Chris Marquette Message Board

I'd love to see Chris on The 4400.  He said he wants to play a superhero, so he'd have to be a 4400.  What would his ability be?  Sean can shape-shift, what could Chris do?

Deb

Sean, I'd suggest a white or nautral colored shirt.  Then all the colors will be right.  I could get one through work and send it to TeeJay next month when I ship some stuff her way.  It might be easier to get a good one cheap in the right size through my ofiice than for her to find one in some weird European size and pay way too much for it.  I mean I can get Anvil and Jerzees, nice stuff like that for like $2-3.  Mine's an Anvil.  Let me know what color and I'll get it.

Deb

Yeah, Kyle was awesome.  We noted that HE approached US, right?  He saw my Fanboys t-shirt and walked right up.  He was so funny and nice.  Couldn't believe the whole "do you wanna interview us on camera?" bit.  He runs a very relaxed, comfortable set, it seems.  How awesome will it be if TeeJay and I end up on the ROTN DVD when it comes out?

Deb

Well, it doesn't look like the crew is shooting for the next three days at ASC.  So I don't know if I'll be able to get back in touch with the guys.  But look at it this way, if they've got three days off, maybe they'll contact us.

Just in case anyone stops by here:

Andrew, we'd love to get that Kyle video interview soon.
Kyle, we'd love to take you up on the offer of schwag from Fanboys and ROTN.
Adam, we'd still like to interview you about writing Fanboys and ROTN.
And Chris, we'd love it if you'd give me a call or something so we can get in contact with your manager about the photos and things you said you'd send us for the site.
And if anyone from the production would like to drop us a line about anything, please do so at: mail@chris-marquette.com

Thanks!

Deb

As you'll see in part two of our interview with Chris, there was supposed to be way more of James.  And he was supposed to be really, really creepy and far darker than he came out.  They even wanted Chris back for the third season that never came about due to cancellation.  Man, that sucks!  As much as I love what we did get to see Chris do on that show, now I'm livid that we'll never see what they really had planned for him when they hired him.  It would've been great TV.

For the record, Chris has never seen those epsiodes so he's not sure what all got cut, but he did tell us about one deleted scene in particular that might've thrown cold water on my little Sexy James fixation in his first episode.  I mean, YUCK!  You'll see...

Deb

Told our story to 5 people today and showed them pictures and all of them were just stunned by our luck.  I still am, myself.  Nicole even said that if she as going to be in town, she'd go back to Agnes Scott with me this weekend.  How cool is that?

Deb

Well, it's there now.  I have no idea whay it wouldn't show up before.  Weird!

Deb

It was actually a more elaborate story which you'll read in the second part of the interview.  It's really disappointing actually.

Deb

Dude, we're having trouble believing it!  It was just so bloody fortuitous.  I mean, who woulda thunk it?  TeeJay and I just kept going over it and over it again on the ride to the airport today.  We still can't believe how lucky we got with the people at Agnes Scott and on the production.  Everyone was so wonderful to us.  It was such a great day.  I just hope we can keep growing this experience into something that finally helps get the word on Chris out there.

Deb

You're very welcome, Irina.  We know what it's like to wait on pins and needles for this stuff. so we're putting everything out there as soon as possible.  I'm sorry I can't get the second part of the interview out tonight, but it just takes so much careful attention to detail and time to transcribe it accurately and I don't have in me right now.  I'll get back on it tomorrow night.

And of course any feedback you wanna give on the fic is welcome.  Let's talk about it in the fan fic thread whenever you're ready, OK?

Thanks for hanging out.  We hope there's lots more to come.

Deb

Here is it is...

SPOILER ALERT!!!

At one point, Chris accidentally gives away the secret of The Invisible.  If you don't wanna know, skip from the warning to the end of the warning...

Interview with Chris Marquette on the set of Revenge of the Nerds
Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA -- Oct 10, 2006

A little bit of a set-up:  Today, they're shooting the scene of the opening of the Greek Games on the Adams College campus.  The scene features the sororities and fraternities, including the Alpha Beta goons and Pi Delta Pi girls, the football coach and the senior class president onstage.  There's a crowd of other students and fraternity and sorority members on bleachers.  The nerds disrupt the ceremony, having created their own fraternity, Lambda Lambda Lambda.  They even flash their own "gang" sign, which is just basically, all their fingers straight down.  It's pretty funny.

The nerds are Chris, Dan Byrd, Ryan Pinkston, and a few others.  One of the nerds is played by a local actor who's name we never caught who's in a very cool TIE Fighter wheelchair with a huge sub woofer on the back.

The first part of this interview was taped at about 4 or 5 pm.  We kind of lost track of time.  We first spoke to Chris right after they got back from their 3 pm lunch break.  He agreed to do the interview and said he'd come find us as soon as he had another break.  That he did.  He bounded up and plopped down on the ground beside me and said, "Are you guys ready?"  Um, dude, you have no idea. 

This was originally typed up by Tina last night and I have edited it over the last couple of days because parts of it were difficult to hear...

~~~~~~~~~~~

Deb:
You're shooting Revenge of the Nerds right now. Kyle [Newman] has said that nerds are kinda cool these days and we were wondering what interested you in the film?

Chris:
Nerds became something that I realized was gonna be something really ridiculously fun, I've known Dan Byrd and Andrew McFarlane, they've been some of my closest friends since I was fourteen years old. Dan Byrd, I've known him for the last three years really well. And, Pinkston, I've known for a long time, Ryan Pinkston. You know, working with Kyle and Adam Goldberg again, so it became something--- I realized, like it's not every day that somebody gets offered a job where in general you can just go and hang out and make jokes with friends and somehow get paid for it. Like that's absolutely kind of ridiculous.  So I realized that in my lifetime if I passed up something like that I'd be a moron. So I think that's what interested me more than anything.

Deb:
Sounds great.

Chris:
Yeah.

Deb:
Of course we remember Dan from being on Joan.

Chris:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he played the stuttering kid.

Deb:
We were really excited when we found out he was gonna be in the film.

Chris:
Oh yeah. That's cool, huh?

Deb:
Very cool.

And we happen to know now that The Invisible is coming out in January, we were wondering how big your role in that is gonna be, because in the trailer it doesn't seem...

Chris:
Yeah, in the trailer it's really hidden. It's pretty big, its--- You know, I play the main guy's best friend, so I play this guy for the first 45 minutes of the movie, I'm in it a bunch. And then, uh, you know, this character goes off on his journey and I'm sort of included then in little bits and pieces. Unfortunately they took two of the biggest scenes I had in the movie and sort of chopped them up, they sort of weren't as um... what's the word without being mean to anybody?

(Laughter)

Chris:
They weren't as, uh... fruitful as I thought they were gonna be. I worked really hard on that project. Unfortunately there's a gun involved in the scene, so they wanted to take out the gun so now they had to use all these weird angles and all these different cuts. I feel like now... the scene now just becomes really odd. So I don't know if they're gonna fix it. Maybe they will.  So I might be saying all this and then people are gonna watch it and go: Oh, what the hell's he talking about?

(Laughter)

Deb:
When was that shot?

Chris:
That was shot last year, around this time. It was October all the way to December. And... September all the way to December in Vancouver. I think I shot that for about three and a half months. It was cool. One of the most depressing times in my life. Because of the part, it was just very, you know dark.  Put me in a bad place, but...

Deb:
So it's kind of a dark story.

WARNING!!! SPOILER AHEAD

Chris:
Yeah, yeah, it's a dark story.  You know, it's this kid who dies and wakes up and finds that you know, he's like dead. And it ends up that his best friend and this girl killed him for no reason, not his fault at all.

END OF SPOILER WARNING!!!

Tina:
You spoiled the ending!

(Laughter)

Chris:
Yeah.

Deb:
Don't do that to her.

(Laughter)

Tina:
I don't like spoilers.

Chris:
Oh, I'm sorry.  I'm so so sorry. (laughs) I shouldn't have said that.  Maybe you shouldn't put that on there (the website) at all.   

Deb:
We won't spoil it for everybody.  I mean, I'm a spoiler-whore, so I'm happy.

Chris:
Oh, gotcha. I won't say anything else about it.  But it came out really interesting.

(Laughter)

Deb:
We read that you got to work with Sean [Marquette] on The Beautiful Ordinary.

Chris:
Yeah.  Yeah.

Deb:
So how was that?  It's been a long time since you guys were in anything together.

Chris:
Yeah, we haven't worked together in such a long time. Last time he played me younger on Strong Medicine. We didn't really work together, it was just like in the same week we were on the same set, and that was it. It was awesome, it was ridiculous, it was really weird. All of a sudden he grew up and he's this, like, actor. He's a really great, talented, young actor. It was so weird. I always thought he was really special and really could offer something to whatever he's working on, but it was like a peer, and it mirrors our life, in a way. Like all of a sudden he's like a young man.

Deb:
He said some things like that about you too.

Chris:
Oh yeah? (in a mocking voice) All of a sudden like he's grown up and he's totally responsible, but he's this jackass. You know, whatever. (laughter) He's so grown up.

Tina:
We saw him on The 4400. We even have clips with Eric and Sean on the website.

Chris:
Do you really? Oh, no way, really? No way, that's awesome.

Deb:
We also caught that NYPD Blue that he did and we've got some clips and some screencaps of that.

Chris:
Oh, cool!

Deb:
We're trying to make it as comprehensive as possible. We know that there are people out there who keep finding us, and saying, "My God, I love this guy, but I can't find anything online."

Chris:
Oh yeah. Thank you. God, I really can't tell you guys how much I appreciate that.

Deb:
Well, we really appreciate you sitting down with us.  You didn't have to do it.

Chris:
Oh, of course. Are you kidding me? If you guys had gotten in contact with me beforehand, I would've... You have no idea, I've been going like, that's a great  website, but I don't know who the hell to thank.

Deb:
We actually sent you a package. A while back, through UTA. I guess it hasn't gotten to you yet because you're always moving around.

Chris:
No, they give me stuff, I don't know ...

Tina:
You would have remembered because there was a towel in it that was painted.

Chris:
Are you serious?

Deb:
There was a bunch of stuff in there.

Chris:
You sent it and they didn't give it to me?

Deb:
Yeah.

Chris:
Whoooaaaa...

Tina:
How often do they give you stuff?  Because we sent it like in July.

Chris:
Oh, I really don't get stuff too often. I mean, I can call them right now. I'll call 'em. Seriously, that's disappointing.

Tina:
And there's, like, a nine pages long letter.

Chris:
Are you kidding? I'm so sorry, I really haven't gotten anything, I swear. I'll call them, that's weird.

Deb:
That's nice of you.

We noticed that you do a lot of independent film. And we wondered if you were just really fascinated with it or if you choose on a role to role basis.

Chris:
It's role by role, but at the same time independent films offer so much more freedom than studios do. In independent films, you go there and it's like you can make up whatever the hell you want on the day, because it feels right.  And there's nobody sitting there, whipping you on the back for it. So the hard part with studio films is, you've got an idea but it's gotta go through ten people that wanna OK it, everybody wants to put their two cents in, so by the time your idea goes in there, it's not your idea anymore. A lot of that is all just really hard and disappointing.

Deb:
I'm actually also a screenwriter and hopefully I'd like to do indies because of that. We wanted to mention to you some of our favorite performances: American Gun.

Chris:
Oh, cool.

Deb:
Big time.  We love that meltdown scene.

Chris:
Oh, yeah? Oh, thank you.

Tina:
Tear duct action.

Chris:
Yeah?

Deb:
Yeah.

Chris:
Thank you.  Oh, man...

Deb:
Every time we watch it, we're just...

Chris:
Oh, really? Thank you.

Deb:
And we loved your guest shot on Miracles.

Chris:
Oh, no way! No way.  (laughs, seems shocked that we pulled that one out of our hats)

Deb:
Such a tortured character.

Chris:
Thank you.

Deb:
Love that. We like the tortured thing.

Chris:
Oh yeah, well I've definitely done a lot of that.

Deb:
And the comedy too. Of course we love The Girl Next Door. And Just Friends.

Tina:
Yeah, it took me a long time to actually watch it, because I thought it was gonna be like this really ditsy movie, then I watched it and I was like, Oh my God!

(Laughter)

Deb:
And we like that rubber face thing that you do.

Chris:
Oh yeah?

Deb:
Yeah.

Chris:
Yeah.

Deb:
Yeah.

Chris:
Oh cool.

Deb:
You have this range where you have this beautiful stillness that you do, and then this hyper-kinetic thing.

Chris:
Oh yeah, thank you.

Deb:
Just wanted to say that. And we wanted to ask you if you have any performances that stand out for you, that you're really proud of.

Chris:
You know, the only thing that I've been really able to watch, to continuously be proud of, is this movie I did when I was young, called The Tic Code.

Deb:
We love that movie.

Chris:
Yeah. It's the only thing I've ever been able to watch and think, that's my life-long career goal to go back to doing something like The Tic Code that I can be really proud of.

Deb:
Wow. Yeah, it's a really special movie.

Tina:
Our third "Dorquette" that we have, Anne, she's also in Germany, and she has an illness called Sturge-Weber-Syndrome. It's quite rare, it's not debilitating, to her at least, in a really affecting way. You know, she has little things that she can't do and she has birth marks over her face, and she loved that movie. She said it's really nice to show that having a disability doesn't have to make you not normal.

Chris:
Yeah, yeah.  Ah, good.  Oh, cool.

Deb:
She totally identifies with the character.

Chris:
Yeah. Cool. Good.

Deb:
We also noticed that you work with a lot of people repeatedly.

Chris:
Yeah, I know. I don't know why, just luck, or maybe the stars align. Yeah, I don't know.

Deb:
Could it be that you're just really talented and really nice?

Chris:
I... don't know.  (Laughter)  I hope so. I mean, I don't know, I guess so. It seems to be something that's just reoccurring.

Deb:
We like that.

Chris:
Yeah, me too.

Deb:
It speaks well of you that people wanna work with you over and over again.

Chris:
Oh, yeah, I hope so.

Deb:
And I need to shut up and let you talk.

(Laughter)

Deb:
We were wondering if you had someone you'd really like to work with that you haven't had a chance to work with yet.

Chris:
You know, there's one person I have had a chance to work with that I would work with forever for the rest of my life, like, only if I had the option, is Nick Cassavetes, the guy who did Alpha Dog. If I could just do his movies for the rest of my life, I'd be happy. Other than that, I don't know. He's the best actor's director I've ever worked with, by a long shot. So I don't know if there's other people. I haven't met anybody else out there. I mean, there's always people you have in mind, that's sort of your goal, and then you meet them or you hear stories and you work with them and it doesn't live up to the expectation.

Deb:
Well, it's not surprising that Nick is a great actor's director. His dad was.

Chris:
Yeah, yeah.

Deb:
And he was an actor himself for so long.

Chris:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Deb:
How did you feel in Just Friends when you had to say, (Nick's film) "The Notebook is so gay"?

(Laughter)

Chris:
It was awesome. It was great. I read the Just Friends script. And I said, that's awesome. I didn't write it, it was just really...

Tina:
We love that line.

Chris:
(repeats line) "The Notebook is so gay."

Deb:
There's so many great lines in that movie.

Chris:
Yeah. Roger Kumble too. Roger Kumble was also the coolest director in the world. That guy's just on it. He knows comedy better than anybody.

Deb:
You've been lucky, some of the people that you've worked with.

Chris:
Yeah, I'm very lucky.

Deb:
If you could play any role, future or past, what would it be? Could be an existing role or... It's kind of a tough question.

Chris:
Bob Dylan.

Deb:
You know that people keep saying to us that you look like Bob Dylan?

Chris:
Really?

Tina:
Bob Dylan and John Cusack.

Chris:
John Cusack, yeah, I've definitely always gotten John Cusack.

Deb:
Well, I'm gonna write something for you guys to do together.

Chris:
Yeah?

Deb:
Yeah. It may take a while, but I'll get it to you.

Chris:
Well, all right, I'm in, so...  (Laughter)  Anyway, I've always gotten Cusack, but I never got Bob Dylan, but I happened to meet a guy who did this movie and they needed a young Bob Dylan, and I went in and got told I was absolutely wrong for it. And I'd gotten so jazzed about the idea that I started watching all this stuff on Bob Dylan and I thought, oh man, that'd be amazing, and then they cast Hayden Christensen in the role.

Deb:
Is that the one that had five different people playing him?

Chris:
I don't know. It's a movie called Factory Girl.

Deb:
I think that's a different one.

Chris:
It's not quite about Bob Dylan, it's about Eva Sedgwick, (loudly cracks his knuckles and startles Tina) I think that's her name. No, that's a different actress nowadays. It was about some other actress. Some old time actress who dated him. But, uhm... Bob Dylan, Fidel Castro, when I'm, like, fifty years old. And, uh, I think that's it so far. And, like, a superhero. Yeah, yeah, I'd like to play a superhero too.

Deb:
This is a weird one. If you could choose a decade in which you would have liked to have made movies, what would it be?

Chris:
Ooooh. Definitely the 50's. When The Actor's Studio was, like, thriving and everything was big. And it was all about harvesting and cultivating good actors.

Deb:
I would have guessed the 70's.

Chris:
70's?

Deb:
In the golden age of people like Scorsese.

Chris:
Yeah, sure, yeah.  But right before that was, well I don't think the movies were as good.  It was just the actors were trying to build, it was just a more serious time... But at the same time I kinda feel like that's the way it is now, because it seems like a real revolution, like actors are coming in, so many new faces that are really kind of like the future of film making and the future of acting and writing. It's all new people who are in it for sort of like a revolution in a sense.  And it's a big twist of all the people in the industry and the studios are like, "Oh, independent movies are taking over." Well, yeah, it's true, they're making good shit and stuff you should do. So yeah, I think uh, this is an interesting time, so I might eat my words and say...

Deb:
Well, you're gonna be right in there.

Chris:
Oh, well, I don't know about that, but I just mean like, uh being an actor nowadays might be cooler than in the 50's.

Deb:
I think so, too, probably, because there was a lot more restriction in the studio system then.

Chris:
It's true, yeah.

Deb:
In terms of film especially.

Chris:
Yeah.

Deb:
They had a lot more freedom in New York.

Chris:
Yeah.  Oh yeah.

Deb:
That's absolutely true.

Chris:
Yeah.

Deb:
I don't know how to say this. We're really excited about Alpha Dog, it looks like it's gonna be a great movie.  But what's up with the wig?

Chris:
Oh, the wig! Oh yeah. They just wanted me greasy and dirty, like, where I was like a kid who had no hygiene, just didn't care.  You know, so it was like, all right well obviously he hasn't cut his hair in a couple of months so...

Deb:
That must have been fun.

Chris:
It was awesome. It was unbelievable. It was like at first I did like slicking my hair back and then they looked at me and they were like, "Nah, too Guido."  And I was like OK.

Tina:
Did you have short hair then?

Chris:
Yeah, I had short hair, yeah.  Well, no not quite short.  I was doing Joan Of Arcadia at the same time, so it was like toward the end when they let me start cutting my hair a little bit more (the end of season one).  Um, so, it was a bit shorter, and then they put in extensions down to here (indicates past shoulder length).  And it just looked weird.  Like I just looked really weird, and it was like, "Nah, you kinda look like a girl."

(Laughter)

Chris:
So, it was like okay... So we thought about it.  Then a couple of days before we started shooting, they said what are we gonna do?  And I was like, I don't know.  So they said, what about long hair down to here (indicates what it eventually came to look like).  And I was just like, I was totally against it, you have no idea.  I was just like, on the inside, "I can't do this.  It's gonna be bad.  It's gonna be terrible,  I'm gonna look like crap in the movie.  It'll be terrible."  And then, for some reason, it totally worked.  It was just amazing.

Then we hear the voice of a PA yelling, "Chris Marquette!"

Chris:
(shouts back)
Yeah?

PA:
You're needed on the set.

Chris:
Sorry.  Can you guys hang out?

Deb:
Yeah, sure.

And off he went back out onto the lawn to shoot more coverage for the Greek Games scene.

Part Two coming soon...