Jonah Hill
by Ryan Stewart for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Famously discovered by Dustin Hoffman, whose children were fans of his one-man plays in Manhattan’s East Village, Jonah Hill was already going places in the comedy business when he had the good fortune to acquire a second mentor in comedy mogul Judd Apatow -- the rest is history. After killing with smallish parts in Apatow-directed comedies The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, the acerbic young comedian (then 24) landed a lead role specifically tailored to his strengths in Superbad, a teen bromance more foul-mouthed and uninhibited than any of the 80s comedies that inspired it. Superbad’s massive success opened up even more doors for Hill, who, at age 27, is already broadening his horizons with more dramatic fare like this year’s indie smash Cyrus and the forthcoming sports drama Moneyball, opposite Brad Pitt. He’s not likely to forget his comedy roots, however, as evidenced by his straight-man role opposite shot-out-of-a-cannon British comedian Russell Brand in this summer’s sleeper hit Get Him to the Greek. With the Greek DVD dropping this week, SuicideGirls called up Hill to get an update on his whirlwind life.




Ryan Stewart: One thing I enjoyed about Get Him to the Greek is that it sort of revels in rock star behavior, even though in the real world that’s pretty much a thing of the past. It should come back, right?

Jonah Hill: You know, I don’t know about that. After shooting the movie I personally needed a break from rock star behavior for about…oh, forever. [laughs] I think you can watch the movie and take a few different things away from it: you can maybe think that, yeah, there should be more rock star stuff going on out there. But I kind of watch it and think, hey, being normal and just hanging out at home isn’t really so bad either!

RS: I guess there are no longer any rock stars around to misbehave anyway, unless you count Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. I can see Paris goading someone into putting drugs in their ass at the airport the way it happens in the movie, can’t you?

JH: [laughs] I don’t know! Look, I think people should do whatever makes them happy, you know? If you want to live that kind of rock star lifestyle – and I’m not referring to them, because I don’t know them – but if you want to live a rock star lifestyle that’s your prerogative. You should just try and be safe and happy. And if you don’t want to do it, then don’t!

RS: Did you use method acting in that airport scene, by the way? Or was that just a good performance on your part?

JH: Well, you know, I spent the weeks beforehand starting out with a quarter and then I worked my way up to a watermelon…[laughs] So yeah, that was a very strong method acting choice.

RS: Did Russell ever do anything wacky on the set, or was it mostly good behavior from him? I just saw that TMZ video of him getting “citizen’s arrested” at an airport.

JH: All I ever really saw was him being a really hard-working, great guy. He really is a wonderful guy. He’s extremely smart and extremely nice, and I really like him and the people he has around him. I mean, he definitely has his eccentricities and things like that, but he’s a really good guy. I appreciate him a lot, you know?

RS: Was there anything you two did together on screen that you were especially proud of, but that maybe got cut out in editing anyway?

JH : Yeah, there was a whole sequence where we did a bunch of cocaine and then we just ran through Central Park. Russell’s character makes me do cocaine with him and then we go jogging in Central Park and there’s this really cool, hilarious montage, but the problem with it was that it came right after the absinthe montage, which was better, so we couldn’t really have two weird, “us being messed up” montages right next to each other because that would be weird, you know?

RS: Right. I bet you also went back and added more Puff Daddy material after you saw him knocking it out of the park. He pretty much owns the movie.

JH: Yeah, I think Nick may have added more stuff in once we knew. As soon as he showed up we became really excited about how hilarious he was. Everyone was fired up about him, definitely, because he was so great.

RS: Were you riffing off pages of jokes and not really lingering on any one thing, or were you all about tinkering and trying to get each joke down perfectly?

JH: I think I would say that both would be an accurate way of thinking about it. I like to improvise a lot, so I’ll try a million different things and see what sticks, but then at the same time when I see that something is working I’ll start thinking about how to word it perfectly and how to make sure that we’re getting it across in the cleanest way possible. And when I say “clean” I don’t mean content-wise, I mean the best-delivered package, delivering it to the audience in the best way possible.

RS: I noticed that your character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall isn’t ever mentioned in this film at all, even though Russell is playing his same character. Does your guy exist in the universe of Get Him to the Greek? Is he at home watching all of this on television or something?

JH: [laughs] I think he must be in some weird prison in Hawaii.

RS: Did you actually think about tossing something like that in? A quick nod to him?

JH: Oh yeah, we kind of talked about every possible thing you can imagine for him. We thought of all sorts of ways to work it in. It was like ‘Are they going to meet each other?’ ‘Should we just reference him?’ And then at the end of the day we just kind of decided that he’s one guy and this is going to be a different guy.

RS: You didn’t want to confuse the audience?

JH: Yeah. We knew that we didn’t want him to be the same person that I was going to play in this movie, so we figured let’s just not even waste time explaining it. Let’s just go with the fact that one guy is one guy and the other guy is a different guy, and not even really have it be a discussion. That’s kind of how we approached it.

RS: Do you have any weird tastes in movies that people wouldn’t assume? Do you secretly love Highlander movies or something?

JH: I think that my tastes wouldn’t necessarily reflect what you know me for in all cases. Of course I do love all of the classic comedies that you could imagine, but I also really love Paul Thomas Anderson. I love Alexander Payne and Scorsese and also Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. I really like those filmmakers a lot, and I also love Bennett Miller, who I just worked with. I made a drama with him called Moneyball, and we just finished that. So, I don’t know, I do like all kinds of different things. I have very eclectic tastes in music also, so it would be just as hard to answer something like ‘What kind of music do you like’ because I have super-eclectic tastes in music.

RS: So, would you say that the comedy duo of you and Russell Brand is more or less retired at this point? Or is there a trilogy idea kicking around?

JH: I think anything’s possible, so I don’t really know. I don’t really even think like that, I only think about what the story is that we’re trying to tell and what kind of movie we’re trying to make as opposed to ‘Let’s figure out something that we can do with this person,’ you know? That said, I love Russell and I would love to work with him again, but it just all depends on what it is as opposed to who it is, you know? It’s more like ‘What are we trying to make here?’ It can’t be ‘Let’s find something for us to do together, no matter what it is.’

RS: You’ve been pretty vocal about wanting to transition into directing at some point in the near future. Do you admire the way Ben Affleck was able to pull off that 180 degree change? People are going to think of him primarily as a director now.

JH: Oh yeah, I admire it beyond comprehension. He’s kind of the perfect example of that, although Jon Favreau is a great example too. And also Ron Howard is a great example of it too, you know? Yeah, man, I don’t know Ben Affleck – I met him maybe once or something – but just as a fan I think that it’s incredible to make that transition. I look at it like that’s exactly what I want to do, and he just kind of pulled it off flawlessly! But you have to also remember that the guy won an Oscar for screenwriting, you know?

RS: Good point. When should we look for your first effort behind the camera?

JH: I would say hopefully I’ll start in the next year or two, definitely. That’s kind of what I’m gunning for. I don’t know what it’s going to be, though, and I wouldn’t want to speak on what kind of movie it’s even going to be, because then it might end up being something completely different from this awesome thing that everyone was waiting on. But it really is my goal, and I am trying to figure out how to accomplish it.





Get Him to the Greek is available September 28th on DVD and Blu-ray.

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Jonah+Hill/