Before I ever met him about a year and a half ago in Austin at the SXSW Film Festival when he was doing press for his great turn in CYRUS, Jonah Hill was one of my favorite people in movies. From the first time he registered in my brain as the kids just trying to buy some kick-ass merchandise at an eBay pack-and-ship store run by Catherine Keener in THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN to playing the would-be college student in ACCEPTED opposite Justin Long to improv-laced supporting roles KNOCKED UP, FUNNY PEOPLE, and FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL to even funnier leading roles in SUPERBAD and GET HIM TO THE GREEK, Hill is a deep well of comedy in any size role.
But with CYRUS, something changed, and under the direction and guidance of directors Mark and Jay Duplass, Hill tapped into a serious, sometimes dark side that never felt like a guy swimming out of his depth. Hill was convincingly creepy in CYRUS, and it opened up a world of possibilities that MONEYBALL director Bennett Miller wanted to tap into when he cast Hill as the Oakland A's numbers man Peter Brand alongside general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt). It's a remarkable and utterly convincing performance, in which Hill must play an obsessive, almost robotic statistics junkie whose love of baseball materializes in putting together teams based on their affordability and ability, and not on intangibles like charisma and looks.
Before year's end, we'll see Hill do the hard-R-rated babysitting comedy THE SITTER, and next year, he's got a whole slate of films lined up, including the adaptation of 21 JUMP STREET, with Channing Tatum, and the Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg-written NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH, directed by Lonely Island's Akiva Schaffer and co-starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn. Hill also co-created the upcoming Fox animated series "Allen Gregory," for which he does the voice of a spoiled-rotten, seven-year-old who is forced to attend public school. The premieres in October between "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy"; you could do worse.
I spoke to Hill in Chicago last week, the morning after a wonderfully received screening of MONEYBALL, with one of the funniest Q&As I've ever been a park of. One of the reasons Hill is so much fun to talk to is that he's one of the biggest film geeks I know, and no conversation between us in the past has happened without a lengthy discussion of what's good in theaters at the time and what we're looking forward to seeing in the near future. Oh, and in case you were wondering, MONEYBALL, which opens this week, is one of the best films you'll see this year, whether you're a baseball fan or not. Please enjoy my talk with Jonah Hill…
Capone: Hello again.
Jonah Hill: Hello, sir.
Capone: I heard you had some fun last night.
JH: Oh, I told Chicago what was up.
[Both Laugh]
JH: Oh man, that was so fun last night.
Capone: Yeah.
JH: I had a great time.
Capone: I got a lot of great emails and comments on Twitter with people saying what an awesome time they had.
JH: Oh, that’s cool. I had such a great time. Your audiences are always so receptive.
Capone: So forgive me if we cover some of the same ground we covered last night…
JH: What do you mean? I’ve been covering new ground with every interview I’ve been doing.
Capone: Of course.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: When you're creating a character like Peter, who isn’t a real person, who is a mixture of a couple different people, how do you go about building that peron? I think you said last night you actually did meet with at least one of the guys...
JH: I met with a few people who were using Sabermetrics at that time. Paul DePodesta and Theo Epstein and people who were really open and giving with their stories and time. But to me it took a lot of pressure off of me. Brad [Pitt] was playing a guy who lives right now and has a family and…
Capone: And the same job , right?
JH: Yeah, THE same job. So, that is a lot of pressure for somebody, and to me it was just, “Oh, I get to create a character that will best service the story and create a cool character that I’ve been wanting to play, a member of society I’ve observed, someone who blends in with the wall and would be in the back number crunching. What happens when a light is shined on them, and they get empowered for the first time?” It’s like a baby using their legs for the first time, and that to me was a cool character to explore.
Capone: But making Peter have the wallflower personality, trying blend in, was that Bennett [Miller]’s idea? Was that your idea?
JH: Bennett and I talked about that, and we felt the same way for what it should be, but we definitely felt that at the same time where it was like, “That person should blend in with the wall,” and when you first meet me, I literally do, he does it so cool, Bennett, with my introduction.
Capone: I know exactly what you are talking about.
JH: They go by me, but they don’t draw attention to me.
Capone: Yeah, when Brad walks in the room and there you are, in a line up of other guys.
JH: Exactly, yeah. I loved the way he did that.
Capone: I actually forced myself to notice your introduction the second time I saw the film because I'd completely missed it the first time.
JH: It’s like he introduced the second lead in the film without taking more than a millisecond to show me.
Capone: It’s like an anti-introduction.
JH: And I think that’s a statement of “He blends in. There’s nothing special at first glance,” and then Billy shines a light on him.
Capone: You said you can identify with that feeling of having someone shine a light on you for no reason other than they trust and like you. I've heard you have list of the times in your life when people did that for you. Can you walk us through those times?
JH: Of course. I think there are four instrumental or defining moments in my career where someone shined a light on me and was a Billy Bean type figure to me. The first one was Dustin Hoffman who was the first person to say, “You should really be doing this, in fact here’s an audition. You should go to this.” I got that part [in I HEART HUCKABEES]. It was so beautiful and meaningful, and I’m always appreciative.
Then the second one would be, probably the biggest one, meeting Judd [Apatow] and Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and Shauna [Robertson, producer]. Judd specifically giving me all of these opportunities and really saying, “I’m going to shine a light on you, you're empowered. I’m going to give you the opportunity to show what you are capable of.” And just incredible generosity on his part, all of their parts.
The next time, I would say would be Mark and Jay Duplass [writers and directors of CYRUS], because it was the first time someone said “You are known as this one thing, and we're going to give you the opportunity to try something different.”
Then finally, and again this is probably as big as Judd’s contribution, because I was probably at the very, very bottom of the list of people that were considered to play the second lead in [MONEYBALL], and a lot of them probably have Oscars on their shelves and nominations or whatever and Bennett and Brad and Amy Pascal [Chairman, Motion Picture Group] at Sony. They shined a light on me and said, “We're going to give you a give opportunity to show what you can do as a dramatic actor and in a movie that people will see this time.”
[Both Laugh]
JH: Because of Brad and the book and everything, and those four times I think about doing this, I just can’t stop thinking about this and how much it relates to what my character had happened to him, and I got lucky enough to have four and a million other little ones you know or ones that are meaningful, but those are the four defining one.
Capone: It might not have been the first movie I saw you in, but I remember the first time I said, “I’m going to remember this guy’s name from now on” and I think it was after 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, although I remember that scene that you were in. But it was ACCEPTED, as weird as that might sound, but I even remember the joke to cracked me up so much
JH: Was it hobo-stab insurance?
Capone: No, that’s another great one. But that came later in the film.
JH: I love that joke.
Capone: It was, “Oh this place is great, I always wanted to get hepatitis.”
JH: I wrote that joke.
Capone: I think that’s early in the film, that’s right when you guys first find the building that you're going to use.
JH: There were just like eight jokes right when I see the building, and I think the people who hired me on that movie, Tom Shadyac and Steve Pink, I remember seeing their faces like, “This guy’s brought a lot of jokes with him.” I just stayed up the night before and wrote like a hundred jokes about what I could say when I see the building, and they ended up putting like five or six in. There’s a lot of talented people in that movie that ended up doing really big things.
Capone: It’s actually better than I thought it would be going in. It’s one of those movies that people don’t remember, but a lot of people came out of it.
JH: Yeah, it was like one of his first jobs. There’s just a lot of people in that movie that ended up doing cool stuff. I don’t know if I’m going to frame a poster of it and put in on my wall, but…[laughs]
Capone: Then when I saw you in, I guess it would have been KNOCKED UP next, I’m like, “Oh, that’s that guy from ACCEPTED, sure yeah.” Which is probably the exact opposite of the way everybody else remembers it.
JH: Capone, you’re a sick man. That’s very kind of you. If any of this interview comes out with me bragging about my performance in ACCEPTED, I’m going to kill myself.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: With MONEYBALL, I love that there are many references to ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MAN, starting with one of the first times that you and Brad had a scene together.
JH: The parking garage. I think ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THE NATURAL are the two films that Bennett and Brad and I would talk about, and Bennett had me watch over and over again. Brad and I really just talked about the Woodward and Bernstein type relationship our characters have in the way that they can finish each others sentences, and it’s two guys against the world trying to do something that’s very controversial with ideas that are very controversial.
Capone: Those conversations have to be spoken in whispers at that point.
JH: They literally had to go down to a parking garage to talk about these radical ideas, and I love that element of it. What’s funny is, and I was saying that I know Robert Redford is a big influence on Brad and someone who’s career he admires, although I don’t want to speak for him…
Capone: Who he’s worked with, yeah.
JH: Yeah and for me, Dustin Hoffman is one of my two heroes, the other being Bill Murray, of people that I look up to because they both do comedy and drama seamlessly, and you don’t balk if Dustin or Bill Murray is doing a comedy, you don’t balk. If they are doing a drama, you don’t balk. For me, that’s the type of career I wish to have.
Capone: This movie feels like something Redford probably would have done when he was a younger guy. It doesn’t seem that out of his wheelhouse to really have done a film like that.
JH: I imagine he would, because he was making… This is definitely a '70s throwback film. It’s definitely a movie straight out of the '70s, and that’s so cool to get to be a part of that. That’s my favorite era of filmmaking, and I think Brad and Bennett and I all used those '70s movies as references for what we were doing.
Capone: People last night brought up the idea that you and Brad had this chemistry. What did that chemistry need to envelop? What did that need to have as a part of it?
JH: I think the movie lives or dies based on our chemistry. There’s no love story. It’s the central relationship of the film and it really is and was important for us to connect with one another and understand that. So basically for rehearsals, we sat in a room for a couple of months with Brad and myself and Bennett, and really the three of us kind of built in that connection.
I remember for the wrap gift I got them a photograph. I had such a joyous time with them and I got them both the same photograph and one for myself, which is this photographer, I believe his name is Joseph Szabo, he was a high school teacher in the '70s, a high school photography teacher and just shot this high school and would shoot the kids at the high school, and it ended up becoming really famous photography. Cameron Crowe, I was told, uses it a lot when he’s writing, to look at like just real kids, for FAST TIMES he may have used it as a photo reference.
So there are these kids, and there is just this picture of these three kids, and they’ve all got their arms around each other and they are really young, they are like 11 or 12, and they're smoking cigarettes, and I just saw it and I was like “Oh my God, that reminds me of myself and Brad and Bennett during this experience,” not that I smoked or anything. And so I got them that photograph and one for myself. [I believe THIS IS THE PHOTO Jonah is referring to.]
Capone: Getting inside the mindset of a guy like Peter and tapping into the obsessive nature, for him the obsession is baseball, for you it’s other things. Was it easy to transfer your obsessive nature into his world?
JH: When I would talk to some of these guys who actually did this, a lot of them could have been billionaires in the stock market, and I kept saying, “Why did you take a crappy job for no money and get treated poorly by your coworkers? Why didn’t you just go make yourself a billionaire in Wall Street?” They said, “I love baseball. I love it. I couldn’t not work in the game.” Then I realized, “Oh, that’s me with movies.” I got lucky and won the lottery, but if not, I couldn’t do anything else, my heart wouldn’t allow it, just like you couldn’t. That was the connection I found to the character, and once I cracked that it became a lot easier to understand where this guy was coming from.
Capone: Did you ever see BIG FAN?
JH: I did. It’s fantastic.
Capone: It’s not the same guy at all, but there’s a scene in that film where Patton Oswalt meets his quarterback hero in a strip club, and got this look on his face…
JH: God, that movie is so good. He’s so good in it.
Capone: He’s awesome. And I said to him, “I’ve seen that look before,” and he said, “Oh yeah, whenever somebody comes up to of my more famous comedy friends, that’s the face.” That’s the face he was using; he’s already telling stories to his friends in his head that he’s met this guy.
Capone: What’s funny about guys like Peter though is that these guys who love baseball have essentially built a system that tears down in the movie what’s called “intangibles,” all of those player characteristics the scouts are talking about at the beginning of the movie: “This guy has a good face and this guy has an ugly girlfriend.” The things that shouldn’t matter in a sport, but that they seem to be judging these guys on. But these number crunchers have torn down the fabric of this sport that they say they love.
JH: It is. Yeah, it is. But then it comes back around at the end of how it’s magical. There's that great line: “How could you not be romantic about baseball?” I love the ending of this movie so much; I want to give it away.
Capone: But then you are right, it does come around in the end because of these players that otherwise probably wouldn’t have been given a shot.
JH: I mean it’s a true underdog story. It’s the Island of Misfit Toys. It’s broken toys, you know? It’s broken people that have been discarded.
Capone: Did you have to audition for this?
JH: I did a table read for the movie. They were doing auditions. I had seen CYRUS, it hadn’t come out yet, but I had seen it and I was like, “Man do I love this movie. It’s really showing a different side of myself in it.” So what I did was I called Mark and Jay and I said, “I want to get this part in MONEYBALL really badly, so here’s what my plan is. I want to do a friends-and-family screening and pretend I really just want to show my friends and family, but I’m going to have Bennett come, and once he sees it he’s really going to like me in it if I’m lucky.” So it was a ballsy move, but I basically arranged this whole fake screening. It was like THE TRUMAN SHOW on Bennett, where I arranged this screening just so Bennett could watch it, and I got cast after that. Yeah, it worked.
Capone: I love the idea that CYRUS is the bridge; it’s the transition film that plays to both of your strengths.
JH: I love that movie. I think that is so flattering to hear you say that, and the gentleman who was just in here said the same thing, and to me that’s just such a beautiful thing to hear. It’s not like a lot of people that are known for comedy are bad actors and can’t do it; I think the opportunity is rare, and you have to be really smart about what you choose to do in another realm. You just have to be really meticulous with it, and CYRUS was such a beautiful gift. It was such a beautiful mix of both, comedy and drama, that it wasn’t shocking to people who love me in comedies--or liked me in comedies…no one loves me in comedies [laughs]. So once you saw that, it was okay to take it one step further or maybe a couple of steps further with MONEYBALL.
It really was a beautiful bridge for me, because I wouldn’t want you to see me in GET HIM TO THE GREEK one day and then SCHINDLER’S LIST the next day, you know? It would be very shocking. It might be hard to accept, so before I did a straight drama like MONEYBALL, I had to do a movie where I was saying, “Look, I’m still funny in it, but I’m playing a character. It’s not me. There’s going to be some real raw, dramatic stuff in here” and luckily people were really kind, the twelve people that saw CYRUS. It really was a beautiful bridge between the stuff I’m known for and the stuff I’m looking to do more of.
Capone: Was it strange with Peter that he has so little dialog? Did you feel like you had to hold back?
JH: I would actually ask to not say things a lot. He’s a guy getting empowered for the first time, and it’s really like a baby using his legs for the first time. That’s what I kept thinking about. It was like a baby learning how to walk, he’s all wobbly, you know? He had never had power before. If there's a reason I'm proud of my performance, it's because I liked what the character does when he’s not talking and I like showing a lot with a little bit, and sometimes you can say a lot more by looking at someone’s face or body language that you can by hearing their words.
Capone: You haven’t seen DRIVE yet, have you?
JH: I am dying to.
Capone: Ryan Gosling says almost nothing in the whole movie.
JH: That is so cool. How cool is Ryan Gosling? [Laughs] He only says one word, and it’s like the best movie ever.
Capone: And I know you love Albert Brooks. It’s going to blow your mind with what he’s doing in this movie.
JH: I heard he was so good in it. That’s the number one movie I’m looking forward to, by the way. I just want to throw that out there.
Capone: You’ve got THE SITTER in December and then 21 JUMP STREET next year, then what do you have coming up? You have something with Mark Wahlberg [GOOD TIME GANG], is that right?
JH: Yeah, that’s something we're talking about. We haven’t set a date to start making it, but that’s like an action comedy written by this guy named Max Landis, who's really talented. He’s John Landis’s son, actually. He is such a cool. I think he’s like a Shane Black protégé. I know he’s really good friends with Shane. It felt like reading an early Shane Black movie, but different like it’s own version of it, but it felt like that kind of thing where you are like, “Whoa, this guy is going to be an important writer and I’m getting on the train now.” I’m assuming Mark felt the same way.
Capone: And then you have NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH, with a Seth and Evan script? Something with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn.
JH: Oh yeah. I’m going to make that movie. It is maybe the funniest script I have ever read. They did such a good job, those two guys. They're so talented, it’s crazy. They've obviously been a big part of my life forever, and they're great friends of mine. It’s like a GHOSTBUSTERS type of movie with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and myself. Those guys nailed the dismount on that one. [Laughs]
Capone: Is that the next thing you do?
JH: Yeah, I’m shooting that next. I’m shooting that in October in Atlanta, and Akiva Schaffer is directing that from The Lonely Island. He’s an old friend. One of the proudest things I ever did, I did with Akiva. We wrote together, he directed, my SNL digital short where I start dating Andy Samberg’s dad. It’s like ANNIE HALL with me and Andy Samberg’s dad. I had it in a dream and I woke up and called Akiva and said “Hey, I want to make ANNIE HALL with me and Andy’s dad.” And we did it. It’s insane and stupid, but it’s so funny.
Capone: I love those shorts.
JH: Yeah, they're so good.
Capone: All right. Maybe I’ll see you in Atlanta later in the year.
