INT: Seth Rogen

Seth Rogen is currently filming an untitled mall cop comedy (possibly titled OBSERVE AND REPORT) and our man Sturdy (he of C’mon Hollywood fame) was on hand to observe and report on the proceedings. While that full report is forthcoming, we’ve got an extra bonus for you today. A candid chat with Rogen about all sorts of things from his upcoming movies to “The Simpsons” to Grand Theft Auto IV.

Consider this interview like a B-side to a forthcoming single. Of course this is a pretty long B-side, but you get the drift. I think it’s clear after watching this that Seth Rogen really is like you and me. Except with lots more money. Check it out below and thanks to Sturdy for the crack reporting!

Seth Rogen

How do you feel that your job in a movie
drives the comedy, like PINEAPPLE EXPRESS?

In PINEAPPLE EXPRESS it was just kind of what’s a
weird job we haven’t seen a lot of that you could fathomably smoke weed all day
while doing. We didn’t know. I honestly have no f*cking clue what a process
server does in real life. We could be completely off the mark. We could be 100%
wrong but in the writing of the movie, it seemed to work. It seemed to make
sense. It was a somewhat organic way of getting me outside Gary Cole’s house to
witness the murder. That’s really all we were – – I don’t think the words – –
and then we just thought it would be a funny joke that Franco never really got
what I did. We thought that was also kind of funny. I guess it serves a
different role in every movie you’re doing.

How did Franco do as the Jew?

He was good. He’s actually half Jewish so he
knows a lot of the slogan. He knows the jargon. He says bubby convincingly. It
worked well.

Been sensitive to stuff on the internet?

I read a lot of – – I mean, I just get bored. I
read a lot of that. I read a lot of the web pages you guys write for.

It didn’t used to be about you though.

No, yeah, you’re right. And it still isn’t for
months on end which is great.

Are you writing something right now?

We’re working on THE GREEN HORNET and writing a
“Simpsons” episode.

How do you get into that fold?

We call “The Simpsons” and ask if we
can write an episode. Evan actually met James L. Brooks at a party and James
expressed that he really liked SUPERBAD so we thought, “There’s our in. We
can ask them to write a ‘Simpsons’.”

This season?

No because we haven’t even written it yet and
then it takes a while to animate, so next season.

Do you have an outline?

Yeah, we have an outline. We’ve started writing
the script. I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you what it’s about though. “The
Simpsons” will sue me.

For two seasons away?

I honestly don’t know. I don’t know exactly how
that works. They just told us to try to get them the script over the next couple
weeks and then I assume it goes to animation so I don’t know. Maybe it would be
next season. I really don’t know how it works.

Do they assign you a story?

We went in and pitched them like five ideas and
surprisingly, they hadn’t done some of them. Yeah, we all kind of settled on one
in the meeting and then we went out and wrote an outline and they gave us notes
on it, we rewrote that one.

Can you write in their voice?

If there’s one thing I’m familiar with it’s
“The Simpsons.” Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be difficult. If
anything, it’s hard not writing like “The Simpsons.”

Did you write a part for yourself?

Yes, I am expected to be in the episode.

As you?

No, as a character.

Writing DRILLBIT TAYLOR for teens, would you
try that territory again?

I mean, GREEN HORNET is PG-13. That’s an action
movie. You can do anything violence-wise, so it actually does not affect it in
any way shape or form that it’s PG-13. Maybe. I wouldn’t rule it out but it’s
definitely, when trying to write something that’s really relatable and kind of
about people going through things that everybody goes through, in my head it’s
easier to do that in an R rated movie just because people say f*ck in real life.

How is your schedule?

I mean, it’s mostly decided by a team of people
and you know, I’m busy. There’s a lot of sh*t to do. I do nothing as often as I
can but often, you see I’m doing – – like the week I get back, I’m just trying
to think what I have to do. I’ve got to go record for MONSTERS VS. ALIENS. I’ve
got to shoot the poster for this movie. There’s just always things we have to do
and we just do it.

What do you know about the next Judd movie?

I know everything about it. I’ve read the script
and given notes on the script. I’m well versed in the next Judd movie. Someone
printed something that was pretty interesting today on one of your web pages.

Eric Bana?

Yeah, where’d you get that from?

Possibly a MUNICH shout out?

Yeah, yup, that’s something I’ve heard too.

What was it about Eric?

I actually had nothing to do with the casting,
with his name coming up. I didn’t even bring that up. Judd had a lot of strong
choices, a lot of strong notions going in. I think soon there’ll be like an
official release of the entire cast which has some really cool people in it that
I think people will be excited to see working with us.

And familiar faces too?

Yup, you’ll definitely see a few familiar faces.

What type of character do you play?

I play a young, struggling stand-up comedian
who’s not that funny. So yeah, not too far.

Does he play a lesbian bar?

No, that’s not in the script actually. We should
put that in though. That was the first place I did standup.

Is it hard to not be funny?

No. I don’t know. It’s actually, we are supposed
to be writing two types of standup jokes. It’s funny because we’re supposed to
be writing good ones and not so good ones. I’ve got a sh*t load of not so good
ones.

Does Adam play a mentor to you?

There may be a mentor type dynamic there which
we’re all very familiar with. You know, Judd, Garry Shandling really mentored
him a lot. Judd really mentored me a lot. Now I’m kind of helping usher in this
new group of guys. I wouldn’t say mentoring them but whoever kind of gets their
foot in the door first kind of opens it for the rest of the group. Yeah, I’d say
that aspect of the story we all heavily relate to.

Do you love the DVD extras?

Yeah, I think DVDs are great. I’m the first guy
to get the DVD and watch every f*ckin’ lame thing that most people probably
never look at in a million years.

The art gallery?

Yeah, exactly. Like they’ve got SIN CITY all
green screen? I’m the guy that watches that sh*t. To us, it’s for fans. It’s for
people who are really interested in the process. Most people aren’t but some
people are and we figure they should be taken into consideration too. Yeah, I
mean, I was actually really inspired by the DVDs of guys like Robert Rodriguez
and those guys who just put in everything to say like here’s exactly how we do
this. There’s no mystery to it. There’s no air of secrecy. I’m against that.
Kevin Smith is really secretive with his stuff and I’m kind of trying to
convince him to not be like that so much. I just don’t get what it gains you. If
I gave one of you a DVD of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS right now, nothing really implies
that it will make any less money ultimately. If anything, it gets more people
talking about it, I think. He, there were actors in the movie who didn’t read
the script for ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO and you could literally go on my
iPhone right now and download the PINEAPPLE EXPRESS script from IMBD in 35
seconds. I don’t think, I personally don’t think it makes a big difference. I
know I’m a movie fan. I love to go out and look at that stuff. Before I was a
writer, I would actively seek out unmade movie scripts and read them and compare
them with their final product, so I’m all for that stuff being out there just in
the hopes that other people will make movies I like.

And PINEAPPLE is really good.

Yeah, I think ZACK AND MIRI is too so I don’t
get the whole secrecy about all of it.

With DVD director’s cut, which do you see as
the canon version?

The theatrical version to me. I’ll be honest, we
basically get final cut on our movies. I can’t think of one instance where the
studio has made us take something out or put something in that we didn’t want to
take out or put in. So the movie as you see it in the theaters is 100% how we
want it to be. If anything, we get pressured to add stuff onto the DVDs just
because they want to slap that sticker on it that says, “with an additional
25 f*ckin’ million minutes of sh*t we didn’t think was good enough to put in the
movie in the first place.” So yeah, to me, it was actually kind of a fight
on PINEAPPLE EXPRESS in that we really didn’t cut much. There’s no scenes that
are cut altogether. There’s little bits here and there so we were kinda
struggling to find enough material for the studio to be able to say, “Look,
there’s extra shit on there” because it’s 100% how we want it to be. If we
wanted extra sh*t in there, we would have put it in there. So we kind of had to
finesse it a little bit. There is extra stuff ultimately. I think there are
funny jokes but I don’t think it’s – – I honestly don’t think it makes the movie
better. I think if you’re a movie fan, again, it’s interesting to see what else
was in there, what they could have added but I’m always trying to push for it to
be put under a separate section. I don’t think it should be put in the movie. I
think it should be deleted scenes as its own special feature on the DVD. You can
watch them if you want but if you don’t want to, you get the movie exactly how
you first enjoyed it.

What have you been watching on DVD lately?

Well, it’s funny. It’s really interesting acting
in a movie that I’m not writing or producing in that I get a sh*t load of time
in my trailer to watch a lot of satellite TV which I normally don’t get. What
have I been watching on DVD? I’ve been going to the theater. I live a block away
from the theater so it’s great. I saw SPEED RACER. I saw IRON MAN. I liked SPEED RACER.
No one else did.

We did.

I really fuckin’ loved it. Yeah, I don’t get it.
Really, I want to see it again. I saw INDIANA JONES and then SPEED RACER the
next day and the level of creativity that went into SPEED RACER in my mind
versus the level of creativity that went into Indiana Jones was just not even a
comparison. Every shot of SPEED RACER, any one frame of SPEED RACER I felt like
had more creative energy pumped into it than any shot in Indiana Jones. And I
like those movies. I’m not a guy who hates Steven Spielberg. I’m a big fan of
his generally speaking but yeah, I loved SPEED RACER. I was kinda shocked. I got
it I guess in that it might have thrown people for a loop and the plot was maybe
a little too complicated for kids to really grasp but it was made for
25-year-old potheads. I don’t know how many of us there are.

You do a lot of voice work.

KUNG FU PANDA’s pretty good.

Do you enjoy that in between other projects?

I do. It’s a lot of fun. I like to do movies that
I’d go see and I do go see all those CG movies. I like the visuals of it. I
think they’re – – it doesn’t matter to me that they’re really aimed towards
younger people. They’re just kind of impressive technical fetes and to me, I get
a kick out of just hearing my voice coming out of something that some f*ckin’
nerd in San Francisco spent four million man hours trying to create on the
computer somewhere. So yeah, and it’s funny because it’s the exact opposite of
making a movie in a weird way in that 100% of the attention is on you and your
performance. There’s no extras, there’s no set, there’s no lights, there’s no
camera. It’s just you saying the lines. There’s not even other actors. So yeah,
I really enjoy it. It really feels like just playing kind of and again, I’ve
seen 10 minutes of MONSTERS VS. ALIENS and it’s f*cking insane. I just get such
a kick by the fact that I’m in that movie and yeah, that someone put that much
effort into that.

Are you planning anything like the SUPERBAD
drawings for this movie or PINEAPPLE?

We just do more d*ck drawings. Does it have to
tie in? No, I mean, with SUPERBAD it seemed to have a very organic – – we’re not
guys, we don’t really care about the money, we’re not one to just kind of find
things to commercialize and sell, but to us that was just something that we
would have wanted. As movie fans, yeah, I want nothing more than a big book of
dick drawings, or a little book but whatever size it is, so far we haven’t
really come up with anything for the other movies. Again, we don’t want it to
seem like we’re just kind of shilling our product. If it’s organic for the movie
then we’ll do it.

PINEAPPLE could have action figures.

Yeah, they could have action figures. We’ve
actually been talking about that, yeah. That’s something, apparently they want
to make action figures for movies like THE DARK KNIGHT and PIRATES OF THE
CARIBBEAN. Not so much your $20 million pot movie.

Kevin Smith does a lot of memorabilia.

He does, he shills his sh*t like no tomorrow. He
said they’re not going to make toys out of this one. But if they do THE GREEN HORNET,
then I get a toy out of that.

An indie toy company might pick up PINEAPPLE.

Yeah, that’s true. They might. I want a Kubrick
made of me. That’s all I want. I want that more than anything in the world. I
don’t know, gotta call Japan. It’s an expensive phone call but I want one.

Will you come to Comic Con?

Yeah, our whole press junket is at Comic Con
actually. We’ll be there for like five days or something.

Like SUPERBAD last year?

Yeah, pretty much. We’re doing a screening and a
Q&A and we’ve got our junket there and we’ve got a big f*ckin’ panel in that
giant, giant room.

Can you walk around at Comic Con?

No, I can. What’s funny is people don’t come up
to me that often and it drives Jonah crazy. We were just at the MTV Awards and
it happened 100 times. We’ll be together and everyone comes up to him and no one
comes up to me. And it’s the greatest thing. I don’t know what it is and he went
so far as to ask me that. One guy went up right up to him and was like,
“Could I take a picture?” He’s like, “Why the f*ck, did you not
see him? Why didn’t you ask him?” He goes, “I don’t know, I thought I
would ask you.”

You were more incognito?

No, that’s not it. I don’t know. Jonah’s shorter,
he’s a little more accessible.

Jonah’s working on a script with you and him
as brothers?

Yeah, that’s something he’s been writing for a
while. I don’t know if he’s ever finished it. MIDDLE CHILD. STEP BROTHERS might
step on that a little bit. I don’t know how many movies about two curly haired
guys as brothers you can have. But I would love to do that. I think it’s a
really funny – – I read a draft of it a little while ago, six months ago maybe
and it was really funny. Maybe one day.

Is Zack any better at making a porno than your
Knocked Up character was at making a porn site?

Yes, I think he is. It’s way easier to make a
porno than a porn web page, I’ll tell you that much. Me and you could make a
porno in 10 minutes. On my iPhone. A web page would take, well one of you guys
probably 10 minutes but for me it would take a while.

Stephen Chow’s name keeps coming up for GREEN HORNET.

It does. He’s someone, you know, until you get an
official green light, the studio won’t spend any money. It’s hard to get an
actor without any money but he is someone that yeah, we would love to have him.
The version of the script that ultimately we’ve written is a very intense action
movie but the relationship between THE GREEN HORNET and Kato, a lot of comedy
comes from that. At first actually we weren’t even sure going in whether or not
we could be more of a Jet Li type of guy who maybe isn’t the funniest guy in the
world but is physically very impressive or whether it would be more of a Stephen
Chow type guy who can do martial arts but also clearly has a sense of humor on
him. In the version that we’ve made, it seems like a Stephen Chow type guy would
be more suitable for the role. But yeah, again, until they officially green
light it, it’s hard to make any of those decisions. We have been meeting
directors and stuff though, even though we haven’t green lit it. Me and Evan
just kind of took it upon ourselves to begin the conversations with people. I’m
really excited. It seems like it really might happen.

No one knows what to expect.

Because no one knows a g*d damn thing about THE GREEN HORNET.

Does he rely on Kato for the action or do they
share?

It’s them sharing the action but I would say the
story has something to do with them working out their relationship exactly. I
would say in a way it’s your quintessential story about a hero and his sidekick.
That’s what really initially drew us to it is we always thought that was kind of
a funny dynamic and a funny relationship. No movies really did that except
BATMAN AND ROBIN. No movies did that well. So it’s something that for years, me
and Evan had actually kind of been toying with this notion of a movie that
really explores the hero/sidekick relationship and what is a hero without a
sidekick. What is a sidekick without a hero? It’s actually a dynamic that
applies to many real life situations, a lot of working dynamics, a lot of boss
and their underlings. That’s what really initially drew us to it because the one
thing people say when you say THE GREEN HORNET is Bruce Lee, Kato. He’s the only
sidekick who’s way more known than he is.

Who even knows who played the Hornet?

Exactly. Van Williams. I know but exactly. That
is definitely part of what the movie is ultimately.

What’s the hold up?

It’s more just us finishing a newer draft of the
script and kind of the timing that they do with these things. You might hear
something soon.

Any Jewish jokes in that one?

There actually is. [LAUGHTER]

Were you writing it as a tentpole or mid
budget?

We don’t think about the money at all. When we’re
writing a script, the only way we can do it is to just write exactly what it is
we would want to see if we went to a movie. When we wrote PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, we
did not know whether it would be a $100 million movie or a $27 million.
Ultimately it was a $27 million movie but that didn’t affect the way we wrote
it. It was more going in after and kind of taking things out but ultimately, we
did all the action that we wanted in that. That being said, this seems like it
would be more in the $70-100 million world but again, we just write these things
thinking what movie do we want to go see? What would we throw down our
money for? What trailer would we watch and say, “That’s the f*cking movie
I’m running too! That’s the movie I’m standing in line for right now.”
Those are the movies we want to make.

Will you go for another indie director?

That’s the question. What do you think? I don’t
know. That’s the argument. We don’t know. We’ve been meeting with people in both
sides of that, in both worlds I would say. That ultimately is the real question.
Do you get a guy who does action really well and who’s done that before or do
you get a guy who’s never done action but can bring something unique to that
style movie? We don’t know yet. Until we get the script out to people, we’re
kind of letting their response to what we write be the dictator. Some will read
it and be more psyched than the other guys and that’ll be the guy we go with.

Is generating a script with Evan different now
than when you were 13?

Yeah, way different. We write in a much nicer
environment, I’ll tell you that much. Yeah, we’ve definitely refined our writing
process a lot. It’s easier every time. GREEN HORNET, it just flew out of us. It
couldn’t have been an easier movie to write I would say, probably because we’d
been ruminating or marinating on it for almost a year by the time we actually
sat down to write the screenplay. Don’t tell Sony that. But yeah, it’s
definitely become a much more refined process. We outline a lot better now and
we know where to start with the emotions and the simple kind of relatable story
and then build from there as opposed to starting with like, “There’s a car
chase where a guy’s foot goes through the window.” It’s a lot harder to
write a movie starting there and working backwards to find a story. Now we start
with the story.

Are you a 9 to 5 writer?

Yeah, we are, when possible. I mean, when I’m
making a movie, it makes it a little more difficult but yeah, I’ll go over to
his house and we’ll write pretty much from nine to five. Neither of us, we both
love writing but we both love sitting on our asses doing nothing more so we do
it in a way where we get as much time to do that as humanly possible. We also
both have girlfriends so we can’t just – – before we would write from 10 to
three in the morning. That doesn’t fly.

The foot gets a great reaction because nobody
knows it’s not blood.

Yeah, exactly. Nobody knows. I like to hear
people say, “How can they show all that blood in the f*ckin’ movie
trailer?” It’s funny how that works. I didn’t even think about that until
I overheard someone say that actually. Yeah, it’s slushy.

Are you open ended after the Judd movie?

Yeah, I mean, if we make THE GREEN HORNET, it
would probably shoot sometime after that, in the months after that so I’m kind
of leaving that slot open, being hopefully optimistic I guess.

And we’ll hear something soon?

You might. I don’t know.

Tomorrow’s Variety?

I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what their
plan is and again, I honestly don’t know 100% if the movie is gonna be made.
But, I can say that we’ve been getting good indicators that it is and we’ve
heard that they really like the first draft that we’ve turned in.

How long ago was that?

Around three weeks ago, maybe a little more than
that. I was here when we sent it so sometime throughout the last month maybe.
But then it goes through a few people before it gets to the people that actually
make the decisions, you know.

Was it a long script?

It’s actually really short. It was 103 pages or
something like that. But in rewriting it, it’s already up to like 109 pages or
something like that but it’s still relatively. We like a short script. To us 106
pages is the perfect script length.

Are you meticulous describing action?

We describe the stuff that we know we want
basically. PINEAPPLE was a really helpful educational process for that in that
some of the action we way overwrote. Basically, all of it we way overwrote and
we learned that we didn’t need to do that. It’s good in some ways like the
fight at Red’s house, the fact that we overwrote it made it that it’s basically
punch for punch how it was in the script. But the big shootout at the end of the
movie, we could have just wrote, “Then a giant shootout happens.”
“Three guys descend from the ceiling, four come from the left with machine
guns unloading rounds, three more come in from the right side as another man
comes down from the top.” None of that was necessary so we’ve kind of
learned where you need to be specific and where you don’t need to be so specific
but I’d say in reading it you get a pretty good sense of what you will see on
screen.

How challenging to write action?

I mean, the movies that I grew up on were not
comedies for the most part I would say. They were, but my mother’s favorite
movies were DIE HARD and TOTAL RECALL and UNDER SIEGE I remember seeing in the
movie theater when I was way too young to see it. I remember seeing LETHAL
WEAPON 2 in the movie theater. So those are my favorite types of movies really.
So it’s not hard at all to write action. It’s really fun for us to just, we try
to be innovative with it. I see every single action movie that comes out so
we’re constantly thinking what do we like, what do we not like, what have we
just never seen before? Our goal is to always make it just, PINEAPPLE obviously
had budgetary restraints but with GREEN HORNET, it’s really our goal to show
people action that they’ve never quite seen before.

What exactly is doing nothing for you?

Right now it’s Grand Theft Auto IV. My nothing
evolves based on whatever video game has been most recently released. I’ve
played it for like three hours total. I’m just in. I’m just getting into it.
It’s in LA. I don’t have an Xbox here. I hear it’s great. Me and Evan used to
play it on PSP all the time.

Did you talk about improv with Kevin before
you came in?

Yeah, I made it clear.

He’s known for sticking to every comma and
colon.

I just told him if that was how it was, I just
couldn’t do the movie. To me, it’s just not funny when you do that. It hurts the
comedy. Although I love Kevin Smith movies and he’s literally one of the reasons
I first wanted to be a writer, I feel like things evolve and change and now
people are used to a more naturalistic delivery style and more loose,
improvisational feel. I just told him this is how we have to do it. It will seem
outdated if we don’t do it like this. I won’t be as funny as I can be if we
don’t do it like this. The whole movie won’t be as funny if you don’t do it like
this, especially other people. He hired Craig Robinson who’s one of the best
improvisers I’ve ever met in my life so I said to him, “You can’t hire
Craig and not have him improvise.” He was totally cool with it. He went
into the movie wanting to make a movie differently. It was very discussed. The
first conversation we had about it was we need options, we need to improvise. If
one joke doesn’t work, it’d be helpful to have another.

So he wanted to make a Kevin Smith movie that
wasn’t a Kevin Smith movie?

But it is a Kevin Smith movie but we didn’t want
it to be limited by the Kevin Smithyness of it. We wanted that to be the jumping
off point for which to build.

Do you think this’ll be a comeback for him?

Yeah, I honestly haven’t seen all the movies that
he made recently. I never saw, what was that one, JERSEY GIRL? I’ve only seen
parts of CLERKS II, in the trailer.

Does he know this?

He definitely knows I haven’t seen JERSEY GIRL.
And yeah, I hope, I mean, none of his movies have made that much money and I
hope, just for his sake, it’d be nice if he gets a big hit. That just makes you
feel good knowing a lot of people wanted to pay to go see your movie. So yeah,
ideally, it’ll be as successful as our other movies have been and will be
received by his fans the same way that his movies have been received.

What kind of guy is Zack?

Zack is kind of a dirty, lazy, somewhat apathetic
guy who is looking for something to motivate him and in making a porno, he finds
that something.

The YouTube video?

Yeah, we did that and it took less time to film
that than it did to watch it.

Do you have other plans over the months?

For ZACK AND MIRI? Yeah, I think there’s other
things. I assume there’ll be more trailers and stuff like that, maybe stuff
incorporating some actual footage from the movie. Again, I’m trying to work with
Kevin also in kind of trying to share some of what has worked for us
marketing-wise.

You kill with the viral stuff.

Yeah, we’ve had some pretty good luck with some
of that stuff. Our PINEAPPLE trailer seemed to play really, really, really well.
We actually got the same company to come in and do the ZACK AND MIRI trailer.
We’re kind of trying to help out with it.