reduce themselves to their archetypes.

Atom Egoyan

You are traveling and see these people shooting the entire experience of going through a city, and maybe in the back of their minds they sustain the illusion that they will edit it all, but I don't think that's it.

Atom Egoyan

Though I am still very vulnerable to audiences - and it happens all the time - where for some reason the energy doesn't connect and, since the film is very personal, obviously I am made to feel very vulnerable by that.

Atom Egoyan

It was very important that it be done in such a way that it be executed with complete conviction. If I had done it both ways, if I was trying to cover myself in case it didn't work, then it would have been to no purpose.

Atom Egoyan

That is where the irony of the film comes off, in terms of the language it employs - where he tries desperately to be a 'TV Dad,' to give advice and it's so pat it becomes ridiculous.

Atom Egoyan

I suppose I had these concerns but I really felt that I had to keep my scope very, very concentrated.

Atom Egoyan

Once we were in the studio, we realized we were getting certain effects through the shooting of the dramatic scenes on video, shooting off a screen and then getting wave patterns and stuff like that.

Atom Egoyan