Nick Stahl: Trapped in L.A.

IFC Rant Magazine – July/August 2001
Written by Anthony Kaufman

“I’m not a big fan of the ocean,” says Nick Stahl. “I’m sort of a land creature.” And yet, the soft-spoken young actor has been swimming in Los Angeles’ coastal capital – Hollywood – since roughly age 10. First there was a pair of TV movies, and then came his breakout role in The Man Without a Face alongside Mel Gibson at the mere age of 13. The fact that he stills lives in L.A. but longs for his land-locked home of Dallas suggests Stahl’s current conflicted state as a sought-after rising thespian: industry vet at only 21, but ready to try something different.

Indeed, Stahl is taking on new challenges: this summer, he plays the sick title character of Larry Clark’s killer Kids redux flick Bully, and in the fall, two stunning family dramas – Todd Field’s In the Bedroom and Christopher Münch’s Sleepy Time Gal – will solidify Stahl’s unique up-and-comer status. Before 2001, Stahl’s most memorable screen time came in his cutesy roles of pre-adolescence, an “evil brain-sucking preppy kid” in the teen flick Disturbing Behavior, and as a dying soldier in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. “In the past few years, it seems that there is more content that I can relate to in the smaller films,”Stahl says of his recent journey into indie-land.

Bully may be the biggest stretch, however. Based on actual events, the film tells the story of Bobby Kent (played by Stahl, with menace and charm), a seemingly mild-mannered college-bound Floridian teen who beats and pimps his best friend and rapes his friends girlfriends, and is then murdered for it. “I was a bit intimidated by the character,”Stahl recalls. “All I could do was just let go. I was never an angry kid growing up, but I definitely witnessed kids like that. All I could do was just try to give in to that anger and let it out.”

In Sleepy Time Gal, Stahl is son to a single mother dying of cancer (Jacqueline Bisset). “I grew up with just my mom, so I could connect in that way,” he says. And for In the Bedroom, Stahl plays another collegiate-type with a bright future “who is blindsided by love,” he explains. “Before Nathalie [Marisa Tomei] comes along,” Stahl continues, “he was just a kid who had things figured out, then he becomes confused, a bit baffled, by his next step.”

Stahl’s own next steps are uncertain as well. He’d like to work with British director Ken Loach because, he says, “his movies don’t follow any particular formula,” just as Stahl himself rejects a formula life. “There’s definitely pressures in this town to do things a certain way,” he says. “I’m glad I went through that stuff. I had a publicist when I was younger and I don’t have one now and I don’t want one. I’m glad I went through that, saw what it was, and now I can say I’m doing things in my own way.”

The man behind the menace

The man behind the menace
Actor Nick Stahl looks for the good side of his sexually confused character in Bully

By Bruce C. Steele
The Advocate July 2001

Based on the book by Jim Schutze, the film Bully casts actor Nick Stahl as Bobby Kent, a real-life suburban Florida bully with a fascination for gay bars and gay pornographyand possibly an unrequited attraction to his best friend, Marty, who bore the brunt of his violence. Bobby is the latest in 21-year-old Stahls impressive, ever-growing résumé of “confused youth” roles, which also includes parts in the teen thriller Disturbing Behavior (1998), the much-buzzed-about upcoming indie drama In the Bedroom, and the latest from iconoclastic gay director Christopher Münch, The Sleepy Time Gal.

Himself a son of suburbia (outside Dallas), Stahl sat down with The Advocate to talk about playing Bobby”more challenging than any role Ive done,” he saysand about the harsh realities of growing up in a place where conformity is the one rule kids dare not break.

How much research did you do into the actual incident?
Stahl: As much as I could. I read the book, and right when I got into Florida, my driverthe guy who was picking me uphe took me around this area that it happened. He went to high school with the actual guy [that I play in the movie, Bobby Kent]. So he was able to take me down to the neighborhood that he grew up in, which is remarkably generic suburban. It reminded me of where I grew up, in that they all seem to be similar, you know? It’s just outside of the cityits just a lot of strip malls and things like that. So I was able to get a visual of what the character was seeing day to day. Otherwise, I pretty much just went on my own [instincts]. It was a true account, but, of course, the dialogue was fictionalized. And so I just sort of took it upon myself to try to give some depth to the character.

Youre physically different from the real Bobby, who was first-generation Persian-American, and he was this big guy doing steroids.
Yeah, the guy was massive. He looked like Stallone or somethingjust this big blockhead, and he looked a lot older than high school. I was small for my age growing up. But I recognize that pushing other kids around and bullying is not really about physicality. Where I grew up there were kids who were much smaller who would push around big guys. Its really psychological. I mean, the character to me was really about fronts, you knowthats why it was such a challenge for me. There was just this really broad front to him.

By that you mean how he presented himself, how he wanted other people to perceive him?
Oh, yeah. Everythingthe way he moved and the way he talked to kids and to peers and to girls, and everything. And then hes got this side of him when he was with his family, with his fatherwho was a pretty strict disciplinarian had him taking piano lessons, you know? So there were two pretty polar opposite sides to him.

What was the casting process? How did director Larry Clark and you get together and decide that you could reinterpret this character in the way that you do?
I expressed my interest [in playing the role], and then I guess I read for it after that, like, maybe a week later. I just say “hats off” to [Clark] for giving me the opportunity, because I think it took a lot of imagination on his part. It was pretty bold of him not to go the stereotypical route. I guess he recognized that it was more psychological bullying. That gave me some security going into the movie that I would have some freedom to do what I wanted to do.

The very first shot of the movie is Brad Renfrowho plays Martydoing gay phone sex for money, which is something that Bobby has set up. Whats going on there?
There were a lot of different things going on with these two kids: Theyre best friends, they grew up together, and in the actual account in the book, kids who knew them talked about this strange sort of sexual tensiona kind of ambiguous sexualityto their relationship. And one thing in this part of the country that really separated it from where I grew upor at least what I saw growing upwas, theres a real hustling aspect to the kids in these suburbs. Like, Marty and Bobby had this kind of hustle set up in gay clubs, where they would go and Bobby would make Marty get onstage and dance, and guys would pay to see him dance. And the phone sex. And also the girls in the movie, Bijou Phillips’s character, you know, was busted in real life for this teen prostitution ringthere was this sort of white-collar pimp who had these young girls and palmed them off for money.

Bobby mentions that in the movie, but you dont really know whether hes just making it up or if its true.
Right. Apparently it was true. But I think [his saying] that also goes hand in hand with his [need to maintain his] superiority over Marty and him trying to secure his place socially in making Marty do these things.

Theres a lot of watching going onBobby likes to watch. In that first scene when they pick up the girls and Marty’s having sex in the back seat and Bobby’s getting a blow job, Bobby really looks like hes more interested in whats going on with Marty in the back seat than he is in whats going on in his own lap.
That was actually shot [to show that Bobby was] looking at Marty. The way they have it edited, it looks like Im looking at [Martys girl Lisa] in the eyes, at [actress] Rachel [Miner].

Oh, its pretty clear that hes watching what Martys doing.
Hes a real voyeur, I guess, in that way.

It’s also interesting later that that scene is repeated in flashback when Lisa has decided that she needs to kill Bobby. Shes thinking to herself, and in the movie they show that shot from her point of her viewBobby watching her and Marty have sex. That really underlined for me the point that Lisa feels like she needs to get rid of Bobby not just because Bobbys a bully but because hes competition with Marty, and Marty will not give her his full attention as long as Bobbys around.
Right.

Bobby and Marty aren’t having sex, but its like a love triangle. Like Bobby is the competition.
There is that, yeah. I mean, she was a girl who was just really unhappy just growing up there. And it is sort of a competition. She also sort of projects a lot of her problems onto [Bobby]. He was a mean guy to Marty, but I think her own problemsthe competition [for Martys affections] and her own sort of family problems and all that stuffwere just as much of a factor for her wanting him killed as it was caring for Martyif not more so.

Bobby plays into that triangle thing too. In a scene where Marty’s sitting outside the shop that Bobby has opened, where Marty gets a job, theres a skater girl who comes by, and Marty tries to pick her up. And Bobby comes out and screws it up for him by telling the skater girl about Martys relationship with Lisa.
Right.

And its certainly not out of Bobbys loathing for Lisaor his trying to protect Lisa and Martys relationship. Its about Bobbys trying to control Marty.
Exactly.

Bobby doesnt like to see Marty with someone elseunless he can watch or join in. Hes jealous.
Oh, yeah, for sure. I think when youre that age and you have all these problems, you look at other kids and for some reason, other kids seem to have it figured out and you dont. I think that every kids got problems and, you know, no one has it figured out. Thats kind of the illusionthat someone else might have a step up on you. But, yeah, he wanted to control, really, every aspect of Martys life.

I think hes got some real sexual questions, and hes really insecure about it, and it makes him react stronger and angrier. He does have some real issues with Marty and maybe with other guys. I think theres a part of him that enjoys going to the gay clubs, and thats what hes really trying to push down and cover up.

So why does Bobby wash his hands all the time?
Well, hes got some real obsessive qualities, you know? That was just one more aspect to his real obsession with facade and image. All of suppression kind of just comes out in that way.

What do you think is going on with his father? That hes trying to please his father and thats one of his issues?
Definitely. His dad has a real influence over him. Bobbys dad was actually Middle Eastern, so there was some of that cultural influencea real family bond and pressures to succeed and live up to [expectations].

Something thats not even in the movie that kids have to deal with are religious pressures. And that would probably be something that was true to real-life Bobby, since his family was Muslim…
Right.

…living in Hollywood, Fla. Gotta be hard to follow religious tenets in that situation.
Yeah. His father almost had Bobbys life mapped out for him. And that was also interesting to me, was that Bobby on the outside was a very together kid: he had straight As in school; he was pretty much at the top of his class. That was definitely a lot of added pressure.

Of all the kids in the movie, Bobby is really the one who has it together, despite his behavior toward his friends. He does his homework, starts a business, and all the other kids just have sex and do drugsand plot to kill Bobby.
Yeah, its a real strange paradox. Thats what I was hoping would come across, because by the end Bobby seems almost like the better kid, you know?

Larry Clark thrives on that kind of moral ambiguity. Not so Mel Gibson, who goes more for the black-and-white. At what point did you find out that Gibson had removed the gay content from the book on which your first movie, The Man Without a Face, was based? You were only 12 when you shot that film.
I dont knowmaybe a few years after I did the movie. Id heard stories, and then I started to sort of piece certain things together about [Mel], you know? I was completely ignorant to it at the timewhich I think was good, I guess. Not that it wouldve have made a huge difference at the age of 12. But it was strange to find out.