By John Polly
Aaron Yoo is a pretty lucky guy. In the past 16 months alone, he's scammed casino bigwigs in Vegas with a gang of collegiate card sharks ("21"), played amateur suburban sleuth alongside cute "it-boy" Shia LaBeouf ("Disturbia") and, in his latest cinematic romp, Yoo gets to jam with his best pals in a queercore band on Manhattan's ueber-hip Lower East Side, then rage around the Big Apple all night in pursuit of drunken friends and indie rockers, all in the name of true love. It's not a bad way to spend a year, eh?
OK, maybe Yoo's high-profile hijinks are all Hollywood make-believe, but the L.A.-based Yoo is definitely on a roll. And his latest film, "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" (which involves the aforementioned queercore band and all-night tour of NYC), out Oct. 3, is likely to make the biggest impression yet. Boasting a killer cast ("Superbad" and "Juno" alum Michael Cera and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin"'s Kat Dennings are the titular couple), a great soundtrack (Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses, Bishop Allen), a wry sense of humor and a sweet romantic bent, it's destined to become a teen classic (a la "The Breakfast Club" or "Mean Girls").
Lucky Yoo gets to play one of the film's memorable and extra-refreshing gay characters. He's Thom, guitarist for the queer rock band The Jerk-Offs, alongside Cera's straight Nick and Rafi Gavron's cocky gay frontman Dev. What's so revolutionary about Yoo and Gavron's characters is that for the first time in memory, gay teens aren't stereotypical or tragic or driven by any issue involving their queerness. Thom and Dev are just gay. No big deal. And they're Nick's best friends. Kudos to David Levithan and Rachel Cohn (who wrote the book the film is based upon) for wrapping gay characters in a solid storyline, and not in a rainbow flag.
Yoo, for one, is aware of the uniqueness of his role. Thom's just a rocker and a romantic – who happens to be gay. And yep, that's rare. "I feel like mainstream movies a lot of the time, in general, don't write fully-developed characters at all," says Yoo, chatting on his cell outside a West Hollywood cafe. "They write sketches of people. And certain kinds of people, especially gay characters, are usually painted in generalities that really do them a disservice, especially for the sake of comedy. But when I read this script, it was amazing. I remember wanting to be part of it, and for either character, Dev or Thom."
What's fun about watching gay bandmates and best buds Thom and Dev onscreen is that they fuss and fight, and alternately harass/support protagonist Nick, just like the best friends would in any film. Still, Yoo admits these guys' relationship is special. Chalk it up to history. "Peter Sollett (the director) told Rafi and I, 'I feel like Thom and Dev have dated at one point, but it didn't work out – but they're still best friends.'"
Yoo elaborates: "They're like a divorced couple, and Nick is their child, and they just all spend all this time together. The arguments that Thom and Dev have about figuring out our band's name have nothing to do with the band's name; they're just arguments about their past. That was totally fun to play."
Career-wise, Yoo has been taking good care of himself. In addition to breakthrough roles in films like "21" and "Disturbia" (as well as previous queer roles in the indie film "Rocket Science" as a nerdy "bi-curious" high-school debater, and then in Christopher Shinn's Off-Broadway hit, "Where Do We Live"), he's got a few more big films in the pipeline. Next year will bring "Game," a trippy action/fantasy film with Gerard Butler, the big "Friday the 13th" remake, and he'll star opposite Lindsay Lohan in "Labor Pains."
But no matter who he's playing or what megastar he's sharing the screen with, it's no big deal – for Yoo, at least. Sort of like the characters in "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist," they're all just people first – gay, straight or whatever.
"Personally, it's not a big deal and never has been. You'd have to live a very sheltered existence in this country not to have an extreme level of diversity in your life," he says. "And at the same time, I've never grown up with a conscious knowledge that my friends and surroundings are even incredibly 'diverse'; it's just who we are. And gay or straight, it doesn't matter. You like this person or you like this person.
"It's sort of like, 'Hey, you like this sport, or you like knitting … whatever!'" Yoo sums it up with what could be a tagline for his new movie: "It's just about being friends."
