Offbeat talent Jack Carpenter in “I Love You Beth Cooper”
In this age of virtual networking, nothing still beats the corporeal when it comes to bagging the best of times with our best friends. It is all these doing and undoing of things taboo during adolescent years that makes high school the most unparalleled times for most, if not all. Such is the case in the latest comedy “I Love You Beth Cooper” where up and coming young actor Jack Carpenter tackles basic teen issues with sheer talent under the magical hands of director Chris Columbus, who directed the first Harry Potter films – “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone,” “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and produced the third “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”
Jack Carpenter stars as Rich alongside Hayden Panettiere in “I Love You Beth Cooper.” In the movie, Rich successfully goaded his best friend Dennis Cooverman (Paul Rust) into expressing his secret chronic l’amour for six years to Beth Cooper (Panettiere) during his valedictory address.
For the part of the flashy Rich, Jack T. Carpenter shares his own take on the place he and Denis occupy in the scheme of all things high school: “The characters Paul and I play are not the complete losers. It’s just that we don’t quite fit in. It’s where I was in high school and that’s something that I definitely connect to.” Rich is one of those great character combinations, then, of verbal acuity, physical comedy and a deep soul…think The Fool in several of Shakespeare’s plays. And who wouldn’t want to portray that?
Carpenter continues, “The thing I like most about Rich is that underneath all of his shtick and his movie quotes, there’s a real sincerity to the guy; he’s a real human being who’s had a really hard background. And he’s trying to get through it. He’s got these brand new shoes that he had to buy himself, because his father wouldn’t get them for him; it’s oddly symbolic, because he’s just trying to dance his way through life without concentrating too much on the bad stuff. Rich convinces Denis to tell Beth he loves her, because in the movie-influenced world of Rich, people who do that fall in love. And even though things don’t go that way, he just doesn’t concentrate on it. He goes with the flow, onto the next piece of bad advice he will give Denis.”
Jack Carpenter made his film debut in the teen comedy “Sydney White” with Amanda Bynes. Next up, he will show his range of acting in the drama “Harvest” opposite Robert Loggia and Barbara Barrie. In 2006, just months out of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama, Carpenter nabbed the lead role of Adam Lipshitz opposite Leslie Nielson in the NBC Television pilot “Lipshitz Saves the World,” which unfortunately never aired. However, he later went on to a recurring role in the Fox comedy “The Return of Jezebel James,” opposite Lauren Ambrose and Parker Posie.
“I Love You Beth Cooper” opens September 9 in theaters from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.