The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 74

E22 CALENDAR LOSANGELESTIMES and Dangerous Lives of Altar still so anony- mousthat the hotel staff bumped him three times from his cabana to make room for other guests. This time next year, not likely to happen. the and Hirsch, specifically, have already earned high praise and Oscar buzz coming out of the Toronto Film Festival. And will no doubt mark coronation. a heady time for the 22-year- old, but he said prepared for whatever comes.

think just stay pretty similar to how I have he said. mellow, you Hirsch grew up in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, N.M.,and started acting at age 8.By 14, he was regularly landing small parts on TV. His first film role was the lead opposite Kieran Culkin and Jena Malone in a coming-of-age tale that starred and was produced by Jodie Foster. He went on to star in a handful of others while still in high school, often opposite the likes of Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. But if those movies represented undergraduate years, making the was like earning a doctorate.

To prepare, Hirsch pored over tersely written journals looking for clues. He read some of literary idols, like Henry David Thoreau and Jack London. He visited parents and spent afew days with his sister. He also trained and dieted relentlessly. He got so thin, Hardwicke said, that she seriously suggested he talk to Christian Bale who became emaciated for about staying healthy.

For all that research, though, Hirsch ultimately found joined the small crew in a weeklong campout on the Colorado River macho stuff for an actor whose most daring on-screen challenge up to that point had been shaving his head for of And as that director, Catherine Hardwicke, remembered it, even that took some serious coaxing. But Hirsch said he was so pumped up while filming the that the physical exhaustion, the fact that he was working for one of his idols, the fact that the role could launch him as a leading man, really get to him. He just felt lucky. believed in what I was doing so much that I was never really nervous in ways that been on other he said. was always like, I believe hired Indeed, Penn had envisioned Leonardo DiCaprio in the part 10 years ago, when he first read the book.

But by the time he got the movie rights, DiCaprio was too old for the role. was just the right age. the cusp of going from boy to Penn said. At the time, Hirsch had finished a feature inspired by the 2001skateboarding documentary and Z- Penn was so moved by performance as the brooding but sensitive skateboard pioneer Jay Adamsthat after Hardwicke screened for him, he wanted a meeting. got him on the cellphone and just handed it to said Hardwicke, who stayed close with Hirsch after their film wrapped.

was a dream come true for Months passed. Penn invited Hirsch to dinner, and over time they got to know each other. really know it was an audition process the whole said Hirsch. kind of just thought maybe, four years from now, gosh, maybe it could happen. He literally called me out of the blue one day and said, just finished the script and the part is yours if you want Ascending All that seemed like a lifetime ago as Hirsch recalled it, sitting poolside at the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica on Labor Day, surrounded by tan vacationers.

He looked a bit goth with the jet- black hair and pale complexion of Speed, the earnest race car driver he plays in the Wachowski live-action version of the 1960s anime set for release in May. wrapped the film in Berlin just two days earlier. have one scene he said, leaning dramatically into a bar of sunlight. must be so Until now, Hirsch has appeared in smallbut critically appreciated films like McCandless enigmatic, a personality that still puzzles him. a guy who show alot to Hirsch said.

to himself. happy and merry, but not a guy going to sit there and tell you his life McCandless grew up in Virginia with affluent and attentive parents. But after he graduated from Emory University, he gave away his $24,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car, went by the name Alexander Super- tramp and hitchhiked around the country and then up the coast to Alaska, telling his family virtually nothing. There, he spent more than 100 days living in an abandoned bus in the brush. When he ran out of food and decided to leave, McCandless found the river too swollen to pass.

Desperate and ravenous, he mistakenly ate some wild plants that he soon realized inhibited his body from absorbing nutrition and he died of starvation. Creating that moment on film, when he knows his fate is sealed, was one of the toughest for Hirsch. Throughout the shoot, Penn had encouraged him to preserve his analytical mind but never second-guess his instincts. After Hirsch had done one take and satisfied, Penn approached him with a thought. know, this is your Penn told Hirsch.

tell you what to do here. This is your he walked Hirsch said. was just an amazing moment. How can you tell someone how to react when you find out going to die like that? He wanted it to be so personal and real. He just gave it to gina.piccalo@latimes.com Chuck Zlotnick Paramount Vantage DIRECTION: Hirsch was excited to work with Sean Penn, one of his idols.

Penn had been impressed by Hirsch in of Coming out of the wilds Francois Duhamel Paramount Vantage WILDERNESS: Filming took Hirsch to hostile environs. PageE1 If it for the ever-popular video-sharing on YouTube, Ryan might still be stocking jeans at waiting for that next commercial audition. Similarly, her co-hosts Rhett Mc- Laughlinand Link Neal, www.rhettandlink.com both 29, who have been friends since first grade, might still be goofing around in North Carolina, showing their musical parodies and short films only to their pals. Instead, they are hosting the first network TV show dedicated to the artistic endeavors of amateurs like themselves who grew up with the Internet. (The fourth host is Joy Leslie, a 29-year-old actress meant to represent Internet junkies everywhere.) not about Hollywood connections Cockerill quipped.

about your Internet All you need these days, Cockerill says, is some ingenuity, a quality Ryan seems to have in spades. As a 12-year-old girl in Victorville, Ryan spent a lot of time socializing in Internet chat rooms and filming herself with her hand-held camera. had all my real chola friends with me and like, up, you And like, be all getting pregnant and she said. was so young. I know where it comes from, but since I was young, been a total camera This is how badly Ryan wants to be a star: When she was 18, she dug a hole under a fence to sneak into the filming of a Moby music video and was chosen to stand next to the musician.

That, and a divine was like one day God woke me up and said, your own head shots, Ryan to take some pictures, develop them in her photography class, Google the names of Hollywood agencies and send them off. The first part she landed was for Hilary which she played a Marilyn Monroe wannabe. was made it! won my first said. course, it was just a little part, but that day I saw my reflection in this huge lens, and that is probably a moment in my life I will never After a brief stint living in Huntington Beach and working in commercials, Ryan moved to Los Angeles. When the acting leads fizzled, she took a job at decided that the new video website she was addicted to was the answer.

Ryan posted vintage-style silent films she starred in and edited, and was stunned when fellow YouTubers called her everything from ugly to stupid. I was from, I was nah- uh, you say that to my face and you will get knocked Ryan said. the environment I grew up in: strong females. just not used to people being mean anonymously, and it brought out the tiger in me. I let that Little Loca attitude come out.

You bring this girl Then something really loca happened: Little Loca became an Internet star. More than 10 million people have watched Ryan playing 10 different characters, but Little Loca is, by far, the most popular. Ryan recently posted her 101st video as the ponytailed, hoops-wearing Latina for whom best known. been the time of my Ryan said. or no show, been really fun meeting new people and finding myself as an Last spring, a casting director asked Ryan to e-mail a tape of Little Loca introducing videos.

Across the country, and were first approached about allowing the CW to show one of their popular music videos, of in the pilot episode. Then the duo was asked to e-mail a tryout tape. whole process was so interesting because we have ahead shot; never been to an McLaughlin said. always aspired to create for a bigger and bigger audience. But just in the middle of North Carolina doing our thing and putting it sounds scary and sound very painful, so avoided Neal deadpanned.

Now, the BFFs, who come to Los Angeles once a month to tape the show, are considering swapping coasts. somebody is sitting at home watching TV and seesthis, they could think, my Cockerill said. is just a way of For a from the desert, a lot more than that. life is probably the coolest life in the Ryan said while eating lunch recently in the dressing room the four hosts share. not in the world, but definitely in my life.

I know anybody with a cooler and would beg to differ. maria.elena.fernandez terego, the tough-talking chola Little Loca, made her a YouTube sensation and is about to turn her into a TV personality. Ryan is sitting on the Minimalist white spiral staircase to nowhere. She then crosses her legs, tilts her striking face and does indeed act like a girl. She later admits, though, that still getting used to being told what to say, how to say itand, toughest of all, having no say about the finished product.

Executive producer David Hurwitz observes, create her, right? beautiful and talented but has no ego, and completely uninhibited but never in a dangerous Ryan is one of the four hosts of a modern- day Funniest Home that premieres on the CW at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. In a very fast 30 minutes, the clip show zips through 40 or so videos but also reinforces how much You- Tube has changed both show business and popular culture since its launch two years ago. As much of a mom-and-pop operation as the homemade productions it features, cuts costs by hiring unknowns as hosts, producing four shows two days a monthand not paying for its content. (The network cannot air the videos without permission from the owners, however.) show goes off and features all the people who have the motivation not to procrastinate but to create and go out and shoot and said executive producer Paul Cockerill.

really is a new world out there, and this is really bringing to light all their Little Loca hits the big time Robert Gauthier Los Angeles Times Stevie Ryan hosts the new CW show a sort of Funniest Home of the Web. Loca, from PageE1 veterans of the storied Black Watch regiment with movement choreography, film and video imagery and a whirlwind of explosive special effects, a few of which had me nervously ducking for cover. When the production opened at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year, it was the talk of the British press, and it has continued to garner favorable attention while on tour. easy to understand why: The all-male company of 10 actors is impressively coordinated, and the unusual, grab-bag form that was devised by playwright Gregory Burke and director John Tiffany proceeds with an almost surreal, free-floating energy. But to what end, you might ask, is all this theatrical ingenuity placed? Why should you bother to seek out onstage what long wished was over in reality? Good questions.

concerned with the political motivations that led to the invasion. That story was attempted by David Hare in and it remains a narrative quagmire that only history will be able to sort out. Nor is the piece a harangue about the evils of the American empire or a melodramatic exploitation long on sensationalism, short on perspective. The ground that covers is narrow, but it be more important in a war being fought without a draft and that remains to many of us a distant reality despite the bombardment. The work wants us to understand these soldiers as more than losers in the socioeconomic game of life or working-class casualty statistics.

It wants us to get acquainted with them not as but as men with a sense of pride in their military service, a profound loyalty to one another and a traumatic bond that will haunt them and their families for the rest of their days. I think minds are usually made up about you if you were in the says Cammy (Paul Rattray) at the top of the show, once the bagpipe and drum tattoo that has greeted us with its repetitive squeal has quieted down. Cammy is back home from his tour of duty in Iraq and has agreed to meet a woman from a theater company interested in the story of what he and his fellow vets went through. But instead of the researcher whom he looks forward to seducing with his war stories, he encounters a shy writer (Paul Higgins) at the pub that he and his pals play pool at every Sunday. Pints of Guinness keep the fellows from storming out, and slowly but surely they share their collective tale of combat in amanner that refuses to tone down the barroom profanity or thick Highland accents.

Moving between the past and the present to an eclectic musical score, establishes an expressive physical life onstage that allows us an unusually intimate perspective. We see the men sweltering in the desert sun with their pants drawn down to their ankles for momentary relief from the heat. We share their restless boredom as they fidget with a torn book or ogle nudie pinups. And we observe their discomfort as they stand on guard with guns as the bathroom calls out to them from far away. Asequence in which the soldiers receive letters from home is performed purely through stylized gesture.

As one by one they begin reading their missives, the men allow their arms to sway in arcs of poignant grace. The humanizing effect allows us to sense the hearts and souls that have been covered over in fatigues. It also, curiously, reminds us of what it means to be human cherishing of connections that provide stable meaning and life-affirming purpose. Commentary on the war is limited but not absent. The deployment of the Black Watch to one of the deadliest areas in Iraq is chalked up by one politico as a response to the U.S.

presidential election. Cammy describes the incessant aerial bombardment as old- fashioned rather than fighting. And, in probably the most quoted line of the play, an officer (Jack Fortune) laments to Cammy: takes 300 years to build an army admired and respected around the world. But it only takes three years pissing about in the desert in the biggest Western foreign policy disaster ever to it up This last statement reflects one of the more problematic aspects of the piece, which has nothing to do with criticism of a disastrous war. Rather it involves the desire to extend the legend of the Black Watch regiment, which has been recently (and controversially) subsumed as a battalion in a new Scottish The history of the Black Watch, the pride of its members that goes back generations, the sound of its music that played at John F.

funeral, even the red hackle that adorns its distinctive bonnets, are treated with enormous reverence. (A greatest hits recap of its battles is actually performed on a red carpet.) But little grappling with its colonial and mercenary baggage and way too much about its glorious courage and character. Iraq the first misguided and bungled war, and sorry to say, not likely to be the last. (World War I so noble either.) Of course legitimate to loathe the conduct of this particular one, but to do so by making contrasts with a whitewashed version of the Black past seems somewhat provincial for such an otherwise sophisticated piece. one other nagging issue, and that has to do with the almost decadent aspect of watching such an elaborate multimedia spectacle about technological military brutality from the safety of campus.

This put you off going to but it should caution you against being hypnotized by its sleekness. The failure of critical intelligence has left our world in the shambles that in. offers a powerfully wrought theatrical snapshot of recent history that deserves to have all of its assumptions interrogated. See it, applaud it and carry the discussion back home. charles.mcnulty@latimes.com Iraq reports via from PageE1 Where: Freud Playhouse, UCLA campus, Westwood When: 8 p.m.

Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays Ends: Oct. 14 Price: $38 and $46 Contact: (310) 825-2101 or www.uclalive.org Running time: 1hour, 55minutes Manuel Harlan WATCHFUL: Ryan Fletcher portrays a Scottish soldier..