By Christina Radish

Actress Mary Stuart Masterson makes her feature directorial debut with The Cake Eaters, a quirky, small-town drama that explores the lives of two interconnected families, coming to terms with love in the face of loss. Living in rural America, the Kimbrough family is an odd bunch. Easy (Bruce Dern), the patriarch, owns a butcher shop and finds himself grieving over the loss of his wife, while hiding a secret on-going relationship for years. Beagle (Aaron Stanford), his youngest son who was left to care for his ailing mother, works in the local high school cafeteria by day, but has a secret passion for painting. And the eldest son, Guy (Jayce Bartok), has been away from the family for years while pursuing his musical aspirations in the big city until he learns of his mother’s passing and that he’s missed the funeral.     

Upon Guy’s return home, each character begins to unravel. Beagle’s pent-up emotions connect with Georgia Kaminski (Kristen Stewart), a terminally ill teenage girl wanting to experience love before it’s too late, and Easy’s longtime affair with Marg (Elizabeth Ashley), Georgia’s eccentric grandmother, is exposed to the Kimbrough family. Through it all, the Kimbroughs and Kaminskis manage to establish a new beginning in the face of their greatest fears of life, death and family.

Introduced to worldwide audiences with her performance alongside Jodie Foster in Panic Room, Kristen Stewart is best known as Bella Swan in the hugely successful vampire film Twilight, and its continuing saga, which includes New Moon (to be released on November 20, 2009) and Eclipse (scheduled for release on June 30, 2010). An actor who consistently brings intensity and intelligence to his work, Aaron Stanford was Pyro in X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand, and starred in Alexandre Aja’s remake of Wes Craven’s thriller The Hills Have Eyes.

These co-stars spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about making The Cake Eaters, along with what is coming up for each of them, in their future career endeavors.

MediaBlvd Magazine> What was it about the script that made you want to do these roles? What did you love about this project?

Aaron Stanford> I loved a lot of things about it. I mainly loved the amazing, complex and fascinating characters, great relationships and a great story. That’s all I need to like a script. I read it and got invested in it. I started to care about these people and care about what’s happening, and I’m interested in exploring these sorts of fractured relationships.

Kristen Stewart> It’s a really quaint little movie, but it is so madly triumphant, even though there are no big story points. It’s not like a whole lot happens, but somehow, at the end of the movie, you feel like these people really accomplished something. And, any time you feel a responsibility for the characters and you don’t want to let them down, and they are whole enough for you to want to give a month of your life to, then it’s obviously something that you should do.

MediaBlvd> Kristen, where did you start with the physicality of this character?

Kristen> I was so intimated by the character that I didn’t start any physicality before, literally, the first day of shooting. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Mary Stuart set me up with a lot of material and information, and there was Sam and Alex Bode. They’re two girls that have the disease, and they were too generous. They’re an amazing family. They recorded a lot of video of themselves speaking, and of Mary Stuart interviewing them. I was just obsessed with it, for maybe three weeks prior, and then delved into it very impulsively. It was just something that I had to wrap my head around. I couldn’t physically do it until the day we started shooting because it felt like I was faking something. Until it was actually real, in the moment, and we were actually doing it and I was actually playing this person, then it felt right to do it. But, before that, it just didn’t feel right.

MediaBlvd> Aaron, what was your take on your character?

Aaron> Beagle is unique. He’s definitely an eccentric character, but one of the things that struck me about him, reading the script, was just his purity. He’s an incredibly decent and good person. He’s the caretaker of his family. He’s the youngest and the least noticed, but he’s actually the patriarch. He’s the one who does all the work. And, as for his relationship with Georgia, he’s also a character with a tremendous amount of love to give, and hadn’t ever really found anyone to give it to. Then, he finds this other person, and it’s difficult because of conventional morality. Is she too young? Is this right? Is this wrong? But, the great thing about the relationship, for the two of them, is that it’s a situation to which conventional morality does not apply at all because Georgia is going to die. She only has a limited amount of time, in which to live her life, so the conventions fly out the window, in that situation.

MediaBlvd> Kristen, did you get to keep any of the beautiful black and white photos of you?

Kristen> Yeah, actually. I think I have two of them.

MediaBlvd> Who actually took them?

Kristen> She’s a friend of Mary Stuart’s, and she did it before we started shooting.

MediaBlvd> Was that actually you two riding on the scooter, and were there any spills?

Aaron> That was us. We were worried about taking some spills, but no. We managed.

Kristen> Aaron managed really well.

MediaBlvd> What was it like working with Mary Stuart, as a first time director?

Kristen> She didn’t seem like a first time director, probably because she’s been an actor since she was much younger than me. She was 13, or something. Maybe even younger. This is going to sound way cold, but she’s very facilitating and nurturing. She really creates an environment for you, where you just feel like you’re in the best position to give as much as you can possibly give. She’s really one of the most amazing role models I’ve ever had. She’s very ambitious.

MediaBlvd> Did you get to give any input into Georgia’s look, before and after her hair-cut?

Kristen> It was written in the script that there was a hair-cutting scene. She was going to have longer hair, then shorter, which meant that I had to have some sort of wigage. But, to have it so extreme represented her untouched virginity. It was very symbolic, and that was intentional. It was in the story, in the script.

MediaBlvd> When they are alone together, Georgia points out that Beagle must not work out much. Aaron, did you do anything specific for your look in this film?

Aaron> It wasn’t super tough to look like I don’t work out, but it was a trick of the light to hide all of my ponderous bulk. They put highlighted make-up under all the shadows of my pectoral muscles and six pack. It was a suspension of disbelief. I loved exploring the vulnerability of that, and being a man in his 20's, who is completely put back into his place by a 15-year-old girl. He wants to shut off the light and hide. It was fun.

MediaBlvd> Georgia is so anxious to have this affirmation of her femininity. Kristen, how did you get into the mind of that 15-year-old girl?

Kristen> When the movie starts out, her objective is clear. She’s definitely after something, but I feel like she’s smart enough to realize that, if she didn’t find what she finds in Beagle, then she wouldn’t have gone through with it. I don’t think she’s just finding a weak person to conquer. They fill each other up in a way they’ve never had before. It’s hard to define the way people click. They find solace in each other.

Aaron> Yeah. I think you can see that, in the moment when Beagle almost leaves, and then comes back and they just hug. They want that connection. They want to be close to each other. It can’t just be about a girl, wanting to have sex. That may be what begins it, but it can’t just be about that. Otherwise, it won’t mean anything and you won’t be invested in it.

Kristen> I totally agree.

MediaBlvd> You said that your movie, Speak, had a special place in your heart because it nurtured your fondness of acting. How did this experience compare, seeing as it’s also such a character-driven piece?

Kristen> It was just like every other character-driven piece I’ve done. It’s weird how you change and grow with every movie you do, with almost every day of shooting. It’s always surprising and always amazing because it’s like, “Wow!” It’s just gonna continue and continue and continue. In a very unspecific way, it was just something I felt very compelled to do and, at the end of it, considering it was so short, I grieved the character for a long time. I held on to her. Obviously, I grew as a person. I had some pretty heavy themes and issues running through my head, most of the time, when we were making the movie. It’s a hard subject matter.

MediaBlvd> If you were approached for another role where you had to do specific mannerisms, would you be more comfortable with that now, or would you still be nervous?

Kristen> Yeah, I would probably be just as nervous, but that’s what drives you to work so hard. That’s why you’re doing this. It’s a driving force. I’m a little bit more ambitious than I was when I was 15 or 16, or however old I was when we made this. I’m more willing to take on big things.

MediaBlvd> What was it like to work with this interesting cast? Did you get to hang out together?

Aaron> We all hung out. We were up in Hudson, New York, which is tiny. We hung out together all the time. It was great to get to know people, like Elizabeth Ashley. And, Bruce Dern was fascinating. He’s an amazing character. If you put him in a room, at a table, you would sit there for the next five days and listen to everything he has to say, and be fascinated by it.  He’s great.

MediaBlvd> What would you hope an audience would take from this film?

Aaron> That’s hard to say. I don’t know if it’s the sort of film that answers a lot of questions, so much as asks a lot of questions. I would just hope that people will see the film and see why it relates to their life, and somehow get some solace from that, or just find something that strikes a chord in them, that moves them and gives them any kind of emotion or experience or feeling.

Kristen> The one thing that the movie has is an unabashedly outward sense of hope. It’s a very positive movie, which is commendable, considering it’s about a girl who is gonna die before she reaches the age of normal consensual sex. So, that’s a feat in itself. Hopefully, audiences can take from it, real characters that actually effected them and put their faith in characters, for a good hour and a half.

MediaBlvd> What does the title mean?

Aaron> It was a whole huge, big deal during production, whether or not they were going to keep the title. here was a line in the original script referring to “the cake eaters,” who were the privileged, wealthy class, on the other side of the tracks -- mainly Georgia’s family -- and the title just came from that. I think it was a phrase that (writer) Jayce Bartok’s grandmother used to say. I think they just held onto it because they liked it. It’s a provocative title. People are going to be asking what the hell it means.

MediaBlvd> Kristen, is this type of film more your speed than the blockbusters?

Kristen> No. The process of making movies is pretty much the same. When they’re on a much larger scale, you might not have such a hands-on feel that you can have a whole lot to say about what goes on creatively, that doesn’t have something to do with your specific story and character. With these types of films, you have a little bit more ownership. You can really own something, if there’s only a couple of people that care about it, and you’re all best friends, for that period of time that you’re making it. It’s your little project. And, it’s easier to promote movies like this, as odd as that sounds, because once you’ve committed to a character and you feel like they’re yours and you’re responsible for them and you have to do them justice, it’s sort of the same monster.

Aaron> It depends on what the blockbuster film is. It’s case by case. There are a lot of shitty blockbuster films, and there a lot of shitty little indie films too. And, there are great blockbuster films and great, tiny, little indie films. It depends on what the project is.                     

MediaBlvd> Kristen, in Adventureland, The Cake Eaters and Twilight, your character has a relationship with a person that they shouldn’t really be having a relationship with. Is it just coincidental that those sort of roles happen for you?

Kristen> Yeah, it’s coincidental. That’s not a recurring theme in my life. But, the stories are so different. In this film, Georgia and Beagle are right for each other. And, in the case of Adventureland, she’s really deliberately hurting herself.

MediaBlvd> Since the recent interview in Nylon magazine, do you feel like you are playing with fire when you talk about the Twilight fans?