A Rebel Without A Pose

By JT LeRoy

At the same, Michael Pitt has something in common with him, an edge, a quality that might explains why he was able to shuck off the ill-fitting teen-idol straight jacket he inherited from the TV series Dawson's Creek and moved on to work with directors like Gus Van Sant (Finding Forrester), Larry Clarke (Bully) and John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch). It's a similar Houdini act to the one Johnny Depp pulled off when he escaped from 21 Jump Street via directors like John Water and Tim Burton. And like Johnny Depp, Michael is Cherry-picking his roles: Consider the heavyweight performance he pulled off in Bully, "a true story about these kids in Florida who kill this bully". So how was it to kill somebody on film? "It was scary," he admits. "I did one take of it, and the crew was afraid to talk to me, you know? They were weirded out by it. It's hard, it's really hard. cause you don't wanna weird people out, but you wanna do your job." Michael and I first met through Gus Van Sant, Gus had optioned my book Sarah and passed a copy of it on to him. Michael called me to tell me how much he liked it, and i got to tell him what a swell actor I though he was, having just seen Finding Forrester. We connected in that unspoken code of communication common to kids who have spent time on the street. Michael catches details. The night before we met, he called me and said in his New Jersey tough-guy accent, "Don't worry, I know, you're delicate, I know." When someone says this to you in a Sopranos voice, it feels like the safest place in the world. It's precisely this hybrid of toughness and sensitivity that will put him on the cover of People's "Sexiest Men" issue. Like Gus Van Sant said, it feels like it's Michael Ptt month right now.

Here in the coffee shop, he shrugs off the comment, muttering someting like "I hadn't noticed. I mean, I still gotta do my laundry." Michael will deal with Hollywood (he just shot Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock) but only on his own terms. "I can't really stand L.A.," he says, constanly shifting in his chair. "I mean I like it, it's cool, but not to live there. I feel like I don't trust anyone out there. It sucked, just being away from everything I knew. I'd just met my girlfriend too, I just wanted to be back home with her". (Fuck that party scene. they're such fucking dorks. it's rich kids with cell phones. I feel like a cheese ball hanging out with them) and like, I don't really drive, and if you say, "let's walk there, they flip out: "What do you mean, walk there?" Like I say, a corner boy to the core-albeit one with plans buy a warehouse in Brooklyn or Manhanttan, and who is currently editing his own movie "about street kids and stuff." What's he going to do with the film when it's done? "I don't know. Watch it."

Michael began acting when he was 10 and soon became obsessed with the craft to the point of leaving his parents home five years later in order to pursue it. Did he feel trapped at home? "Yeah, kinda, I had to get a job. I was working at Boston Market. I got kicked out of school-I think that was part of it too. I just felt like I was wasting time everywhere when I could be working on being an actor." Which he did on weekends at the America Academy, studying under Bill Barlett, who encuraged him to get his hand dirty with casting calls and Interviews, "mostly just for commercials and sh*t like that. When I would first go, a lot of the agent appointments that I had, they said that. what did they call me? Lethargic. They said I was lethargic, uninteresting and basically I'd never work." You can't really blame them. Looking at Michael now, it's hard to imagine hin selling Corn Puff. "Yeah, that was really hard thing to hustle," he laughs. "I could'nt trick myself into doing it. I went against a lot of things that I felt were important." and then he landed a place on Dawson's Creek for a year, becoming a poster boy for a thousand preadolescent girls. Teen-idol staus-seemed assured, but he was reluctant to get railroaded onto the teen-magazine meat rack , a stance that became more and more unworkable as time went on. "They try and convice you, he says. "They're like no, no, no, its not like really teen stuff. I just said,"I won't do it." Regardless of the fact that it's just uncool-which is a big factor-it's not really a good business thing if you love acting and you really want to do this. When I was doing it. It was like making fun of acting. And that bothered me."

So how does he reconcile the drive to do something important with all the sex-symbol stuff? "I don't really deal with it, "he says abruptly. "People talk about this in magazines and stuff-it's not reality. I don't get mobbed when I walk down the street." Which may be because Michael's very body language broadcasts gutter wisdom. I remembered after our dinner with Gus Van Sant - a dinner in which he made a joke out of exclusive restaraunt etiquette by grabbing bread from the waiter and licking his plate-he approached a couple of young dot-com guys outside for a cigarrette. He asked with the air of one who has been on the street and knows that a certain personal property is communal. The two guys guardingly gave him one were unnerved to find that he accepted it not with groveling gratitude of a beggar but with a sense of entitlement. "Sharing a smoke is an unwirtten rule, a rare kindness of the street, and to break it is inexcusable". "I always give anyone a cigarette". he told me that night.

The street is still with him.