Guillaume Canet narrowly escapes disaster at his Little White Lies premiere

Guillaume Canet narrowly escapes disaster at his Little White Lies premiere

Gilles Lellouche, Marion Cotillard and Guillame Canet at the Toronto press conference for Little White Lies (Image: Karon Liu)

Director and actor Guillaume Canet almost cancelled his own premiere for Little White Lies at Roy Thomson Hall because there was a hiccup projecting subtitles on the screen. “When we arrived Saturday afternoon to screen the film, it was announced that we wouldn’t be able to screen the film,” he deadpanned at yesterday’s press conference. “It’s a problem when you come to Toronto and they can’t screen your film.”

“I was depressed, and just before I killed myself, they came up with a solution to go to another theatre [at the Scotiabank Theatre], which Danny Boyle had been so kind to lend us,” said Canet. Boyle moved his audience for 127 Hours into two other theatres in the building. “The audience had been wonderful because they all followed us down the street to the other theatre like a big march. That was really depressing at the beginning and exciting at the end.”

Little White Lies centres on a group of friends who go on a beach vacation where each of them starts admitting to the fibs they’ve been telling each other over the years. To prepare for their roles, Canet had his cast of friends, including Marion Cotillard and Gilles Lellouche, spend three days living together in a beach house in Maine that later served as the set for the movie.

“I wanted them to live in the house so they would use the coffee machines, sleep in those beds, use the boat and go to the nearby restaurants so that they would get used to the place,” said Canet. “That’s so that on the first day they come on the set, they would have a feeling that they really went there every year in the summer.” To which Lellouche quipped, “It was like a vacation for us. For Guillaume, not so much.”

See photos of the press conference below.