TOTAL FILM INTERVIEW
JONAH HILL
Jonah Hill on a career that takes in Superbad, 21 Jump Street and The Wolf Of Wall Street… and now ace directorial debut Mid90s.
After making a name for himself with a string of memorable comedy roles, Jonah Hill refused to be typecast and instead landed awards-attracting work – Moneyball, The Wolf Of Wall Street – with some of the greatest directors around. Now, the transition continues as he turns writer/director with Mid90s, a painfully authentic coming-of-age tale.
It’s a cold day in New York when Jonah Hill sits down to talk to Total Film. “It’s like, freezing!” he laugh-shivers. He’s taking a break from his next writing project to talk about his directorial debut, Mid90s, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to positive reviews last September, before opening in the US. It comes to the UK next month.
It’s no surprise that the film was warmly received. It’s a remarkably assured debut, with a keen sense of time, place and character. Set in LA during the middle of the 1990s, it tells the story of a young kid, Stevie (relative unknown Sunny Suljic), who falls in with a crowd of slightly older kids at a skateboard shop, and spends a summer with the cool crowd, finding his tribe, hitting personal milestones, and running into trouble. Stevie also grows distant from his single mother Dabney (Katherine Waterston) and aggressive older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges).
Mid90s has clearly been a passion project for Hill, who spent four yearshoning the screenplay before directing it. It’s not a project you’d associate with an actor-turned-director, given that it’s low-budget, unshowy and worlds apart from Hill’s on-screen work. But it wouldn’t be the first time Hill has subverted expectations. Born in Los Angeles in 1983, his earliest ambitions were as a playwright, until screen stardom came unexpectedly calling. A friendship with Dustin Hoffman’s children led to an audition for I Heart Huckabees, which would become his first screen appearance.
A string of Judd Apatow films followed (Hill has collaborated with the comedy power-player seven times), most notably Superbad, which was his first leading role. More comedies, supporting parts and animated voicework followed, until he was seen in a new light in 2011’s Moneyball, an awards-baiting drama in which he appeared opposite Brad Pitt, and received an Oscar nomination for his troubles. That, combined with comedy franchise success with 21 Jump Street (on which Hill also has a story credit), saw him diversify and work for such directors as Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained), Martin Scorsese (The Wolf Of Wall Street) and the Coen brothers (Hail, Caesar!).
Having been somewhat sidetracked by his acting success, Hill’s clearly relieved to have finally made good on his ambition to write and direct. During our conversation, he comes across as thoughtful and sharp, although he’s not the joker one might expect if you’ve grown up on his ribald comedies. Having successfully managed to escape a typecasting pigeonhole, he’s somewhat reticent to talk about his biggest comedy hits. Even when we ask if he discovered he had a gift for making people laugh at a young age, he brushes off the topic. “It’s a long complicated question, with such a long complicated answer,” he sighs. “I won’t even bore you with it.” But Hill comes alive with infectious enthusiasm when talking about shepherding his directorial debut to the screen, and beams on the subject of his young cast, the filmmaking process, and the mentors who inspired him, as TF is about to find out…
Where did the idea for Mid90s come from? When did you start working on it?
I was writing a play with Spike Jonze, who is a collaborator and mentor and friend. He’s the best guy. We were writing a play together, and we were doing this thing where he was writing a movie, and I was writing a movie, and we were sharing a story of the movie every day. And in that, the other person sees flaws. They see what’s working and what’s not working. I was writing this first movie, and the B-story kept flashing back to the main character, when he was young and skateboarding with friends. Spike was saying, “You seem far more excited about that than the A-story.” I went, “Oh, OK, well, maybe I should just do it like that.” And that’s when I started. It’s one of those moments where you’re like, “Oh, why didn’t you just write about that?”
Were you drawing more on feelings than anything autobiographical?
Yeah, it’s not like a biopic of my life, with this character and stuff. But a lot of scenes were… you know, people that reminded me of people, and mixing people together. Some things happened. Some things I completely made up. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. But I think the feelings of it are really about finding your crowd, and growing up, and stuff like that.
Was it a cathartic process?
Yeah, I think… Writing something, no matter what it is, is some form of understanding and processing good and bad things that have happened in your life. It could be a movie set in outer space, but you’re still putting feelings into those things. But for me, I don’t see a world where I write movies where it’s not some form of digesting and processing the experience of being a person, you know?
Before acting, it was always your intention to write and direct, wasn’t it?
Yes, definitely. I always wanted to be
a writer and director. The best part of acting is, it’s such an up-close view of how all these writers work, how all these great directors work. You get a front row seat to every department doing their job really, really well. And if you’re annoying, you can ask a lot of questions.
Did the experience of directing such a personal script live up to what you thought directing might be like?
It’s the greatest. It exceeded… It couldn’t have gone better in the sense of all the people involved, the experience, and how true the movie remains to the spirit of why I started writing it. I think so much of moviemaking is protecting the spirit of what you set out to do. The thing I’m proudest of about the movie is, I was very open to following actors and the scenarios and the free-ness of making the movie. But ultimately, no matter what things are changed, the movie that you saw is exactly the spirit of what I set out to make. So I’m very grateful for it.
Did you always intend to have seasoned supporting actors, such as Katherine Waterston and Lucas Hedges, alongside the film’s untrained kids?
Yeah. I mean, clearly Katherine and Lucas are world-class, amazing actors. But from the beginning, it was important to know that the actors were kids, and not vice-versa. You know? So, the key to the movie is, it’s Sunny [Suljic] and Na-Kel [Smith] and Olan [Prenatt] and Ryder [McLaughlin] and Gio’s [Galicia] movie. And the world-class actors are part of their world. So it’s not the other way around. It’s all tone. Directing is so much about managing the tone. It was just an amazing tone. And the tone was from those kids. Sunny was such a blessing because he can play in both worlds. He’s the bridge. He’s been in a Yorgos Lanthimos movie with Nicole Kidman [The Killing Of A Sacred Deer]. But he also speaks with Gio in real life. So he was an amazing bridge to connect these very formidable actors and firsttime actors who are skateboarders.
How did it feel to direct someone as young as Sunny? Did you give him advice you were given, or wish you’d been given, as a young actor?
All I tried to do was give them the experience that I wanted. Anything that hurt me about my experience, or was positive about my own experience – in a weird way, it feels like parenting, in the sense where you’re mentoring, or are an older sibling. I tried to give him the dream experience that I would have wanted. And what you learn as a human being is, you know, your parents did their best to give you the experience they would have wanted. What I tried to do, with these young, first-time actors, is to be like: “I want to talk to you the way I’d like to have been spoken to. I want to give you the respect.” When I was a young kid, I would always be upset if someone talked to me like I was a kid. So I’d be like, “OK, I’m going to talk to Sunny… even though he’s young, I’m going to talk to him as my equal. It’s not like I’m going to talk down to him.” And at the same time, keeping an awareness that he’s 11. [laughs]
The film doesn’t pull any punches. Did you feel protective of Sunny?
I felt protective of him. I did. First and
IN A WEIRD WAY, DIRECTING FEELS LIKE PARENTING, OR MENTORING