Jonah Hill has shared details of his email conversations with Morrissey and Trent Reznor.
The actor is set to make his directorial debut next week with the release of Mid90s, a film about a 13-year-old skater growing up in Los Angeles. Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails bandmate Atticus Ross composed the score for the film, while the soundtrack features a Morrissey song.
Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Hill discussed what it was like to email the musicians. He said he spoke to Reznor and Ross every day, via Skype, phone, text, and email, but had never met either.
“He’s the most dry, funny person I’ve ever met,” Hill said of Reznor. “He’s one of my heroes. A lot of times I’d end the exchange with, ‘Oh if you need someone to sing backup on ‘Head Like A Hole’, I’m available.’ And it was never acknowledged.
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“I would do it every day, every time we had to discuss the score. ‘Hey, I’m available to sing backup on ‘Head Like A Hole’. Nothing. And then after, like, six months I did it, I just got back, on the email with everyone, a ‘Ha’. H-A.”
The star explained that because of a limited budget, the film’s production company didn’t have money to pay for music to be on the soundtrack so he had to write letters to “all of my favourite artists.”
“Every song that’s in the film, I wrote the scene to have that song in it,” he said. “And I wrote to Morrissey, and I wrote him a really personal letter, and he emailed back, ‘It is my pleasure and I can’t wait to see Mid90s, Morrissey.’ All caps… I was like, ‘Morrissey knows what Mid90s is! He said the words Mid90s! Morrissey is my best friend! We are best friends! I’m best friends with Morrissey!'”
Mid90s stars Lucas Hedges, Sunny Suljic, Na-kel Smith, and more. It currently has no UK release date confirmed but will arrive in cinemas in the US on October 19.
Earlier this year, Hill revealed what Kanye West’s Wyoming listening party was like. “It was truly a beautiful experience,” he told Jimmy Kimmel. “They had big speakers and everybody was moshing and going crazy. Nas is there and Chris Rock … The album was amazing and it was a beautiful experience. and he seemed happy, y’know?”