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For the four young leads of Dawson's Creek, the hit teen soapie has become their ticket to the big-time, says Simon Houpt.
It's late at night, and Dawson
Leery has just climbed through Jennifer Lindley's bedroom window.
As crickets chirp outside, he whispers to her with a throaty desperation, saying
something about love and lust. The two teenagers kiss - tentatively at first,
then with a greater intensity and, it seems, a fair amount of tongue action.
Jen's teddy bear falls silently to the floor - and she starts to laugh.
"Cut!" the director hollered. "Why is it that everyone that
kisses James can't help laughing?"
James, of course, is James Van Der Beek, the cuter-than-cute actor that plays
the lead role on one of televisions hottest shows, Channel 10's Dawson's Creek.
In the space of just over a year, the show has become an authentic hit,
especially popular with the highly sought-after teen market. Its four young main
cast members, Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams, Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes
have become bona-fide stars thanks to sqeezing big screen roles into their
schedules.
"It's crazy.It was just this little show we were doing down here in
Wilmington, North Carolina," said Van Der Beek, who at 22 is the eldest of
the four.
"We never expected it to be this big. All of a sudden we were on billboards
and it started to dan on us, 'Wow, I can't believe how many people are
watching'."
In the first episodes, 15-year-old Jen (Williams) arrived in the fictional town
of Capeside, Massachusetts, and moved next door to Dawson, setting his hormones
jumping. After a few heavy kisses, the two broke up and it wasn't long before
Dawson turned to a new romance with his long-time friend, the tomboyish Joey
Potter (Holmes).
Then there was the reversal of fortune: After Joey unexpectedly dumped him,
Dawson once again fell for Jen's seductive allure. But it wasn't too long before
he realised Joey was the girl for him and the pair go back together, only to
spilt again a the end of the last series.
In the next series, Joey and Dawson are barely on speaking terms but that's OK
with Dawson because his thoughts are with an older temptress.
Sounds like pure soap opera, but that leaves out the impact of
screenwritingphenomenom Kevin Williamson, the creative force behind the show and
one of its executive producers.
The screenwriter of hit movies such as Scream, I Know What You Did last Summer,
Halloween: H20 and Teaching, he based the television series loosely on his own
adolescence.
Modelled after Williamson himself, Dawson is an angst-ridden 16-year-old who
aspires to be the next Steven Speilberg. Or maybe, to judge from the movie
posters in his bedroom, the next Kevin Williamson.
The new series will be the first without Williamson at the helm and his
departure - to focus on his new television project Wasteland - makes some
wonder how long Dawson's Creek can survive without him, especially as its
rising stars win more movie roles.
But fans insist the show will go on, the key to its appeal being its hip
media-savvy intelligence. Dawson's Creek takes the emotional turmoil of
adolescence seriously, but always knows when to drop in an entertaining
pop-culture reference. Then there is the crisp, hyper-realistic dialogue, which
also explains the series' demographic which extends beyond the pimple cream set.
"There have been shows that have captured exactly the way teens speak, word
for word," Van Der Beek said during a break in shooting. "Our
characters speak the way everybody feels, the way people would speak if they had
a day to go over an argument int heir head, pull out a thesaurus and then go
back and give someone their comeback."
"We are very eloquent teenagers and we have taken a sound beating for
that," agreed 20-year-old Joshua Jackson, who plays Pacey Witter, Dawson's
wisecracking friend. "These kids may speak with the intellect and the
language of a 30-year-old, but they still have the emotional core of 15-and
16-year-olds".
"That's why people who are older than the kids are watching the show. And
that's why 15-year-olds watch the show as well, because they can relate on a
one-to-one basis with what we're doing." "I think it's just because
we're talking about sex," Williams said, drawing a laugh from her co-stars.
More seriously, Holmes added: "I just think everyone can relate to first
kisses and the confusion of being a teenager." Off camera, the actors
describe themselves as the best of friends. That's part of Williams's problem
with the kissing scene, actually. "It's a strange situation," she
explained, "to be in front of a large crew and kissing somebody that you're
intimate with on a friend-to-friend basis. And all of a sudden, 'Oh, your tongue
in my mouth is kind of strange!'."