By Christina Radish
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Justin Long (L) and Jonah Hill (R) star in Accepted |
In the new Universal Pictures film Accepted, high school senior Bartleby “B” Gaines (Justin Long) is on his way to scoring eight out of eight rejection letters from colleges, which isn’t going to go over well with his mom and dad. Several of his outcast friends are in the same, college-less boat. Taking matters into his own hands, B decides to open his own university, the South Harmon Institute of Technology, in an attempt to keep from facing a bleak career, please his parents and get noticed by his dream girl. Before long, dozens of other college rejects show up for classes, and B and his friends forge ahead with maintaining a fake, functioning university.
Even with some of its raunchy content, Accepted still has a PG-13 rating so that wider audiences can be exposed to the film. But, that was an aspect that made the film’s star Justin Long a bit hesitant about taking the role, initially.
{quote_top}“I was hoping that the film would be R and was very apprehensive about doing it when I found out it wasn’t,” the 28-year-old Connecticut native tells MediaBlvd Magazine. “I had a real hang-up about it having to be R because, in my college experience, to say it was R-rated would be sugar-coating it. If you’re making an accurate, realistic college film, I felt that an R rating was necessary, not only because of the sexual stuff, but just the ease with which college kids say the F-word. But, they were adamant about it being PG-13. We fought it for a little while, but I had no real leg to stand on because who cares what I think.”
“Having seen the movie,” continues Long, “I’m glad they didn’t change it. Had they gone for the R rating, it would have been a hard R and, in that case, it might have detracted from what the movie is. It has the tone of an ‘80s comedy, like a John Cusack or Michael J. Fox movie. Those were movies that I grew up with and loved, and that inspired me. This movie is not a sex comedy. It’s a comedy about people trying to find their path.”
{quote_middle}Los Angeles native Jonah Hill is also glad that he finally let go of his desire to push for an R rating for the film. “Justin and I really adamantly wanted it to be an R-rated movie,” the 22-year-old tells MediaBlvd. “Seeing it now, I’m so glad it is PG-13 because more people can see it. A lot of times, R-rated movies are just R-rated movies for the sake of being R-rated movies. They’re like, ‘Well, it’s a R-rated movie, so let’s throw boobs in there, or a lot of F-words.’ I think this movie doesn’t need that kind of stuff because it’s fun on its own without having gratuitous nudity, language or violence, or anything like that.”
Playing best friends on screen wasn’t difficult for Long and Hill, as they developed such a great rapport during filming. “We knew each other a little bit before this, and then we just became really good friends during the course of the movie,” says Hill. “We both had a similar sense of humor. And, Justin is an awesome guy. In my short time, I’m learning that, when you meet someone in this business who you genuinely think is cool, you should stay friends with them because it’s few and far between, compared to other businesses.”
With his roots in comedy, Hill is happy that he is getting so many opportunities as an actor, since it was not really a career that he set out to have. “I didn’t really want to be an actor,” explains Hill. “I always wanted to be a writer. Then, I started writing these things and realized that I could probably perform them better than trying to get an actor to work with so that he could understand what the writing was about. I thought I could convey what I was trying to say better than someone else could, so I started doing it. I was doing one of the pieces that I had written and Dustin Hoffman’s kids came in and saw it, and we became fast friends. They were like, ‘You should meet our dad.’ At the time, I didn’t know who their dad was. I was like, ‘You should meet my dad. His name’s Rich and he’s an accountant. He’s pretty cool, man.’ So, I met their dad and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s crazy, it’s Dustin Hoffman.’”
Hill’s comedy experience definitely helped him when it came time to improvise on the set. “Everybody was so great about letting Justin and I write a lot of jokes, even before we started shooting. I feel like it’s a waste to hire me, if you’re not going to let me do that because that’s when I think the best stuff comes out, and it feels like it’s actually a person saying it, as opposed to a line you’ve read a million times. And, sometimes you find jokes that day, when you’re there and you’re looking at the set. Most of the stuff in the movie that I say is stuff that I came up with, which is so cool to me. It was such a fun, collaborative effort on everybody’s part.”
“My favorite improvs were most of Jonah’s lines,” adds Long. “The scenes were all structured, but we needed transition scenes. We just came up with stuff, and I’m proud of that. Ninety percent of Jonah’s funny lines were him ad-libbing.”
As to the kind of person he was in college, Long admits to being a wise-ass. “I was a go-getter, but for the wrong reasons. I was the slacker guy who concentrated too much on ways to get out of things -- the typical Ferris Bueller type of guy. Had I put as much concentration into studying, I would have gotten to MIT and I’d have a great job as some kind of engineer. But, I focused on sicknesses to come up with and ways to get out of writing papers and charming my teachers. I feel like that was the seed of what I’m doing now. A lot of the script wasn’t really there and we had to ad-lib a lot, at the encouragement of the writers, director and studio.”
{quote_bottom}Hill feels that he’s way more laid back than his Accepted character. “It was so fun to play an uptight, high-strung guy. I shoot first and ask questions later. My two best friends from high school saw the movie and were laughing so hard at how different this character is than me. I’m always just like, ‘Hey, whatever, let’s do it.’ I don’t really plan things out. I just do things on a whim.”
While Hill says that, if he could make up any college course, it would be something having to do with the history of rock and roll, Long thinks a more useful course for him would be either How to Answer Interview Questions You Aren’t Prepared for 101 or How to Diffuse a Potentially Serious Argument with Your Girlfriend 101.
“I’m in this great relationship now,” says Long, “but I’m discovering all these relationship pitfalls. There are very simple things, like flowers, that I didn’t know about, and I’m discovering all that now. I wish I’d taken a class on that before I got into this relationship. I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble.”
