There’s just no getting around it. Were Jason Biggs to pioneer cold fusion, cure cancer and then, after breakfast, write a Pynchonesque novel, he would still forever be associated with American Pie’s central visual metaphor. That someday his tombstone may read ‘He stuck his dick in pies. For all of us.’ doesn’t really bother him, though inevitably the 27 year-old still gets yelled at in the street.
“I wish once they’d say something really witty,” he tells me. “And I really don’t mind it. But it’s always just ‘Hey Pie Guy!’ or ‘Hey American Pie’. Once I had this girl come up and say ‘I wanna be your pie’ but I wasn’t prepared for it and ended up cowering away into the nearest corner. Too much, too soon.”
Despite the notoriety, the actor has since demonstrated keen comic instincts beyond the world of pastries, working with Jack Black on Saving Silverman and for Woody Allen on Anything Else.
“Woody’s very cool”, gushes Jason. “It’s not like working for anyone else. He wants you to do your own thing. But he was still intimidating by default. He walks on set and you’re like ‘Oh my God! It’s Woody Allen!’”
Most recently, Mr. Biggs has been freezing his ass off in two chilly productions – the husky-bonding kids' flick Antarctica and the rather more interesting Guy X.
“Yeah, well, it’s like this”, he explains. “I had to walk around with a warm sausage between my legs for American Pie, so I figured aiming for frostbite was like some kind of karma thing. And it worked because even though I didn’t lose any toes, I did get bitten by puffins. Those fuckers.”
In Guy X, a dark, 70s-set Helleresque comedy, Jason finds himself stranded on the Qangattarsa US military base, above the Arctic Circle. There he stumbles on secret medical unit which houses mortally wounded soldiers from Vietnam in order to keep the official figures for fatalities down.
“I’m far more used to broad comedy,” says Jason. “I like being a clown and I like going for the joke. But here I couldn’t do that. It’s a black comedy, so I had to be disciplined. I had to keep the performance subtle. It was such a brilliant funny script. I hope I did it justice.”
Having toned down his banana-peel comedy, is he now keen to move in more serious thespian circles?
“You know, I like to stretch, but not as far as Shakespeare or anything. I’m a pretty goofy guy and I don’t think it’d be my place. I never made it to a single class in college.”
Ironically, despite his shocking attendance record, college ambitions kick-started Jason’s entire career. At the age of five, his mother realised that her clownish son might be happy in front of a camera and started taking him to auditions with a view to putting money aside for his university years. He was an immediate hit, landing parts in sitcoms within the year while also finding time to carve out a youthful career on the Broadway boards.
School quickly became a secondary concern once the acting bug bit hard. Since then, he’s been working and falling over on a regular basis in movies such as Loser, Prozac Nation and Jersey Girl. Like most young professionals his age, he’s alarmingly together and industrious, with little time for the blandishments of Hollywood.
“Just after Pie, the invites to premieres started rolling in,” he sighs. “And for the first few months I was like, ‘Woo-hoo! Free movie!’ The novelty wore off pretty quick though. Soon it was like ‘I’m not wearing a tux again’. I’m happy just hanging out and doing dangerous things with motorbikes. Well, I also like doing dangerous things with large numbers of chickens and hookers occasionally, but I am a guy.”