STACK Magazine November Issue 121

22 / 116

AUGUST 2014 JB HI-FI
visit
016
EXTRAS
01/ What do you think the key is to keeping
an audience engaged with a sequel?
Christopher Miller: It’s true for
sequels and for all movies; the real
important thing is to have a character
relationship that you care about driving
you through the story. Otherwise, it’s just
a bunch of jokes and you’re living joke to
joke. So the thing that was key for us was
finding a place to take these two guys’
relationship even further.
Phil Lord: In the first movie, they fell in
love for the first time. In this movie it’s,
how do you sustain a relationship over
a long period of time? That also seemed
to be a lot like, how do you sustain a
03/ Do you have any crazy or fun
stories from set?
CM: There’s a scene where this helmet
car explodes on a football field, but it
exploded at about three times the scale that
anyone thought it would. It melted the end
zone and we almost got kicked out of the
football stadium and we had to replace all
the turf because of this massive fireball that
burned up the football field.
PL: So that was like a cute thing that
happened. We had some people almost
burned alive. It was fine. It was hilarious.
We all had a good laugh.
04/ Was there room on set for improvisation
from Channing, Jonah and Ice Cube?
CM:There was a lot of room for improvisation.
The first cut of the film was four hours long
because of all of that improvisation. But we got
great stuff out of it and those guys always find a
way to surprise one another, and it helps us find
ways to surprise the audience.
05/ Who are your influences as directors?
There are so many.The movies we grew up loving
are The Jerk, Raising Arizona, Harold and Maude
and Young Frankenstein. We like comedy directors
who reach for things that are deeper than just
jokes. And what all of those
movies have in common is that
they’re really funny and they’re
really meaningful.That’s what
we aspire to.
franchise over a long period of time?
Once we realised that those were the
same thing and that we could have a lot
of fun with those themes, we got really
excited about the sequel.
02/ What are the challenges of
making a sequel?
CM: I’d say that sequels, by their nature,
are bigger and more expensive and crazier,
so you have to do bigger, more ridiculous
things, so the challenge was scale. So
we were having crazy helicopter chases
and things exploding and all sorts of
shenanigans like that, and all the stunt
work. It was a lot, lot harder.
What better than having two mates co-directing a buddy movie.
That’s exactly what Phil Lord and Christopher Miller did on 22 Jump Street.
They’re still friends and happy to talk about it.
22 Jump Street is out on DVD
& Blu-ray on November 6.
JUMP TO IT
There’s a scene where this
helmet car explodes on a
football field, but it exploded at
about three times the scale that
anyone thought it would.