Mara Math Archives — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Director Atom Egoyan talks remakes, marriage, and “Chloe”

Sue Vaughan

March 24, 2010

Director Atom Egoyan talks remakes, marriage, and “Chloe”

Canadian director Atom Egoyan (1994’s Exotica, 1997’s The Sweet Hereafter) was recently in town to discuss Chloe, his latest film, which producer Ivan Reitman commissioned him to direct. Based on, but markedly different from, the 2003 French film Nathalie, Chloe follows the unexpected course of events triggered when the middle-aged Catherine (Julianne Moore), suspecting her husband David (Liam Neeson) of having an affair, hires luxe call-girl Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to tempt him.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Do you know what attracted Ivan Reitman to this project?

Atom Egoyan: My only clue, really, is that in looking at his filmography, he made a film [in 1993] called Dave, which I enjoyed because it really is also a study of a marriage, a marriage that had gone completely cold. Sigourney Weaver plays the wife of a president, played by Kevin Kline, and they can’t stand each other. He dies, and a ringer is brought in, also played by Kevin Kline. All they have to do is make public appearances, because this couple doesn’t talk to each other in private at all. And she finds herself strangely falling in back love with her husband, and of course it isn’t her husband, it’s a surrogate. I think I understand why the person who made that film would be attracted to Chloe, because it’s dealing with similar themes.

SFBG: This is the first time you’ve directed a feature film script you haven’t written. Have you been approached before?

AE: Oh yes, all the time [gestures to two stacks at the end of the table, two and four inches thick, respectively]. I’ve had an agent since Exotica, sending me scripts. I was actually about to do a script after Exotica, a thriller, with Warner Brothers, and I spent a year in LA. And like anyone else, you can spend time there and have meetings and sort of not make movies. And I had an opportunity in Canada to make a certain type of movie, so I went back and made The Sweet Hereafter, and I didn’t really ever regret that decision. I’m still sent scripts all the time. And some of them are tempting, some of them are films that you’d be interested in watching, but my question is, would I be able to spend a year, year-and-a-half, two years making the film, and remaining interested, and then talking about it?

SFBG: The script contains some of the recurrent themes in your work — identity, secrets, history; were there any other aspects that drew you to it?

AE: It was the study of a marriage. I thought it was a challenge to deal with this issue and this script that was written by a women, dealing with this very specific issue of a woman who feels she’s disappearing, and the crisis that it brings on in her, but also the very extreme action that she takes as a result. She wants to prove her husband is having an affair, and there are other ways of doing that than hiring a prostitute [laughs]. What she wants to do is not just prove he’s having an affair, but re-eroticize an image of him. because she can’t do that herself. There is something that Chloe’s stories are eliciting in her that she’s finding very compelling, and it’s a reconnection with her husband, a connection she once had. Unbeknownst to her, I think Chloe is finding it very powerful telling these stories to her of these encounters which she actually is having, though not necessarily [exactly as she is describing them]. It’s basically the story of these two women’s fantasies colliding in ways that they aren’t necessarily aware of.

SFBG: Did Reitman have something in mind that he wanted to change or add to the original film, a specific reason for wanting a remake? Had you seen Nathalie, and did you think about doing a remake?

AE: That’s the strange thing, I’ll tell you. I did see Nathalie, at the Toronto Film Festival in 2003. I enjoyed the film, and I know [director] Anne Fontaine, she’s a friend, someone I’ve known in Paris. It never would have occurred to me to do a remake. I wouldn’t have thought it was a particularly interesting premise to explore, but Ivan did. And then Ivan hired Erin Cressida Wilson to write the script, and by the time I got the script, it was intriguing. There were problems with it for me — it really pushed the thriller aspect way too far, so I felt it had to be pulled back, because the ending in the script I got was wildly different.

SFBG: Did you change anything else? The names are so tailored to the characters — “Catherine” means “pure,” “Chloe” means “blooming,” and “David” means “beloved” — that I wondered whether you or Erin had chosen them.

AE: Erin did. I think Erin’s incredibly attendant to all those things. She’s a really great writer and it was really a pleasure working with her, but I think there were things she felt she was being pushed to bring forward, certain more formulaic expectations of where the film should go. [Egoyan describes the specifics of making the ending less melodramatic. Redacted to avoid spoilers.] That alteration tonally just changes the whole film. I never wanted to demonize Chloe — I mean, the instigator in all this is Catherine, in a way, and I felt for Chloe and I wanted that to form our sense of who she was.

SFBG: You normally have great compassion for and involvement with your characters — and yet we never really find out anything about Chloe, not even if that’s really her name. Was there originally more story or backstory for her?

AE: Yeah, there was. But I think we must understand through the nature of her interaction with Catherine that there’s something she hasn’t received in her life, and I think we can figure that out, there are clues to that. I just didn’t want to make it too explicit because that felt reductive.

SFBG: She’s not really getting all that much from Catherine, is she?

AE: But she is. And it’s only my interpretation, I never want to assert orthodoxy over these movies, because I want them to be open, but I see that [how she comes to feel about] Catherine, all that she has from Catherine really is that someone is listening to her so attentively, listening to her tell stories about her day-to-day life. She’s paid to be forgotten. When they meet, Chloe’s crying in a bathroom cubicle, there’s some crisis that she’s experiencing, and from the moment that she meets Catherine, although you could say she sees her as a prospective client, I think there’s something in the first gesture, something that Catherine does, in that first touch — Chloe over-responds to it, maybe, but she needs to at that point.

SFBG: I wondered if this difference, that we never find out more about Chloe, was rooted in the fact that you hadn’t written the script.

AE: I have to admit, there is something, in retrospect, talking about it now, almost a year later, to do with Adoration [Egoyan’s 2009 film, starring his wife and longtime collaborator Arsinee Khanjian]. The deployment of exposition in the last part of that movie just doesn’t work for me somehow, when they begin to actually explain who they are. I really love the beginning of that film, the way it’s structured, and the way these [metaphoric] balls are being juggled — I don’t need to know exactly where and why, exactly what Arsinee is doing. Both these films involve women are trying to get into the house of someone they either are in love with or were in love with. But if you make the comparison with Arsinee’s character in Adoration, the audience cannot have access to why that woman in that strange outfit wants to get into this house. There’s no way that that invites identification, and yet there’s tension and mystery….

SFBG: There was originally also more story and backstory on the son?

AE: Yes, Max Thieriot’s a really wonderful actor and he has a great story, which we had to cut. This will be on the “deleted scenes” on the DVD. There’s a conversation with Catherine and Chloe about Catherine’s background….

SFBG: How long would the film have been if —

AE: The problem really wasn’t about the length, it just became unwieldy, it didn’t play right.

SFBG: The original script was set here. Was San Francisco’s iconic status as a locus for hedonism and sexual freedom a significant factor in Wilson’s original script?

AE: Yes, but there were things about it that made me recoil, because first, I was trying to wrap my head around the issue, how do you photograph this city in a way that hasn’t been shown before, when it’s been so detailed through films. My attraction to filming in Toronto is that it’s a place with a very distinct iconography — except most people don’t know what it is, so it creates this interesting tension. We’ve shown this film to a lot of people outside of Toronto, especially outside of Canada, and they’re going, “Where. Is. This. Place?” They feel they should know but they don’t.

SFBG: Because we’ve all seen Toronto masquerading as New York.

AE: Exactly. Toronto is like Chloe, paid to be something else. It becomes a controlling metaphor throughout the film.

SFBG: Was it relevant at all to the making of this movie that you and Arsinee had separated?

AE: We’re trying again. But I’ll be honest, it was a tough time for us when I was shooting, so . . . a lot of reflection on marriage. So this ended up being a strange and personal movie, and I was very thankful for Erin to have written it, because there is no way I could have gone to these [emotional] places as I was experiencing that. But we’re in a better place now.

Chloe opens Fri/26 in Bay Area theaters. Go here for Lynn Rapoport’s review of the film in this week’s Guardian.

The threat of Proposition 98

May 20, 2008

OPINION Just as the California Supreme Court finally recognizes queers as full and equal citizens by ruling in favor of gay marriage, a June 3 ballot measure threatens to kill anti-discrimination protections for queers. But that’s not the half of it: Proposition 98 is in fact a savage attack on protections of all kinds for all Californians.

A fraud wrapped within a fraud, Prop. 98 masquerades as eminent domain reform while only semi-covertly legisutf8g the death of rent control. But just as rent control is about far more than price alone, Prop. 98 is about far more than only ending rent control.

All Californians, not only the 14 million who rent, will be trampled under the iron hooves of this Trojan horse. In a detailed analysis, the Western Center on Law and Poverty concludes: "There is nothing in the text that prevents Prop. 98 from being used to prohibit or limit land use decisions, zoning, work place laws, or environmental protections."

Prop. 98 not only bans all state and local residential and mobile-home rent control laws, now and forever, it kills inclusionary housing requirements and ends tenant protections in the Ellis Act. But wait, there’s more! As assessed by the Western Center, other "likely" applications of Prop 98 include the end of just-cause protections for eviction, and the end of most regulation of residential rental property.

The center also rates it "possible" that Prop. 98 will invalidate all anti-discrimination protections below the federal level — including California’s LGBT fair-housing protections.

Given the potential outcome, the nearly $2 million that more than 100 apartment building and mobile home park owners spent to put Prop. 98 on the ballot, and the subsequent $291,000 that the Apartment Owners Association political action committee gave the Yes on 98 campaign represent a shrewd investment.

It would be a bargain for them at twice the price. Being able to charge unlimited amounts for renter screening and credit checks, for instance, and no longer having to provide deadbolt locks, a usable telephone jack, and working wiring means a nice chunk of change for landlords and speculators. But that’s nothing compared to the larger gains to be exploited: a landlord would be free to have you sign a lease without being obligated to disclose that he or she already applied for a demolition permit on the property. Serious defects in the unit? Too bad, the prohibition on landlords collecting rent while substandard conditions exist would fly out the (broken) window.

Unlike the tenant-backed Prop. 99, which truly prevents eminent domain abuse on behalf of renters and owners alike, Prop. 98 only guarantees the domain of the wealthiest over the rest of us. If we let this Trojan horse in, whether actively — by voting for it — or passively — by not voting — June 3 (and that’s a real danger since too many San Francisco voters assume the measure will fail anyway), all Californians will pay the price. *

Mara Math is a writer and tenant organizer.

Dogs behind bars

September 12, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

Why would an underfunded, understaffed, volunteer-dependent organization dedicated to taking care of animals institute new policies that prevent volunteers from volunteering and, some say, put the animals at risk?

That’s the question some people are asking about the Alameda city animal shelter, where the director has fired several core volunteers, reduced the number of hours other volunteers can work, and at one point temporarily suspended the volunteer dog-walking program.

After some outcry, the dog walkers are back — but there’s still a lingering battle between director Diana Barrett and the volunteers, and the result is a policy that leaves shelter dogs in conditions that experts say border on inhumane.

Under Barrett’s new rules, laid out in a June volunteer handbook, dogs not yet eligible for adoption are now kept in small kennels 24 hours a day, for as long as 11 days if the dog is a stray and up to 21 days for any dog ever registered to an owner. Barrett’s policy dictates that these "on hold" dogs may no longer be visited, petted, walked, bathed, or allowed to play with toys.

Dogs eligible for adoption are locked in kennels 23 hours a day, with dog walks limited to 20 minutes, at most three times a day.

"I think those conditions border on abuse," behaviorist Bob Gutierrez, who for 10 years was coordinator of the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal’s Animal Behavior Program, told the Guardian when we described the rules to him.

At the SPCA, Gutierrez recounted, "we would encourage people to interact with the dogs as often as possible because socialization is an ongoing process, even with adult dogs."

There’s also a physical health risk. "Dogs will not foul their own space," Gutierrez explained, "and dogs that are confined that long often develop some medical issues from not emptying their bladders at regular intervals."

And the shelter doesn’t routinely vaccinate the dogs in its care.

Deb Campbell, volunteer coordinator at the San Francisco animal-control shelter, said dogs there are generally taken out five or more times a day and are also given a socialization hour in a dog park where volunteers supervise group play.

BAD BEHAVIOR

Barrett, an animal control officer with the Alameda Police Department, which manages the shelter, has been on the job since 2000.

Since the shelter has only limited paid staff — three animal control officers, including Barrett — who also have to go out on calls, much of the work of walking and caring for the animals has been done by volunteers.

But some of those volunteers have clashed with Barrett — in one case, a Barrett memo talks about "foul language" and "argumentative-confrontational stances toward staff members" — and as a result, the entire program has been changed.

Although a half-dozen core volunteers had each previously worked from three to five days a week every week, Barrett’s new rules permit only two volunteers per hour and limit each volunteer to a maximum of 20 hours per month — one half day per week. Anyone who works more than four hours a week "will be given a mandatory break of two weeks," according to the August edition of the shelter’s volunteer handbook, and if the infraction is repeated, the volunteer’s service will be terminated.

At least six volunteers have resigned in protest. As Mary Sutter and her 16-year-old daughter, Kaity Sutter, who were volunteers for four years, explained in a July 25 letter, a copy of which was provided to us, "We left … because we felt that policies were being put in place to control people to the detriment of the dogs."

Alameda city manager Debra Kurita has barred Barrett from speaking to the media, and Lt. Bill Scott, Barrett’s supervisor, serves as her designated spokesperson. Scott defended the changes as allowing "increased efficiency and supervision." Asked about the reduction in the volunteer hours — formerly 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., now 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. — Scott said, "We can do more now in three hours than we could before in five," but he could not explain how, nor which tasks are being accomplished more quickly.

Scott insisted that the volunteers who were most recently let go were dismissed for cumulative histories of infractions. A June 27 memo from Barrett outlined the problems, some of which seem to be a bit of a stretch.

One volunteer, Jim Gotelli, was cited for "tampering with city property" — because, according to Gotelli, he bought and attached a new hose nozzle to replace a broken one.

Gotelli was also given a written reprimand for contacting a law professor at UCLA who is an animal-law expert and asking if the Alameda shelter was complying with the Hayden Bill, a state law that sets minimum standards for care in California animal shelters. Barrett informed Gotelli that as an agent of the city, he was barred from seeking outside legal advice. Gotelli was dismissed in July after writing a letter to the city attorney seeking policy clarification.

Another charge cited by Barrett — "feeding the dogs unauthorized food and causing them gastric distress" — apparently refers to Dan Mosso, who for 18 months paid out of his own pocket for premium-quality food for the dogs, with Barrett’s consent, until she suddenly withdrew permission. Mosso was also terminated in July, for questioning shelter policy.

Scott also made dark hints to us about a "subgroup that needed to be broken up," apparently referring to a group of long-term core volunteers — Gotelli, Mosso, and Donna McCaskey — who suggested to Barrett that the shelter might not be in compliance with the law. Scott suggested that a public organizing campaign by the terminated volunteers — which includes an online petition — is a vendetta against Barrett. But each volunteer we interviewed praised Barrett for some of her work. "It’s not about us, and it’s not really about Diana Barrett — we’re worried about the dogs," Mosso said.

Okorie Okorocha, a lawyer and expert in animal law, wrote an Aug. 17 letter to the city of Alameda charging that the shelter is vioutf8g the Hayden Bill. In the letter, Okorocha stated that several Alameda residents "have first-hand knowledge that animals in your shelter are kept in cages or kennels for periods of 10 to 20 consecutive days without receiving any exercise."

Mohammed Hill, a deputy city attorney, stated in an Aug. 29 response that it’s perfectly legal to keep dogs in their kennels without exercise as long as the cages are big enough for the animals to walk around in. The cages at the shelter are 12 feet long, seven feet wide, and four feet high. But the cages are divided, so that much of the day the dogs are in a six-foot space.

Some animals — those who have been claimed by owners but not yet picked up — are kept caged all the time "for liability reasons," Hill’s letter states.

However, it adds, "The shelter has a current staff level of approximately 40 dedicated volunteers who on average walk each dog for a period of 20 minutes three times a day, six days a week." But the shelter is only open five days a week, and the volunteer statistics Hill cites are almost certainly inflated. Since the volunteers can only work from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., it’s unlikely that the dogs are getting three walks a day.

In fact, that could only happen under perfectly optimal conditions — a factory-line approach to dog walking, with no more than five dogs and two volunteers per hour, the last of which, several observers say, has not been the case. At least one visitor observed that the paperwork showed no walks for any dogs on the day she visited.

Vicky Smith, a 55-year-old schoolteacher, visited the shelter recently to offer her services as a volunteer. She said Barrett told her the shelter needed no more volunteers.

Equally troubling were the conditions that Smith observed in the cat area two weeks ago: empty water bowls, crusted-over remnants of canned food dried in the food bowls, a terrible stench from dirty litter in several cages, all against the background din of a multitude of cats yowling for attention. The one volunteer on duty seemed completely overwhelmed and, Smith said, apologized, saying, "There are hardly any volunteers anymore."

WHO’S WATCHING?

The situation at the Alameda shelter might not have reached this point had there been effective oversight. The city lacks an animal-welfare commission, and Scott told us repeatedly that nobody at the Police Department has specific expertise in animal welfare. Scott is so unfamiliar with the shelter that he was literally unable to answer a single question about its daily operations. He repeated, "That’s animal stuff, that’s beyond me," "I wouldn’t know," "That’s a question of animal law," and variations thereof a total of 11 times.

We asked Scott how, without such knowledge, he could be certain that Barrett was making the wisest possible decisions. "We work closely with the Humane Society of Alameda," he assured us.

While that statement is technically true, it is profoundly misleading. The Police Department does receive grants from the HSA, but the bulk of the funds received do not go to the shelter; instead, for instance, last year the department spent $15,000 in HSA funds to purchase two police dogs and thousands more on bulletproof vests for the dogs.

When asked about Scott’s assertion that the HSA provides the animal knowledge that the police lack, HSA president Carmen Lasar denied it fiercely, repeating several times with increasing agitation, "Our only role is helping them financially."

Discussing the nature of municipal shelters in general, Carl Friedman, director of San Francisco Animal Care and Control, told us, "Most of the successful agencies are independent, not part of any other department, and either report directly to their city administrator or have oversight from a commission that includes members of the public. Politically, the independent departments are usually free to fight for the resources and funding they need."

In response to the recent burst of publicity about the issues at the Alameda Animal Shelter, Police Chief Walter Tibbet publicly pledged to conduct "a full investigation" into those issues. After we made numerous Public Records Act requests of the city of Alameda, the investigation was upgraded and is now being conducted by Internal Affairs. The investigating officer, Sgt. Robert Frankland, is on vacation through Oct. 10 and does not expect to finish his report until early November.

"Volunteering at the shelter is the best thing I’ve ever done, one of the most satisfying things, and I love it, and I miss it," Mosso said. "But if this is my legacy, so be it: that they’ll never let me come back, but at least the dogs will get walked and get proper care."