MADE TO BE BROKEN: An interview with The Rules of Attraction director Roger Avary By Ryan Kugler 10/14/02 Part 2 of 2

This film has an unusual cast. Most of these actors aren't associated with these types of roles. James Van Der Beek, especially, is totally playing against type. Why go with him?

I hadn't been thinking about James, and before pre-production, when we were trying to get the money together, somebody suggested him. I had the reaction that I think most people would probably have -- Dawson? That's one of the big problems with being woven into the cultural fabric and being so closely identified with something, which as you know happens to a lot of TV people. I'm sure that Robin Williams, when he did Mork and Mindy, had a dickens of a time getting people to stop thinking about Nanu Nanu as did my friend (director) Mark Romanek when he was doing One Hour Photo. It was like -- Robin Williams is going to play this dark character? I don't know, will the audience be able to disengage from their preconceived notions going in? I had that same concern about James, but I had been a really big fan of Varsity Blues, so I was like, yeah, I'll meet with him. I thought, if anything, I'll get him to sign my Varsity Blues laser disc. So, I go to lunch with him and he sits down and then literally from the moment he takes his sunglasses off, I looked into his eyes and immediately it all crystallized exactly how the movie should be. I looked into his eyes and what I saw was something I really hadn't seen in him before, but I guess it was just looking at him in person. There was this capability for cold dark emptiness. A lot of actors have that. I mean, so many young actors today have this sort of you know, they all think they're Brando or James Dean and are always smoking cigarettes and acting all, "I'm dark and cool." James had that, but what he had that none of the other guys had was this intense enigmatic likable puppy dog charisma that I hadn't really seen. It reminded me of one of my favorite casting choices. When Oliver Stone did Platoon, he took Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe. Dafoe would always play the bad guy and Tom Berenger had always played the good guy and, instead, he cast Tom Berenger as the bad guy and Willem Dafoe as the good guy. I remember going in and it was so exciting to see them doing something other than what everyone had preconceived them doing.

What was it like working with him?

What people don't realize about James or maybe don't remember is that he was doing Ed Albee on Broadway before he did Dawson's Creek. I mean, he's actually a theater-trained actor and is an awesome, unbelievable performer. He also has what many young actors don't have -- the luxury of being in front of the camera like two hundred days out of the year. When you're shooting a series for as long as he's been shooting, you just instantly start to know where your light is, how to move within the frame, and you don't have to worry about that as a director. He comes intensely well prepared for his performance. He knows his lines backwards and forwards. He has a take on it worked out, and he's intensely passionate about what he's doing. Because he knows everything so well and is so professional and highly technical, it affords you the ability to go through and really work on the scene and experiment with it, and say, "You know when you did that inflection? Lower your left eyebrow and bring a little anger into the moment." And then, you go ahead and play it out, "And after that inflection, raise the other eyebrow and instead of doing a little anger, bring a little sarcasm and then do this." He'll actually put all the beats exactly where you'd like, and what you dislike, he'll make adjustments to. It's a joy to work like that.

At what point did Shannon Sossamon get involved and what was it like working with her?

Shannon was one of the last casting choices. She came into the process very late. I went and met with her. She's kind of the opposite of James. She doesn't come from a classically trained background, so she would come in and would be very honest as a performer. If you try to make her do something that she doesn't feel, what you're going to get is somebody who looks like they're just performing, and I don't really like that in movies.

Tell us about your process of working with your cast.

I asked all of the actors to bring truth into whatever it was that they were doing. If you are upset and angry and pissed off about something in your real life, bring it into the moment, so that you know there's something real within what you're doing. If you're doing a love scene and you're angry, that's o.k., because emotions don't make sense. You know, we laugh when we're terrified and we cry when we're happy and emotions are all over the map anyway. I told them, just make it real to you and that way, I will have captured a little piece of your soul and when you watch this movie when you're one-hundred-years-old and you see yourself on the screen, you won't just be looking at somebody who has no relation to your real life. You'll be looking at something that has a very real connection to who you were within that time of your life, and I think that's the closest thing I can offer towards immortality. That's where I think a slight ecstasy comes into the process.

What can you tell us about Glitterati (A side project based on the four-minute segment outlining Victor's European vacation)?

I'm working on that film between now and the end of the year. What happened was, on the Victor European trip, I literally walked with Kip Pardue and told him, "I'm just going to follow you through Europe. You be Victor Ward twenty-four hours a day. Your sleeping hours are yours, but your waking hours are mine." I cut him loose on Europe and just followed him. I gave him the money and everything and he just took a camera and we wandered through Europe. Whenever he would encounter somebody, Greg (producer) would run over and get a release from them. It was actually an intense exercise as a director to not know what your script is, and then be thinking about what your shots are in advance. It was intensely difficult, but I shot like seventy hours of video for that sequence and so much of it is so intense and there are full-fleshed out scenes, that I decided to cut it into a mini digital video.

(Read the interview with James Van Der Beek)

(Read Ryan's review of The Rules of Attraction)

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