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Wiley
Wiggins
In
1993, Wiggins came into the pop culture psyche as one of the
stars of Richard Linklater's Austin-based film "Dazed
and Confused." The film (re)invented the nostalgia genre
by revealing the 70's not as camp or comedy, but as a real
period in time where important events were happeneing. However,
this cinematic revelation was not on a historical level, but
on the human plane. Rather than discuss national events or
even alluding to the national matters at hand, Linklater's
film presented a generation not only in the throws of discovering
themselves, but their place in the world. Hidden under the
comical and drug-ladden plot lines and dialogue were real
emotions pouring forth from real characters, trying to evaluate
their existence and justify their fears and emotions.
Wiggins'
portrayal of Mitch, a naive and shy young man crossing over
to the world of high school represents that moment in time
where we grow up, where we begin to truly believe we might
be adults. Through him, we discover this rich and complex
new world. And his rosy-cheeked wonder at it all reflects
our own. More than simply "coming-of-age," Mitch
comes to life and sees a world that he can be a part of, unfiltered,
unfettered and alive.
Wiggins
brings forth Mitch with a mystical performance that weaves
a character wandering between audacious cool and naive amusement.
For me, it was the role that defined the film and gave us
the entryway into what it was all about. And Wiggins continuously
and gently pulled us through it until, like he, we arrived
at the conclusion, vibrantly alive, wiser, and seemingly unscathed.
Adam
Goldberg, another cast member of "Dazed," brought
his own directorial debut, a film called "Scotch and
Milk" to Austin this summer and showed it at the Alamo
Draft House. Having just moved to Austin, I was awed to not
only see Goldberg in person, but to see his film as well.
Richard Linklater introduced the film and I again became ecstatic
at the idea that I was finally in Austin. I can still barely
believe it. The night was ethereal and breathtaking.
Outside,
that night, as I left the Alamo, I saw Wiggins on the sidewalk
talking to friends. Astounded by this, I was too in awe to
speak to him. While researching info on Goldberg to write
about "Scotch and Milk," I began to look up members
of the cast of "Dazed" on line and was surpirsed
to find Wiggins had his own, self-produced, homepage. Through
the comfortable seclusion of e-mail, I have finally had a
chance to talk to him. And ask him all the thoughts that meander
through my head.
He
was kind enough to talk back and, as before, lead me through
a strange and interesting world: His cinematic life, his dream
life and his "waking life..."
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| 1. How much of the story is true... about you being
discovered coming out of a store here in Austin. Is that really
how you got the part in "Dazed and Confused?" |
| I'd done a fair amount of acting as a child. Some television
and a lot of theatre mostly. In my early teens I had been auditioning
for movies with little luck. The story of being just sort of
picked off the street and magically given a part is sensationalism.
Producer Anne Walker McBay was trolling the drag for extras
when we met, I auditioned along with a fairly large amount of
kids and finally got the part after a long audition process
that ended up in Los Angeles where I met and read with the other
actors who ended up in the film. There were some funny moments
there, like me reading the senior's parts for kids auditioning
for freshman parts, Nicky Katt reading the part of the convenience
store clerk who sold me beer for my auditions... |
| 2. I really admired your work as Mitch in "Dazed"
because it was so honest and charming. You really were that
guy. And you seemed so natural in front of the camera. What
kind of direction did Linklater give you? |
|
Rick's main strength is his ability to work with actors and
get convincing performances from them by letting aspects of
their own lives and personalities add depth to the characters.
I don't know how much I'm like Mitch (not much to be honest)
but certianly everyone has felt the same insecurities, humiliations
and the joys of discovering and tinkering with bravado and
their own ego that he experiences. It's part of being a teenager
and learning how to relate to a social group.
I get along very well with Rick. I think our relationship
has gotten a little more level now that I've grown up some
and have experienced some of the things I had been avoiding
when I was a kid (like a shitty nine to five job)... Rick's
a very empathetic guy, and like some of the characters in
Dazed, he's very skilled at relating to a huge variety of
very different people (something that really comes out in
the movie we're doing currently, Waking Life, where I'm interacting
with a massive cast of really varied and surreal people)
|
| 3. Tell me more about "Waking Life," the
animated feature you and Linklater are working on. One of the
characters is actually you correct? |
| The character isn't actually me, that's a little misleading.
In the script I'm just listed as Wiley, because I never say
my name. I don't want to give away too much of the movie, but
it's basically me having a very, very strange dream that involves
a ton of dream-characters. It's going to be a lot more like
Slacker than Dazed. Except instead of switching off from character
to character in the vertical narrative style, it follows my
character as he fades in and out of these sort of dream-realities. |
| 4. The only other major "Hollywood" type
film you seem to have been in, other than brief appearances,
is "Boys" (1996). Were you disappointed when it kind
of failed? |
| It's a shitty movie. very sad. I wince when people bring it
up. It's too bad, too... because I loved working with Lukas
and Winona. Maybe We'll work again in a movie that's not a two
hour Calvin Klien Commercial. Anyway, it put some healthy cynicism
in me and I've been very cautious about just 'taking any part'
since. |
| 5. Was there a time when the "business"
was trying to turn you into a "teen idol?" Surely
after "Dazed" there were a lot of offers to do teen
sex comedies and more commercial stuff. Did you consciously
object to working in that area? |
| Yeah, right after Dazed I did a Sassy and a Seventeen magazine
spread, kind of just for the novelty of it, but when I saw myself
in these magazines and read how they had filtered the goofy
stuff I had said into this inane hip-teenspeak I felt like such
a chump. That was the beginning and end of any teen heartthrob
potential for me. I got a massive amount of 'magical kid and
his monkey enter a surfing contest to save the rainforests and
discover hot teen love in the process' movies. I think my agent
got resentful after a while when I just kept ignoring the stuff.
I guess my selling potential died down and finally they just
gave up in disgust with me. I've got a much better agent working
with me now. I mean who gives a fuck about being some Jesus-sized-cinema-dildo
when you become this 2-dimentional self-parody in the process?
I have no interest in being famous, I can work real jobs too.
I just want to get rich so I can make stuff. I've never made
any assumptions about my 'career', not even [in the past] really.
I've always figured I'd pass through a couple hundred careers
until I finally found certian sight of what I'm trying to go
for creatively in all my careers, digital art, directing, writing,
acting, macrame, jello molding, whatever. |
| 6. I've been on your website http://www.fringeware.com/anathema/bios/wiley.html
and checked it out. You have a filmography that lists a lot
of self-made, local, films/video art projects. What sort of
films are these? They appear to be sort of computer-altered,
video pieces. |
|
Mostly just video cut up and drunken monalogues really...
I have this sick infatuation with electronic things breaking,
video games spewing out streams of flashing japanese text,
satellite footage getting scrambled and distorted... there's
a lot of that.
I showed a couple of them at film festivals around town.
Binary Cancer Tacos played at the Texas Fine Arts Association
grand opening which was a hoot. To be frank a lot of those
movies on that page don't exist. But they all will someday...
[For now], most of these are actually elaborite jokes and
haven't really been filmed. But they will be... As soon as
I've tricked people into trusting me with a few "normal"
movies..
|
| 7. You also seem to be interested in computer animation.
Do you see it as a commercial medium? As purely art? |
| It's a pretty commercially dominated medium right now, that's
for sure.It'll be interesting when more real directors learn
to incorporate CG in tasteful imaginateive ways that really
empower the medium instead of beating us over the head with
a lot of cheesy obvious video game monsters. |
| 8. You writing is quite unusual. You did a sort of
local "fanzine" called "Happy." Now, you
post a lot of your fiction writing to your website. Where do
you get your inspiration? |
|
Oof.. I write a lot of short fiction now, a lot of it is
based on dream journals I keep. It's just something I do when
I need to let off steam and I need an easy means to do it
that gives me total freedom. I've just got this bad habit
of putting it where people actually read it. I've smashed
a lot of my "fans" conceptions of me I'm afraid,
and a lot of them don't like it one bit.
I had a friend tell me once that what I was doing was vomiting
up mangled parodies of what I've always been force-fed and
I guess that sounds pretty good. My motivating emotion is
fear. Every once in a while I'll fall prey to a little self-conscious
ennui, but give me a break, I'm in my twenties. (Some of my
work comes from) Bad dreams, bad icky emotions. Incomprehensibly
bad stuff does seem absurd to me. One of the main arguments
against my stuff is that there are a lot of creepy Hitler
and Cancer jokes. I can't rationalize it.
|
| 9. Do you think you could write a mainstream script?
Or direct a mainstream film? |
|
tianly. It's possible to do great mainstream work. The most
important art is mainstream because it affects the most people.
That doesn't mean it has to cajole or pander to the lowest
common denominator. That mainstream art doesn't usually challenge
it's audience is why most people are so fucking stupid and
complacent.
I figure I'll try and start doing mainstream films if only
to fund my own stuff and the work that I like. I like being
an actor and being told what to do by a director, frankly.
I like the relationship of trust that occurs when it works.
|
| 10. Tell me about the feature you are working on called
"Gated Communities?" |
| It's something I'm developing with my friend Chris Micklethwait.
It involves a set of characters who are extremely isolated,
all living in a shitty apartment building. Most of the interaction
between the characters is one-way, occuring when one character
can hear what his neighbor is doing through the walls of the
apartment. It's a very paranoid film, some characters start
to yell out spurious shit to make their neighbors think things
about them that aren't quite true. We've got some interesting
tricks in our hats for this and I hope it follows through. |
| 11. Have you always lived in Austin? How do you feel
about the city? |
|
I was born and raised here. I tried living in California
for about a year but came back... Austin is in a serious period
of growing pains right now. Small businesses are being pushed
out for mega-chain-marts and there doesn't seem to be much
room to breathe. There's no support for an art scene here
and the music scene is a fucking joke. I don't see Austin
being much of a place to live until it really gets big and
starts to decay a little. Gradually you'll see life flourish
again. I miss the small town it used to be, but I'm optimistic
about the big city I think it'll become.
Culturally I'd love to see a real, diverse art scene, a DIVERSE
music scene with some real venues. There's already a healthy
film community here and it ought to encourage the other two,
which have become cliqueish, stale and limited.
|
| 12. Your mother is a bit of an artist herself. Has
she been a big influence on you? Do you share your work with
her and the rest of your family? |
| I don't think they get it and I actually kind of shield it
from them. They like the acting that they've seen. My mother
is a big influence on me just from being raised with an artistic
mindset, if not by her actual art (although I love her sailor
valentines and there's one hanging over my computer right now) |
| 13. In November of 1999 you turn 23. Do you feel old?
Do you like being a "grown-up?" |
| Yup. wow. I don't know. It's pretty scary. In a hundred years
I'll be dust. Who will care about these stupid answers then?
Answer: nobody. |
|
Thanks to Wiley for taking the time. Like him, I look forward
to the city Austin will become. And I also look forward to
seeing the niche Wiley carves out for himself within the confines
of the town and it's art, music and film communities.
Visit Wiley's homepage at:
http://www.fringeware.com/anathema/bios/wiley.html
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