SHIFT magazine, 1997
Atom Egoyan is obsessing about The Tragically Hip. He spends hours listening to their song "Courage," looping the lyrics on a tape, checking the sound, selecting images that might complement the poetic words. It's not that he is a crazed fan--although he's so exhausted from work that he sounds a bit crazed. It's just that he has used the song extensively in his new film, The Sweet Hereafter, and he wants to make sure it works. Atom Egoyan is a perfectionist.
All of which makes his encounter with the songwriter Gord Downie that much more unnerving. The day of the meeting is particularly intense. Atom finds out that his film has just been selected to compete at the International Cannes Film Festival and he is frantically trying to nail down the final details of the $5-million production. Gord, meanwhile, has just learned that his wife is pregnant with their second child and he's rushing to the hospital for the first check-up. And both are anticipating a gruelling summer of self-promotion: Atom for his film; Gord for The Tragically Hip's new record, Live Between Us.
Amid this frantic activity, the two took a three-hour break for a quiet conversation--their first meeting ever. Here is what happened.
Atom: You know, I'm right in the middle of marketing my new movie, I've been looking at poster ideas, and I'm just appalled at what they're bringing me. Yesterday I was in tears because I've spent three years of my life trying to make this film, to make each image mean something, apply everything I have to make it express the most elusive emotions I have--and then some fool comes in with, essentially, a mutual fund ad. It was this girl in front of a maze, that's the first image people would see, and I'm shocked that my film can be treated so frivolously. But it is. How do you decide what image is going to represent your whole album? Are you really careful about controlling your image?
Gord: I'm not often driven to tears about it. I guess what you're always doing is getting onto the head of a pin and seeing how long you can stay there. For example, we had a great poster image for the last album, Trouble at the Henhouse, which was manipulated with a computer. It was three different lightning strikes on the horizon on a prairie landscape with a highway. Someone decided to make a promotional poster of it that would go up in bars and various places, and we thought, "What a great idea, this can't miss!" But when we saw the posters--and by that time more than a million had been printed--someone had superimposed a picture of the five of us posed in a room at the lower corner of it. So it looks like the five of us are sitting around at the edge of a highway, waiting for a bus.
Atom: But do you lose sleep when something like that happens? Are you able to separate how you're marketed from how you feel about your own work, or are the two inexorably linked?
Gord: What I enjoy is the art. I enjoy writing, I enjoy creating, I enjoy extracting things out of the richness that is my personal life. My wife and I just went for an ultrasound because she's pregnant and so I feel very rich at home. I show that in the stuff I do.
Atom: So you're able to create a fortress around your personal life which sustains and gives motivation to what you do. How it's perceived or received at the other end is secondary. But do you get inspiration from your audience? Do you have a "fantasy listener," the person who is able to respond to anything you do, or are you not thinking of the listener at all?
Gord: I don't so much do either. I hear stories from time to time about how my music permeates people's lives, and those are great stories and I always find them fascinating. Those are things that I cherish. But I'm lucky in that I'm part of a group, so there aren't the high platitudes of glory that you get when you're a lone wolf, a well-known persona. But then, I don't feel those valleys of despair either. I have this freedom and this security because I operate inside a co-operative. There are 10 of us--the band and the crew--and we see what kind of juice is extracted from bumping up against each other. Of course, there's a general understanding that friendship is the premium, above and beyond anything we create. But still, I operate within these contradicting terms all the time. I'm reconciling the reckless and insane world that I have on the road with my need for a uniquely normal home.
Atom: But how normal can those things at home be when you have this other life? Maybe the contradiction fuels your creative drive. If you were living just that normal life and you didn't have the road to contrast it to, would you still be able to feel as passionate about what you do?
Gord: No, I don't think so. I find the road essential, but the band has always been fairly sensitive about it. We only go out for three weeks at a time and I find that time vital for gathering experience. On the business side, the general order is that you write, record, and then go on the road to sell the album. But lately I've realized that I go on the road to gather experience from which to write and to record, so it's always a little ass-backwards. I find going to America valuable for writing the type of music we write; it's a necessary place to go.
Atom: When I'm on the road, I'm full of all these ideas, but they're in response to the act of promoting my film. My ideas are very temporary, they come out of conversations I have with various journalists and I get very passionate about the last thing I do. But even though I write and am constantly thinking when I'm travelling, that's never when I produce my best work. I find I worry a lot about this notion of family and home that you were talking about. When Exotica was released my son was really young, and now he's three-and-a-half and won't be able to travel around as much. And I wonder, maybe I'm going to have to stay home a lot more? When I'm considering what I'm going to do next, I have to consider the fact that I've chosen to bring someone into this world who needs some sort of stability. You seem to have found a way to make the two co-exist and I'm just fascinated by that. Is there ever a tension between the two?
Gord: In the last 10 years, I've learned that my family has allowed me to focus on what I really want. But watching Exotica I sensed this kinship with you. This might seem really ridiculous, but I thought that you understand what I've come to understand--that what we're doing really doesn't mean shit, it's not going to change anything, but possibly it might change us. It might change me inside. And that's what I'm going for. That's the hit, or the thrill. So in that sense you dovetail with what you're doing at home, because it's really the same thing. Your circumstances of the day help you stumble upon revelations, and they come in the most regular, sometimes mundane, inane circumstances. Through the grind of routine. When I went to see Exotica, I thought, "Anyone who thinks that way is essentially a songwriter." I thought of you as a songwriter because I find your scenes to be vignettes. It's your ability to riff off everyday occurrences, to create a story behind something you just saw. There's something so empowering about being able to transform any experience into a creative statement.
Atom: Right. The privilege we have as artists is astounding to me. We're allowed to indulge, which other people might resent us for, and yet we have to give ourselves that space. But the end result of what I do often means that there's a weight placed on my persona, a glorification of that persona. I'm amazed that you've been able to avoid that. Aren't you the driving force of The Hip?
Gord: No. But I think the weight that's placed on your persona is a delight for your fans. For example, before meeting you I just imagined you. I saw these scenarios and I thought they can only come from someone personally engaged in his own life. That's why I sense this songwriter thing. I think there are more songwriters out there than people who read music, who need the technical ability. When I see your films, I think, 'Wow, you're really tuned in, you're able to weave all these different moments into a story.' In my case, I take one moment, synthesize it down to a drop, which hardens into a seed, put the seed in the ground and it springs up into something I can't even predict. And that excites me.
Atom: But you've resolved the question of ownership over your music by always crediting The Tragically Hip, not Gord Downie. Unfortunately, I can't do that. Ultimately, every film I do is by Atom Egoyan, and the only way these films get marketed is by Atom Egoyan going around to talk about them. And I can't help but feel that I'm distorting my own message in the process. The things that are expressed in my films are quite succinct and quite beautiful, and I don't know if my ability to express them in public is at the same level. Yet that's what I have to do.
Gord: You can't submit to the most tedious and tiresome aspects of your personality. Ambition is a very potent thing, but if you spread it around with people and they help you carry it, then you can really get something done. Home is all about submerging your ego and persona so you can get something accomplished.
Atom: I used to have the sense that recognition is something that should provide satisfaction, but it never does. Recognition just means you have to keep doing what you do, it's a temporary stop on the way. I always think of that great Peggy Lee song, "Is That All There Is?"
Gord: That's right. That was a good realization for me, too.
Atom: And the thing is, my early films had absolutely no response here at all. Whatever momentum began to build in my career came from outside. I always felt quite lonely, like no one was quite getting what I was doing. I had to prove something to people--which you never felt. And then I think of your band, and from the very beginning you've had a following which was very accessible and immediate. You started playing at Queen's [University] and you knew the people who supported your band. And now you're in this incredible situation where within your own country you're completely embraced. How do you feel about your success?
Gord: Success is something I've worked at trying to define for myself against a sort of hurricane of hints of how I should feel about success. I've tried to be very resolute about what I think success is, and it's entirely personal. I don't stay up at night worrying about it. In Canada, the latest label put on us is that we're Canada's "most popular band." We find that to be an odious term because, in a weird way, it's a dismissal. We're more than just Canada's most popular band, we're Canada's best band. That sounds really immodest, but I don't mean best in terms of people's infatuation with charts and lists and rankings. I mean in terms of how we work internally and how we've managed over 12 years to operate and still love each other and still find infinite plateaus on which to work and to communicate. That makes us one of the best bands in the country. I know that we're not going to make anyone's Top 10 list based solely on our ability to interact with each other. At the end of the day, no one cares if you got along; they just ask, what did you produce? You're judged on your output. But that's the way we work.
Atom: So how do you judge a successful band?
Gord: What I'm most interested in is how people deal with the predators--and they're not always human. I mean the predators that infiltrate what you do and pit you against each other and allow ego to supplant creativity. Existing with predators is a very important and necessary thing because we're all out there with predators. You just have to survive it.
Atom: I'll tell you something honestly, and this may seem cruel, but I got a press kit from your management and it was full of reviews of the band from American papers. It was trying to show that The Hip are recognized in the States. And, while I hate myself for thinking this, I'm wondering, why hasn't the band really taken hold in America?
Gord: I always feel hijacked when the questions slant in that one mundane and crass direction. I'm thinking, why are you asking me this? But I shouldn't complain because we send out packages that are slanted in a way that makes American recognition seem paramount. We're unwittingly inviting these questions on ourselves. So I usually tell people that it doesn't bother me because whatever kind of recognition we've got is nice, temporary but fine, and recognition or lack of it has not changed what we do. But you know, our goal is also to be recognized. I don't mean to brag, but the day will come, and I do believe that it will, when we will be recognized, and it will be so incredibly sweet. It will happen because a body of work becomes undeniable. I sound like Judy Garland now, but our so-called "Canadian success" is a debt we owe to Canadian fans. They've allowed us to build up a body of work, they've allowed us to concentrate on what we do, because they're interested in the whole process. We don't hide that process from them. If you come to our shows it's like going on a trip to the sugar bush or that place where you get to watch the baker make the pies. The process is all wide open. The fans who come to successive shows get that, and they can go as deep as they want, they can experience our shows any way they want.
Atom: When you're on stage you create a world unto yourself, and you're an astonishing performer. I'm not a performer, but my films are performances. When that projector goes on, there's a flash on the screen, and there is a performance element. But when I have to perform in person, when I have to talk about my films, it's so alien to me. I don't think in a linear fashion and that's reflected in the way my films are formed. That's what gives them their character. So when I'm asked to define them in a linear way, I feel something is betrayed.
Gord: When you make a record you're doing the same thing. You're sitting in a darkened room and you're anti-social. You say, "I'm working on a song." And it's like this mothership of a song, you know, it may go, "Don't tell me what the poets are doing/ don't tell me what poets are doing." The process never sees the light of day, it's just spinning out ideas from which an infinite number of verses come. "Don't tell me what the poets are doing/don't tell me that they're talking tough/don't tell me that they're anti-social/that they're not anti-social enough." And it just goes on and on like that, just rhyming, and there's an exercise to it, and... man, I'm losing my train of thought.
Atom: I think you lost it a long time ago.
Gord: I'm saying, you could be reclusive and say, "I'll never talk about my movies," but then people will want more from you. The expectation for you to betray your work by speaking about it will increase. People will seek you out, and then you'll really feel like an impostor. The odd thing to me is, your films personify patience. There's an economy to them, in that sort of peeling-the-onion-skin way. Each scene gives mood and colour and support and foundation to something that the viewer finds out later, and there is this agreement between you and the viewer that if you sit here you'll be rewarded. Maybe in talking about your films you also have to be patient.
Atom: And yet I can't be. This is where I don't have the discipline of a performer. I can't restrain myself and actually respond in a very succinct and distilled way. I think that's because so much of what I do on a day-to-day basis involves seducing people. I have to seduce actors to work with me, I have to seduce people to give me money, I have to seduce various distributors into thinking that it's worth paying money for my finished film. Yet my experience in Los Angeles taught me that I'm not equipped to do that. There are people in L.A. who have absolutely nothing to express, but they're able to express it in such a persuasive way that it's irresistible. Last year I almost surrendered my ambitions to what these people thought I should be doing, and that brought me to the edge of making a really mediocre movie.
Gord: Really? What happened?
Atom: I almost made a really bad movie with Warner Brothers last year and, at the last moment, I stepped aside and I made this film, which I'm really proud of. But I constantly wonder if I can keep that balance. I worry that I'm going to be tempted to go back to Hollywood. I've got this agent and I'm going to be given scripts, and I know I'm going to waver. Ultimately I'll make the right choices, but I'll waste a lot of time in the process.
Gord: You have to confront yourself, confront your scepticism, and there are those of us who manage to keep that healthy and those of us who allow it to get unhealthy. I don't mean that as an insult to you. Ultimately, I think people's ideas and emotions exist with them in a subterranean place, but eventually they have to come out to the surface.
Atom: I have a very specific question for you. In The Sweet Hereafter, I have a character who sings your song "Courage." How do you feel about that? Because I know you've been really guarded with your work.
Gord: It's all about trust. I'm sitting here today and talking with you in ways that I would never talk with a journalist. I just couldn't, as much as I've tried. But I've always thought sincerity has to count for something. If you're just honest, totally honest, what can possibly happen to you? And talking to you today I've learned something. I just trust you.
Atom: But what if you thought I had completely trivialized it? This goes back to what we were talking about before about image and persona. You were content to trust me with one of your songs based on a picture you had of me, which is an incredible thing to do.
Gord: That's true, but what does anyone ever go on? You want to put "Courage" in The Sweet Hereafter, and yes, there's no guarantee. I could read a thousand articles about you and still never know you. So you just go on trust.
Atom: What do you think is the most original thing about what you do?
Gord: My commitment to things that take a lifetime to learn. And that goes against all conventional wisdom in the music industry. Everything has to be very fast. If it doesn't work, then it's over. Only recently I've started to embrace things that take a lifetime to learn. You do that and then all of a sudden you think, "A lifetime--man, that isn't that long given how good you want to get." And to embrace that feels good. Embracing that is such a hard thing, maybe the most elusive thing of all.
:lol:
