Sitting at the bar of Carroll Gardens’ Buttermilk Channel recently, Springer laughs good-naturedly when I bring up his career’s throughline thus far. “Weird sexual scenes,” he agrees between sips of water. “Which is really weird because when I was in acting school, we were doing Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest. And there’s a scene between a vampire and a dog and the director was insisting that the dog be naked, because it’s a dog. And she really wanted me to play that part. And I said, ‘I don’t wear shorts. I literally don’t even wear shorts. I’m not being naked on stage!’ And so then my first part [in Teeth] was kind of a departure for me.”
Dare, a sort of high school version of The Rules of Engagement, follows outcasts and friends Alexa (Rossum) and Ben (Springer) as they indulge in senior year experimentation at their suburban prep school with the popular Johnny (Friday Night Lights’ Zach Gilford), among a cast littered with boldface names like Ana Gasteyer, Alan Cumming and Sandra Bernhard. And though Springer’s sexy midnight pool scene with Gilford is sure to be much discussed, the most startling thing about Dare is the revelation that the demure Rossum can be a believable bad girl, in a role previously played by Olivia Thirlby in readings.
“Emmy was great to work with,” Springer says. “I think this was the first movie she’s done that’s under $60 million. But she was psyched.They didn’t even think of her. But her manager gave [the script] to her and showed her the short, and she was really into it. And made an audition tape on her iMac, and she recorded the other lines and then played it back and acted with herself! It’s so good! It’s so good! And they were like, ‘OK!’ She’s a very serious actress. And I really dig that about her.You haven’t seen her in anything with a character that wasn’t running through a boat. She’s spent a lot of her career running through things.”
Since Alexa is a good girl gone wild (thanks to some questionable advice from a visiting theater star, played by Cumming with his claws out), it’s not hard to see why Rossum fought to land the role. But Springer says that what most impressed him about Dare was its vision of the high school experience.
“I was pretty miserable in high school,” he says. “I remember my mother trying to convince me that I wasn’t always going to feel like this. Everything seemed dire, you know? I don’t think I’ve ever really felt those operatic emotional heights [again]. And you’re feeling sort of like, ‘Should I be in this group or that group?’Wanting to be universal but unique.”
Capturing those hormone-fueled last days of school better than almost any other movie, Dare has been touching real high schoolers ever since it premiered earlier this year at Sundance. Springer recalls Gilford being besieged by so many teenagers wanting to talk about how much they related to the movie that he eventually had to ask them to write him letters about it.
Part of its appeal is its unflinching, undramatic examination of Ben’s sexuality.The turning point of the film, the moment you realize that Dare will fulfill the promise of Alexa’s transformation by not taking the easy way out, is a scene between Gilford and Springer that ends in a poolside blowjob. Hardly surprising, given Springer’s resume, but still a touchingly romantic moment made all the more so by the audience’s knowledge that there is no way these two characters will now ever be able to get what they think they want.
“No, it wasn’t awkward,” Springer heads me off when we start discussing the scene. “Hopefully you’re not thinking about what you’re doing.You’re thinking about not thinking about it. Otherwise, you’re thinking, ‘Was that too much?’ Afterward, you can apologize for too much tongue. But all the sex scenes we did at the end, so we were all friends,” he says with a laugh. “And it had all happened for real in the hotel by the time we had to shoot it.”
