Daily Inspiration Quote by Atom Egoyan

Egoyan is basically admitting he engineered mess on purpose. The paradox is the point: a director is the ultimate control freak, yet here he’s chasing the texture of things slipping out of his hands. “Not that controlled” isn’t a rejection of authorship; it’s a strategy for getting a different kind of authorship onscreen, one that feels lived-in rather than arranged. A small crew becomes an aesthetic device, not just a budget line.

The intent is practical and psychological. Fewer bodies on set means fewer cues telling actors when to “perform,” fewer machines dictating rhythm, fewer micro-rituals that turn emotion into a take. It can also mean faster pivots: you follow an accident, a glance, a shift in weather, instead of resetting the world to match the plan. Egoyan’s films often orbit mediation, surveillance, and the ways people curate themselves. Against that thematic background, the desire for an “uncontrolled” environment reads like a deliberate pushback against the very systems of management and self-management his characters get trapped in.

There’s subtext, too, about power. A smaller crew can flatten the social hierarchy of a set, making intimacy easier and intimidation harder. It can also concentrate power in the director’s hands, because fewer intermediaries means fewer checks. Egoyan’s phrasing neatly keeps both possibilities in play: spontaneity as liberation, and spontaneity as a carefully designed illusion. That tension is where his cinema tends to live.