Michael Cera says something very, very naughty

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For a recent Nylon Guys back page Q & A, I got to talk to the lovably droll Michael Cera. Some people warned me about him. “I hear he’s a dick,” a friend in the bizz said (though he later felt bad for repeating the rumor when Cera turned out to not be a dick). And more than one person said, “Good luck getting more than one word answers.” This proved to be a little closer to the truth. But I came to the phone prepared with twenty questions. And I asked them all.

I haven’t been doing this that long but this is the first time that I had time to ask ALL the questions I’d written down. Not all of them were solid gold, though, you know. You gotta be choosy in this life. Not everything you throw at the wall is gonna stick, unless what you throw at the wall is in fact super sticky. Sticky rice, say.

In the upcoming Youth in Revolt, Cera plays Nick, an erudite young virgin who falls for a girl he can’t have. In order to win her affection, he creates a “bad boy” alter ego by the name of Francois. The mustachioed Francois wears tight white pants, smokes like a Frenchy (you know, he holds it between his middle two fingers rather than the first two; that’s how all French people smoke cigarettes, right? All French people do smoke cigarettes right?) and he tells people exactly what he thinks. Since Cera plays both roles, the actor finally gets a chance to act out. He curses (creatively)! He get in fist fights! He blows shit up! And he takes a spanking from a guy most young men would run from.

How’s it feel to be spanked by Ray Liotta?

Amazing. Really painful too. It was a foam belt, but with each swing the momentum would flip it around my leg. It kept hitting my thigh. It left a bruise, but it was worth it, for sure.

You didn’t show any pain.

It was acting [pause; he laughs]. It was excruciating pain. My mom was on set that day. She visited twice, and the first time Steve Buscemi was beating the hell out of me and the second time Ray Liotta was beating the hell out of me. But she’s used to it. She’s seen me take some beatings over the years.

In Fight Club, Ed Norton needed Brad Pitt. It doesn’t seem like you need Brad Pitt.

No, I do need Brad Pitt, in other ways. I wouldn’t say I don’t need Brad Pitt.

You seem like a classic “good kid.” Did you ever revolt?

I grew up in a pretty quiet place. There wasn’t much trouble going on. But I used to do stupid things with my friend Chris. Just really bored kids stuff. The stupidest thing we did was, on the way home from school a few times we knocked on people’s doors and asked them to take us home.

Did anybody ever do it?

Yeah, they did. They did. And it’s really idiotic. It’s basically hitchhiking but if the person wanted to kill us, they’d be kind of less to blame than if we were hitchhikers. We came to them.

What lessons would you say Youth in Revolt has to teach us about life?

I guess to just be yourself. Nick creates an alter ego to win over this girl, but I think in the end he realizes that he doesn’t have to pretend to be someone he’s not.

You could say that. Or you could also say, maybe, go ahead and fuck shit up because…

Yeah, because it ends up working out. Commit crimes and you’ll get away with it. Yeah. For sure.

A lot of Juno’s lines are pretty famous now. Is there a line from Youth in Revolt that you hope really catches on?

Yes. It was a line that Miguel [Arteta, the director, whose previously credits include Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl] came up with during the re-shoot for Francois to say. It was really late at night and we were dead tired, just hanging out in my hotel room. It just came out of that tired haze. We laughed about it for five minutes. I never actually thought it would be in the movie.

What is it?

‘I’m not going anywhere until you sink your filthy dick into this tomato.’

Wow. You naughty boy.

Yeah. It was a lot of fun to say that line.

Taken from my Q&A in the new issue of Nylon Guys, out now. And Youth in Revolt is out January 8. Here’s the trailer.