Director Milo Ventimiglia starts small, very small

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Heroes star and current EW cover boy Milo Ventimiglia will be directing a "Web comedy series" called It's a Mall World for American Eagle Outfitters. The series, 12 five-minute webisodes to premiere on the clothing company's website (and as ads on MTV) in August, "explores the lives and relationships of a greeter/salesgirl at an American Eagle store, two employees at a fictitious independent record store, a 'slightly psychotic' girl who works in a similarly ersatz lingerie store called Glorious Chest, and a 'bad-boy poseur from the requisite mall juice bar.'"

This sounds so, what's the word we're looking for— lame?— that it's endearing. You can just feel how much he wants to direct, and how willing he is to do whatever it takes to learn the craft. You gotta respect that. EW readers already know Ventimiglia is comfortable behind a camera. A budding photographer, he chatted with me late last year about the photos he'd taken on the set of Rocky Balboa (two of which then appeared in our Holiday Movie Preview issue). He said he'd been watching how director Sylvester Stallone set up his shots, and that having a ringside seat to "the process" was one of the reasons he took the role.

Ventimiglia also told me he's been taking pictures since he was in high school: "I was always the guy who would have a camera and document the event, to the point where my friends would be like, 'Dude, stop taking pictures.'" He got serious about it a few years ago, and has been shooting behind-the-scenes of whatever project he's worked on, including Heroes, ever since. Who'd happily sit through an album of those photos?