The fame game

I want to be publicized, not analyzed," says Vince Collins (Colin Firth) early in Where the Truth Lies, an erotic mystery set in the high-flying 1970s. Half of a famous nightclub act that abruptly broke up in the late '50s (think Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but not quite), suave crooner Vince has secrets to hide from investigative celebrity profiler Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman), who's fixated on his erstwhile partner, manic comedian Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon).

Truth is the most mainstream film yet from acclaimed Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan (Ararat, The Sweet Hereafter), but the film has gotten much of its publicity and analysis from a dustup with the MPAA. The film's bold sex scenes (including a threesome) moved the group to issue an NC-17 rating. "We felt the film deserved an R, [so we] appealed the NC-17 and came very close to getting it," says Mark Urman of ThinkFilm, the movie's distributor. "While the film is sexy, it is not a sex film, and the NC-17 gives it the wrong connotations." ThinkFilm eventually decided to release the film unrated.

Unfazed by the ratings flap, Egoyan, 45, cuts a striking figure in person: trim and elegant, intense but warm. He's relaxed and, unlike Vince, accustomed to being analyzed. The subject of several books and countless articles, he welcomes the scrutiny as a corrective to the now-standard DVD director commentaries. "You know what you're saying on one day might be very different from what you're saying on another," he says, "so when some-one else interprets your work in a way that is surprising but yet feels right, it's liberating—and gratifying to know there's a reality outside of the one that you create."

The difficulty of sorting out the truth is, in fact, one of the major themes of Truth: Karen assumes a fake identity to chase her cover story, Lanny has penned a self-serving memoir full of spin, and in flashbacks, the duo's publicity rep colludes with the press to bury a scandal.

"Once upon a time," Egoyan says, "when something terrible happened, it was allowed to remain a mystery. What makes Vince sad is he's sort of still in that time where he believes he had control over his image, and that results in this really naive, dumb idea that with Polaroids he's going to be able to blackmail Karen. And she just responds to him, 'They're part of the story; how can you think that would compromise me? My role as a new journalist is to include all that.' The last thing she expects is that she's opening Pandora's box."

In Rupert Holmes's 2003 novel—the book Egoyan adapted—descriptions of the act's shtick make Vince and Lanny read eerily like Martin and Lewis. "Yeah, but the book—I find it distractingly so, in a way, because I think that then you almost believe that this really happened between Martin and Lewis. I looked at the presence in American culture of that time of the Englishman—of the David Nivens or the Rex Harrisons, or even [Peter] Lawford, to an extent—this idea of a person who had this sense of gentility and civilization. If you could combine that with a character who's completely unleashed, and have the Englishman [be] the ego trying to tame the id, it becomes interesting when you realize it's the other way around. Then I approached the actors, and they were both excited by importing aspects of their own celebrity and deconstructing that."

The film's weaving narrative makes Truth a demanding movie to watch, but Egoyan is unapologetic about asking his viewers to think. "I think the greater plan here is to create a very richly layered movie that sets up a number of parallel courses [around] individuals who are never what they seem," he says. "It's very challenging, I think, to a viewer—and exciting as well, as long as one is able to trust the journey."

The Truth will be told in theaters Thursday 27.