MOVIELINE-April 2000
"Roswell's star JASON BEHR crashes at a small bachelor pad that's perfect for a few guys, a few DVDs and a pizza."
Jason Behr's one-bedroom apartment in Burbank is only a short drive from the soundstage on the Paramount backlot where he plays Max, the heartthrob teenage alien in love with human waitress, on the hit TV series "Roswell." After a lenthy day on the set, the 26-year old Behr tends to rush straight home to plan his entertainment for the evening. Should he drive over the hill to the Viper Room on the Strip? Line up pals to shoot pool with at Q's in West L.A.? Neither. He'd rather invite some guys over to kick back at his place with a pizza and any of the dozens of mives in his expanding DVD collection. "Movies, for me, usually mean a bunch of my buddies and a stack of pizza boxes from Mulberry Street Pizzeria," Behr says. "We try to create as much of a theater atmosphere a possible, so we turn the house lights out." Laughing, he adds, "Sometimes we even spill Coke and spread out Jujubes for authenticity." Behr's "all snacks all the time" entertaining style meshes perfectly with his comfortable, very modest digs in which he's got a bulletin board littered with Blockbuster coupons and a healthy supply of (as-yet-unopened) Dom Perignon bottles (grateful offerings from WB execs?). The actor plans to move somewhere more spacious soon. "But for now, "he says while carefully positioning his shiatsu messager equipped black leather recliner in front of his entertainment center, "this setup works just fine for me." In front of him a Sony DVP $7700 DVD player coupled with a Sony Triniton KV 20S40 20-inch TV and a Sony SLV-679HF VCR stands ready.
So what's on Behr's marquee tonight? Well, his collection includes alienated Gen X fare (Trainspotting and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), some comedies (both Austin Powers), some sci fi (The Matrix, Star Wars) and a scare flick (Disturbing Behavior, which was directed by "Roswell's co-creator, David Nutter). But Behr's real enthusiasm is for intense films like Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, Scarface, Seven, The Godfather and A Clockwork Orange.
Behr, who arrived from Minnesota just a few years ago, has noticed that his perspective on certain films has changed as his tenure in L.A. has lengthened. "I saw Robert Altman's The Player when I first came to L.A. Back then, I didn't get a lot of the insider nuances. I watched it again six months ago on DVD and had an entirely different impression of it. Now it's, like, Wow! I love how the openingscene is one long shot. Someone told me it's a homage to Hitchcock's Rope. That's the kind of movie that gets better each time you see it."
Having never gone to film school, or college for that matter, Behr is educating himself about the classics at home. He owns 1956's Giant, 1958's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and 1967's Cool Hand Luke. He also owns much of the Spielberg oeuvre, from Jaws to Saving Private Ryan. "I'm really getting into DVDs," says Behr. "The extra information they offer does it for me, especially the documentary and director commentary parts. I love knowing why a scene was set up in a particular way. And why this actor moved to a certain position." Take Martin Scorsese's cold-blooded 1976 classic, for instance: "On the Taxi Driver DVD, Scorsese explains why he set up certain scenes in particular ways, and I also learned how Jodie Foster prior to shooting. You get so much more out of movies when you get inside the director's and actors' heads."
When Behr is inspecting films this close up, he tednds to limit his company to only the most appreciative movie aficionados. "I watch with my Akita, Ronin," he says. "By the way, I adopted him long before Robert De Niro made his movie of the same name!"
--Conducted by Daniel Guss
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©2001 Mulan's Jason Behr Fan Page. All design and content owned by Heather.
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