It was a typical milky-white 9:00 a.m. in San Diego, but Atom Egoyan, on the phone from his office in Toronto, was far from gloomy. The director spoke passionately (and rapidly) about his latest feature, Where the Truth Lies, a fictionalized account of a murder that may or may not involve showbiz royalty.

Egoyan is a brilliant independent writer/director, whose cold, clinical and frequently nasty films (Calendar, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter) reflect a similar sensibility to that of fellow countryman David Cronenberg. While Cronenberg is a master of psychological horror, Egoyan excels at dysfunctional relationships best viewed from a distance. What better subjects than Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, comedy’s most famously divorced duo?

The film is set in America during the ’50s, and Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth) are the country’s comedic pulse. A classic duo – Lanny is the crazy schtick comic, while British Vince is his cool and collected straight man – the boys seem equally at home wetting the eyes of adoring nightclub patrons as they do telethon viewers hooked on their pity pitch. They are at the top of their game, wealthy, powerful and popular beyond compare, until one day when a young hotel maid inexplicably turns up dead in the boys’ suite.

The project presented Egoyan with several new hurdles to conquer. Budgeted at $25 million, it’s his biggest, most commercial film to date. It is also his first film to be shot on American soil. Perhaps the biggest challenge was in the production design. This is the director’s first period – make that periods – piece. Half of the film takes place at the scene of the crime, a flashback to the 1959 Annual Veterans’ Day Polio Telethon. Inter-cut is a distanced ’70s perspective, where we look back on the events through the eyes of a young journalist (AlisonLohman) wanting to clear their names.

Working closely with production designer Phillip Barker and cinematographer Paul Sarossy, Egoyan had a high time reconstructing the style of Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel. According to Egoyan, this deco-reinterpretation proved to be a lot more than just finding locations. “Most of my films keep a pretty traditional approach, but this time we wanted an enhanced feel and used a lot of diffusion,” he said.

His creativity is further sparked by a loyal stock company of crew members. Egoyan said he finds “nothing more gratifying than working with a team over a number of films and redefining yourself.”

When asked his earliest memory in a movie theater, he was quite specific. “I went with my grandmother to see The Sandpipers (sic). There’s a scene where a character is crushed to death by a piston in a boat.” When told the director’s name, Egoyan hesitated and asked, “Was that Vincente Minnelli?”

During the production, Hollywood glamour was his textbook and Minnelli one of the prime authors. Through an expressionist use of light, color and art direction, the film excels at recapturing that embossed Technicolor lushness of the 40s and 50s. “I watched a lot of Minnelli while preparing for the film,” he said – most notably Minnelli’s two scathing Hollywood exposés, The Bad and the Beautiful and Two Weeks in Another Town.

“You have all these sections where Lanny is describing his world as he remembers it. When it came to putting it all on film, he would not have hired Atom Egoyan to direct that. A guy like Lanny would have hired Vincente Minnelli,” Egoyan said.

Other prime influences were All About Eve, a lot of noir and neo-noir, Vertigo, the use of voiceover in both Sunset Boulevard and A Letter to Three Wives, and Gilda, the film Egoyan calls “the most glamorous ever made.”

Having reached a point in my cinematic education where I see films weeks before they open and frequently know nothing about them going in, I approached Where the Truth Lies as I would any other Egoyan film – eager and grateful. Little did I know this film centered around a personal deity. The closest I’ve come to Paris is French’s mustard, yet I have spent more of my adult life defending Jerry Lewis than any other cinema artist. It’s a tough road. Most Americans either hate Monsieur Jerry or they despise him. As I grew, so did my ability to appreciate his artistry, and I am not ashamed to mention him in the same sentence with the towering likes of Keaton, Groucho, Harold Lloyd, Ernie Kovacs and W.C. Fields. On the directing side, he holds his own with Keaton, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Tashlin and Jacques Tati. Call me Rupert Pupkin, but for the past 30 years I have never felt the hot Labor Day sun beating down on my face, because I’m indoors staying up and watching the stars come out on Jerry’s annual love-in. For years, Egoyan was right there on the front lines with me.

“Growing up, I was a big fan of their comedy and was one of those kids who woke up every Sunday morning and watched Martin and Lewis movies on TV,” he said. “And I never missed a telethon.” In addition to Dean and Jerry, there were other comedy “pardners” to plumb and Egoyan combed through hours of footage. The tension “between public mythology and private history” led him to consider the careers of Rowan and Martin and The Smothers Brothers as well. “At times there’s more Abbott and Costello in Lanny and Vince than Martin and Lewis,” he said, adding, “The thing that fascinates me about the entertainment industry is that it involves constructing a persona; that is, it involves representing something other than who you are. And, by doing that so well, people want to believe it. That is what’s at the heart of the story: Who are these people?”

I can see Bob Hope using Bing’s Dumbo ears to pin back his ankles, or Costello bent over a sink really screaming, “Hey Abbott,” but Martin tailgating Lewis while the funnyman/humanitarian is in mid-hetero hump? Is nothing sacred? Obviously not because the scene in question earned the film a dreaded NC-17 rating. When asked whether the blue-noses would have been a bit more accommodating had the scene in question not involved gay sex, he replied, “I’m not sure. We filmed it in a bright, traditional Hollywood style with well know actors. If this was a cast of unknowns shot with a handheld camera on grainy stock, they wouldn’t have batted an eye. This is my biggest film to date and this move by the ratings board makes me feel condemned to be on the margins.”

How would Mr. Lewis feel were he to dignify the film with a viewing? Egoyan says, “I hope that he wouldn’t take it personally. I thought the relationships were really interesting. Maybe I’m naive, but I tried to construct another act, create another duo. I am fascinated by the nature of that type of marriage and how their ways of communicating were constrained. It’s a publicly celebrated and adored relationship that could not be consummated: an Ego/Id dynamic trying to control and tame each other.”

One publicist’s dream is another’s nightmare. How serendipitous is it that the publication of Dean and Me (A Love Story), Jerry’s love letter to his ex-partner, coincides with the film’s release? Egoyan has yet to read it, but he did have to laugh when informed of the book’s most “did we really need to know that” moment. Anyone who reads Lewis’ autobiography after seeing Egoyan’s film is guaranteed to glean new insight from the passage where the older, more experienced Dean checks freshman Jerry for crabs. “Is that really in there,” Egoyan asked? After a moment he let loose his biggest laugh during the 30-minute phoner. “That’s right up my alley!”