Eye spy

>> With his new romantic thriller, Stephan Elliott goes from Desert to Death Valley

by JOANNE LATIMER

 Stephan Elliott wants to get paid. His ire isn't directed toward Seville Pictures, the Montreal production and distribution company that he credits with "saving" his film from meltdown at Behaviour. He loves the gang at Seville. But he's testy about Behaviour.

 "They completely screwed us. Someone already made a fortune with pre-sales, then claimed to go broke," explains Elliott, whose new film, Eye of the Beholder, is about to open. Elliott is known for his resplendent The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the less popular Welcome to Woop Woop. There's nothing obvious in Eye of the Beholder that makes it an Elliott film, except a penchant for lush photography and wonderfully twisted characters.

 "We shot 80 per cent of the film in Montreal," recalls Elliott, on the phone from New York where he was doing his bit to promote the project. "I have to say that the crew in Montreal was fantastic. The first day on set I noticed that a few crew members had T-shirts saying: WE DON'T CARE HOW THEY DO IT IN L.A. Neither did I, so it was perfect."

 Getting to the production stage was a long haul. The film began over six years ago. "Nobody was going to cut this film except me," says Elliott. "Priscilla was the only time I've ever had final cut on a film and I wanted that again. This project was really important to me. When I took the project through the studio system, I could tell that I'd lose control if I went down that road. One studio actually said that they wouldn't do the film unless Ashley [Judd] had a twin sister pop out of a closet at the end. They were serious."

 Surreal, romantic, thrilling
 As far as categories go, Eye of the Beholder is closest to a surreal romantic thriller. Ewan McGregor plays The Eye, an English spy sent to see how his boss's son is spending the trust fund. A would-be hit woman, Joanna (Judd), gets involved and all objectivity goes out the window. Against the advice of The Eye's Moneypenny--played perfectly by k.d. lang--he jeopardizes his job to trail the girl.

 The Eye has an array of nifty spy gadgets that help him obsess over Joanna. The high-tech spy toys are such a sexy hook that they become as important as a character. "I found a spy expert and I researched on the Internet," explains Elliott. "The expert said that all the technology we wanted--which was pretty far out--existed, but would be obsolete by the time the film was released."

 Regular civilians won't find it lacking. I had an issue with the wardrobe, however. McGregor wears a horrendous red jacket with quilting. "Ewan was not impressed," laughs Elliott. "The coat is from my childhood. We had a bigger replica made. I had one like that when I was seven years old. I was wearing it when a kangaroo grabbed the sleeve and dragged me, screaming, through the bush. It was the most traumatizing thing from my childhood. Ewan's character is utterly mad at the end, and the coat helps convey this."

 Prison time
 Joanna is also unhinged. She's a homicidal grifter who likes wigs and astrology. "If you ever spend some time with a serial killer--and I did, researching in jails--you soon see that they had terrible childhoods," said Elliott. "You find out that all they got for their fifth birthday was a kick in the head and a packet of cigarettes."

 The parts of the film that weren't shot around Montreal were done on a mad road trip across the United States with Elliott and two crew members.

 "We had a camera and some wigs. At one point, I was dressed up as Ashley, in a wig, and walked in front of the camera that I had just set up... We even went to Death Valley with no filming permit. I was on top of the car with the camera and the cops were coming down on us within minutes. We pretended to be Australians shooting a documentary and they let us go. You just have to play dumb and you can get away with anything." :

 

Eye of the Beholder opens Friday, January 28