MainstreamMag.com
Ian was interviewed by Kim, Catherine & Christine Smith for MainstreamMag.com during the press junket on October 5, 2002 for Rules Of Attraction.
Question: When you read the
script, what attracted you to this character?
Ian: When you read the script initially, it's written in a way in which
really hasn't been done. Some people say it's really Momento-esque, and they
use varies comparisons but the way he wrote this has never been done on
film. The intro to a character, you meet a character and then you roll in,
you reverse, but you're not really reversing in time, you're actually moving
parallel in time. You're in the same time moving to another perspective of
the person. You meet them and then you roll out and yet again you are not
moving back in time, you're simply moving parallel within time. The first
three or four pages of the script I read, I said, 'I'll do whatever I can to
get this movie.' And I flew back to L.A., actually I didn't fly, I was
driving, I was coming from vacation. I wanted to drive across the country,
and I got the script and I had no time to have my car shipped and jump on a
plane, so I said, 'You know what? It's okay, I'll drive.' Big mistake; let
me tell you. Don't ever drive from the Florida Keys to Los Angeles.
Question: How come?
Ian: I should have just stopped somewhere and left my car at an airport and
got on a plane. I didn't sleep from Houston to L.A. because I didn't have
time. My session was with Roger, and they couldn't find Paul, and they had
just seen My Life as a House and my agent said, 'Get here now, now, now.' So
I read the script literally driving across the country, going over my
'sides,' my lines in traffic jams and I got home at four in the morning,
hallucinating through lack of sleep, and went and had my session with Roger
and then went home, had another session on Monday. I slept and watched a
bunch of Peter Sellers' movies all weekend, and then got the movie that
following Monday.
Question: Portraying a gay or bisexual, do
you feel the need to be beyond reproach?
Ian: No, not really. I think Paul is just very subtle, if he's gay he's very
subtly gay, he's not this openly very flamboyant guy. And again, that was
the whole other thing that I've been asked a lot is, are you over
compensating trying to state how straight you are? I'm not, it's challenging
as a straight guy to make conscious efforts to be gay. The one thing you're
comfortable with is your sexuality, you know it when you wake up you know it
when you go to bed, it's like wearing a comfortable pair of shoes. And when
you step out of that, it's a challenge. And so, no, I didn't feel – I've
been in the fashion industry for so long, I've lived in New York and L.A.
and Europe, so many of my friends are gay – no, it's just a guy.
Question: Isn't there a
problem with gay guys going after straight guys?
Ian: Yeah, I talked to a lot of my friends and I came to the conclusion,
it's got to suck, to want something – this is going to sound so horrible –
If I were to walk down in the lobby and see a very attractive woman,
technically, provided that she likes men, biologically I could be with that
person. If I wanted to I could pursue it, and actively pursue it, and it
could possibly happen. But if you're gay and you're pining for straight men
all the time, technically and physically it's simply not going to happen.
And I guess if you want something really badly and you literally cannot have
it, that's got to not be so fun.
Question: How did you prepare
for the role?
Ian: A) Paul's bi – and very subtle again, to reiterate that, but honestly I
just paid attention to what I've seen and everyone has their own take on
anything, and also too I'll be honest with you, I watched a lot of Kubrick
and a lot of Peter Sellers' movies. He's got that very fluid, very sexually
ambiguous tone about a lot of things. He can say three lines – you know
Christopher Walken can spit out dialogue like no one else, and Peter Sellers
had that ability to subtly and even at some points timidly when he was even
confident because it was very ambiguously – his sexuality was very
ambiguous, so you never really knew where the hell he was coming from, and
that was Paul, except in the context of this movie there is just so much
confusion. Everybody likes somebody, but no one knows it because they never
verbalize it. It's all in their head, which I think is pretty indicative of
life. I think we do it all the time, especially in college.
Question: It's interesting
that this was written in the '80s and I've done stories recently about how
there seems to be a lot of bi-sexuality among the young people today, and
Roger chose to make this modern day. Do you feel like this is a reflection
of what's happening in youth today, where they're less identified about
their sexuality?
Ian: I think they are less identified. It's becoming more sociologically
acceptable, so I think kids are feeling more free daily to do that. And
thank God Roger used a contemporary setting. But there still is that –
listen to the soundtrack, it still has that very '80s, and what's really
funny is that kids my age, and all the way down to 17, they're not
necessarily going to know the music very well, I have older siblings so in
sixth grade I was listening to Kyra and the Smiths and all these bands, but
the music fits really well, so what you're going to do is you're going to
have all these 17 year old, 18 year old pop culture kids who follow James
and Jessie, who are going to be jammin' out to Blondie, and they are not
going to even know what's going on, because they are now listening to the
soundtrack. I had a party at my house on Thursday and I had in their gift
bags with soundtracks – The Rules of Attraction soundtracks are all over my
house. My housekeeper said, 'What do I do with these?' There were stacks of
them, because everyone left them there. I listened to it several times and
then what I realized was, especially after watching the premiere, is that
the music completely complements the scene that it's in, and if the movie
means anything to anyone they'll identify with those songs – I had a
conversation with my sister last night, and she said, 'Wow, it's really
interesting you see movies a lot in which the music is just a background
subconscious aspect of the film, but the music in this film accentuates the
scenes and you remember the music with the scene.' Which I think is kind of
neat.
Question: What is your
natural high?
Ian: Exercise. Yoga, running, we have a lot of canyons, biking, swimming,
surfing. You've all these things. I know that's why sports are so heavily
promoted in this country, but unfortunately the Music Departments and Art
Departments of schools the budgets have been cut to support the football
team. I mean, come on. Art and literature gives you so much, especially with
these kids in high school and junior high. Kids start using drugs in junior
high now, and if they had interaction with other people, or they had more
insight due to having had read specific works of art, or seen works of art,
or had the means to go somewhere else in their mind, and discuss it with
kids. I know it sounds so square, but it's true and sports are another good
outlet to do that. Just health – it starts messing kid's grades. I have a
career, I can't screw around, but in college you do, and that's what you do
and that's not going to change. And that's what the movie's about, so
instead of masking or sugarcoating the way it is, which I think is now how
it's done in film, this movie will hopefully change that and raise the bar
for the way that these movies are made. And look, if it becomes more real,
I'm sorry – censorship, we live in a country which is so free but yet we are
so limited as to what we can see, which is so strange to me. I know it's
post-Columbine, I know it's post-9/11, this is the way the world is. If you
sugarcoat everything, it's like the drinking ages in the States, go to
Europe, you don't see the kids getting so wasted that they're puking and
dying, it's a moderate thing, they really don't care. You see an 18 year old
having a beer, they're not just there – kids in the States, they get a case
of beer and they drink all of it and they get sick. So I just think it's
just a whole smorgasbord of things that all these kids are dealing with
right now.
Question: Were there any
scenes of yours that were cut?
Ian: There was a lot of stuff that was cut, mostly stuff with me and Faye
that did not work in the movie and slowed it down. There was also another
huge cafeteria scene which we shot three days of which slowed the movie
down, but was great. No, I think that everything that was cut should have
been cut, I think things that were really grotesque – I think what you can
imagine would be far more gripping and graphic than what you'd see. So I
think what they did with it was great.
Question: Are you going to continue modeling?
Ian: No, I want to continue acting. It's a longevity thing. I want to do
this for a very long time. I can't erase those years of my life, I won't
try, but I never told anyone, and then I started doing press and I realized,
'Oh, yeah, I can't lie.'
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