Quotes by Atom Egoyan

About Atom Egoyan:

Atom Egoyan is a Canadian stage director and film director. Egoyan made his career breakthrough with Exotica (1994), a film set primarily in and around the fictional Exotica strip club.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

When I was planning Family Viewing, the Ontario Film Development Corporation came into existence.

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

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

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

I have always felt that this story is universal. When I began to understand the details of the history, I felt that the most compelling aspect was not what happened, but what continues to happen and how it is denied.

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

These sorts of things can happen, identities can be switched, the emotional implications are something that he has not been trained to feel. His whole life has been about separating himself from these sorts of actions.

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

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

These are very subtle things, of course, and I don't expect everyone to pick them up consciously, but I think that there is something there that you must be able to feel, there is an energy at work that I must trust my audience will be able to pick u...

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

You can talk about Holocaust denial, but it's really marginal for the most part. What is compelling about the Armenian genocide, is how it has been forgotten.

Atom Egoyan

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

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

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

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...

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

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

Atom Egoyan

Author Bio

  • NameAtom Egoyan
  • DescriptionCanadian-Armenian film director, screenwriter, film producer and actor
  • BornJuly 19, 1960
  • CountryCanada; Armenia
  • ProfessionFilm Director; Screenwriter; Film Producer; Actor
  • AwardsOfficer Of The Order Of Canada