Audio By Carbonatix
When Phil Lord and Chris Miller pitched their idea for a 21 Jump Street movie, a
film everyone thought was, at best, a moronic moneymaker, they had one bold proposal:
“What if the twist is that we try to make it really good?” says Lord. “That’s basically a
summary of our entire career.”
Lord and Miller are the zeitgeist’s duo of the moment, a writerdirector pair who can take
an existing property — Legos, kids’ bedtime stories, an ’80s cop show starring
Richard Grieco — and turn it into a critical and commercial success. In this era of
franchises, they’re a godsend. Studio executives love them for falling on grenades, the
movies that seem destined to be bombs, like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,
which had languished in development for three years before Sony tossed it to the two
unknowns for their directorial debut. (“It wasn’t that risky because it was already a bird
with a broken wing,” jokes Miller.) And audiences love them because the resulting flicks
are shockingly great.
“It’s kind of a punk rock prank,” laughs Lord. “We’ve got a niche to ourselves of taking
what seems like a bad idea and taking advantage of people’s low expectations. It’s a lot
easier for it to be, ‘I was expecting this to be a giant turd and it wasn’t!’ instead of, ‘I
thought this would be an Oscarwinner and it’s just OK.'”
In the selfreferential recap that opens 22 Jump Street, the followup to Lord and
Miller’s miraculous 2012 hit starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as two policeman
sent to infiltrate a high school drug ring, deputy chief Hardy (Nick Offerman) starts things
off with a stern metarebuke. “You got lucky,” he grumbles. “Anyone with half a brain
thought it would fail spectacularly.”
Now, the problem for both the fictional cops and their reallife creators is that we expect
them to succeed. Four home runs into Lord and Miller’s career (21, Cloudy
and its sequel, The Lego Movie), people finally assume that they’ll make
something awesome. But the only thing more challenging than a comedy about a goofy
old TV show is a comedy sequel where they’ve lost the element of surprise.
The pair brainstormed fresh concepts, then tossed them for being less funny than the
original. Then they decided to embrace the staleness.
“We leaned into the conundrum,” says Miller. Every peril of a sequel is made literal: 22
Jump Street has the same plot — a campus narcotics deal to bust —
and a visibly higher budget. Their new headquarters, right across the street from their old
one, have been upgraded with fancy equipment and, inexplicably, a shark tank. Even
Tatum and Hill’s characters, now posing as college roommates, are getting bored of each
other. Explains Miller, “When the sequel became a metaphor for their relationship, that’s
when we realized there’s actually a story worth telling.”
It’s tempting to analyze the parallels further to wonder what the movie hints about Lord
and Miller’s own partnership. They met at Dartmouth, shared a bedroom in L.A. (“We had,
like, Bert and Ernie beds,” admits Miller), and have spent their careers side by side. When
writing separately, they confess to hearing each other’s voices in their heads.
Brainstorming how Tatum and Hill would get weary of their enforced bond, they risked
jokes that cut close to the bone.
“We probably should have used it as a tool more to talk about our own relationship,” says
Miller. “Well, we kind of did: two men who are incredibly avoidant about talking about their
own relationship, but for years.”
At least reteaming with Tatum and Hill eased their challenge. In the two years since,
Hill’s scored his second Oscar nomination (“Maybe three times after this one!” Miller fake
blusters) and proven that he can do drama. Meanwhile, Tatum, the wifebeaterclad pinup
voted People‘s 2012 Sexiest Man Alive, has proven he’s hilarious.
“The first time, Channing was a little nervous. It was his first time doing comedy and he
was afraid he was going to put himself out there and fall on his face,” says Miller. “This
time, he had great faith. He’s like an oldschool actor where they can all dance and sing
and perform and do jokes and serious stuff and cry on command. He’s always making
everybody who’s holding the purse strings nervous that he’s going to break a leg and shut
down production.”
“He can’t break legs,” insists Lord. “He has an Adamantium skeleton — a
Channingmantium skeleton.”
Yet 22 Jump Street suggests the franchise has a fatal curse. One month before
the first film opened, Whitney Houston died, forcing Sony to cut a gag at the pop singer’s
expense. This time, there’s a recurring Maya Angelou oneliner and no time for a reedit.
If there’s a third film — or a 45th, as the closing credits warn — Lord has a
new rule: “Don’t put any famous African American women in it because you’ll be
responsible.”
For now, having rejected Ghostbusters 3, a grenade no director has dared pick up,
Miller’s working on something really scary: a wholly original script that Lord wants to
produce.
“It would be a nice change of pace to do something where people had good expectations
going in,” says Miller. “Although it could be dangerous.”
