Jonah Hill's New Movie Made Me Go Back And Look At The Uncomfortable Interviews I Had With Him

Jonah Hill didn’t do a traditional press tour for his new film, Outcome, because he gave up "media appearances and public facing events" a few years ago because they caused him anxiety. Fair enough. Though he did let Martin Scorsese interview him in support of this film. I have interviewed Jonah Hill three times. They also caused me anxiety. This is not a glib joke. In the most recent one I literally tell him to his face that he makes me anxious. I left every single one of them feeling worse about myself as a human being. I'll come back to that.

Hill has a new film that he directed, co-wrote, and co-stars in called Outcome. It has received, so far, mostly not great reviews. Out of curiosity, I did watch it. It is, at the same time, not a good movie, yet still fascinating taken from the perspective of how Jonah Hill sees himself. (Martin Scorsese plays a small role in this film as Red, a washed up agent to child actors who always fire him to move on to better agents. Credit where it's due, Hill does get a great performance out of Scorsese.)

I wanted to watch it because I was curious to see this from Hill's perspective. Keanu Reeves plays a beloved movie star, Reef Hawk, who is being extorted by an unknown party who has a video tape of Reef allegedly doing something "bad" while Reef was addicted to heroin. The entire film is Reef worrying about what the public will think of him as he whines about how hard it is to be a movie star. Hill plays Reef's crisis manager, who spends the entire film doing very unfunny shtick. It's baffling. It's missing all the irreverent charm that made Hill's Mid90s both a festival darling and a sign of better things to come from Hill as a director. Outcome is just baffling.

Jonah Hill is my least favorite person to interview. His new film forced me to remember this. To be clear, he was never my worst interview. He never did anything truly shitty like others have done. But when people ask me who is my least favorite person to interview, it's Jonah Hill. I want to be clear, I am not calling Jonah Hill "unpleasant." I am calling the experience of sitting in a room with him and trying to interview him "unpleasant." This has always bugged me because, as part of my job, I always thought I could get through to him a little bit? Make it clear I am not his enemy? I always failed. So, now, I'm going to relive all the times interviewing Jonah Hill made me feel bad about myself. And since this is partially what his new movie is about, I'm going to try and figure out why this happened every single time and even try to defend him.