The Stars of Superbad

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

You know that one friend you have who's always, without even trying, the funniest guy in the room' And whatever he says, it's almost impossible not to laugh' Attending a roundtable with the cast of Superbad is amazing because all three leads are that guy. With ages ranging from eighteen to twenty-three, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse have more innate charisma and likability than half of the more experienced so-called "stars" out there.

Not that these guys don't have experience - well, the first two, at least. Jonah Hill didn't appear on screen until 2004's I Heart Huckabees but has since then stolen scenes in bit parts of a dozen-odd comedies such as Grandma's Boy, Ten Items or Less, and Click. He graduated to full-fledged supporting roles in the movies Accepted and this summer's Knocked Up, and it's thanks to that movie's director, Judd Apatow, that Hill took the starring role in Superbad, which Apatow produces.

Cera, meanwhile, has been bouncing around Hollywood for a while, playing the kid versions of Vincent D'Onofrio in Steal This Movie, Noah Emmerich in Frequency, and Sam Rockwell in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. He managed to jump out of the child actor circuit - and prove what a finely-tuned comedian of all things awkward he is - by landing a role in the beloved cult TV series Arrested Development. Superbad marks his first big movie since Arrested's cancellation in 2006.

And Mintz-Plasse, who in the movie plays Fogel, the third wheel of the trio' He's a complete newcomer, although you'll hardly know it when you watch the film.

Currently, Superbad's riding on a wave of positive publicity, the likes of which haven't been seen since...well, since Knocked Up, this summer's other comedy that lacked starpower but drew audiences to the seats by, quite simply, being really, really funny. The early word from numerous sources (and having seen the film, I completely concur) is that Superbad is at least as good.

The similarities don't stop, though. Seth Rogen, the star of Knocked Up, and his friend Evan Goldberg started writing the script back when they were in high school, and named the characters after themselves. "Fortunately Seth has aged poorly and I've aged wonderfully," Hill says, noting that while Rogen couldn't play his cinematic alter ego because he was too old, Hill is only a year younger. "I wasn't thought of originally for a long time, because we're all such good friends and it would be weird to consider me younger and not them."

Mintz-Plasse, meanwhile, is exactly the right age - he was seventeen when the movie was filmed. "I didn't even know it was an Apatow movie when I went in to audition for it," he says. "When I went in to the audition I recognized Seth from The 40-Year Old Virgin so I was like, "Cool, this might be a funny movie, because he's a funny guy." It was later on when I went to a rehearsal with Michael and Greg that I found out it was an Apatow movie."

The trio play the socially awkward teenagers so well, it's hard not to question whether or not they were just playing themselves. " I remember being not quite as socially inept," Cera says, "but I never felt like the most popular person in school. I don't even know what popular means, but I know I wasn't it."

"I had some kind of nerdy confidence to me when I was in high school, kind of like the character," Mintz-Plasse says. Cera immediately concurs: "he's the most confident person I've ever met."

Hill also agrees and looks at Mintz-Plasse: "Well [when] you came in and auditioned, you said you were nervous, but you were literally like 'Hey guys, what's up, let's do this.' And I was like, 'Cool.'"

With Hill, being significantly older, it was a little harder to get back into the high school groove. "I had a lot of conversations with Greg [Mottola, the director] and Judd about not being who I am now, to not have any traces of myself now," he says. "So I moved back in with my parents. I stayed in the same bedroom where I lived in high school, which was torturous, as you can imagine. I would go through my old yearbooks and look through my stuff and try and get back to a place where [I was]'and it did, I started feeling the same lack of privacy."

The film chronicles the boys' one night quest for the two things most important to all male teenagers: alchohol and girls. Mintz-Plasse, perhaps because high school was almost yesterday for him, is reluctant to say how much he actually drank in high school -- "I dabbled a little," he teases -- but Hill is happy to explain his experiences. "When I was like 16 or 17, we would spend the whole week discussing how we were going to obtain alcohol," he says. "I grew up in Los Angeles, and there's this place called the San Fernando Valley, where Chris grew up, and way deep in there you can find a liquor store who will sell alcohol to a one-year old. We would just drive far out and look for the seediest-looking liquor store. I looked like I was 14 when I was 16, and I would obviously not be 21, and they would sell me alcohol." He pauses, reminiscing. "Thanks, guys. Thanks for the memories."

Like on Knocked Up, there was a lot of ad-libbing and improvising during the shoot. Hill helpfully explains the process: "Everyone, Greg included, just thinks that you shoot the script a couple times and you get it to where you can use that. Then after that we have a bunch of takes'the big thing you spend the money on is time to spend [creating] more options. What if something's not funny' The worst thing as a director is to be in the editing room and the joke doesn't work and you have no other options for it. You're screwed."

The system seemed to work. "My theory is, you're never going to be the only person who has a good idea," Hill continues. "Anyone else could have away better idea than you in the room, and it only makes you look better. It only makes Seth and Evan look like better writers if we improvise a funny line. I think everyone has that theory, because there's no ego. Like, who cares' Whatever's funny will wind up in the movie."

Cera is quick to note that the script has to be -- and was -- funny to begin with, though. Coming from a heavily-plotted TV show, he said things weren't necessarily too different. "This was a really well-written script too," he clarifies. "It wasn't like an outline, where there would just be a scene idea. There were very well-written jokes and lines. If we were improvising at all it was just to make things seem more natural, to punch it up."

Another great thing about the movie, according to the three, is the female characters. In most high school movies about guys, the female characters are treated as merely objects of desire, and at first glance, Superbad does that too. "I would actually disagree with that," Hill says, noting that the movie has actually been testing highest with young women. "The female characters in the movie are by far and away the smartest characters in the movie. They're way more mature and smart than we are. I think the whole point of the movie is that, if we had asked them out in the first ten minutes, they probably would have said yes. We would have been able to avoid this whole thing. They all seem way more mature and intelligent to me, and not typical girls you would see in a teen movie. They're not bubblehead cheerleaders. They feel like girls that I knew growing up."

All three leads, like most other people their age, have favorite movies that they constantly quote to each other. "The funny thing is, now that Superbad has come out it will be ridiculous when I quote things from that, but we kind of do quote to each other. I quote Chris's lines. Like 'I've got a boner.' I say that all the time."

"One of the funniest lines in cinema," Cera adds.

Somebody asks him if people ever come up to him with quotes from Arrested Development, and he says he doesn't actually get that a lot. "I make one quote always, and I always see you get uncomfortable when I say it," Hill tells him. "'There's always money in the banana stand.'"

"Oh yeah, I have heard you say that," says Cera.

"I don't know why, I really like that quote. And aside from the show, it's just a nice-sounding sentence."

And what movies do they quote from that they aren't in'

"I quote The Big Lebowski a lot'that's the most quotable movie ever," says Hill.

"Rushmore," Cera says.

Anchorman," adds Mintz-Plasse.

"Crash," Hill jokes. He laughs. "Cronenberg's Crash, [not the new one.] It's pretty disgusting. That movie I saw at an age when I should not have seen that movie. There's few movies I saw before I was supposed to see them, and that was one that stuck with me and has haunted my dreams for the last 20 years."

"Yeah, Matt Dillon sounds like a hideous person in it, and I just don't want to see it," Cera deadpans.

Luckily, all three actors look to be keeping busy, both in an acting and writing capacity. Cera is about to shoot Year One, a new comedy. "I'm starting to film [it] in January. It's Harold Ramis's movie that he directed and wrote. It's with Jack Black, and Judd is producing." (He also notes offhandedly that one of his favorite books is called Youth in Revolt -- and a few days after the interview, The Hollywood Reporter breaks a story that he's signed on to star in a movie adaptation.)

Hill, meanwhile, is currently writing a few different movies, which he hopes to turn into vehicles for him to co-star along with Jason Schwartzmann in one and Sam Rockwell in another. "The people that always inspired me most were people that generated their own material, like Albert Brooks or Woody Allen," he says. "It just seemed more interesting to me. I think those are the people that have stayed relevant longer...I think [writing's] what I've had the most fun doing. When we make the first one of those movies, that'll be the greatest day of my life. The first day I show up to be there, and everything we're doing is the result of something that I thought of."

Rising young stars who actually want to put in a lot of the grunt work seems to be a pretty rare thing, but even Mintz-Plasse is getting in on the action. Since Superbad was his first movie, he doesn't know if he'll continue acting, but "I'm writing a script with my friend, actually," he says. "So we'll see how that goes."

Before any future stardom comes to pass, however, they'll have to deal with the stardom they're getting right now -- after they finish doing the interviews here, they all have to travel to Europe for the international press tour. Luckily, judging from the rapport they share with each other, it seems like they've become friends.

"It'd be bad if we were sick [of each other], since we're going to Europe for a month," Mintz-Plasse notes. Cera jumps in.

"We hug out a lot," he says.

Hill agrees. "We talked about our feelings a lot."