Waking Life and Other Complex Creations: An Interview with Wiley WigginsBy: Dan HeatonWiley Wiggins first appeared in front of film audiences as nervous teen Mitch Kramer in Richard Linklater's 1993 cult classic Dazed and Confused. Since that time, he has appeared in Boys, Love and a .45, and The Faculty. Wiley recently played the featured role in animated form in Linklater's ambitious and stunning Waking Life, which presented a groundbreaking format never before seen on the feature-film level. Wiley also worked as an animator on the picture, and he possesses significant background and experience in the design field.
When he's not acting, Wiley also devotes his time to writing short stories, which appear on his web site www.wileywiggins.com. He is currently working on his first novel, The Queen of the Ant-Lions. digitallyOBSESSED recently asked the 25-year-old about Waking Life, his DVD collection, the state of the film industry, and specifically the science fiction genre. dOc: The exceptional Waking Life DVD recently hit the stores. How did you enjoy participating in the commentary track?
Wiggins: I had been looking forward to it for most of the week before, thinking about all the clever things I would say. Then, on the morning of the recording, I managed to somehow stick myself in the eye with my thumb. I can't explain how it happened other than to say that I am not very coordinated in the morning. I went to the recording with my head bowed and a damp paper towel over my eye. I'm happy to report that my eye is much better now and Rick did most of the talking anyway.
dOc: Were you actively involved in other aspects of this release?
Wiggins: I think they've got some of my unused art as an extra feature. As for anything else well, I'm not sure if they included my award-winning waffle recipe or my perpetual motion device schematics. I'll have to wait till Fox Searchlight sends me my very own copy.
dOc: Do you have much of a personal DVD collection? What are some of your favorite discs?
Wiggins: My own collection is rather small but here are a few of my favorites:
2001: A Space Odyssey (D: Stanley Kubrick): Unfortunately there aren't a lot of extras on this disc, but you can change the language to French, which makes HAL sound downright sinister.
Parents (D: Bob Balaban): I love this movie. It's everything horror movies can be but usually aren't. Randy Quaid makes my skin crawl in every scene he's in. Brian Madorsky gives one of my all-time favorite childhood performances.
Alien "Legacy": I got this and threw away the last two movies. It was cheaper than buying the first two separately. I didn't just throw away the last two movies, I think I broke them. It was my revenge for having to see them in the theater.
Solaris (D: Andrei Tarkovsky): I know Steven Soderbergh is making a remake of this now, but he's kidding himself if he thinks he can do better than the scene where Natalya Bondarchuk drinks liquid oxygen and then slowly, agonizingly, comes back to life.
Andrei Rubalev (D: Andrei Tarkovsky): Another movie from the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. There's a scene in this where dozens of naked pagans are running through a black Russian forest at night with torches and there's this sort of murmuring singing going on in the background. I imagine not a lot of people have enough of an attention span to watch movies like this anymore, but I attribute that to stupidity drugs in the water supply.
Repo Man: Special Edition: OK, so I don't really have this, but I want it really badly. My birthday is on November 6th.
The Thing: Collector's Edition Some of my more snooty film friends don't understand why I love this movie so much. Then I make them watch the scene where Wilford Brimley goes insane and throws a gun at the other characters after firing all its rounds at them. Ditto for when he buries his fingers in another man's face and drags him around by the skull. Plus the monster in this movie played checkers with me once during a particularly bad acid trip. Don't tell my mom I said that. 
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