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IF you
make a movie about group sex, you must be prepared to
own up to your point of view on the subject. But when
actress Eliza Dushku, star of the indie Sex and
Breakfast, which opens in limited release Friday, is
asked whether she’s pro or con group canoodling, she
giggles, before fessing up, she’s more of a monogamous
kind of gal.
“It
doesn’t even make sense to me,” she says on the phone
from her childhood home in Watertown, Massachusetts,
where she spent the Thanksgiving holiday. That would be
a pass from Dushku, 26, best known for her stint on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and as the title character
on the series Tru Calling. That’s why they call
it acting. “Let us live it up for you,” she cracks.
Forbidden desires.
Kuno Becker
(left) and Eliza Dushku costar in
Sex and Breakfast, about
couples who experiment with group sex.
Sex is
certainly a hot topic in
Hollywood,
whether it’s sexual dysfunction, unplanned sex, too much
sex, too little sex. Sexual problems seem so distinctly
less nihilistic—so eminently solvable—compared with the
war in Iraq or global warming or anything else in the
newspapers. The burdens of sex are driving such comedies
as Superbad, Knocked Up and Juno, as well
as the TV dramas like Californication and Tell
Me You Love Me.
Now come
the twentysomethings’ turn. Sex and Breakfast
tracks two couples (Home Alone’s all-grown up
Macauley Culkin, Kuno Becker, Alexis Dziena and Dushku)
who’ve lost the passion in their relationships and
consult a therapist who advocates communal sex. Still,
Dushku points out, the movie is less risqué than your
average Paris Hilton sex tape.
“It
wasn’t about the sex so much, than about the feeling,
the confusion, the experimentation,” she says. “Those
are really honest things that aren’t necessarily
explored in the movies I’ve seen. Relationships can be
so maddening and just all over the map. Of course, the
sex is a major part of it, but it goes so much deeper.”
Although
she doesn’t play the girl next door, Dushku, a sloe-eyed
beauty with an insouciant air, steers away from her more
typical screen image as “the bad, sexy girl.” She was
pleased when writer-director Miles Brandman, 26, offered
her the other female lead, the
not-as-adventurous-as-she-thinks woman who’s “more
personal and just vulnerable at times, raw.”
Dushku
has been acting since she was 10, debuting opposite
Juliette Lewis in That Night. She played Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s daughter in the James Cameron film
True Lies, traveling for nine months to locations
all over the world. “I hung off airplanes in Miami. My
poor mother was standing on the rooftop. My mother is a
political science professor. Never, ever in a million
years would she have put me in this business, except I
tripped and fell in my brother’s audition when I was 9.”
That
pratfall snagged the attention of the powers that be.
Coming of age in Hollywood sounds tabloid-esque. “There
was a lot of craziness, immaturity.... These stories
about kids in the industry, where adolescents are left
unprotected and hung out in this town. It can be a
disaster. I really truly felt what a lot of these women
feel. I wish them the best.”
Dushku
admits that she got “sober” a couple of years ago, and
that has made a difference. “I’m clean and relatively
unscathed by the whole process.”
Up next
is Dollhouse, the TV reunion between Dushku and
Buffy creator Joss Whedon. Part-Truman Show,
part-Alias, the series will begin shooting after
the writers strike is settled. The new show concerns
people who live in a biosphere who are imprinted with
personalities and sent on spy-like missions, after which
their memories are wiped. Dushku, who also
executive-produces the series, says, “It’s the ultimate
outlet for me to direct this constant stream of crazy
energy. I get to be a new personality every week.” |
