It's something of a relief that Christopher Mintz-Plasse is happy to talk about nerds. If he wasn't, I'd have to go away and think of some more questions; but the truth is, in his impressive but brief screen career to date, Mintz-Plasse might well have redefined the landscape of movie nerdism. The nerd has steadily taken over youth cinema in recent years, and Mintz-Plasse is a sort of stealth weapon in that process. "I've played a whole bunch of 'em so I can't be sick of them yet," he says. "Maybe I will once I get older, and start looking older, finally. But I'm just glad I've had these opportunities to be geeks in some really awesome movies."
And just as it's impossible to talk to Mintz-Plasse without getting into nerds, it is compulsory to start with McLovin. For the uninitiated, McLovin is the name on the fake ID card brandished by Mintz-Plasse's character in the 2007 teen comedy Superbad. In the movie, this fake persona is crucial to the all-important underage acquisition of alcohol. A star was born the moment when Michael Cera asks Mintz-Plasse if he thought he could pass himself off as the 25-year-old Hawaiian organ donor his fake ID says he is. A wonky grin breaks out across Mintz-Plasse's bespectacled face, and he declares with premature swagger: "I am McLovin."
Mintz-Plasse's portrayal of this gangly, bespectacled 17-year-old, spouting fake hip-hop diction and misplaced sexual bravado in a barely broken voice, made McLovin one of those teen movie characters who defines a generation. You can file him alongside Sean Penn's Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, or Bill and Ted, or perhaps Seann William Scott's Stifler from American Pie – characters who were new to teen movies, but entirely familiar to their audiences. McLovin didn't just steal Superbad, he became a cultural moment – emblazoned on T-shirts, namechecked, mimicked and bandied around the internet. Few people remembered the character's real name (it was Fogell), few remembered Mintz-Plasse's actual name, but everybody remembers McLovin.
The actor himself is at a loss to explain how he became a viral phenomenon: "Itwas insane, man. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, really. When I read the script I thought McLovin was a stupid name. I didn't think it was funny." Much of Mintz-Plasse's performance was the result of improvisation with his co-stars, he says. "That's kind of how they work. They're riffing, so you have to riff with them. And a lot of that stuff made the movie. We didn't think people would enjoy it, because we were just acting like fools. But when it came out, it overnight just blew up."
It's the stuff of a Hollywood fable how the mildly curious 17-year-old came along to the audition for Superbad accompanying some friends, having only previously acted in school plays, and decided to have a go. "I don't know what they saw in me – I still don't know what they see in me – but yeah, they wanted me in the movie." Has McLovin been a double-edged sword? "Definitely not. Iget to have a career because of that role, so I'm forever grateful."
In the five years since Superbad, Mintz-Plasse has been a fantasy-role-playing outcast in Role Models, a spoilt, cowardly dork in cult comic-book hit Kick-Ass, and now in his latest part, in the Fright Night remake, he inevitably plays an uncool high-schooler with interests in sci-fi and the occult and no girlfriend prospects to speak of. "There are shades ofnerd in all of them," he says, "but they're all on completely different spectrums. I'm not going to deny myself the chance to work with these great directors just because it's a nerdy role." But each face in Mintz-Plasse's gallery of nerds is distinct and credible, and each has helped him puta little more water between himself and McLovin.
There's an edge of poignant desperation to Ed, his supernatural geek in Fright Night. (If you don't want to know what happens to him, stop reading now.) Rejected by his former pal Charley (Anton Yelchin), who's now one of the cool kids, Ed blackmails him into coming vampire-hunting by threatening to broadcast embarrassing photos from their dressing-up fantasy play sessions. The vampire hunt ends badly for Ed when he finds what he's looking for in the form of Colin Farrell, hungry for blood to suck and scenery to chew.
In a twist of nerd wish-fulfillment, Edcomes back to punish Charleyin the form of a super-powerful vampire. That ends badly too, and slightly more messily. After a few rounds of combat, Mintz-Plasse ends up minus anarm, then an axe-blow to the neck leaves him wandering around grotesquely half-decapitated.
"So good!" he enthuses. "They had an open gash wound and then they put green paint in the middle, which they turn into CGI blood spatter. Then for the arm they created this really gnarly nub that had blood spurting out the end. Though my arm was just folded behind my back most of the time – old-school magic trick," he nods with a McLovin-ish grin. It took him four hours to put the makeup on, an hour to get it off again and he loved it.
It's no coincidence that Mintz-Plasse's rise has coincided with a big changes in the dynamics of Hollywood teen movies. Once teen movies were led by James Dean types, then John Travolta types and then Rob Lowe types; the geeky guys only got the girls if they created them on their computer à la Weird Science. Now a teen movie is practically unmarketable without a square, bad-at-sports, badly dressed, awkward-with-girls young man at its centre – from Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man to Napoleon Dynamite to the films of Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg.
But that's not Mintz-Plasse's niche; he's the support nerd. What he brings to the party is a different tier of nerdism to put the hero's faux-nerd qualities into perspective – just in case people think the hero's too geeky. Thus, in Superbad, McLovin was there to finesse the nerdiness of leads Michael Cera and Jonah Hill. It was the same in Kick-Ass: Aaron Johnson played the social-outcast hero, despite being a handsome, athletic young man in actuality (they just put glasses on him). Mintz-Plasse's character was his nerdier foil – the cowardly, comic-book-collecting rich kid. Tellingly, Mintz-Plasse auditioned for the lead role in Kick-Ass, but director Matthew Vaughn shrewdly cast him as the support. "He didn't want the lead to be too funny," says Mintz-Plasse, "which I guess is a compliment."
It's the same in Fright Night. Anton Yelchin is another nerd hero, but Mintz-Plasse is the real nerd. "I have to one-up his nerdiness," he says, mindful of his place in the scheme of things. "And also I've got to bring some humour to it because he's more the everyday guy. We're there to make people laugh."
Off-screen, it's a different story. "I wasnever really a nerd," he says. He's so not-nerdy, he hadn't even heard of his Fright Night co-star David Tennant, having never watched Doctor Who. "I'm not really into comic books or Dungeons and Dragons, or any of that kind of stuff. I was in drama class, and I'm a big movie and music buff. And I'm into sports." What? Watching it? "No, playing it. I'm pretty decent," he says. "I can shoot a three pointer in basketball, and I can kickasoccer ball." He also plays drums with his old friends in a rock band, the Young Rapscallions, just to dispel any lingering doubts.
Mintz-Plasse is not a teenager any more either. He's now 22, though he still lives with his parents in Los Angeles (his mother is a school counsellor, his father a postal worker). "I'm going to move out soon, but I'm always on the road working, promoting." He's just been to Dublin on promotional duties for Fright Night, which have also included a surprise visit to the Celebrity Big Brother house with Anton Yelchin. As a loose indication of the flexibility of the term celebrity, Mintz-Plasse didn't know who any of the housemates were apart from Tara Reid, but they all knew who he was. "Oh my God that's awesome. McLovin!" screamed one of Jedward as soon as they walked in. "Everyone was very excited," he says, still nonplussed by the Big Brother experience. "It was like they'd lost their minds a little. You could see it in some of their eyes. It was like a weird zoo." Then he whispers: "So weird."
Right now, it's a matter of waiting for Mintz-Plasse's body to catch up with his ambition. "I'd love to try something different," he says, "But I can't really grow facial hair yet; it looks like dirt when it comes. I have very young looks, so it's easy for me to play high school, but I'm trying to stay away from high-school movies. As I get older, I'll try and broaden my talents. I wanna do movies like Anton [Yelchin]. He's doing amazing indies and he gets to do dramatic roles, and I want to do that in the future. I've gotta prove myself, and hopefully I'm doing that."
