AS A KID growing up in Draper, Noah Bastian dreamed of becoming an actor.
He's living his dream with a starring role in MTV's first-ever made-for-TV
movie, "2gether" - and he's more than thrilled to be doing so. But the life of an
actor isn't exactly what the general public might think. "When I started doing
TV, I was a little bit surprised at how different it was than I thought it would be,"
Bastian said during a telephone interview with the Deseret News. "It's not at all
glamorous like people think it is. It's really hard work and long days." Not that
he's complaining one bit about his experience on "2gether" (Monday, 6 p.m.,
MTV), a comedy that parodies the current popularity of boy bands. "It was tons
of fun," Bastian said. "I made a lot of friends, especially Kevin Farley. He's a
real good guy." Bastian and Farley (brother of the late Chris Farley) play brothers
who are two-fifths of 2gether, a boy band put together by veteran music manager
Bob Buss (Alan Blumenfeld) when megastar boy band Whoa! stabs him in the back.
Buss puts together a new dream team that's really more misfit than perfect fit:
Chad (Bastian) is "the shy one," Linus (Farley) is "the "older brother," Jerry
(Evan Farmer) is "the heart-throb," Mickey (Alex Solowitz) is "the rebel" and
Jason, a k a "QT" (Michael Cuccione), is "the cute one." The fact that Jason is
afflicted with a fatal, incurable disease - which Buss uses as a marketing tool - is
a pretty good indication of the tone of "2gether." And Bastian's character is . . .
well, he's a dope. "My character was really, really dumb," he said. "That was the
funnest part about it, because I'd never played a character like this before. I'd
always played, like, a bully or a shy kid. This kid's shy, but he's just outright
stupid. And it was really fun because it was a definite jump from me to this kid.
"I'm not saying I'm smart or anything, but this kid is just insanely dumb." Bastian
does have a few things in common with his character, however. They both sing
and dance quite well. They're both small town boys who hit it big - Bastian was
acting in school plays at Alta High as recently as 1996 (his junior year). "The
teachers there at Alta are amazing theater teachers," Bastian said. "Paul
Winkleman and Chris Richards, they're really good theater teachers." He did
home-study his senior year so he could pursue acting. A small part in the Disney
Channel movie "Johnny Tsunami" got him noticed, got him a manager, got him a
bit part on "Days of Our Lives" and - after a cattle-call audition and four or five
call-backs - got him the part in "2gether." "I always wanted to be an actor and I
love to sing, but I never thought that they would go hand-in-hand," Bastian said.
"Not only that, but I used to dance a lot. At Alta, I was on the ballroom team."
Among the goofier aspects of "2gether" is the wide range of bizarre outfits the
boys wear, which range from gaudy to just plain strange. Like when they're
attired in jungle-man outfits. "The first Tarzan (outfit) I saw was Evan's. That
was not the right one to see because his was just really small," Bastian said.
"Luckily, mine was bigger." Then there were the suits that made the guys look like
sumo wrestlers. "At first I was like, 'Oh, this is going to be fun.' But then I got
sewn up into the fat-guy suit for about seven hours and it was really hot," Bastian
said. The script called for him to get stuck in his, and the fantasy ended up
becoming reality. "The Velcro just wasn't holding for the kind of movement they
wanted me to do. So it was their brilliant idea to sew me up in the suit," Bastian
said. "I got stuck in the suit for the seven- or eight-hour shoot." However, the
scenes of the band singing and dancing they shot the next couple of days "made
up for it." "They had, like, 300 extras screaming. It was fun," Bastian said. And
it gave the actors a taste of what it must be like for the real boy bands like
Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync. "It was very surreal. It's like jumping into a
different world because these girls, they were just hired as actresses to do that,
but it seemed so real," Bastian said. "They were so into it. It was very eerie. "In
one of the scenes . . . we had to walk through the crowd and get into the limo and
we had girls grabbing at us. I had a girl grab the back of my hair." While 2gether
isn't exactly a real boy band, its video "U+Me=Us (Calculus)" is getting play on
MTV, and they've made a couple of appearances on the cable network's top-rated
show, "Total Request Live." Which has also given Bastian a taste of what the real
bands go through. "We've already experienced some backlash from this. Not bad,
but, I mean, people saying, '2gether sucks,' " he said with a laugh. "It's mostly
boys, though. '2gether sucks. Boy-bands suck.' " And, while the movie parodies
the boy-band phenomenon, it isn't vicious. (Why would MTV bite the hand that
helps feed it?) Bastian himself has nothing negative to say about his real-life
counterparts. "Actually, I am a fan," he said. "I think people take this kind of pop
music a little too seriously. It's just entertainment and it's just about good music.
It's not Eric Clapton or anything - it's just boy bands. "I was a fan before this,
too. and that probably helped me get the part. I knew the music and I knew how to
sing it." As excited as he is about "2gether," his parents - David and Gayla
Bastian - are even more excited. "My parents tape everything - all the
commercials. I guarantee you that they'll cut this out of the newspaper if it's in
there," he said with a laugh. "My mom loves it. She's way into it. She thinks it's
just great."
By Scott Pierce, Deseret News television critic