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 Miss Independent
Saved!'s Jena Malone, A Hollywood Veteran At 19, On The Behind-The-Scenes Action Of This Year's Most Subversive Comedy.
One of Hollywood’s brightest young talents, Jena Malone, likes to look at L.A. from a safe distance. She also gets pregnant by her gay boyfriend while attending a Baptist high school in the new comedy Saved!
INSTINCT: You’re turning twenty this year!
JENA MALONE: I am!
So let’s look back. What’s been the best part of your teen years?
There have been a lot of good things. The teen years are supposed to be—I don’t know what they’re supposed to be in my mind, because I’ve never really done them correctly. I had one year of high school, moved out when I was fourteen. I’ve just always been into doing my own thing.
Good for you. Aside from work, what have you been up to lately?
I’m actually on a road trip right now down to Los Angeles. It’s easier to just do the vagabond thing and crash at a few different people’s places. The instability of Los Angeles becomes a reality if you’re not looking for stability there, so it’s actually quite grounding. I stopped in Santa Barbara to surf in the morning.
Are you into surfing?
Uh, no, I’m pretty bad at it. I can only get up to like five seconds, and I eat shit 98 percent of the time. I live up in Tahoe, but my boyfriend’s band played this show in Santa Barbara, and they’re playing some shows around the Los Angeles area. I just had to drive down. Living up in the mountains, you kind of miss the ocean a lot.
Switching gears, let’s talk about your new movie, Saved! This isn’t your typical teen high school comedy.
It’s the type of film that uses a format that we’re all very comfortable with. You open up to this teen high school film and then you enter into a lot of the stereotypes of this world that we’re exploring. It’s a specific world, because it’s a religious high school. And what the film does is, it doesn’t just offer this world and all the bullshit in it, it tries to examine it. It’s really just about questioning your own faith and belief system, whatever that is.
What a fun cast you were a part of: Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit, Eva Amurri.
It was sort of like summer camp; you’re working with all these people who are similar ages. I went into it just expecting to have a lot of fun, but I kind of got out of this experience something very wonderful. It’s such collaboration. Mandy was giving one hundred twenty percent every day.
Speaking of Mandy Moore, please tell us you two had catfights on the set.
Oh, no, not at all! You expect some sort of pop star and all the mentality that comes along with it, and then you meet the person and they’re really fuckin’ talented. She has a really good head on her shoulders. In fact, she was quite fearless and it was a really wonderful thing to watch. Just seeing young people giving their all, it’s like, Yeah, man. I know why I’m doing this. It’s good to have peers around you with the same goals.
Did Macaulay pull any naughty pranks?
He’s rad! [Laughs] He’s like this old grandpa that knows everything about everything. He’s seen a lot—and actually done a lot with that.
We can see we’re not gonna get any dirt from you. Tell us about the film’s director, Brian Dannelly.
He’s a really beautiful gay guy who’s just so sweet. He’s the person who really made this film what it is. He put heart behind it, because there’s a lot of pokes and jabs, a lot of truth guised in humor, which is easier to swallow sometimes. I think he really did a good job.
With all the current fuss over religion and gays, the film’s timing couldn’t have been better planned.
People have such crazy ideas and beliefs, like what television is to kids or what fashion is to teenagers and what drinking is to adults and what religion [really] is. I thought people might take offense, but [the film has] a lot of heart and I think at the end it’s very pro-faith.
You seem to work so much. Do you ever get tempted to just move to L.A.?
I lived in L.A. for seven years. I got it done; I did what I needed to do. Everyone has different scenery that they need to be in. Tahoe’s where I need to be right now. It’s a beautiful thing to be there and try to balance work with that. I see the seasons change and I shovel my driveway every day! [Laughs]
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