TOP OF THE HILL!
Jonah Hill stars alongside Ari Graynor and Sam Rockwell in ‘ The Sitter’. The new movie directed by David Gordon Green is a comedy about a college student on suspension who is coaxed into babysitting the kids next door, though he is fully unprepared for the wild night ahead of him. Here the Hollywood funnyman talks about his experiences of babysitters when he was a kid, how he got into the comedy business in the first place and the secret to his dramatic weight loss.
WERE YOU A TROUBLEMAKER WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER , OR WERE YOU A GOOD KID?
IS IT JUST REALLY FUNNY TO GET A NINE-YEAR-OLD GIRL AND TEACH HER TO KICK SOMEONE IN THE BALLS?
I was a troublemaker, definitely. I stirred the pot. Just general misbehaving. My mum makes fun of me because I did do a lot of bad stuff, but I always got caught so I always served the time for the crime. I never got away with anything. I always got busted. The other kids’ mums didn’t want them hanging out with me for a couple of years. Then I became a little angel. Now I’m an angel.
Yes. It’s really funny. It makes you laugh even though you know it’s a cheap joke. It still makes you laugh. There is just something funny about kids doing inappropriate stuff. I think ‘South Park’ is a great example of that. These are actual little kids and the idea of the movie is that there are all these movies that I didn’t think were very good that were like: “Oh, you don’t want this guy babysitting your kids, he might give them too much candy, or something.” I wanted to make the punk rock, R-rated, middle finger to those films, which was like: “Oh you ‘really’ don’t want this guy watching your kids.” That to me seemed like a cool idea for a film, for a funny movie.
HOW WAS WORKING WITH THE KIDS ON THIS?
It was great. I loved them. I was a fan of Max Records from ‘Where The Wild Things Are’; we talked to Spike Jonze about Max and he said really great things about him, and sure enough, he was great. And the other kids, Landry (Bender) and Kevin (Hernandez), they were all great. I like kids, especially as acting partners because they are so spontaneous, and I like to improvise and be spontaneous especially in the broader comedic stuff like this. The spontaneity is everything. And their minds are so disconnected and so spontaneous that it’s really a great challenge as an actor to play off that energy. I like to bring that energy to the comedy stuff.
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I’M SURE MANY OF OUR READERS HAVE YOUNGER SIBLINGS, SO HAVE YOU GOT ANY ADVICE FOR BABYSITTING? HOW DO YOU GET THEM TO GO TO BED?
Candy. Candy. Candy wins their heart always. You can get them to act however you want by candy bribes. If I need them to do something, I throw a candy bar at them and say: “I’ll give you more candy. There’s more where that came from if you give a performance, and don’t talk too much!”
FEBRUARY 2012 | MAYHEM!
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