XY Magazine
Mister Squeakyclean gets dirty
"I just saw Dawson masturbating!" That's my first thought after previewing The Rules of Attraction, in which squeaky-clean James Van Der Beek gets very, very, dirty with Ian Somerhalder.
James says his makeout session with hot model-cum-acator Ian was no big deal. But his tone carries a hint of taboo. "I mean it was the first time I ever had to do a scene like that; where I've had to kiss a guy," he says.
James almost whispers when he says, "kiss a guy."
"But we only did one take of the actual kissing and it was over in like ten seconds. It was really a much smaller deal than I thought it would be."
I'm supposed to be interviewing James. But like, I'm thinking - ok, looking into Ian Somerhalder's crystal clear blue eyes, how could anyone, straight or gay, stop after only ten seconds? [You nailed that one, Dan!]
One of the movie's most talked about scenes is that steamy encounter between James' character Sean, and Paul Denton played by super-hot-finally-being-noticed Ian. "I really liked that scene when I first read it," James says. "I love that it was Paul's fantasy about how Sean would act. In his ideal world, this is how Sean would be."
In split-screen style, the audience watches as Paul's fantasy is played out on one side, while what is actually happening plays on the other - which, unfortunately for Paul, isn't much.
But for the former star of white-bread Dawson's Creek, this adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel is his first role as a bad boy.
Taking on the character of Sean Bateman, younger brother to Patrick Bateman of American Psycho, would be a challenging task for any young star, but for James, it was something he knew he had to do.
"When I actually got the opportunity to do this movie-come hell or high-water, I was going to do this thing and put everything I had into it."
Now that James has actually kissed a man on screen the predictable questions are sure to follow. "People have been asking me, 'Aren't you afraid that people are going to say you're gay?'" James says. "But of all the things my character does in this film, if a rumor comes out that I'm gay, I could care less. There are so many worse things that they could be saying."
Initially, James had hoped that the now infamous kiss would remain a secret and surprise moviegoers. But Hollywood can't keep secrets, and word soon leaked out. "It was funny because it was so not a big deal," he says.
Rules of Attraction puts James into some other compromising situations: in addition to kissing Ian, he had to take a dump and beat up women. "The last thing you can afford to have in your mind is, 'What are other people going to think of this?'" he says.
James doesn't know how his real-life parents will react to all this debauchery. "They've seen me do some crazy stuff on stage in New York," he says. "I did this Nicky Silver play where I told then, 'You can not come!' but they snuck in anyway. Thank god I didn't see them. But I don't know if there's any way to prepare them for the kind of situations they're going to see their first born in in this movie."
James's offscreen persona is every bit as squeaky clean as his Dawson's one. And he days some of his close friends have even found it difficult seeing James in this debaucherous new light.
"Some of them can't even look at me after seeing it," he says.
And while he thinks he is great in the film, James knows not everyone will like it.
"It's a brutal film, and I think it's going to upset a lot of people," he says. "but it's even better than I thought it would be when I first read the script." - Dan Deevy