How Get Him To The Greek became the most problematic comedy ever made
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When well-loved comedian Russell Brand sat down for a table read with cuddly comic actor Jonah Hill during pre-production for 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the film’s director, Nicholas Stoller, could tell they had instant chemistry.
Brand was playing vainglorious rock star Aldous Snow, while Hill was an obsessive fanboy working at the Hawaiian resort where Snow was recuperating. Neither was a lead character in Stoller’s crude romcom, but, to varying degrees, each stole the show. This gave Stoller an idea: what if they buddied up for their own movie? In that flash of inspiration, 2010’s Get Him to the Greek was born.
Fourteen years on, it is fair to say Get Him to the Greek has not inherited the earth. The film – just like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, produced by early 2000s king of comedy Judd Apatow – has its issues but is also, at moments, completely uproarious. Yet seldom in history has a movie “cancelled” itself more emphatically than this gross-out buddy flick.
Brand’s downfall is well-documented. In September, a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary accused the actor-turned-YouTube influencer of multiple cases of sexual assault. But he remained in the spotlight and in early May, was “baptised” in the Thames in the company of his friend Bear Grylls – a ceremony Brand has described as “an opportunity to die and be reborn; an opportunity to leave the past behind and be reborn”.
Hill is not flying high either: last year, his ex-girlfriend, surfing instructor Sarah Brady, accused the actor of being emotionally abusive and described him as a “misogynist narcissist”. She publicly shared several text exchanges between the pair in which Hill said he could not continue the relationship if she continued surfing with other men, posting pictures of herself in a swimsuit, and spending time with friends he did not approve of.
Then there is Get Him to the Greek’s third big star, a former altar boy and business student named Sean Combs – or, as he is better known, Diddy. In 2010, Combs was one of the most powerful figures in hip hop and it was no stretch for him to play film’s villain, egotistical record executive Sergio Roma.
Yet he has now joined Brand and – arguably Hill – in cancel corner following the leaking of a 2016 video in which he punches and kicks his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, in a hotel hallway in Los Angeles. Combs has issued an apology for the assault, describing his behaviour as “inexcusable”.
“I take full responsibility for my actions in that video,” he said. “I was disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”
The footage is, needless to say, horrifying in any context. It is also reminiscent of a scene in Get Him to the Greek where Roma chases Brand and Hill’s characters down a hotel corridor, eyes blazing with rage. Talk about life imitating art in the most disturbing way possible.
But that’s not all. The movie has a problematic fourth wheel in comedian Aziz Ansari, whose career hit the buffers after claims that he behaved creepily towards a woman on a date. Ansari was not accused of any crimes and has returned to comedy but never entirely recovered from the accusations.
Watched in 2024, Get Him to the Greek is Russell Brand at peak cultural clout. His role in Sarah Marshall was essentially an extended cameo. The sequel, however, was built in his image. Snow is a ludicrous mix of Robbie Williams, Mick Jagger and David Bowie, while his hit parade includes sanctimonious dirges with titles such as African Child (Trapped In Me).
Clean for years, he falls off the wagon after breaking up with his vacuous pop star girlfriend (Rose Byrne, the best thing in the movie and also one of its few uncancelled actors). Drugged out and doped up, his career is heading south. This is when Hill’s record executive Aaron Green (a new character unrelated to the obsessed fan Hill plays in Sarah Marshall) suggests to his boss (Diddy) that Snow record a live album at the Greek Theatre in LA. Green’s mission is to bring the debauched star from London to LA in time for the gig.
Starting with this vague premise of a Brand-Hill buddy movie, Stoller dove into Brand’s 2008 memoir My Booky Wook, in which the actor and comedian “frankly” discusses his struggles with heroin and experiences of sex addiction. Subsequent revelations about Brand’s behaviour have cast his musings in a different light. In 2009, however, Stoller was riveted.
“Russell has been clean for a long time now, almost 10 years, I think, but when I read his book, I literally did not know the Russell I was reading about,” Stoller said at the time. “He just seemed a totally different person.”
He was keen for the actor to tap into the “old” Russell Brand – the bad boy who became an agent of chaos in the lives of those around him.
“I don’t have experience with addiction, and I wanted to make sure it all felt real,” Stoller explained. “The movie, while it’s certainly a big comedy, still tries to explore some serious themes, and we’re hopefully getting into this character who’s lonely and an addict.
“I wanted to make sure it was truthful, so I interviewed Russell and asked him lots of questions. There’s nothing in the movie that’s from his life, per se, but in terms of emotional truths and that sort of thing, he really helped me a lot with trying to figure the character out.”
Brand also suggested one of the film’s most notorious scenes in which Hill’s character is forced to smuggle the singer’s heroin stash up his bum – or, as Combs says, “if he wants you to put the candy in the jar, you put the candy in the jar”.
Combs is hilarious throughout. Stoller would wind up the mogul-turned-actor by interrupting him – and then, when Combs was about to lose his cool, rolling the cameras. The tactic worked. Diddy is arguably the real star of Get Him to the Greek.
The movie hasn’t aged terribly – certainly not as badly as the careers of its top cast. It is packed with cameos by celebrities playing themselves, including Christina Aguilera, Pink, Pharrell Williams, and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich – though an appearance by Brand’s then-romantic partner Katy Perry was cut (on the basis that it risked shattering the fourth wall).
The only real flashpoint is a rape sequence in which a groupie attacks Aaron that proved controversial even in 2010. “There is a particularly egregious rape scene that involves a humiliated Aaron – can’t we just agree going forward that no matter who the victim is, rape jokes never work?,” said the LA Times. “Get Him to the Greek reinforces cultural myths surrounding the acceptance of rape,” agreed Elevate Difference, a New York-based “economic and social justice” website.
Get Him to the Greek provides few clues regarding the behaviour of which Brand is later accused. Though Snow is a wild-living rock star, under the party lifestyle, he’s a lost soul with huge daddy issues. Brand, however, displayed a more sinister side promoting the film. In one retrospectively disturbing interview, he chats up a Dutch female journalist by taking her sunglasses and shoving them down his trousers.
“How’s this going to make you feel? I’ve undone one button on my zip,” he says. “Your glasses are going down. They are next to my penis. When you put those glasses on this morning, you didn’t imagine they would be next to a man’s penis… Who expected that at the beginning of the day?”
He grins like a wolf, his shamelessness on full display much like the chest-hair spilling from his shirt (undone, just like his trousers). A few years later, it would all come toppling down for Brand, leaving Get Him to the Greek as a stark example of a film from recent history that would never be made today.
