<< click to enlarge >>

Table talk

In the summer of 2006 Roy had had to call off appearing at the Rivers Conference due to filming Shake Hands with the Devil on location in Rwanda.  After returning to Quebec he had squeezed in the filming of Emotional Arithmetic, so by the time we saw him in November he was pretty tired.  

We met in the National Monument Theatre, a “sacred place” where he couldn’t smoke and was suffering as a result.  Three sugars in his double espresso that came with a ‘9’ drawn in the froth, in honour of The Rocket.

He called 2006 his ‘genocide year’.  Although he couldn’t have coped with anything major so soon after Shake Hands with the Devil, he accepted the small undemanding role in Emotional Arithmetic because of the opportunity to work with such an impressive cast.  He got on particularly well with Max von Sydow.

On the subject of Shake Hands with the Devil, at this point he seemed very focussed on Dallaire and his psyche rather than the broader humanitarian issues.  Apart from the intense physical effort of being in almost every scene, (and one got the impression that he was not as cosseted by Roger Spottiswoode as he had been by Leclerc and Budreau previously), he seems to have been haunted by the briefing that Dallaire had given him prior to setting out for Rwanda. 

“It was the hardest thing I have ever done and I’ve done some hard things.”

Perhaps surprisingly he’s 100% behind the concept of the United Nations.  Echoing Dallaire’s own sentiments he is critical of the actions (or non-action) of the US and France, and blames the failures of the UN on the constituent nations, not the organisation itself.   He is convinced that the UN still serves a purpose as a vehicle for information sharing.

Harking back to his experiences on That Beautiful Somewhere which we had just seen, he recalled that the bit he found difficult was when he had to go into the church, as he is a resolute non-believer.  (His sister is very religious, and they have big debates.  He observes Christmas because it is a family tradition.)  He vigorously argues the case for science against religion, and believes that faith inhibits communication, or information sharing (his current favourite topic!).