Chris Klein on Taking a Supporting Role in ?Just Friends:? Chris Klein ("American Pie") plays Dusty Dinkleman, a guitar-playing paramedic in the romantic comedy, "Just Friends." He's also Ryan Reynolds? onscreen rival for the affection of Amy Smart.
Though he doesn't get a lot of screen time in "Just Friends," Klein does have a couple of real scene-stealing moments. After saying thanks for the compliment, Klein said, ?This was the opportunity that Ryan and I both had here, was to come together as a cohesive unit and work to get the scene exactly right.

To find the joke, to get the laugh. But more importantly than all that, in all comedy, is to tell the story and know exactly what's going on.

Ryan did a particularly wonderful job of playing the straight man when he needed to. Without his reaction to my antics, it won't work. So I really think the credit falls to both of us to be able to deliver those scenes appropriately.?

Chris Klein on Playing a Geeky High School Student: Klein is covered with pimples and has stringy hair when his character Dusty enters the picture as a high school student. ?That was a bit of time in the makeup chair, although I couldn't complain. Ryan had to wear a fat suit. That was really fun too, actually. They did a wonderful job with the hair and the acne makeup. That's great. That's kind of the idea. So we had a good time playing with that,? said Klein.

His character Dusty has a stuttering problem in his teen years, and Klein said that was something he came up with for the character. ?That was a personal creative choice.

I just thought that to show the distance and growth that Dusty came from in high school to now being a paramedic - and having the theme of ?Superman? playing when I catch Amy Smart - it was a creative choice. It was also something that I wanted to play with because growing up, I had a stuttering issue as well. Not in high school. Mine was earlier on in my childhood development. But it's always something that I've been interested in because I remember it affecting my life in a huge way. So I was excited to go back and play with that a little bit. Just exercise that a little,? explained Klein.

Chris Klein on the Dreaded 'Just Friends' Label: ?I was kind of thinking about that on the way over here, trying to remember if I had been or had not been because I thought that that might be a question of interest. I did come up with one name, and her name is Natalie. I remember my freshman year of high school - my freshman and sophomore years of high school - I was absolutely in love with her but she was always busy dating older guys. I had braces and I was kind of a late bloomer pubescence-wise, so I didn't have the juice needed to get out of that. I was in jazz choir and things like that. She was interested in all that stuff too, so we'd go on the road together and do all that stuff. But I could never? She dated a baseball player. I had no chance.?

Chris Klein on Filming ?Just Friends? in Canada: ?What ended up happening in Regina, and we also used the town of Moose Jaw which is I guess 45 miles to the east of Regina, it actually reminded me a heck of a lot of where I grew up. The flatness of it. The sparseness of it. When you do get to the town, environmentally it was perfect for our movie: how I felt very at home with the women of our particular suburban small town, how I was content with the available women in that town and confident that I could woo most of them, if not all. Ryan's feeling of being trapped right back where he was and what he escaped from only to find that maybe he hasn't changed as much as he thought he did. The town really created, really helped us for that environment and that atmosphere. It was really great.

One of the things I love about acting is that I get to travel to all kinds of different spots. Though some of the locations might not be the most exotic, i.e. Regina in my particular opinion, but it's always when you end up making a movie like this, you end up having a special memory about that particular place, which I did.?