INTERVIEWS

Mandy Moore and Shane West--The IMDb Interview
http://www.us.imdb.com/

Mandy Moore is both beautiful and all-business, poised yet a bit pursed, like she's steeled herself to finally break up with you before Winter Formal. Her video-blonde is now a more sensible brunette, reflecting the sensible role of Jamie Sullivan she plays in A Walk to Remember. Shane West, the lead in the film, is lanky--skinny, really--the way that rodeo bronc riders are. I like him immediately. I hand them both their IMDb Biography/Trivia items. Moore reads aloud: "Before her music video "Walk Me Home," she hadn't kissed anybody in her life." She looks up and smiles an exasperated smile, "That's a load of crap! I'm gonna cross that one out." I warn her that we fact-check these things so she'd better be sure. She continues her broad, friendly smile as her pen marks through the factoid. Now I like her too.

A Walk to Remember, an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks book, is largely as harmless and as marginally involving as an earlier Sparks-inspired film, the Kevin Costner vehicle, Message in a Bottle. But Moore and West do bring an element of freshness to a film that had the bad luck to have already been lampooned, without its knowledge, in Not Another Teen Movie. Sparks's book was originally a period piece set in the '50s, consequently Moore and West saw a few evolutions of the script. The original update they read was set, briefly, in the '80s, but the film eventually takes place, for no particular reason whatsoever, in 1996. A centerpiece of Walk is a high-school play, where Moore sings a torch song while West's character, Landon Carter, falls hopelessly in love with her. 

IMDb: What was the first school production you were in?

Moore: "Guy and Dolls." I played Miss Adelaide.

West: I was Huckleberry Finn in a storybook play. I also played the Nutcracker in the 8th grade. Don't remember a thing except being really scared and everyone was goofing off.

IMDb: Now, Shane West is a cool name, a good high school name. It's a...

Moore: ...it's a bad-ass name.

IMDb: It's a bad-ass name. Is it your real name?

West: No, not my real name. I'll say this, my first name is really Shannon. So I know what going through life is like with a different name; it hit about the fifth grade when "Shannon" was suddenly different. That's also the year that I moved to California. I was born in Louisiana. So around the fifth grade moving to California, trying to fit in, having long hair, accent, name of "Shannon," and everyone was going "Isn't that a girl's name?" and I was like, [in best corn-pone slang] "Yuk, I dunno." My middle name is Bruce so in junior high through high school at the beginning of the year I'd go to each teacher and say "I want to be called Bruce-circle that' and at roll-call they'd go, "Is Sh...Bruce here?" For acting it was going to be Shannon West, but I think it was already taken.

IMDb: Where were you on 9/11?

Moore: I was in L.A. with my mom. My dad's actually an airline pilot with American Airlines and he woke us up at like 7:00 in the morning and I remember turning on the TV and saying "What the hell????" 

West: I was in L.A. as well, with some friends.

IMDb: [to West] I liked something you said in an interview in the Calgary Sun about your popularity status in high school, and about celebrities who claim that they weren't popular in high school when they were obviously gorgeous and athletic and it just seems so unlikely.

Moore: I was not in the popular clique.

IMDb: OH COME ON!!

West: But, let's be honest, she went to a public high school for half a semester.

Moore: And in middle school I was not in the popular clique. I missed a lot of school. That whole part of my life was separate. I was doing singing. I was always at auditions.

IMDb: You were that person. That person that everyone always heard about, that was doing things worthy of recognition, that you never saw...

Moore: But I never said anything. I didn't want people to think of me any differently. I kept that separate. So I was not in the popular clique. I was like Jamie (her character in Walk). She wasn't in the bookworm clique and she wasn't in the popular clique she was somewhere in the middle, that people kind of knew about, but in some ways she didn't really exist; she was just there. And that's how I felt in school, in middle school and in high school.

IMDb: Is there anything that you've auditioned for that you really wanted that you didn't get?

Moore: My very first audition was for a Todd Solondz film.

IMDb: Oh my God...

Moore: ...for Storytelling...it was untitled at the time. It was one of the weirdest auditions I've ever been on. I was very interesting to audition for him. a very strange audition. And I love Welcome and Heather is a friend of mine. It was for the role of the girlfriend of the football-playing brother in the second half of the film. Anyway, it was a strange audition.

West: I did want Tigerland. Not Colin Farrell's role but Matt Davis's role. That became a problem because of my show. That was a little comforting because of my show, I knew I had work.

In the ephemeral, voracious world of youth celebrity Moore and West may not always get the jobs they want, but they show themselves to be thoughtful, gregarious professionals. A Walk to Remember certainly got its money's worth. - Keith Simanton