"I'll Be Home for Christmas" (1998) BOP Magazine

 "I'll Be Home for Christmas" (1998) DVD advertisement featured in BOP Magazine.

"Speedway Junky" Out Magazine (May 2002)

Speedway Junky 

Executive producer Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting) once again tells a powerful story of overlooked young men in an indifferent society.

Las Vegas promises easy money and glamorous times to the adults who flock there, but what does it promise a kid? In Speedway Junky, Johnny (Jesse Bradford, Clockstoppers, Dancing at the Blue Iguana) has run away from his military family with a dream of racing cars in North Carolina. Naïve and broke, he ends up in Las Vegas, where he meets Eric (Jordan Brower, Texas Rangers, TV’s Teen Angel) and his street gang friends, including brash hustler Steven (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Common Ground, TV’s Home Improvement),

Initially attracted by the party atmosphere, Johnny walks off in anger when he finds out Eric is gay. On his own, he keeps getting in trouble, but Eric always comes to his rescue. Eric offers Johnny a place to live and makes the difficult decision to teach him to hustle. As the two boys become close, they are confronted by a life-threatening situation involving drugs, money and betrayal. 

Bradford is quite convincing as the innocent teen who comes to love his gay friend. Brower, likewise, shines as the kid who hustles because he thinks he must, but is capable of great love and loyalty, both for Johnny and for his “surrogate mom,” a former junky played affectingly by Darryl Hannah (Splash, Steel Magnolias).

And after years of playing the kid brother on Home Improvement, it’s fascinating to see Jonathan Taylor Thomas play a swaggering hotshot who’ll sleep with the male or female who offers the most bucks on any given night.

1997 Nickelodeon The Big Help

Jonathan Taylor Thomas & Larisa Oleynik appear in an advert for Nickelodeon’s The Big Help in late 1997.

Video sourced from Internet Archive

Got Milk? Advertisement (April 18, 1997)

Jonathan Taylor Thomas photographed in Culver City, California, on April 18, 1997 for his advertisement for ‘Got Milk?’

April 18, 1997

Culver City, California.

The original idea for the Jonathan Taylor Thomas photo was to have him sitting in front of a makeup mirror.

After kicking the idea around a bit, we decided that what we really wanted was to downplay Jonathan’s role on television’s Home Improvement and promote J.T.T. as a teenage heartthrob.

We came up with the garage concept. There wasn’t one woman on the set that day that didn’t think he looked cute.

Guess it worked.

Text sourced from “The Milk Mustache Book: A Behind-The-Scenes Look At America’s Favorite Advertising Campaign” By Jay Schulberg. 1999 Ballantine Books.

Advertisement transcript: “Sure I’m young. But I know a lot about girls. Stuff they don’t even know. Like, 8 out of 10 don’t get enough calcium. Big mistake, but easy to fix. Just get at least 3 glasses of milk a day. It has lots of calcium to help bones grow strong. Of course, milk helps me too. I look older with a mustache.”

During his appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show’s Season 2, Episode 26, in 1997, Jonathan explains what that infamous milk mustache is made of:

“It’s a bunch of different things. Its got yogurt, ice cream, milk, glue. Its got everything in there so it stays on your lips during the shoot.”