A few days ago all three sat down to answer some questions about the movie. As you’ll be able to tell when you read or listen to the press conference, all three are friends in real life and their familiarity is what makes the movie so good. In fact, some of the fights and conversations were adapted from real life discussions before rehearsals or during the filming, while on a break.

During the making of “Knocked Up” they shot around a million and a half feet of film and that ridiculously high number was due to all the improvising that was done on every take.

As you’ll read below, they talk about the way Judd directs, what they have coming up, and the behind the scenes of making the movie. If you’re curious how Judd Apatow works you’ll dig the interview. But I will warn you… if you were hoping to get a lot of info on Martin Starr you’ll have to look elsewhere as he doesn’t talk that much….

As always you can download the audio of this interview here. It’s an MP3 and easily put on a portable player like an iPod or a CD for listening in your car.

“Knocked Up” opens June 1^st and you’ll definitely want to check it out.  

Question: Can you introduce yourselves for our reporting?

Jonah Hill: Sure.  Oh….sorry, I’m Jonah Hill and that’s my name. 

Jay Baruchel: I’m Jay Baruchel.

Martin Starr: I would be Martin Starr.

Can you guys talk about the improv process on the set and when you finally see a movie that you’ve done a million and a half feet for does it hurt to be missing certain jokes that you thought were oh, my God?

Jay Baruchel: Oh, yeah of course. But that is just sort of the nature of that process and Judd always gets us together. The same with Undeclared, we got together about a month before we shot the pilot and just sort of work shopped and rehearsed and came up with whatever was funniest and it’s kind of like comedic Darwin-ism you gotta bring it or else it’s not getting into the movie but of course there’s always a jokes that you love, your babies that don’t get in there but it’s the best way to work.

Jonah Hill: I think it works out for the best in the end. It’s like especially this after seeing every version of the movie while it was coming towards the final cut of it you know? You know from the longer ones thinned down. It’s all appropriate to pushing the movie. It’s what makes the movie best. You can’t think of like man, my joke’s not in there that I really like. It’ s like you know there could be a lot of funny jokes in the movie but the best version of the movie makes the movie good and that’s all that counts is if people like the movie. They don’t want a 4 hour version with more jokes. Maybe for us. 

Jay Baruchel: I’d love that. That sounds awesome. That sounds like a great time.

Well, we have heard that the DVD will feature an extended version of the shmeshmorshion debates.

Jay Baruchel: Oh, sweet. 

Jonah Hill: That’s classic. A classic duel.

How far did that go?  How controversial did it get?

Jonah Hill: I think a lot of that stuff got pretty controversial. I think when you’re in the moment of improvising and especially when you’re in a heated argument you kind of take it to a place you would take it in an argument where the goal is try to make it as real as possible so like….

Jay Baruchel: It’s kind of being like ridiculous and funny but in keeping with the parameters that they set up for the scene.  It’s got to make sense in the scene sort of but we’re both getting animated screaming at each other so obviously it’s going to elevate. There’s a little sort of healthy improv one-upsmanship thing happening too so we’re both trying to outdo each other and I don’t know it was a really fun scene to shoot. I had my shirt off the whole time. That was wicked. 

Jonah Hill: Which was distracting for me.

Jay Baruchel: It gets hot in Northridge. 

Jonah Hill: Yeah, it was like 120 degrees.

Jay Baruchel: For like a week, and I live in Canada so that was horrible.

Jonah Hill: Jay was melting.

Jay Baruchel: I was melting. There’s pieces of me…my goo is all over Northridge.

Jonah Hill: One of the funniest things was when we shot the opening scene of the fight club stuff kind of. It was 120 degrees outside and you would go inside and me and Jay everyone would be like passed out with fans in front of them then me and Seth and Jason had oxygen.

Jay Baruchel: They made fun of me because I kept saying to everybody make sure you drink your water. Drink your water. Drink 2 liters of water and Jonah and Jason are from California like man, we grew up in this. I don’t need to and like stupid Jason drinks like no water he smokes 5 cigarettes and drinks a coffee.  And of course within a half an hour he’s like I don’t feel so good. So I’m the water police, which is very cool.

I wanted to ask each of you the first sex comedy that made an impression either comedic or erotic or otherwise?

Jonah Hill: Martin? 

Martin Starr: Oh shitballs. Movie sex comedy?

Jay Baruchel: I’m trying to think.  I mean, in Montreal there is soft-core porn on TV every night at 11 p.m. It’s kind of like a right of passage for everybody that grows up there to watch.  It’s called Blue Night and they just show these horrible dubbed soft-core like Red Shoe Diaries all the time, so it probably be one of those like David Duchovney introducing an assorted tale of sex and intrigue. That’s probably…yeah, its Red Shoe Diaries.

Martin Starr: I watched some of those.

Jonah Hill: I would say there’s those Harold Ramis kind of 80’s comedies for me was probably the first time I saw parts of the female anatomy and laughed at the same time. It was kind of interesting you know, that dichotomy, or just talking about sex was always more interesting to me than seeing it. It kind of made me more uncomfortable to like and a lot of times misogynistic almost to just see a naked woman randomly because it’s an R-rated comedy. But I always found the hilarity came from 2 uninformed people generally talking about sex or a bunch of guys that kind of really were uninformed about the ways of like women or how to be in a relationship. Talking about sex was always way funnier to me then seeing it, you know what I mean. So I think like Animal House is a pretty high bench mark for like a sex comedy.

Jay Baruchel: We all found a porno at the park jungle gym I used to hang out at when I was like 9 or 10 and we all had …somebody had strewn like pages and pages and pages of this hard-core pornography and like it was like 0 to hard core and it’s like going from never seeing a naked women to seeing like blow jobs and all this stuff and yeah, that caused quite a stir. I had some horrible questions to ask my mother. All of them were what is that? What does this mean?  All this terrible porn slang for stuff—watching my mother try to explain that to me.

I just want to talk about the improv of the Jewish jokes and then Jay I wanted to know why you didn’t make fun of Seth for being Canadian.

Jay Baruchel: Well, I’m Canadian and in the movie I get to have my tattoo out so I’m technically Canadian too. No the Jewish stuff….

Jonah Hill: What scenes?

Jay Baruchel: The Munich rant in the club?  That comes from ….

Jonah Hill: That was us just talking.

Jay Baruchel: That was literally like we showed up for the first table read for Knocked Up and Seth and I were like you know what movie I saw? I saw Munich.  Oh, man Munich’s wicked. It’s like a Jewish action movie and basically like verbatim what you see in the movie is the conversation we had which is probably sadder that we actually believed all those things. I actually did get as much of a kick out of it as it seems.

Jonah Hill: I remember…that was the first day.  I remember shooting that and being like if this isn’t in the movie that sucks, because I found that to be so funny a bunch of dudes talking about…

Jay Baruchel: Munich in a nightclub.

Jonah Hill: Yeah, Munich in a nightclub.  It’s true. Those places, those cool, hip kind of places and stuff and you get a bunch of guys that are like nerdyish dudes and it’s like the whole movie is about or a lot of judge movies are about people that have a hard time like being a normal member of society and they’re like able to go out and talk to everybody…

Jay Baruchel: That’s it, bullshit and …

Jonah Hill: Yeah, and it’s funny, I think a lot of times if we were all at a bar we’d be sitting around talking about like something as trivial or silly as that. It’s a way of avoiding having to be like let’s meet a stranger.

Jay Baruchel: It’s way easier to talk about movies and hockey and TV.

Jonah Hill: So that’s that one.

Were you guys fans of Mr. Skin.com before the movie and have you since become fans?

Martin Starr: Definitely knew about it.

Jonah Hill: I never knew about it and then we still have a free pass…

Jay Baruchel: We still all have a free year.

Jonah Hill: Universal doesn’t know that there’s still….because I don’t want to get kicked out.

Jay Baruchel: Neither do I. There’s a password and user name that we’ve all been using since the movie started.

Jonah Hill: All my friends and people I’ve met through life usually if we talk non-media to anyone I’ll give it to you off the media. I don’t want millions of people, but Universal does not know they are paying for it and I just found out it existed when we were making the movie. I didn’t know what it was.

Martin Starr: I still don’t have it and I’m very upset.

Jonah Hill: We’ve purposely kept it away from Martin.  If I tell you, just don’t tell Martin, that’s the only rule.

I’m from Mr. Skin and I’ll make sure you all have passwords.

Jay Baruchel: All right! Thank you. Holy shit.  That’s a valuable resource, man. That’s like Wikopedia, the Mr. Skin.

Martin Starr: Yeah, we’ve got shirts. I’m going to wear the Mr. Skin shirt.

Jay Baruchel: Yeah, we’ve got t-shirts. That’s amazing. Thank you, man.

Jonah Hill: I didn’t get a t-shirt.

Jay Baruchel: So fuck you Jonah. 

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