An affair to remember

>> Writer and star Mike White on the ultrastrange comedy Chuck & Buck

by MATTHEW HAYS

To say that Chuck & Buck is an odd film would be a rather major understatement. Shot on digital video, with a cast made up of unfamiliar faces, the film features one of the most unusual leading men ever in the midst of a passionate, and rather misguided, romantic obsession with his childhood friend.

When Chuck and Buck are in their adolescence, they fool around in the pre-dawn of their pubescence. Afterwards, the primal sex games fade into the background for Chuck, who heads to L.A. where some 15 years later he develops into a hot-shot music industry type. Buck, on the other hand, remains in his small town, living with his mother in a bizarre arrested stage of development. When ma dies of cancer, Buck, still smitten with Chuck after a decade and a half, heads off to L.A. so he can be closer to the man he's decided is the love of his life. Chuck tries to push away Buck, who becomes far too clingy. Director Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) manages to keep the film's style decidedly realistic, making the script's inherent craziness all the more funny and poignant.

Real world

Mike White, who stars as Buck and wrote the film's quirkily brilliant screenplay, says the inspiration for the film came directly from his mainstream writing experience. "I was tired of writing prescriptive stuff," he says, citing his stint on Dawson's Creek as a source of aggravation. "On that show, everyone had to be an idealized character. There could be no flaws. With mainstream screenwriting, you're always making characters more audience-friendly, you're always ironing out all the idiosyncrasies. I didn't want to show a character you wanted to be. I wanted to show a character you're afraid you are."

And Buck, though endearing at times, is certainly someone who will evoke everyone's most awkward memories. White plays Buck as an utter innocent, but also as a social liability of epic proportions. Since he's still stuck at the eve of his teen years, he's left with no sense of social boundaries, no sense of dos and don'ts. As for the stalking of Chuck, Arteta and White create a sense to rival that of Robert De Niro's scenes as Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, in which the actor hounds Jerry Lewis.

The play's the thing

Eventually, Buck is so frustrated by Chuck's unrequited love that he decides to stage a play, Hank and Frank, to be performed one night only at a children's theatre across the street from Chuck's office. He invites Chuck and his fiancee to the premiere. The play-within-a-movie is a stroke of genius, allowing White to bear his character's anxieties while creating some of the film's funniest moments.

Not surprisingly, getting backing together for Chuck & Buck proved tricky. But the filmmakers decided that the intimacy of the story would lend itself well to digital video and thus cut technical costs considerably. (White says he was inspired when he saw the Dogme film The Celebration, shot to great effect on digital video.) The film is given a heightened sense of realism by its cast, most of whom are unfamiliar, at least by face. Chuck is played by Chris Weitz, who co-wrote American Pie with his brother Paul Weitz, who also plays another key role in the film. The one recognizable face is that of Joe Namath, who appears in a minor role.

"When it came time to show the film, I was quite worried about what people would think," White recalls. "I thought, 'People will think I'm insane. I'll never work again.' But people took to the film."

White says there have been some cautious reviews from the gay press, who are reticent about the depiction of a man infatuated with a man who falls into the Freudian stereotype regarding homosexuality as a phase. "Certainly, I've read a lot of Freud and thought about that when I wrote this. But the point of this is neither gay nor straight. Ambiguity is the point," says White, who says his own sexuality is bi. "I didn't want to make some kind of coming-out movie. I wanted to do something that felt honest." :

Chuck & Buck opens Friday, July 28