Re-Post: Exclusive Interview with John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill

If you have nothing to do this weekend, check out Cyrus!

I saw this back in March at SXSW and it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve seen this year.

I interviewed both John and Jonah for the film (along with the directors, Mark & Jay Duplass).

For the entire interview, click here.

For the Duplass Brothers interview, click here.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

You guys did a lot of – I know that the Duplass Brothers do a lot of improvising in their movies.  How much did you guys stray away from the script?

John:  Dialogue-wise we never really did the script.  There were a few places where we did what was written, but for the most part I mean, I thought that was a really kind of egoless way to direct a movie especially since they wrote it.

Jonah:  And it was a really good script. It was a great script. It was actually one of the better scripts I’ve ever read.

John:  Yeah, you know what needs to happen here.  We don’t have to say this. Just say it as honestly as you can to each other.  It was a lot of fun, very empowering, but also a big responsibility.

Did you ever worry that you were ever going to just like – were there a lot of scenes where it just didn’t work because you didn’t end up in the right place?

Jonah: Only one scene that I think….

John:  A couple places where scenes were…. what we found on the day didn’t exactly jive with what the structure of the movie needed to be in the editing room, so in those places I think they did those more creative voiceover things.  You heard dialogue while people are not saying dialogue.  Where they kind of layered, which I thought – it’s not what they intentionally set out to do.  It’s not that they filmed those scenes so they could do that, it’s that we improvised our way through a scene and they turned it into that.  It’s one of those cool moments where necessity is the mother of invention.  They created this new interested way to move the story along because they needed to because the scene that they shot was different than that.

Screenplay: “Get Him To The Greek”

Want the screenplay to Get Him To The Greek?

Sure you do!

Click here to download the script

Cast: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Elisabeth Moss, Rose Byrne, Colm Meaney, Sean Combs

Director: Nicholas Stoller

The Duplass Brothers: “Honest and real and really unpredictable is what we’re really looking for”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:37 — 9.4MB)

Jay and Mark Duplass (The Duplass Brothers) are hot right now. They have Cyrus (starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill & Marisa Tomei) and are currently in pre-production on Jeff Who Lives At Home (with Ed Helms and Jason Segel).

To be honest, I’d never seen one of their films till Cyrus. I’d heard about them, especially once I got to Austin for SXSW, and was excited to see the film. The film is both hilarious and touching and you will love seeing John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill in different roles than you’re familiar seeing them in.

I got a chance to talk with them in a roundtable interview so most of the questions aren’t mine. I did ask some casting questions regarding John and Jonah. And check out the audio (above or on iTunes) portion for the whole discussion.

(For more on Cyrus, click here for my interview with the stars John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill)

How long have you guys been working on this script?

Jay: Good question. You know, we normally write our scripts pretty quickly when we it’s just us producing them because we know we’re gonna improvise the dialogue a bit so once the structure is rock solid we know we’re production-ready. But you know, this was a script where you have to write it well and make it attractive to actors and to the studios so that they want to greenlight it. So we just spent a little time making it look pretty, you know? The bells and whistles. We were, I think we worked on it for like a year or so on and off. We were doing other things at the time. But on and off before we actually got the greenlight.

Do you have any experience as children as of single parents dating again or knowing people in those situations?

Mark: No, none really. We are good little Catholic boys and our Catholic parents have been married for 42 years and are still together.

Jay: What we do have a lot of experience with is desperation (laughter). We have that in spades.

Mark: Inter-personal dysfunction.

Along those lines, when you guys have the photograph of breastfeeding (laughter), it was terribly icky, I was dying laughing. Were there other things like that that you took out because you were like, you know what, that’s just too icky? Or was that about it?

Mark: The level of ickiness was about what we had hoped it would be. There’s an ick-ometer that we have on set.

Jay: We were riding high at about a 3.8 the whole time. If you stay right there, if you go over, people start crying and it gets weird.

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John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill on ‘Cyrus’, Improvising and more!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:34 — 10.0MB)

John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill, two of the best comedic actors around right now, are currently starring in the new film, Cyrus.

Cyrus is a bit of a departure for both actors (although you can’t tell from the trailer). Reilly plays more of a grown up then he has recently and Hill plays it serious but it’s still an incredibly funny movie. The film, one of the highlights from SXSW, was mostly improvised and solidifies just how talented these two guys really are.

So do you think the era of the John C. Riley, leading man romantic comedy is finally here?

John:  Yes (laughter).  I don’t know.  Is there an era right now?  I hope so.  I’m a very romantic person.  I like doing parts like this.  And I think there’s lots of people out there that are not represented in movies that have romantic feelings whose stories don’t get told.

Exactly.

John:  You know what I’m talking about (laughter).  Neither of us look like Brad Pitt.  Let’s not fool ourselves.  I’m with you brother.

Yeah, I’m happy to see you do this genre and bring a reality to it that’s missing, an emotional reality.

John:  Yeah we try to be truthful in our emotions in this movie.

Did you think of yourself kind of as the straight man in this, if you’re gonna call it a romantic comedy?

John:  No, you know, the “straight man” is Marisa’s [Tomei] character because she doesn’t know what’s going on.  We’ve got this whole secret battle happening standing in front of her like it’s not going on. Because I’m a very foolish character in this movie, too, I make a lot of mistakes and bad choices and yeah.

But with a little more maturity though I think.  I like the maturity of your character.

John:  Yeah, that’s one thing I really did enjoy playing in this movie, you know I’m not a kid anymore.  I often play or have played man-child kind of characters before.  It was really great to be able to just sit in a scene and be as mature as I am in life.  And I think that’s some of the best moments of awkwardness between Jonah and I when he’s like, ‘Seriously dude don’t fuck my mom’ (laughter), and my comeback, you improvised that line, and my comeback was, ‘Well, I’m not going to lie to you.  Your mom and I did have sex.’  It’s just one of those moments where you’re being truthful.  Alright, if this is the situation, regardless of what the script says, this is how I would deal with it, if I was sitting across from a 21-year-old like, Mommy and I are –

Jonah:  Special friends (laughter).

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South By Southwest: The Good, The Great

I’m back from South By Southwest (SXSW) and let me tell you, it was an experience! If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know what I mean.

In five days, I saw 10 movies and interviewed 19 actors and directors.

And now, I’m exhausted!

I interviewed:
Edward Norton and Tim Blake Nelson for their fun and incredibly entertaining film, Leaves Of Grass.

Kyle Gallner and Brittney Robertson for coming of age story, Cherry.

Jon Foster and Director Will Canon from the great film, Brotherhood. How good was it? Well, it won the SXSW Award for Narrative Feature.

Patrick Wilson, Judy Greer, Chloe Sevigny and Director Chris D’Arienzo for the hilarious, Barry Munday.

John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and directors Jay and Mark Duplass for the also hilarious, Cyrus.

Lee Turgensen, Paul Fitzgerald and director Joe Infantolino for the incredibly acted, Helena From The Wedding.

Ashley Green and Shiloh Fernandez from Skateland. I loved this move… what more can I say?

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This months cover of Vanity Fair

This picture makes me laugh. Vanity Fair has Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and Jonah Hill on the cover of this months magazine. It’s a knock off of a previous cover with Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley and Tom Ford.

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