| Speedway to Stardom. Rising talents Jordan Brower and Jesse Bradford, the stars of the Vegas hustler movie Speedway Junky, start their engines and share their secrets to kick off our sizzling summer movie preview. Any young male hustlers who work Los Angeles's Santa Monica Boulevard should be in bed by tis time on a saturday morning....someone's bed, anyway. They're certainly not still carboloading at the Yukon Mining Company, the 24-hour diner known for its colorful late-night gay-for-pay clientele. In their stead are two guys in blue jeans who are certainly fresh-faced and foxy enough to pass for hustlers....which is a good thing, because they do just that in their new film, Speedway Junky. Perhaps new isn't entirely accurate, for it's been three years since Jesse Bradford and Jordan Brower took to the streets of Las Vegas to film writer/director Nickolas Perry's tough-and-tender coming-of-age film. Bradford, who turns 22 on May 28, has since gone on to turn heads as Kirsten Dunst's guitar-playing beau in the gay-friendly cheerleading comedy Bring It On; 19-year-old Brower, best known from the sitcom Teen Angel, has since wrapped Texas Rangers with James Van Der Beek. But news that Regent Entertainment is finally steering Speedway Junky into theaters (opening July 20) has brought the pair together again to tale about their adventures in Sin City. A riff on themes from My Own Private Idaho....a kinship underlined by out Idaho director Gus Van Sant's role as executive producer....Junky casts Bradford as Johnny, a runaway and wanna-be NASCAR driver who gets stranded in Vegas on his way to the East Coast. Brower is Eric, the vulnerable gay hustler who....along with cocky 'buy'-sexual Johnathan Taylor Thomas....teaches Johnny the ins and outs of hustling, then falls in love with him. Along for the ride are Daryl Hannah as Eric's ex-showgirl mother figure and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen as a white-trash tourist Johnny longs to get busy with. 'I just loved the look of the film, the character portrayals, all the young talent, and I thought Daryl Hannah gave a real tour de force performance,' says Regents Keith Sky, who discovered the movie at Outfest, Los Angeles's gay adn lesbian film festival, and worked for almost two years to secure distribution rights. 'And the chemistry between Jordan and Jesse on teh screen is very exciting and sexy.' Together again at the Yukon, Brower and Bradford still exhibit strong chemistry, thought the two haven't talked much since the film wrapped ('I should have called you more,' laments Brower). All the same, the actors share the kind of bond that comes from living through the same nightmare. 'I've never been on a movie where more stuff went wrong,' says Bradford. 'So it's great that people are finally getting to see it.' next page. Back to Interviews. |