Q&A: Jonah Hill on toxic masculinity and skateboarding

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Q&A: Jonah Hill on toxic masculinity and skateboarding

2018-10-19 22:23 Last Updated At：10-20 11:10

Jonah Hill has always wanted to direct. He worships filmmakers and has treated what he describes as an "accidental" but "wonderful" 15-year acting career as a partial film school, learning from people like Bennett Miller, who directed him in "Moneyball" and Martin Scorsese on "The Wolf of Wall Street." But Hill didn't just want to make any film, he wanted to have something to say, and the confidence and "emotional maturity" required to lead people

He settled on a coming-of-age story, which he laughs is a "tried and true" formula for a first film. It's about a 13-year-old boy, Stevie (Sunny Suljic), growing up in Los Angeles with a single mother (Katherine Waterston), an abusive older brother (Lucas Hedges) who finds solace (and quite a bit of trouble) with bunch of local skateboarders (newcomers Na-kel Smith, Olan Prenatt, Ryder McLaughli and Gio Galicia).

It took Hill three years to write "Mid90s" which is now playing in limited release before it expands nationwide. For the shoot, he and his crew painstakingly recreated the mid-90s Los Angeles he remembers, from the music, to the clothes, the talk and even the trash. "A Doritos bag has a wildly different shape and aesthetic now than it did in 1995," Hill says.

Hill spoke to The Associated Press about the film and what he was trying to say. Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: What was the genesis of this idea?

HILL: Well, I grew up skateboarding in the mid-90s in Los Angeles. It is in no way a biopic or an autobiography, but I knew skateboarding would play in some way into my first film because although I was terrible at it, it was something that came into my life when I really needed it and really gave me a lens that I saw most things through, even when I went into comedy or film, it's subversive, it's anti, it's punk, its sense of humor, taste in music, attitude toward authority (laughs). And to me skateboarding is always butchered in film. It's always done stereotypically, made by people who weren't from the culture a lot of the time.

AP: How did you settle on Sunny for the lead?

HILL: He had the exact quality I was looking for which was someone who was very young for their age but who was 10-feet-tall inside. He was the first kid we read and after he did this scene (of yelling at his mom in the car), everyone was like, oh this isn't just a good child actor, this is a great actor of any age or gender. He was 11 when we shot. I'm 34 and have been acting for 15 years and have never had to strap a movie on my back and walk across the field with it and he did it at 11. He's a freak of nature. He's remarkable.

AP: I feel like I certainly learned something about how teenage boys are together from this film.

HILL: These kids speak in a way I don't agree with, they treat women in a way I don't agree with. But they also are very much there for one another. There's good and bad to people. It's not black and white. And things like homophobia and toxic masculinity and treatment of women, even though I don't agree with these things, they were things I noticed growing up that I wanted to show as unflinchingly as possible so people could decide for themselves where they fall on that line. To me, it's really ugly and it's really hard to watch a lot of it. That's by design. And I think it's interesting to watch it with a crowd of people. You do see people laughing at moments I never would have expected or flinching at moments and it's important to see the truth even if it sucks. And there's s the example of Steve's first sexual experience. I wanted to show how terrified he was and the only moment that becomes enjoyable to him is when he realizes it's currency to rise up in the animal kingdom of his friends...those were lessons I saw growing up that we clearly as a society are having to unlearn.

AP: So this is a commentary on masculinity?

HILL: Yes. I'm someone who is highly sensitive and emotional and has come a long way in my life in a sense of learning who I am and a sense of being able to communicate my feelings thoughtfully and openly. And part of the humor, part of the harshness, part of the ugliness, part of the joy is watching these people who cannot communicate with one another. And ultimately they teach each other lots of bad lessons and lots of good lessons. And bad and good is not up to me, it's up to the individual watching. I have my own feelings, but I don't like moralist filmmakers. I don't want to be one. I don't want to be shoving my views down everyone's throats. "Wolf of Wall Street" is a great example where people thought (Scorsese) was celebrating our characters. I can speak for myself, I thought those people were terrible, but you know, (Scorses's) like, it's not my job to do that.

AP: Why did you focus in on a lower-class setting?

HILL: Skateboarding for myself, personally, it broke me out of a socio-economic bubble that I would have stayed in my whole life. And skateboarding, like a lot of things, unifies people, it's common ground.

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

Venice tests a 5-euro entry fee for day-trippers as the Italian city grapples with overtourism

2024-04-26 03:49 Last Updated At：03:50

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Under the gaze of the world’s media, the fragile lagoon city of Venice launched a pilot program Thursday to charge day-trippers a 5-euro ($5.35) entry fee that authorities hope will discourage visitors from arriving on peak days and make the city more livable for its dwindling residents.

Visitors arriving at Venice's main train station were greeted with large signs listing the 29 dates through July of the plan's test phase that also designated separate entrances for tourists, and residents, students and workers.

“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’’ said Simone Venturini, the city’s top tourism official. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”

Not all residents, however, are persuaded of the efficacy of the new system in dissuading mass tourism, insisting that only a resurgence in the population will restore balance to a city where narrow alleyways and water buses are often clogged with tourists.

Hundreds of Venetians protested against the program, marching festively though the city's main bus terminal behind banners reading “No to Tickets, Yes to Services and Housing.” Protesters scuffled briefly with police with riot gear who blocked them from entering the city, before changing course and entering over another bridge escorted by plainclothes police officers. The demonstration wrapped up peacefully in a piazza.

Tourists arriving at the main station encountered almost as many journalists as stewards on hand to politely guide anyone unaware of the new requirements through the process of downloading the QR code to pay the fee.

Arianna Cecilia, a tourist from Rome visiting Venice for the first time, said she thought it was “strange” to have to pay to enter a city in her native country, and be funneled through separate entrance ways for tourists. She and her boyfriend were staying in nearby Treviso, and so downloaded the QR code as required. But she was still caught off-guard while soaking in her first view ever of Venice's canals by the sight of the entrance signs and her boyfriend telling her to get out the ticket.

On the other side of the entrance ways, workers in yellow vests carried out random checks at the train station. Transgressors face fines of 50 to 300 euros ($53 to $320), but officials said “common sense” was being applied for the launch.

The requirement applies only for people arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outside of those hours, access is free and unchecked.

Venice has long suffered under the pressure of overtourism, and officials hope that the pilot project can help provide more exact figures to better manage the phenomenon.

The city can track the number of hotel visitors, which last year numbered 4.6 million and is down 16% from pre-pandemic highs. But the number of day visitors, which make up the majority of the crowds in Venice, could only be estimated until recently.

A Smart Control Room set up during the pandemic has been tracking arrivals from cellphone data, roughly confirming pre-pandemic estimates of 25 million to 30 million arrivals a year, said Michele Zuin, the city’s top economic official. That includes both day-trippers and overnight guests.

But Zuin said the data is incomplete.

“It’s clear we will get more reliable data from the contribution” being paid by day-trippers, he said.

Venturini said the city is strained when the number of day-trippers reaches 30,000 to 40,000. On peak days, local police set up one-way traffic for pedestrians to keep the crowds moving.

Residents opposing the day-tripper tax insist that the solution to Venice's woes are to boost the resident population and the services they need, limiting short-term rentals to make available more housing and attract families back from the mainland.

Last year, Venice passed a telling milestone when the number of tourist beds exceeded for the first time the number of official residents, which is now below 50,000 in the historic center with its picturesque canals.

“Putting a ticket to enter a city will not decrease not even by one single unit the number of visitors that are coming,’’ said Tommaso Cacciari, an activist who organized a protest Thursday against the measure.

“You pay a ticket to take the metro, to go to a museum, an amusement park. You don’t pay a ticket to enter a city. This is the last symbolic step of a project of an idea of this municipal administration to kick residents out of Venice,” he said.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro declared the launch day, coinciding with an Italian holiday, a success, registering 15,700 paying visitors, 50% more than anticipated.

More than 97,000 others had downloaded a QR code denoting an exemption, including to work in Venice or as a resident of the Veneto region. Hotels in Venice, including in mainland districts like Marghera or Mestre, provided a QR code for visitors to attest to their stay, which includes a hotel tax — accounting for 40,000 of those.

Venturini, the tourist official, said that interest in Venice’s pilot program has been keen from other places suffering from mass tourism, including other Italian art cities, and municipalities abroad such as Barcelona, Spain, and Amsterdam.

But Marina Rodino, who has lived in Venice for 30 years, doesn't see the fee as the cure-all. Neighboring apartments in her residential building near the famed Rialto Bridge once inhabited by families are now short-term apartment rentals.

The corner butcher shop closed. Yet she noted that the new entrance fee requirement will still allow young people to flood the city in the evening for the traditional aperitivo, which can grow rowdy.

She was passing out mock European Union passports for “Venice, Open City,” underlining the irony of the new system, and challenging its legal standing with citations from the Italian Constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to “move or reside freely in any part of the national territory."

“This is not a natural oasis. This is not a museum. It is not Pompeii. It is a city, where we need to fight so the houses are inhabited by families, and stores reopen. That is what would counter this wild tourism,’’ Rodino said.