Hill does major flip to make skateboarder tale ‘Mid90s’
LOS ANGELES — The first time Jonah Hill’s mom dropped him off at the West L.A. Courthouse, she didn’t want him to get out of the car. He’d told her this was his favorite place to skateboard. But seeing it in person — a dingy concrete courtyard populated by homeless people — she thought it was too seedy for her 10-year-old son.
But he couldn’t just stop going. “Skating came into my life when I really needed it,” recalled Hill, now 34.
Hill brought his laptop to these steps to write “Mid90s,” his directorial debut, many times over the past few years. Though Hill insists the movie is not autobiographical, it contains numerous parallels to his youth:
“Writing this was healing for me,” acknowledged Hill, whose film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last month and opens tomorrow. Hill got famous in his early 20s as the star of 2007’s “Superbad” and was quickly branded as Hollywood’s goto goofy, chubby comedian. Even though he’s flashed some serious dramatic chops in the past decade — earning Oscar nominations for his roles in Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” — he said he has still felt an expectation from the public to be funny.
“I was like, ‘Oh, people just want me to be funny, so I’ll just be funny,’ but I wasn’t being true to myself,” he said. “And then I got pent up so bad that I got angry.”
And his anger often manifested in public. After being harassed by a paparazzo in 2014, he lashed out and lobbed a homophobic slur at the photographer. (He quickly apologized for his “hurtful” and “grotesque” language.)
“You’re young and you’re egotistical and you think you deserve to be understood,” he said. “I’d do an interview that would go poorly because the person wouldn’t be sensitive or would think because I was — I think a lot of it has to do with weight and people, how they view funny. If you’re funny and overweight, people can speak to you however they want. ”
Instead of retreating, Hill decided to throw himself into “Mid90s.”
“I think in the past few years making this film, I’ve really come to love who I am and understand who I am,” said Hill. “Because I was stuck in something that wasn’t who I was. I love being an actor — a great color in someone else’s painting. But I’ve been a decent green for a long time.”