In Magazine
October 22, 2002
Ian Somerhalder
Learns The Rules of Attraction
How to figure the value for the unknown leg of a triangle seems a problem better left buried in a dusty geometry textbook. But it's precisely the question facing Rules of Attraction breakout star Ian Somerhalder. The 24 year old model-turned-actor [oops to In, Ian is only 23 right now] is the unknown quantity in this film's love triangle.
The most familiar name is TV's James Van Der Beek (Dawson's Creek), who's trying his hardest to sully his good guy image playing drug-dealing, bed-hopping American Psycho kid brother Sean Bateman. The film's coolest factor is Shannyn Sossamon, who even if she wasn't cris-crossing campus via skateboard or blowing her professor for a grade, would be able to fall back on her indie cred as Gwyneth Paltrow's party DJ of choice.
Somerhalder's place in the triangle at the imaginary Camden College, closely modeled on Bennington, is as the horny Paul Denton. He's a typical Bret Easton Ellis creation: dapper, smart, always crushing on the wrong straight guy. In short, he's the author's double. The writer and director of the film, Roger Avary, has a loftier goal in mind than just carving a place for Van Der Beek in the post-Dawson marketplace (sorry kids, this is the last season for the Creek and the Beek); his larger aim is "to drive a stake through the heart of the teen film genre."
"Hurrah, yay, go for it" is how Somerhalder cheers the death of the teen movie.
Rules is not the anti-teen movie, but it will raise the bar for the way these movies are made and the way this genre is personified. Kids are getting smarter, they're more Internet and fashion-savvy.
But is the MTV generation, weaned on fare like Road Trip, ready for the teen movie to die? "I think they can identify with the reality presented here," Somerhalder explains. "Some of those mornings you wake up and you don't want to go to class or don't go to sleep and head straight to class, that's the way it is. You read it in Bret's books because he writes what he wants. Yeah, it's not Road Trip. It's not that type of film. There is no love. It makes me feel dirty, but at least I feel something other than 'Oh My God, that movie sucked' and I just want to go home and go to bed."
Although Somerhalder's high-style character chases both boys and girls, Paul is positively demure when compared with Somerhalder's last role as a sleazoid teen pimp in Irwin Winkler's Life as a House. Then there's his sexually confused character from the WB's short-lived Young Americans. He even took on the role of one of the killers for MTV's Matthew Shepard biopic.
The pretty boy from Covington, La., with the Guess and Versace campaigns under his designer belts is, like his co-stars, straight. In fact, he even anticipates the "What was it like to neck with Dawson?" question - "I know it's going to come flying out soon" - before it's even asked. "I had concerns literally for about a second," Somerhalder volunteers. "The homosexuality didn't bother me at all. It's very challenging as an actor. Lately there's just so much that's not challenging. The one thing you know is your sexuality. It's the thing you're most comfortable in. It's like wearing a great pair of shoes. If you step outside of that, you pose a challenge for yourself."
He got into the kiss enough to characterize it as "very scratchy and uncomfortable. My face felt raw; that shit hurts." Stepping back from the razor burn, he's able to see that sexuality between two men in the college age demo is really something we haven't seen since Another Country. And he's ready to roll into that unfamiliar territory. "I want to explore it because it hasn't been explored. I wanted something new, different and wacky."
Ask and you shall receive.
By Tony Phillips