Mommie's Boy Stark Sands To Die For. Originally published on ZAP2IT website on Fri, Oct 31, 2003, By Mike Szymanski

In his first big movie, the 25-year-old dude from a conservative Texan family is seen playing the guitar in the nude, plotting to kill his mother and seducing Jason Priestley with the line: "Haul out that bratwurst and spread some mustard on it."
He smiles slyly, "I had a lot of fun with that line, it was too much! I'm just not sure my grandparents should see this." Auburn-haired, green-eyed Stark Sands so far is best known as Lauren Ambrose's heart-throb hippie boyfriend in a two-part stint on "Six Feet Under," but is already replacing twinky poster boy Randy Harrison from "Queer as Folk" as a favorite in the gay community after the film "Die Mommie Die!" has played festivals throughout the country. "I'm flattered! I don't mind [becoming a gay icon] but I didn't know who Randy was and never saw that show, but I was excited about being on the cover of a magazine for my first movie," Sands tells Zap2it.com about his Advocate magazine cover just before his movie opens to mainstream audiences Oct. 31 (and to hit more major markets by late November). Presented by Sundance Film Series, "Die Mommie Die!" is a film adaptation of drag performer Charles Busch's raucous stage play and is an homage to the over-the-top melodramas performed by Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner and Susan Hayward. Busch plays an aging diva married to a once-successful producer (played by Philip Baker Hall) who's fooling around with a gigolo ("Beverly Hills, 90210" star Priestley) and has two weird children played by Natasha Lyonne and Sands.
Although he says he tries to throw a bit of himself into every role, he readily acknowledges he hasn't been able to find the gay side of himself to muster for this role, but he has a lot of gay friends he has borrowed from for his femme portrayal, which also requires him to be in drag. "I can't quite find the gay side to myself, but I certainly could find the obsessive-compulsive part for my role," says the actor, wearing jeans with holes and a green-gray shirt that match his eyes. He lives in Los Angeles, goes to the local Kinkos to rent computer time until he gets his own home set-up and keeps in touch with his friends from Highland Park High near Dallas where he was a shooting guard on the basketball team.
Although a jock in school, he gravitated to the creative world of drama and studied at USC before landing a role on a short-lived ABC series "Lost at Home." One headline about the show read "Saddam should see this, it may kill him" and he faced his first negative reviews. Then, he finds himself in a movie where he gets kicked out of school for leading orgies in the math department and making eyes at any handsome man who comes by, including Priestley's Tab Hunter-like character. "He's a great kid," Priestley tells Zap2it. "He asked me a lot of questions about what was going on on the set. We only had 18 days to film the movie, so I tried to explain to him why cameras were being moved, why the lenses are being changed and what was going on. He asked me about directing, too."
Director Mark Rucker has been told many times that the scene between Priestley and Sands is the sexiest in the film, and says, "I needed someone who could be both sexy and psychotic and he does it well." Although Sands didn't know movies such as "Now Voyager" and "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte," he did know about Busch's cult New York following and the plays "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom" and "Psycho Beach Party" (also turned into a movie).
"Now, if there's a movie from that era that I happen to be flipping by on TV, I'll watch it, whereas I normally wouldn't have," says Sands, who had Busch on the set to constantly explain to him about the films they were trying to spoof in this campy melodrama. His father died of pancreatic cancer in March and wasn't able to see the finished product of "Die Mommie Die," but was always supportive even knowing the over-the-top blue humor of the film. Sands' mother was his date at the Hollywood premiere of the movie. A huge fan of Johnny Depp, he says, "He was given this card early on to play a rebel and he wanted a career that didn't typecast him, and he did that. I admire that."
Already he's done that with films in the can including: a children's caper movie "Mission Without Permission," playing Mandy Moore's boyfriend in her upcoming untitled role where she's the daughter of the president and a Jennifer Lopez movie "Shall We Dance?" where he's the son of Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere. He's also in an indie, "11:14" with Hilary Swank, Colin Hanks, Rachael Leigh Cook and Patrick Swayze with five stories shown from different perspectives. "I have quite a diversity so far, it's pretty early in my career, I have no complaints," he says.