by Paul Fischer
by
Paul Fischer
Since 23-year old Jason Biggs burst
onto the scene with American Pie, the rest of his film 
career
hasn't fared as well. But all that is about to change with the release of the
even funnier sequel. Paul Fischer met a very chirpy Mr. Biggs who waxed philosophical
about pies, comedy and failure.
At 23, Jason Biggs is one of Hollywood's 'biggest' discoveries. Sitting in a Malibu
beach-house formerly owned by Olivia Newton-John, Biggs remains philosophical
about the spate of box office and critical film failures he did, following the
success of the first American Pie, films such as Loser
and Saving Silverman, for example. "Of course you can't help but be
bothered when a film fails, but not to the point where I really let it get to
me. I mean, you don't go into a game to lose but to win and when you don't, it's
upsetting. But if you played well, then you should be happy. A couple of
those movies did not do well at all but the most important things I look at are:
Did I have a good time making them, which I did and am I proud of my performance,
which I am in everything I've done."
Now, Jason is bouncing back in the inevitably successful Pie follow up,
although shooting a sequel was never something that was ever going to be guaranteed
from the outset, insists the actor. "We all approached doing a sequel with
great trepidation and skepticism," he recalls. But a few factors came into
play that changed his - and the entire cast's - mind. "First came a pleasantly
surprisingly script and then, with the whole cast coming back made doing this
most appealing so, it was a great reunion of sorts." Biggs says that the
group "went off in the past couple of years to do other things, some of us
have kept in touch, some haven't, but we all came back and had so much
fun on this film." In this J.B. Rogers-directed sequel to Paul
Weitz's 1999 teen comedy 
American
Pie, the barely post-adolescent group of horny kids from the first film reunite
one year later for summer vacation after completing their first year of college.
Biggs' own storyline has his Jim asking for sex advice from Alyson Hannigan's
deceptively sweet-natured Michelle, 'this one time in band camp'.
Biggs does some wild comedy in Pie 2, even more extreme in some ways, than his now infamous apple pie masturbation scene in the first movie. "Physical comedy is my favorite thing in the world to do," he smiles. "In the first movie, I got to be involved in some pretty outlandish scenes and I'd be lying to you if I said that I wasn't scared before shooting the pie sequence, and questioned, a little bit, what I was going to do. But once I went
for it, left my inhibitions aside and saw its eventual success,
it made me much more comfortable and eager this time around to take it
to a whole new level." Seeing the risk he would need to take in the new film,
Biggs adds that he "was pretty damn excited. After all, the bigger the risk,
the greater the return, right?" The actor admits that what he loves about
doing physical comedy is that he does it all himself. "I choreograph
it and I do it, because I consider myself to be a comedic actor who'll do just
about anything for a laugh."
But amidst the obvious raucousness of Pie 2, lay a surprising degree of
humanity and growth, which is an added appeal to this sequel. Biggs is happy that
Jim, like many of the characters, manages to grow up by the end, "and thematically
that's what the movie centers around", as does Jim's relationship with Alyson
Hannigan's Michelle. "That was another big draw in doing this movie."
As the characters in Pie have changed so have the actors, since that group
of relatively unknown young actors got together for the first Pie. With ensuing
success comes an inevitable new savvy with the Hollywood biz. Biggs doesn't disagree.
"I don't think we've all changed for the worst, in the sense that we're coming
now with egos and bringing a lot more annoyances to the table, but rather I feel
that in the past two years, because of American Pie's success, and all
of us working so much now, we're a little more in tuned to how the business works
now, so we've changed in that respect. We're not as wet-behind-the-ears
or as naïve as we once were."
While Biggs has successfully proved to the world how funny he can be, next up,
he does a 180 degree switch in the new Christina Ricci film Prozac Nation.
"It was a nice change for me doing that, but also terribly hard, because
of a lot of self-imposed pressure I felt doing that, because it was so different
from anything else I'd done. Hopefully it will open up some new windows of opportunity."
In the meantime, Biggs fans will be able to fall in love with Jim all over again
in American Pie 2.