Micaehl Cera - Superbad Interview
Wacky cops, awkward sex, and underage drinking are just some of the finer points of high school highlighted in the film, "Superbad."
“Superbad" focuses on two codependent friends, Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera), that are forced to separate after getting accepted into different colleges. Crude antics and drunken debauchery ensue as the three friends embark on their last high school caper.
Curtis Steudeman sat down with cast members Hill, Cera and debut actor, Christopher Mintz-Plasse for a Q&A. “Superbad” opened on August 17 and grossed over $30 million at the box office in its first weekend.
Steudeman: “Superbad” had a lot of throwbacks to the ‘70s, like the costumes and the opening credits. What’s the significance of that?
Michael Cera: The costumes you think?
Steudeman: Well, Jonah’s especially.
Jonah Hill: Yeah, yeah. Our friend David Krumholtz, who’s a friend of ours-he’s on the show “Numb3rs,” he’s in “Superbad,” he’s one of the cokehead guys. They couldn’t figure out a name for the movie, “Seth and Evan” and Dave was just like, “How about ‘Superbad,’ like the James Brown song - it’s a cool name?” And that was that. And then once that happened, it gave Greg Mottola the idea, the director to infuse this funk, ’70s throwback vibe to it which I thought was an amazing idea.
It was kind of a joke-funk score was the original idea, then it became a real thing. Bootsy Collins did all the music, it got really awesome really quickly and it gives the movie a whole different feel.
Steudeman: How was your high school experience for all of you?
MC: Mine was kind of abbreviated. I only went for ninth grade and then did the rest of it on the Internet.
Christopher Mintz-Plasse: Mine was fairly easy.
MC: He was in high school while we were filming. I mean for the one year I went it wasn’t awful, but it was like the rest of school leading up to high school. I wanted to drop out of school in like sixth grade (laughs).
JH: Join a motorcycle gang ….
MC: (Laughs) Something tough. One thing I remember from high school is I only had two pairs of pants.
JH: This is funny.
MC: I didn’t ever go to buy new pants. And one pair was like parachute pants that was like gray and tattered off at the bottom, and inside was like felt so it was really warm and sweaty inside. And I just didn’t go and buy new pants and people notice apparently-people look at your pants. I had that pair that was very noticeable and then like a pair of black jeans.
(Laughs) It really got to me, really affected me. Now I have 20 pairs of pants.
JH: I had more pairs of pants, but it didn’t help.
Yeah, you feel like being funny isn’t necessarily a talent when you’re in high school. If you’re not good at sports or if you don’t get stellar grades you feel like you’re not really that good at anything, or you’re not being told you’re good at something. I always felt that once I got out of school that maybe I could try writing or being funny for a job, ya know?
Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] wrote the script for “Superbad” when they were in high school. Do you think that gives “Superbad” an edge that other teenage comedies don’t have?
MC: Nobody can say that this is not how teenagers talk. They were very credible, I guess.
JH: I think that’s the advantage of the movie is that they started writing it when they were the age - even younger than the ages of the characters.
The script was the funniest script I had ever read, so far to this point.
Did you see yourselves in high school in the characters you played?
JH: It wasn’t so much like my character was me. I felt like I identified with a lot characters.
MC: You at least knew these guys in high school.
JH [to CMP]: Do you feel like McLovin was like you?
CMP: No.
(Laughs) I used experiences and a little bit of my personality in the character, but I definitely exaggerated it a lot. I’m not that lame.
[To CMP] What was your first professional acting job like?
CMP: It was unbelievable. I got in with the best crowd I think I could have in Hollywood right now. Everyone was so nice.
How did you meet these guys?
CMP: It was an open audition for the part. My two friends were going down and they told me, “You sound like you would fit the part, you should come audition with us.” So I just went down and auditioned.
JH: And he fucking nailed it. He did it exactly like he does it in the movie. It was perfect. He was so good that my character is supposed to dislike him and have arguments with him and he was so good that afterwards I was like, “Fuck that guy!”
(Laughs) Because he was so good!
[To CMP] Where do you see your career going from here?
CMP: Well, I have an agent now. After the film, they got me an agent so hopefully I’ll do more acting stuff - that’s what I’d like to do. We’ll see what happens.
Do you see “Superbad” having the same type of success “Knocked Up” did?
JH: I hope so!
(Laughs) I hope it makes money just so it gives us the opportunity to be in more movies.
MC: It’s not always going to be so much fun. Also, it’s something that we’re really proud of that we get to talk about every day.
JH: If it was a shitty movie, it would be really hard to go out and do this press tour. You would just feel really shitty about yourself if you had to be like, “It’s really great!” and talk about it all day if you really hated it. I’m sure one day I’ll be talking to you guys and be completely lying, but this movie I couldn’t be more psyched about, so it doesn’t make it bothersome to talk about it all day. I just really hope people go see it (laughs).
MC: Me too. It would be awful if they didn’t (laughs).
SOURCE