All aboard the Toronto love train: Atom Egoyan, Ivan Reitman and Julianne Moore talk Hogtown and Chloe

By Karon Liu | September 16, 2009

By Karon Liu | 09/16/2009

Julianne Moore and Atom Egoyan pose for the cameras at the Chloe press conference (Photo by Karon Liu)

While it’s no secret that Chloe director Atom Egoyan loves his hometown, we were surprised that fellow Canuck Ivan Reitman needed some convincing to set the erotic thriller, a remake of 2003’s Nathalie…, in Toronto.

“The original script was set in San Francisco and we see a lot of films shot there, like Dirty Harry and Vertigo,” says Egoyan. “The challenge was convincing Ivan that Toronto can be as sexy and alluring as San Francisco. Ivan’s from here originally but hasn’t spent time here recently, so I was driving him around showing him places and he got very excited and saw the city transform itself.”

Reitman, whose family gave the $22 million plot of land where the Bell Lightbox will be, says, “It’s always used as a stand-in for New York or Chicago, and as we were walking through the city and through midtown I was saying that we never see these streets, and it’s a really romantic and beautiful city that transformed a lot over the last 10 years. If we can get some of those iconic buildings into the setting it would be such an architectural background to this sensual story.”

Actress Julianne Moore also says that she first met Egoyan at TIFF in the mid-’90s, further proving that the city is now a centre of Hollywood activity—for at least one week per year.

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