The Nude Dude is No Prude

Did Gus Van Sant really say he wanted you to kiss Sean Penn for 12 hours?
He was kidding, obviously. We didn't kiss for 12 hours. But it inspired one shot where Sean and I are on the sidewalk kissing, and it's, like, a minute long. That's a long time to kiss anybody, and there were, like, 200 people behind the camera watching.

You're taking fiction writing at Columbia. Do you have your stories workshopped?
Yeah.

Are you a mean work-shopper?
I'm not going to say you should write the way I write. I'm going to say, I know this is where you're going; this is where I think you should improve in that direction.

So you're not the guy who hates everything.
There's nothing positive about that.

Are some people meaner on you because you're an actor?
At UCLA it happened in a couple workshops, where one person was going off on my story. They probably hated the way I wrote my name. They'd go after everything. And then, usually, after the first submission, they'd chill out.

© 2008