Look at that face — what’s not to love? Credit: Getty Images
We’ve all seen romantic comedies from the female perspective. Zac Efron is excited to turn the tables.
“This is, I think, the first look really at what it’s like to be a guy dating at our age,” he told reporters at last week’s press conference for his new film, “That Awkward Moment.”
The movie is about dating, sure, but at its crux the real relationship in the spotlight is the one between Efron’s character, Jason, and his two best friends, played by Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller. “Sometimes it takes your best friends to get through it,” he says.
And it’s good to have friends on your side during love’s many twists and turns. Efron says one of his favorite moments of the film — which he also produced — is when his character realizes he’s got someone special in Ellie, a writer he meets out one night.
“For the first time, he’s flustered,” he says. “He’s never had this feeling before. He doesn’t quite know what it is, and he’s caught off guard.” It’s one of the film’s many awkward moments: “that moment of authenticity, of a guy who’s so smooth [meeting] somebody that he has no tricks for.”
On a totally different level (literally and figuratively), one other standout awkward moment in the film finds Efron and his buddies forced to approach relieving themselves in a new and unusual way, thanks to the Viagra they’d taken earlier.
“In real life I wouldn’t use that technique,” Efron says. “I think there’s other ways around it. Actually, it was a weird day of filming. … [I had] an elevated toilet in the middle of the room, built for this reason. So it was a room full of people. That was really awkward — everybody watching.”
In case you were wondering, that means there’s some Efron skin in the film, which the actor says he is perfectly OK with.
“If it’s authentic and helps the story and it’s necessary, then there’s nothing I wouldn’t try.”
Dating drama
Efron told the crowd that he doesn’t really have any dealbreakers — but that doesn’t make things much easier for him.
“I think it’s tough to do what we do, be actors, and constantly move around. We’re on an adventure here, and it has a lot of different twists and turns that we don’t expect. I don’t want to commit to being in a relationship that I can’t be 100 percent there for that person all the time. It’s difficult.”
His most awkward moment
“My most awkward moment was probably this year when I slipped and hit my face on the fountain in my house. The cool part of that [story] is there is a fountain in my house.”
