It All Goes Back to Ryan

Once upon a time, I had a huge crush on an actor named Ryan Phillippe, of whom you may have heard. It all started with I Know What You Did Last Summer and that shower scene at the gym. You know the one, right? (pics borrowed again from Superherofan!)
Things really kicked into gear with Cruel Intentions, though, a movie that I still shamelessly love, if I'm being completely honest. From there, I felt like I had to see every movie Ryan had ever done. I was also extremely upset that I'd missed his turn as gay teen Billy Douglas on One Life to Live, of course!

Why am I bringing all of this up tonight, long after my adoration of Ryan has faded into nothing more than an appreciation for his overall hotness? Well, my early obsession with Ryan and seeing all of his films lead me to a writer/director I might not have discovered otherwise: Gregg Araki.

Ryan was in a film of Gregg's called Nowhere. Watching the film, I was totally confused and turned on and mesmerized, all more or less simultaneously. It was certainly one of the oddest films I'd seen at that point in my life, but as out there as it was, something about the weird yet strangely heartbreaking ending spoke to me.

I found out that the film was actually the third in a teenage apocalypse trilogy, so I sought out the first two films (neither of which had Ryan in them, so at that point it was Araki who was my point of interest), Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation.

All three of the films were interesting, disturbing, and exciting, but as soon as I saw his earlier film, The Living End, I knew that it was his best work, at least out of those early films. The movie is about two men who have AIDS and who end up on the road together, living outside the law because they have nothing left to lose. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out.

Since then, he's impressed me even more with Mysterious Skin, starring the incredible Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It showed the same deft touch with uncomfortable subject matter as his earlier films but also proved how much he'd matured as an artist since the early 1990's.

I just read today that he's working on a new film, Kaboom, which "follows the sexual awakening of a group of college students." Perfect material for Araki, who no doubt will take what could in most hands be rather tired subject matter that we've all seen a million times and make something completely original out of it.

Most of Araki's films (I have yet to see his most recent film, Smiley Face, or his very first two films, Three Bewildered People in the Night and The Long Weekend (O'Despair), but I can speak for the rest of them) deal with LGBT subject matter to some extent, so it's especially interesting to see that Thomas Dekker is among the cast. I wonder if he'll dare to play a gay/bi scene after the whole controversy of Heroes de-gaying his character in the first season, apparently at the request of his management.

At any rate, I'm very much looking forward to Kaboom. It's funny to think that if it wasn't for my early crush on Ryan, I may never have experienced some truly interesting films! Of course, I also would never have had to sit through 54!