Public Enemies - What Did You Think?
With only two feature films and one TV show to his name, writer/director Jody Hill, is now synonymous with ignoring the boundaries and “genre rules” of modern comedy and creating anti-heroes that laughably burble with nihilistic rage, scary faux pas and hot-air egos. But there is also an internal depth to these macho doofuses played by Hill’s longtime pal and writing partner, Danny McBride, and comedy star Seth Rogen, to surpass the high art of a perfectly-timed and pronounced “fuck.”
Hill’s work on Observe & Report, The Foot Fist Way, and his cultural breakthrough, HBO’s Eastbound & Down, contains more glass-darkly social commentary and life-lived expression than the work of any hotshot young novelist in recent memory. Rather than document the cold realities and indulgent pleasantries of another big city with bright lights, Hill is set on exploring the very place that so many creative-types vacate upon the arrival of their first Visa card or college acceptance letter: the American South. Moreover, as many middle-class and broke white American males face sobering, if inevitable, realizations and disillusions about the future, laughing at Hill’s moronic, unhinged versions as they champion outdated movie/sports star heroics atop small-town kingdoms is like homemade medicine. When it comes to countering the monotony of the average day-to-day? Eastbound is harder to beat still. The sight of Kenny Powers “dancing” in a middle school gym under the influence of eggrolls and ecstasy or ejecting a topless broad from his Jet Ski is priceless. Like cheetah-spotted gold or “a bulletproof tiger, dude.”
A native of North Carolina, Hill is the latest progeny of the North Carolina School of the Arts, alongside McBride and creative partner Ben Best, fellow EB&D director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express), and EB&D cinematographer Tim Orr. In the first part of my interview, we discuss the show in-depth, including some of the surprising and vile admissions and special features on the Season One DVD. We also talk about what it’s like to be a young director coming from, and staying in, the South, why so many comedians today are from there, and why the region was overdue for a proper comedic depiction.
Hunter Stephenson: Hey Jody, how are you?
Jody Hill: Hey Hunter. Good, good, good. Hey man, I wanted to say that I was sorry I wasn’t there when you visited down in Wilmington [Eastbound & Down set, 2008]. I remember the piece you wrote, and it sounded like a really good time. [laughs] Sucks I couldn’t there, man; I was editing my film (Observe & Report), and Warner Bros. wouldn’t let me go. When you have to do a director’s cut, they want to lock you up for 10 weeks. [laughs] Everybody said they had a blast…and I was editing.
Yeah. I expected to interview you there. And I didn’t know about the change, that David Green was now directing the majority of the episodes while you were in L.A. But it all worked out, he killed it. My first question: Legend has it that when you, Danny [McBride], and Ben [Best] first conceived of Kenny Powers you were sitting in a kiddie pool in North Carolina drinking beers. [laughs] Is that accurate?
Jody Hill: [laughs] Yeah, this was before we made Foot Fist Way or anything. We were trying to come up with ideas for shows. I was between jobs; I had been working this really shit reality show job, doing motion-control for Behind the Music and shit like that. [laughs] It was pretty lame. And so, yeah, we were in Charlotte, in the backyard of Ben Best’s house. And yeah, we were literally sitting in a kiddie pool with a case of beer. And Kenny was one of the ideas that, uh, we came up with. [laughs]
Movie Review: Land of the Lost Rocks (Peter Travers Can Suck It!)
Posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 by Hunter Stephenson
It was a little before the half-way mark to Land of the Lost when a little kid started crying in the theater as the Sleestaks opened their reptilian beaks, revealing row after row of neat, razor-sharp teeth. We hadn’t even reached the scene in which Danny McBride’s misogynist, would-be casino maven, Will Stanton, stared directly into the camera while sitting in a swimming pool, tripping his fucking mind out on “narcotic” alien fruit-juice. The swimming pool was randomly parked on an inter-dimensional white sand desert sprinkled with a Viking ship, a broken-down Cessna, and a meta neon sign that blankly spells “Motel.” And as if exiting from Jeff Goldblum’s ear canal during a Jurassic Park hallucination, dinosaurs big and small were roaming the diverse terrain beyond. Land of the Lost is chockful of original, PG-13-hazing moments. And if you’re a parent and bring your kids to see it, you deserve a cool sticker.
Natalie Portman Joins Danny McBride in David Gordon Green’s Your Highness
Posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 by Hunter Stephenson
In July, director David Gordon Green begins shooting Your Highness in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Inspired by herb-friendly ’80s fantasies like Krull, Yor, and The Dark Crystal, the R-rated adventure-com centers on Danny McBride as a regal fuck-up who’s forced to save his kingdom and his brother’s fiancé. James Franco recently signed on—Pineapple Express reunion, natch—to play the feted, charming brother. And today, Natalie Portman is officially a lock to for McBride’s would-be love interest, described as a “warrior princess.” Some may recall that Portman was attached last year to headline Green’s remake of Dario Argento’s macabre, color-obsessed Supiria; that project remains on the back-burner. She’s currently producing and working on Hesher, a cool-sounding teen angst film co-starring Rainn Wilson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
McBride, who co-wrote Highness with Ben Best, has said that the supporting cast will consist of “serious” British actors to align with the film’s play-it-straight tone; in jest, he’s even compared the tone to Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. The movie’s SFX by Spectral Motion will go light on CGI (a welcome trend) and—a la the actor’s upcoming Land of the Lost—willl shoot on built-sets that are “huge and crazy.” This project easily makes my top-5 most anticipated. For more info on Your Highness, click here.
Danny McBride Wants To Enter the DC Comics Universe
Posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Last night we told you that Eastbound & Down writer Shawn Harwell was writing a big screen comedy adaptation of the graphic novel Hench for Danny McBride. The story follows a football player who suffers a career-ending injury and resorts to working as henchman to a successful villain. CHUD has learned that McBride is pushing Warner Bros to set the film in the DC Comics universe, and allow them to involve some of the super villains.
Eastbound & Down Writer Developing Hench Comic Adaptation For Danny McBride
Posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Warner Bros has acquired rights to the 64-page black and white graphic novel Hench, which they plan to develop as comic book comedy starring Danny McBride. Eastbound & Down writer Shawn Harwell will write the screenplay. McBride will play a football player who suffers a career-ending injury and resorts to working as henchman to a successful villain. Sounds like a fun concept, and I could definitely see McBride in this role.
Hunter Stephenson’s Movie Review: Observe and Report (A Contender for Best Film of 2009). Essay: The Genius of Jody Hill
Posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 by Hunter Stephenson
Weekend Update: Due to the amazing bitch-session in the comments: the following article is a combination free-form essay/review on the genius, relevance, and influences of writer/director Jody Hill and his works including The Foot Fist Way, Eastbound & Down, and his latest, Observe and Report. It also deals with the growing trend of incredibly dark and conflicted American male anti-heroes in movies and TV. Oh yeah, it’s also really, really, really long and I didn’t see a need to begin the piece with “If you were expecting Paul Blart, get ready for a crazy rollercoaster not suitable for the kiddies.” Because fuck Paul Blart. No one will remember that movie in five years, until the sequel is released and makes $200 million. My bad?
Let me preface this by saying that I now anticipate Jody Hill’s films more than any other working filmmaker with the exception of Paul Thomas Anderson. And on a particularly excruciating Monday, maybe Tommy Wiseau’s.
“You suck this gun like a dick and then this dick goin’ cum in your mouth and blow your brains all over the street!” – Danny McBride in Observe and Report, um, protecting his legacy
Generally speaking, there are two types of people, and as it lies, two types of moviegoers: Those who go to malls without a second thought and those who go into them only on the rarest of occasions, sucking on an imaginary Klonopin, those who walk around wondering how the fuck this and they and that sign came to be, pregnant with the speeding notion that a loon might as well destroy the entire fucking building or at least high-jack the “raffle car,” peel out through the entrance doors, and drive on to a fabled body of water.
HBO’s Eastbound and Down Renewed for Second Season!
Posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 by Hunter Stephenson
I just returned from the set of H2 (Halloween 2) and am running off adrenaline, craft services coffee, and an iPod of Brian Jonestown Massacre and MF Doom. And also, a little bit of anger. Let me just say that Twitter has become a HUGE problem on movie sets, and that I do not grasp why it is necessary for some sites, however cool, to Tweet every effing detail of what they are seeing in real time. Word spreads quickly on these productions, and one bad, trivial, prematurely ejaculated Tweet can potentially and seemingly spoil access for everyone. End rant. The below news was in my email, cheered me up, and even though I need to crash, it was too good to delay posting…
HBO has officially confirmed that its original comedy series Eastbound and Down—a /Film fave—has been renewed for a second season. Better yet, given the fast ascent up the comedy ranks of the show’s masterminds, Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and Ben Best, one may have expected another six-episode season further down the pipeline. Instead, the next season begins filming later this year and will air in 2010. Woo. When we were on the set last year, co-director David Gordon Green revealed that a follow-up pitch was being entertained that centered on McBride’s profane bulletproof tiger Kenny Powers shipping off to South America to quasi-fulfill his baseball career. However, the idea seemed to be news to much of the cast, and given how well received the ensemble performances of Andy Daly, Katy Mixon, John Hawkes, and Steve “Ass Blood” Little, I wouldn’t bet on it.
My review of Jody Hill’s Observe and Report is on the way. It’s a 9.5/10 and one of the most uncompromising, face-checking comedies to come around in a long time.
David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s Your Highness Moving Forward with James Franco!
Posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 by Hunter Stephenson
While David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s trippy fantasy movie, Your Highness, has been sizzling on my radar for many months now, the project now sounds like it’s happening sooner than later. Hell yes. When I spoke to these dudes last year, they were hopeful, but Green also had a lot of plates spinning (Suspiria remake, Freaks of the Heartland). I also got the impression that if their HBO series, Eastbound & Down, was successful and claimed its place in pop culture—and boy, has it—that it might serve to launch such a high-concept R-rated flick with McBride at the lead. One thing more people are starting to admire is that these guys make sure to do things their way, no “one for them” studio fluffing.
According to Knowles at AICN, McBride confirms that the film has been greenlit by Universal, will shoot soon in Ireland, and the creature effects will be handled by Spectral Motion (Hellboy 1 & 2). In ode to its myriad inspirations, the film won’t feature heavy CGI but more traditional, weirder effects. Moreover, McBride let out that James Franco will co-star, in a Pineapple Express trifecta reunion of sorts. Many of you might be like, “So WTH is Your Highness?” Here are some quotes from my interviews that didn’t see light until today…
/Film: Can you go into Your Highness? Judging from the title and from what you guys previously did on Pineapple Express, is this a true-blue stoner genre film?
Green: It’s not really a weed movie. [Danny's character] smokes shit [weed] in it, yeah, but it’s whatever they had in olden times. This is an R-rated adventure, it’s ridiculous, played with lo-tech effects. I looked at Army of Darkness recently for it, but it’s not campy. Krull has Juliard actors, it’s really ‘80s. At the same time, Danny ain’t Orlando Bloom.
TV Buzz: Season 2 of Breaking Bad Kicks Off Tonight! Kenny Powers Joins Twitter, Crashes BBQ…
Posted on Sunday, March 8th, 2009 by Hunter Stephenson
Mad Men certainly deserves all of the praise thus far received in its first two seasons on AMC, but I always thought it a tad disconcerting that AMC’s Breaking Bad has purred in the background like colorful dry ice. Not only is the series as entertaining, well-produced, and agreeably shrewd with its layered characters, but creator Vince Gilligan has given a daring, nutty jolt to themes long mastered by others shows i.e. the drug war (The Wire) and the rapport between money and mortality (The Sopranos).
At last year’s Emmys, when lead actor Bryan Cranston beat out Dexter’s Michael C. Hall and Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, the underdog bite in the W mirrored that of Walter White’s, the cancer-stricken, primo meth-cooking family man he plays. Season Two begins tonight at 10 p.m. EST. and picks up immediately where the first left off. If you’re a fan, it’s been a friggin’ longtime coming, eh? Almost a year to the day. If you haven’t been following, recommended. This is easily one of the best shows going…
What Do You Think?: Is HBO’s Eastbound & Down One of the Funniest Shows Ever?
Posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 by Hunter Stephenson
“It was the egg rolls, not the ecstasy.” If you missed the second episode of HBO’s revelatory Eastbound and Down last night due to misplacing your savings in an Oscar pool, that’s no friggin’ excuse! EB&D > “Jai Ho” on repeat. Will Ferrell made his debut appearance as a BMW dealer named Ashley Schaeffer, the embodiment of shithot blond ambition. Danny McBride’s Kenny Powers continued his fall from the bleachers of Major League Baseball by hoovering blow in a school parking lot, capsizing a bird fountain, and mistaking a tween dance for a romantic rave. But perhaps what stood out most of all was the direction of David Gordon Green, who nailed an indescribable tone that fell somewhere between a hilarious Southern Sopranos, Freeway and his Pineapple Express.
Land of the Lost Super Bowl Ad Features Bad Blue Screen Removal
Posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
Universal has released the Super Bowl advertisement for Land of the Lost. I’m impressed with some of the visuals, but the jokes and plot seem overwhelmingly generic. And I know that the footage in this teaser television spot is probably unfinished, but how bad does the blue screen removal around Will Ferrell’s head in the screen capture above look? Watch the television spot after the jump, and as always, tell me what you think in the comments below.
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Exclusive Set Visit! HBO’s Eastbound and Down With Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, and Ben Best. (Cameo by Gina Gershon)
Posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 by Hunter Stephenson
Pulling into the suburbanish neighborhood of Marsh Oaks in Wilmington, North Carolina, one would not expect this quiet enclave to be ground zero for an American Comedy Valhalla, but surprise, surprise. On the sunny backyard patio of an upscale home, a camera is rolling as Pineapple Express director, David Gordon Green, casually pitches one-liners to Danny McBride. His suggestions are incredibly vile.
“Okay Danny, now say ‘she’s my cum dumpster,’” says Green, with a focused smirk, his moderately tired eyes hidden beneath a pair of Ray Bans. “She’s my cum dumpster,” delivers McBride with deadpan redneck aplomb, referring to his date, the local floozie who’s standing nearby and currently flirting with a large, black male. “I put a lot of shit into her.” I’m standing a few feet away, hearing this ribald improv through a headset, surrounded by the cast and crew of Eastbound and Down. Nobody is laughing—professionalism aside—because everyone knows these lines are funny as shit, the funniest shit you can imagine. Airing in February on HBO, this new original series from the all-star creative team behind The Foot Fist Way, which also includes Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, looks to do for Southern stereotypes what Larry David did for rich neurotics burdened with follically-challenged cul-de-sacs.
“This is not some Blue Collar Comedy Tour shit,” laughs McBride, during a break. “I like being in the South, I was born here. We’re having a fucking blast and if we could, I would seriously make every movie in Wilmington. This is where we want to be. When we started shooting, we didn’t want a bunch of kids from Burbank putting on fucking Southern accents.
“The way the South is portrayed in Hollywood, they shoot it in Van Nuys, and everyone yuks it up. And in places like New York, that’s just what the South is. But to us, that’s just insulting. It’s like they’re scraping the tip of the ice berg of what the region is all about. It’s too easy.”
The coastal city of Wilmington remains off the map to the casual moviegoer, but in the film industry it’s oft-referred to as “Hollywood East.” In the early ‘80s, mega-producer, Dino De Laurentis, brought the Drew Barrymore cult flick, precociously entitled Firestarter, to the region, and ended up permanently setting up shop. If you resided here in the ‘90s, you might have heard things like, “I saw Katie Holmes getting a haircut,” “Brandon Lee got shot!”, “Steve Buscemi got stabbed…at a bar,” and “Vince Vaughn got banned. Good.” Tourists still partake in a local Blue Velvet tour. Today, the city’s major studio, EUE Screen Gems, is in the midst of constructing the largest soundstage east of California, in addition to a massive $175 million water tank for blockbuster features. The buzz is back, making Eastbound even more of a celebration.
For those of you who haven’t illegally downloaded the show’s leaked pilot—McBride’s lines like “You mean, Jew York?” and “You’re Fucking Out!” were drunkenly quoted to me by local film students during my barhopping seshes in “Wilmywood”—in the series McBride plays Kenny Powers, a former champion Major League Baseball pitcher with a major league penchant for cocaine and soundblasts. And banging prostitutes wearing the Scream mask. WTF? Reduced to a simmering Kid Icarus in denial, Powers moves back home to North Carolina with his older brother and his family.
With America’s economy in the proverbial shitter in real life, Powers’s rude awakening in the series will likely pack an extra punch. All he has left is a storied ego and one last piece of materialistic excess in the form of a customized cheetah-accented jetski—referred to on set as the “Panty Dropper”—leaving him to reluctantly take a gig as a P.E. teacher. A solid ensemble cast fills out the school’s faculty including Katy Mixon, Steve Little, and comedian Andrew Daly (UCB, Mad TV). But curb the sighs in regards to a redemptive and predictable “smartass students teach the smartass teacher” arc…
“Fuck formula. That’s what we’re all about. There is no formula. You don’t have to like the main character,” says David Gordon Green, dissing The Writer’s Journey, inside his humid-as-fuck trailer. “Look at most of the great movies and comedies, they follow their own beat. This show has a lot of traditional narrative devices that do not necessarily play out in traditional narrative ways. We’re alluding to all of those points of the hero’s journey…and then we’re decapitating them. We fucked the textbook over on this one.”
“We’re dealing with fame,” continues Green, “and it seems that so many people think they’re going to live forever…You know, these people who are on the cover of every magazine and can’t get through airport security, and then one day, nobody recognizes them anymore; and they’re back in the line with everyone else. That bitterness becomes a seething wound and this show is a comedic exploration of how Kenny—everyone Kenny touches he puts back to their place in his childhood. And by dealing with him, they revert into that dynamic, be it his brother, his ex-girlfriend: By the end of episode three, this infantile Hollywood-like behavior has spread throughout this 4×4 culture. [laughs] This is the South at its funniest and this is what we know.”
When I arrived on set, I expected to interview Jody Hill, who directed, co-wrote and co-starred with McBride and co-star/writer/producer, Ben Best, in the gang’s first ode to the contemporary, marginalized anti-hero, The Foot Fist Way. Completed in 2006, just a few hours away in Charlotte, Hill’s indie didn’t see release until this summer; by the time it quietly reached theaters, the flick had already solidified McBride as one of the most original lead actors and writers working in comedy today.
However, it turns out that Green is now directing the majority of the show’s six episodes, while Hill is wrapping up Observe and Report (pegged by me as the darkhorse classic comedy of spring ’09). Hill was scheduled to arrive shortly thereafter to helm the finale ep, and McKay (Talladega Nights, Step Brothers) also directed an episode. Originally, Will Ferrell was slated to contribute his first-ever gig behind the camera, but he got sidetracked rehearsing his 2009 George W. Bush stage show. He had just flown out to do SNL while I was there. In Eastbound, Ferrell appears as an “alphamale owner of a local BMW dealership” named Ashley Schaeffer who sizes up dicks with Powers (probably not literally).
Green is candid. Everyone on this set is. Half of my interviews contain party stories and crazy shit that was sworn off the record. While riding back from craft services, Green semi-dismissed a well known ensemble actress unrelated to the show as “…or whatever her name is.” Funny. When I ask if East Bound’s half-hour episodes and UK-inspired six-episode season will leave viewers frustrated for real depth a la Entourage (RIP), he grins and quickly says, “No. It’s not like that.” And then, as if he’s cutting a taut line, “And I’ve never watched Entourage.” What about the divisive Southern accents on HBO’s vamp-hit, True Blood, which is set in Green’s home of New Orleans? “I can’t watch that show.”
