"See Ya Real Soon"
As I wrapped up my interview with 21-year-old Ryan Gosling, I asked him how I might get through to him if I see him in a year or two and he's gone Hollywood and started referring to himself in the thrid person. He offered to let me punch him in the shoulder, but I felt something stronger was necessary. We agreed that I'm to say "Bitch, get off your high horse" if it becomes necessary to shake him out of a self-important delirium. I practiced a few times, much to the terror of the looming bulicist, and Gosling laughed and confirmed the arrangement with a handshake. Imagine someone saying those workds to Ed Norton with a crowd of his "people" standing by, and you'll get a sense of how down-to-earth this kid is.
Gosling has been the wunderkind at Sundance for the past two years; this year he appeared in "The Slaughter Rule" (which was chosen for feature competition but has yet to be picked up for distribution), and last year in "The Believer", which is finally being released this summer. In "The Believer", he plays a Jewish boy who happens to be a violent, anti-Semitic neo-Nazi. The film premiered to raves and controversy at Park City.
"As a character, I wanted to show people who never actually saw it was equally overwhelming. A few days into the fim's festival debut, criticism on the nature of the film (as opposed to the film itself) started snowballing. Several distributors interested in it were rumored to have subsequently backed away. "I was really depresed when the backlash to the film first happened, but then I thought at least they are reacting to us and I decided it's not so bad. It was certainly never our intention to make an anit-Semitic film. In fact, at the beginning it was frustration because we talked about the script so much, it was like talking about making love or kissing when you're younger-you can only talk about it so long before you have to actually just do it."
The film ended up winning the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and went on to win the Gotham Awards Open Palm (along with "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", in a rare tie). Gosling himself was nominated for an Independant Spirit Award for Best Male Lead.
"The most beautiful part aobut the movie, but what makes it ambiguous, is that it doesn't tell you what to feel," Gosling says.
How does a blond, blue-eyed lad from Toronto learn how to tell if his shpikus is gefuvah? "I was really naive about Judaism, but Henry [Bean, ,the director] runs a kosher household and his daughter was a rabbi and she helped me so much. I didn't learn Hebrew, just the prayers I had to learn for the movie. The language is not Latin-based, so it was very hard for me to make certain guttural sounds I just didn't know how to say. I didn't want Jewish people to watch this film and think I was butchering the holy language."
Shaving his head and wearing jackboots and swastikas was quite a 180 for a kid who started out as a Canadian Mouseketeer. But unlike his fellow 'teers Britney, Justin and Christina, he took his early showbiz exposure in a more artistic direction breaking out from the comfy ghetto of lightweight Canadian and American TV roles by constantly auditioning.
"I always knew that acting would be my career path," Gosling says, "It's an internal drive."
Despite his brooding star in "The Believer", he's one actor who doesn't cite Robert DeNiro as his inspiration.
"My heroes are Bill Murray and Christopher Guest. Bill Murray's the king. I saw a five-minute promo he did for "The Man Who Knew Too Little" where he rean around a junkyard begging people to go see the movie. It was brilliant. And Christopher Guest is what every character actor/chameleon just tries to be."
Gosling is leaping from indies to more studio far this year, with a part in "Murder by Numbers" with Sandra Bullock this spring and "United States of Leeland", with Kevin Spacey, scheduled for release later this year. So, if by Christmastime he starts acting like a poncy young stud, let's all work together and tell the bitch to stay off his high horse.
