META-

GOSLING:” Thanks so much for doing this. You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever actually felt compelled to tell the truth in an interview. But now that it’s you doing the interviewing, I feel like I can’t make stuff up, because you’re a truth-seeker.”

CARELL: “I would actually like to begin this by saying that I want you to lie to me. If you feel uncomfortable at any point during this interview, please make up a story that has no bearing on your actual life. That’s what I do, and it seems to work well.”

GOSLING:”I should let you know before we get into this that the pictures which will be accompanying this interview are basically of me in tight, wet T-shirts and tiny leather jackets going around in the rain and pretending that I’m a lot cooler than I am.”

CARELL:” Are these the pictures that I took?”

GOSLING:” No, but similar. [laughs]”

…..

GOSLING: “I loved growing up in Canada. It’s a great place to grow up, because—well, at least where I grew up—it’s very multicultural. There’s also good health care and a good education system. So it’s a great place to be from, although, when I was 8, I was walking to school one day and I saw a frozen cat by the side of the road, and I picked it up and hit it against a tree.”

CARELL: “Just to confirm that it was frozen?”

GOSLING: “Yeah. It was frozen solid, almost mid-step. So I thought, “This isn’t right. I’m moving to California as soon as I can drive.” And that’s what I did.”

…
GOSLING:”Well, in my age bracket, there were seven kids, three of whom were Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake.”

CARELL: “That’s unbelievable that the four of you were cast at the same time. That, frankly, says a lot about the casting people at The [All New] Mickey Mouse Club.”

GOSLING: “I know. There was a guy there named Matt Casella, who we really owe it all to. But I didn’t end up working as much as I wanted to on the show, so I had a lot of free time, which I ended up spending in the Disney World park itself. It was interesting as a kid to go backstage to the commissary, and to see all of the people who were playing the characters with their heads off next to them while they were eating lunch. I remember there was one guy who I became friends with. He played a genie and was this great dancer. He took us to a place called Pleasure Island, which was for adults to go after the kids had their days. It was geared toward an older crowd. It was completely inappropriate, now that I’m thinking about it, but he would sneak us in and we would go to a club there called 8 Trax and dance with the secretaries, who were grinding on us … Now, that sounds completely inappropriate. I can’t imagine how it was possible.”