Kip Pardue
Interview By: Christian Ghigliotty
As I enter the room where Kip Pardue is patiently awaiting for my arrival, I spot him looking off into space, stroking the corners of his mouth with his index finger and thumb. Sitting with his legs crossed the twenty-eight year old actor is doing his best thinking man impression, unwilling to show the vulnerability of the blue-eyed All-American boy from his numerous print ads than the journeyman actor that has shown noted versatility. When he comes to and I shake his hand, he sports a warm smile that looks like a couple dozen saloon parlor doors were painted a glistening white, unexpected only because many of his on-screen characters have explored the darker, more complex emotions and the idiosyncratic nature of people. And yet even with his embracing grin, there is a seriousness and candor that lurks behind the baby blue eyes.
'Undiscovered is a safe movie; it's a movie for fifteen year-old girls,' he tells me, careful to pronounce every syllable possible. 'Rules of Attraction wasn't a safe movie, and either you loved it or hated it.' True, a movie that has a rape scene that culminates in with an alcohol induced heave and James Van Der Beek pondering masturbation as a way of spending a Friday night can hardly be tagged as 'safe,' but good movies with balls are hard to come by these days. It's also increasingly difficult to find characters within movies period that move you to despise, loathe, or even fear them. Every character in the screen adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel showed the varied gradients of the darkest human psyche; James Van Der Beek stole the show playing Sean Bateman (the brother of Patrick Bateman, the psychotic wall street big wig in Ellis' American Psycho) but Pardue as Victor Johnson gave new meaning to the word sleaze. Johnson's sordid love affairs throughout Europe and spiraling drug addiction wasn't just believable, it was downright scary. It gave every college girl second thoughts about hooking up with the cute blonde haired boy from Math 120; and just like many of his future roles it was a memorable one.
The juxtaposition of beautiful people and malicious intent stirred audiences and critics to split respective opinion down the middle. Kip, however, sees the reason for this fervor as more of a reflection of American culture rather than shock or controversy. 'Europeans love the movie because I think it's more like a window into American life whereas Americans feel like it's a mirror. People don't like to be satirized.'
So how exactly does one of America's own come to mock the very culture he constantly portrays onscreen' If you're Kip Pardue, the journey began in the year 1998. He was recruited to play for football for Yale'a sport he was no stranger to growing up'in 1994 and four years later graduated with a degree in Economics. Shortly thereafter he began modeling for a plethora of clothing lines, with Armani, Abercrombie and Fitch and Polo topping the list. Enjoying success in the modeling sphere, he decided to travel west and try his hand at acting, snatching the coveted lead in the WB series Popular. For a moment it looked like the budding actor had his career set in motion, but his role was later recast, stalling his breakthrough into acting until his debut in the racy independent flick But I'm A Cheerleader, following with the tepid Whatever it Takes. It wasn't until the following year that he finally caught a break, landing the role of Ronnie 'Sunshine' Bass in the box office smash Remember the Titans. That break opened the Hollywood floodgates that placed him in the eighty million dollar Stallone written flick Driven, playing hot shot prot'g' Jimmy Bly. The box office turn out was disappointing and the reviews less then stellar, convincing Kip that the large studio scene just wasn't for him. 'I was thrown into an eighty-million dollar movie about race cars called Driven and it didn't do as well as everyone thought it would and didn't turn out to be this raging success and building back my career has been a very strategic thing of doing roles that are small or very memorable or the right director at the right time and very poignant scripts. I haven't done that big studio movie because I was teaching myself how to act through this process''
True to his word, Pardue has played a number of small roles following Driven, but the scope hasn't necessarily shrunk all that much; if anything they have swelled, portraying troubled and sometimes disturbed characters with poignancy and breadth few young actors possess. In 2003 he starred in Thirteen, alongside Rachel Evan Woods and then in Imaginary Heroes two years later, garnering adoration from fans but perhaps more importantly notice from critics and executives alike. 'People will argue that my career has gone down since Driven but I think just the opposite. I make movies that I want to make and I'm doing the things that I want to do only now I don't have any pressure on me.'
Cue Undiscovered, Pardue's newest and 'safest' movie about four young entertainers trying to establish themselves in Los Angeles. And just like his many recent projects he isn't carrying the burden of trying to fill the seats in the movie theatre, a task best left for leads Steven Strait and Pell James. He hopes that in taking something so uncharacteristic'playing a broke musician that dons sequined tops and thongs, opposite his sell-out brother (Strait)'that it will allow for something fresh and different from his normally intense and serious roles. 'I've never done an over the top comedic role. I mean this movie isn't an over the top comedy but my role is and it was an opportunity to come in and be. Have no pressure on me, it's not my movie'it doesn't hang on my performance but if I do something great then it turns out really great and people are really happy with what I did.' It would be ridiculous to think otherwise, especially with his track record but more importantly his increasingly busy schedule. He has two more films slated to hit theatres in the tail end of the year and has a whopping five film projects due out over the next two years, with standout Glamorama (yet another Ellis novel) reprising his role of Victor Johnson.
After finishing the interview Kip once again shakes my hand and thanks me, his eyes catching mine during our exchange. For a moment I think back to and see Victor Johnson staring right through me, the eerie glow of his eyes howling like a crazed werewolf. I'm taken aback for a moment but he pulls out a hidden baseball cap from behind his seat. Pulling it over his head as he flashes an ear-to-ear smile, and in that moment I see, like the flash of a camera, Ronnie Sunshine walk out the door.
ChristianGhigliotty@TheCinemaSource.com
