Interview: "Colin Firth chats about "Where The Truth Lies" (Close-Up Film)

How did you deal with the sexually frank scene at the heart of the story?
Firth: We have to do so much weird stuff as actors anyway. I know this crosses a threshold which I think most non-actors find the least comprehensible and the most difficult to get their heads around, because most people wouldn't want to take their clothes off in front of their colleagues. But by the time you've been through drama school you've had to go through a bit of that anyway, and by the time you're in your mid 40s you've been round the houses a few times. That doesn't mean you think nothing of it. There's always a slightly tricky moment when you go from being dressed to undressed and yet you've got a scene to play. In the case of this film it was quite a tricky scene, emotionally. We had to get that right while also framing out peoples' private parts. A lot of the time you're wrestling with the technical requirements, as you are on any film. Even if you're not naked you're having to hit a mark and hit your light and move in accordance with the camera movement, while looking as if on take 15 you've said it for the first time and it's spontaneous.....more

Interview: "Mr Darcy dares to bare everything" by Caroline Briggs (BBC News)

The film explores the dark side of fame, fortune, and celebrity, something Firth says he was immediately attracted to.
"I liked all the dark stuff, the unpredictability of the character, and I thought it had a lot of possibilities," he told the BBC News website.
"[Darker roles] are not entirely new to me. In Trauma, which I did about three years ago, and throughout the 1980s, I was playing characters who were less than pleasant."It's not a reaction to typecasting - I just tend to like that territory. "I have reaped enormous benefits from doing rom coms... but I tend to be more comfortable in drama than in comedy."

Tortured is always good for an actor. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to do a bit of torturing," he added.
"It is hard to imagine any central character in any film that is happy at the beginning, happy in the middle, then happy at the end. What story has there been?....more

Interview: "Without prejudice" by Peter Ross (Sunday Herald)

If he will allow it, though, I'd like to clear something up. One of the great Firth myths is that he is modest and self-effacing, and he nods when I mention this, dismissing it as "a load of British shtick". It is essentially the Colin Firth act that he slips into in public. But the truth is that acting requires enormous amounts of self-belief, even arrogance, and he certainly has those personality traits.

"Yeah, it requires huge ego," he says. "I remember one of my grandfathers, who was a minister in the church, said that he had to have quite a considerable ego to get up in front of people, tell stories and preach to them. He said that's what got him up there, and over his nerves about being the centre of attention."

This is typical Firth, making a point about himself by referring to his family background. He does it a number of times during our relatively short time together; he clearly believes in the importance of bloodlines and a certain level of genetic predestination.

Anyway, he is not finished talking about ego.....more

Interview: "Is that Mr Darcy taking part in an orgy?" by Sheila Johnston (The Telegraph)

Aside from its more lubricious elements, one of its presiding themes is the shifting sands of showbusiness and, in particular, the seismic shift between the star-struck 1950s and the ruthless 1970s when celebrities' secret lives became fair game for the media.
It's something that both Firth and Bacon - though both men's lives are mercifully scandal-free - are well-placed to comment on.
"My parents get weird phone calls and people showing up at their house," Firth says. "They're innocent about it - they want to be nice to absolutely everybody because that's the kind of people they are, and they answer questions politely. Then they'll get me on the phone saying, 'How could you tell them about the Batman outfit I had when I was 19?' The press are pretty determined and they'll do anything. It doesn't matter to them what the wreckage is in someone's life after the one-day story....more

Interview: "Director's edgy moment of 'Truth" by Roger Moore (Orlando Sentinel)

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

It's been a rough few weeks," says director Atom Egoyan.

The Canadian maverick had received an estimated $25 million to make his "most commercial" film, with a "name" cast that includes Kevin Bacon, Allison Lohman and Colin Firth.

It was in the can, ready to hit a few film festivals and then head into North America's movie theaters this fall.

Then he ran into a little thing called the MPAA -- the studio-run Motion Picture Association of America, whose ratings board decides what to label movies: G, PG, PG-13, R -- or the dreaded adults-only NC-17.

Egoyan, director of The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica, earned commercial cinema's equivalent of the death penalty. As reported in Variety, the MPAA identified four scenes in the sexually explicit murder mystery, including a menage a trois that Egoyan could not cut to its satisfaction. His studio appealed, but no dice.

ThinkFilm decided to release Where the Truth Lies without a rating. To no avail, as it turns out.
Truth won't be coming to a theater near you.
The studio gave up on rolling it into new cities, including Orlando, as of Friday.

"I was happy, at least, to see the film in its uncut state," Egoyan says. "The last time I saw it was at the MPAA's screening room in Los Angeles in our 'final cut' version, and I was really unhappy.

"It was a very confusing moment for me, because one side of me really wanted to get the R, and the other side didn't want the movie to go out that way. I guess I'm just relieved that the film won't be tampered with."

Movies with NC-17 have a hard time advertising on mainstream outlets. The rating also restricts the audience, ruling out those 17 and younger. Releasing a film unrated skirts that stigma, though studios prefer to have films rated, widely advertised and able to reach the largest audience.

Truth is based on a lurid serio-comic novel by Rupert Holmes, the singer-songwriter of "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." The film is about a reporter (Lohman) who investigates a long-covered-up scandal, a murder mystery overshadowing the breakup of a beloved comic team (Firth and Bacon). Her research uncovers the kinky sexual overtones of the mystery and how they relate to the long-estranged comics.

The MPAA doesn't make public statements about its edicts, but filmmakers are certain that the movie's suggestions of gay sex earned it that NC-17 stamp.

"I think they offered the information early on that this is 'not, repeat not, about the homosexuality,' " says Bacon. "And that's a pretty good indication to me that it is about the homosexuality."

Firth seconds that.
"We're being penalized for the nature of the sexuality," Firth says. "I've seen many movies with more nudity. The sex here is not pornographic or titillating. It's this business of them telling us, 'Well, there's one thrust too many' that is so maddening about this. It's hypocrisy at its worst."

Egoyan says that the very fact that his film has a name cast "and all this Hollywood studio machinery behind it is what is transgressive about it. If this had been an indie film with lesser-known actors, there wouldn't have been any fuss whatsoever."

In any event, it's the uncut Truth that took its shot in theaters, and failed. But look for it on DVD.

Interview: "We find Where The Truth Lies" by Sam Toy (Empire Online)

Looking at the stuff that you have coming up on IMDB-
I'd take it with a pinch of salt, IMDB. I find that I'm involved in things I've barely heard of. They're things people try and set up, the order of things have been changed. So none of those are certainties.

Would you still consider rom-com roles in the future?
I consider anything that’s good, really. The criteria is quite broad for why I would take on something. As I said in the case of Atom Egoyan, a director could be the first hook. I’ve done jobs because there’s a group of people I want to work with. But a good comedy is hard to come by and I’ll definitely do it if I feel it’s worthwhile. One of the things on that list is called Gambit, which is written by the Coen brothers. Having said that I’m not really up for comedy at the moment, this came along which is so brilliantly written - it’d be stupid not to jump at it, if it happens.....more