Michelle Trachtenberg

News From the Junket Circuit: Eurotrip

An interview with Michelle Trachtenberg and Scott Mechlowicz.

By Smilin’ Jack Ruby

Continuing the column I started after Barbershop 2, here’s the answer to the "what’s next" question from the folks who showed up at yesterday’s Eurotrip junket at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood. Strangely, writer/directors Jeff Schaffer, Alec Berg and David Mandel haven’t locked down their next project (they say it’ll "be a comedy, but not necessarily a teen one") and neither have two of the three male leads - Jacob Pitts and Travis Wester.

So, that leaves us with Michelle Trachtenberg and Scott Mechlowicz. The thing of it is, Trachtenberg has about a hundred projects lined up, so read on, but first - Mechlowicz...

S.J.R.: What are you looking to take on post Eurotrip?

Scott: I shot a film right after Eurotrip. They flew me directly from Prague pretty much straight to Oregon. It’s called Mean Creek.

S.J.R.: Ah, that’s screening tonight as well (the Eurotrip premiere was the night of the junket)...

Scott: Yeah, I know! It’s screening tonight at the same time. My parents are in town, so I’m going to try and shuttle them as quickly as possible.

S.J.R.: So, who do you play in it?

Scott: I play the bad guy. I play the antagonist. It’s really good. It has a very nice, Stand by Me-ish kind of a tone, which there haven’t been too many films lately that are like this. And the cast, it goes down to twelve year-olds and their performances are mind-blowing. Rory Culkin is one of them. There’s six of us in the cast.

S.J.R.: And it’s coming out?

Scott: Yeah, we went to Sundance and we just got picked up by Paramount. We’re really, really excited.

S.J.R. Note: Mean Creek is from first-time writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes whose Mean Creek won the Nicholl Fellowship not too many moons ago. I pulled my Sundance Program off the shelf and here’s what they have to say about it:

"Set in a small Oregon town where secrets are hard to keep and lies even harder, Mean Creek flows with a simple elegance of truth and consequences as it follows a crisis in the lives of its teen characters, keenly directed by first-timer Jacob Aaron Estes.

The journey within begins as a plot for playful payback on a local troublemaker; the journey onscreen begins with a river, as a ragtag group of troubled-and-not teenagers set out on a boat trip to celebrate the birthday of their youngest member. As a sort of boyish Heart of Darkness trip develops, cracks in the crew form when some of the teens have second thoughts about what they are about to do.

Photographed in mossy greens and bark-colored skies, Mean Creek exposes a strange, natural growth that appears in the nuanced performances of a fantastic cast that includes Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley and Carly Schroeder, almost as if audience and child are forced to grow up together."

So, there you have it - on to Michelle Trachtenberg...

Michelle: ...I don’t mind singing for projects. I’m actually doing four episodes on Six Feet Under where I play a pop singer, so that’s kind of fun.

S.J.R.: So, what are the next projects you’re taking on?

Michelle: I have many projects going on right now. After Eurotrip, I took a week off, flew back to L.A. and I went into Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin, which is a very dark movie. I’m incredibly proud of this movie. It’s based on a true story about two boys who were sexually molested when they were younger - based on a book, actually, about a true story. One of the boys is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who is basically a homosexual who really goes out and whores himself out. He sells himself. The other boy is played by Brady Corbet, who is confused and thinks he was abducted by aliens. I play his best friend. He’s the only person he’s able to confide in and really I help his character discover the importance of embracing and understanding what happened to him when he was younger and how these two boys deal with it.

S.J.R.: Gregg Araki hasn’t made a movie in awhile...

Michelle: No, and I’m so honored that he called me up. It was actually funny. While I was in Prague shooting Eurotrip, I flew back for two days to graduate high school and I sat down and had coffee with Gregg and he said, ’You know what, I think you’d be wonderful for this role.’ I understand what a risk it was for a director to take a chance on an actress who really hasn’t done that much of that dark, edgy, indie kind of movie. I’d really wanted to break into it for years, but Gregg took that chance and I appreciated it so much. I did that and now I’m in ice skating training for my next movie. I’m in three months of training, I skate five days a week and on top of that, Six Feet Under had me doing choreography practice, so I was doing that for four hours a day. But it’s called Disney’s Ice Princess and I am the "ice princess." It’s a story of a girl who has always dreamed of being a figure skater, but her family is very studious and very intent on getting her into Harvard. So, she devises a plan through her knowledge of physics and talks to the three big figure skaters in her town and says, ’Okay, I’ll teach you about physics and how to be a better skater through physics if you let me work with your coach and choreographer.’ I get the chance to be a wonderful skater and there’s a love story involved. I’m doing a lot of my own skating, but the triple axles, I’m obviously not going to be required to do, because that takes years of training.

S.J.R.: Who’s directing that?

Michelle: A man named Andrew Waller. I seem to have a thing about first-time directors, but there’s something raw and great about them.

S.J.R.: And what is Odd Girl Out [S.J.R. Note: Written and set to be directed by first-timer Deepika Daggubati]

Michelle: It’s another independent movie I’m doing with Bijou Phillips about two girls in a private school and one is the rebellious wild child and one is the perfect bitch. I’m the perfect bitch. I’m the queen of the private school and it’s a dark, little rivalry that we have. Of course, there’s much more emotional problems involved. It’s an independent movie, so come on!

S.J.R.: Do you know when you’re shooting that?

Michelle: No. With Bijou’s schedule changing and my schedule changing, we’re figuring out when we can do it.

S.J.R.: Is there any studio money behind it or is it completely independent?

Michelle: Completely independent.

As for whether she’d do a Buffy movie if they ever decided to do from the show, she said, "You know, never say never. Right now, I’m more focused on new aspects of my career. I’m not really wanting to go back and repeat characters because I think that’s just not as exciting."