With his 2008 hit Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Nick Stoller cemented his status as one of Hollywood’s most promising comedy directors.  Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why when it came time to make his next movie, the filmmaker decided to revive that movie’s most memorable character.

In Get Him to the Greek, British comic Russell Brand plays an obnoxious rock star (Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Aldous Snow) who manifests his reluctance to play a comeback concert through extreme partying.  Instead of making his way to L.A.’s Greek Theatre, he’d rather take his poor executive escort (Jonah Hill) on the most exciting/treacherous ride of his life.  The results are hilarious.

I got a chance to talk to Mr. Stoller recently about making Get Him to the Greek, rapper-turned-actor Sean Coombs (who plays the tyrant of a record company) and our endless fascination with the rock n’ roll lifestyle:

Steve Gow: Congratulations, this is a very funny movie.
Nick Stoller: Thank you.

SG: People are loving it, aren’t they?
Nick: Yeah, it seems like we’re getting positive reactions.

SG: I’m sort of curious to find out how the idea came to bring back Aldous Snow?
Nick: Basically during (Forgetting) Sarah Marsall - during the first table read actually – I thought Jonah and Russell had amazing chemistry…so then during the shooting of Sarah Marshall, I thought of this idea and I pitched it and they both thought it was fun, they hadn’t done this kind of thing before. Then I was writing the script, I wrote a few drafts and realized that it didn’t make sense for Russell to be playing a new rock star since he just played a rock star in a movie that I directed so we thought we should spin it off and that’s what we did.

SG: It’s interesting too because it sounds like Russell is not that far off from this character and, if anything, he’s actually toned down.
Nick: (laughs) Yeah. Well, personality-wise he’s very different.  He really has created this guy. Aldous is a lot darker and he’s less friendly and he kind of tortures people. You know, he’s kind of a mess and very lonely guy and Russell is a very polite, English, charming guy who’s very effusive and talks a mile a minute and wants everyone to be comfortable – I mean, he’s just very different that Aldous. However, Russell has addiction in his past and certainly drew upon – nothing factual – but there’s certainly like an emotional truth from his past that we kind of brought into the movie.

SG: Do you think that’s kind of key to both of these characters – that sort of honesty that shines through in their performances?
Nick: Yeah, I think hopefully will come and see it and laugh a lot but hopefully they will be surprised that there’s a heart to it and kind of a real emotional through line. That’s certainly interesting to me, as a filmmaker, to try and like hit that emotional truth and try and make a movie that has a heart to it as well as something that’s really funny.  And certainly with Judd (Apatow, who produces the film), that’s his goal.

SG: Also, I read about how you had to audition Sean (Combs) but you figured out pretty quickly that he was perfect for this role, right?
Nick:  Yeah, I thought he’d be great in the movie. Like I had him in mind when I was writing the script. Then he came in to audition which was very cool of him. When you have someone in mind that you’re writing for you really hope they’ll do a good job in the audition because if they don’t, you don’t really know what you’re going to do. And he came in and was just hilarious, like amazing and he and Jonah had good chemistry. Then we cast him and at the first table read, he just killed and we kept expanding the part.

SG: Let me ask you, what do you think it is about the rock n’ roll lifestyle – what is it about that that people are fascinated with?  Because obviously that’s part of the hook of this movie, right?
Nick: I think people have just been obsessed with rock stars - and certainly celebrity culture dominates right now – but everyone wants to party with a rock star. I think there’s a glamour to it and just this reckless, exciting – it seems like a lot of fun. We kind of want to take people on this trip (where) you have the best night of your life with a rock star, it’s so much fun, it couldn’t have been crazier and then the next day you wake up and the rock star taps you on the shoulder and says, ‘let’s do it again’. The party won’t stop. And I’ve certainly hung out with those kinds of people where the first night is so exciting and then all I want to do is sleep the next day. And someone who does that is clearly on the run from something. You realize that at a certain moment.

SG: And at a certain age too.
Nick: Yeah, at a certain age. Except for Mick Jagger. He seems to have figured stuff out.