Film: Cregger can identify with his 'Miss March' character

Except for the whole part where he wakes up from a coma to find his girlfriend is a Playboy centerfold, Zach Cregger can identify closely with his character in "Miss March."
"It's basically about what I was like in my youth," says the 27-year-old Cregger, who wrote, co-directed and stars in the teen comedy, in theaters Friday. "He is very pro-abstinence, very polarized on the topic of sex. He's very puritanical."
Cregger plays Eugene Bell, a guy who wants to hold out on sex until marriage. His girlfriend is pressuring him otherwise. When he finally decides to give in, he has an accident and is in a coma for four years. He awakens to find out his old girlfriend is a Playboy centerfold model.
Determined to confront his old girlfriend, Eugene and best friend Tucker Cleigh (Trevor Moore) go on a road trip across the country to track her down at the Playboy mansion.
So is "Miss March" making a statement about waiting?
"There is a message in the movie," says Cregger, who is single but in a committed relationship, "but it's not about not waiting."
Tucker "has an equally unrealistic view about sex," Cregger says. "He wants to have sex with as many people as possible before marriage."
Then what is Cregger's movie trying to say? "There's so many different ways to look at sex, all equally as unhealthy," he says. "There is a middle ground, and you have to let some of these things go sometimes."
Cregger says "Miss March" also shines a bit of light on subjects rarely talked about. For instance, "sometimes," he says, "guys are afraid of sex."
But for all he's talk of the issues within the movie, "Miss March" is still a sex comedy about two buddies on a road trip. It has silly sight gags and pratfalls.
Cregger says he can identify with both Eugene and Tucker. Eugene is the guy he used to be. Later, but before he found his girlfriend, Cregger was a bit more like Tucker.
"I have elements of both," he says. "I have more in common with both of the characters once the (story) arc has come to an end."
Cregger wrote the movie two years ago. It is his feature-film debut and his first major project outside his cable-TV sketch show, "The Whitest Kids You Know" (10 p.m. EDT Tuesdays on the Independent Film Channel).
"It was easy to write, but the first (scripts) had nothing to do with abstinence. It was just about two guys on a road trip, wanting to break into the Playboy mansion."
Once Moore, who was also raised in a conservative and religious family, and Cregger talked about Eugene's whole abstinence issue, the script went into a slightly different direction.
"At the core of it," Cregger says of "Miss March," "it's your basic teen sex romp/road trip comedy. It kind of wrote itself."
And what does Cregger's mom think of her son's first major movie?
"Well," he says. "I think she is proud of me and happy for me.
"I don't know if she's going to see it, and I'd be surprised if she recommends it to her friends."

(E-mail Terry Morrow of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at morrow2(at)knews.com.)