“If it’s human, it’s human”: the documentary Jonah Hill called as important as ‘Goodfellas’
Having broken out as a comedy star before evolving into more dramatic roles, Jonah Hill gave arguably the best performance of his career in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.
The part of Donnie Azoff was the perfect showcase to blend the comedic chops and physicality he’d honed during his years working with Judd Apatow’s inner circle with the unheralded dramatic chops that had earned him an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in Moneyball.
Putting the two together in spectacular style, Hill stole virtually every scene he was in as the most rambunctious and outgoing associate of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort, adding him to the long list of performers who’d delivered some of their best work under Scorsese’s stewardship.
The legendary filmmaker is responsible for several of the greatest movies ever made, a lofty accolade that not many names in cinema history have ever been able to lay claim to. He’s been knocking them out since the early 1970s, but for many, Goodfellas was and always will be his magnum opus.
Whereas Goodfellas was a decades-spanning crime saga that tracked the rise and fall of Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, the documentary Hill compared it to is completely different. There’s not a gun, gangster, or Steadicam in sight on writer, director, and producer Ondi Timoner’s Dig!, which uses The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre as a means to explore the collision between art and commerce.
Filmed over a seven-year span and whittled down from 2,500 hours of footage into a 107-minute film, Hill couldn’t speak highly enough of it to Le Cinema Club. “It’s my favourite documentary,” he said. “And that’s just because of its characters.”
“It’s about two ‘90s indie bands, the Brian Jonestown Massacre (the lead singer Anton is a truly wild crazy guy, completely out of control) and the more successful Dandy Warhols,” Hill continued. “They envy each other and end up having this super Shakespearian love affair/friendship/rivalry. It’s an example of how great storytelling can get you unbelievably engaged, whether you have any connection to the world of the film or not. If it’s human, it’s human.”
A personal and professional rivalry can often evolve into something else, and Dig! maximises that age-old concept by diving into the differences and similarities of the two groups at its core. Hill sees it as nothing less than a seminal example of the art form, going so far as to say, “This film is as important among docs as Goodfellas is among narrative features.”
That’s a lofty claim to make because there aren’t even that many narrative features to share a playing field with Goodfellas in the grand scheme of things. The actor is willing to die on that hill – no pun intended – and it’s undoubtedly a sentiment shared by many fans of the bands and Dig! itself.
