We all knew Katherine Heigl was beautiful and talented even before Knocked Up hit theaters.
But who knew Seth Rogen was so funny? Below, he answers questions from ComingSoon.net...
ComingSoon.net: So this is the last day, huh?
Seth Rogen: It is, kinda. We've got a DVD day, I guess.
CS: What's a DVD day?
Rogen: It's a day where we shoot s**t just for the DVD.
CS: Interviews and stuff?
Rogen: No, like bits. We invite every actor we know, basically, to come in and just shoot extra content, kind of.
CS: Like the "Special Edition" DVD?
Rogen: No, we'll put it on the regular DVD. Like for Superbad, for example, me and Bill played cops, so we did this thing, like for a whole day we just invited every actor we know to come in and play criminals we busted. We just shot in front of a green screen and kind of improv'd all day long with every actor we know. We're kind of doing the same thing with this. We have different people buying weed from Danny McBride and stuff. We have this part in the movie where it's like the government marijuana testing in the '30s. So we're like doing that for the DVD. We just have people coming in and being test subjects.
CS: Who's coming in?
Rogen: I think Rudd's coming. I'm not sure what the big list is. Charlene Gi. We'll see if Jonah's in town. Michael, Sarah, just whoever's in town. Schwartzman maybe. David Krumholz I think is coming. I don't know who else. I haven't looked at the final list. It's our regular band of misfits. I think Martin Star is coming. Leslie Mann I think is coming. I think Judd might shoot something. It's whoever's in town. We'll see. (Laughs) You get $300 bucks.
CS: Superbad is based on your experience in high school?
Rogen: Kind of. I mean, it's so confusing to explain, even for me. There was never that night. That never happened to us. But like some of the stories â" the pee your blood thing, for example. A lot of the people's names are real. Just our friends getting fake IDs and stuff like that. But we kind of like just combined it all⦠I mean we never had any separation anxiety going to different⦠I didn't go to college, so that didn't play into it.
I was just a loud mouth assh**e in high school, and Evan was just a slightly less loudmouth assh**e. That we took from our lives, I guess. But Michael was much cuter than Evan ever was.
CS: You and Evan wrote the screenplay as well for this, right?
Rogen: Yeah. This came from years ago, actually, in like 2001. Judd paid for Evan to come here for a summer. This is after "Undeclared" got canceled, and basically just had us generate movie ideas all summer. And this was not one of them. After we handed Judd our list of ideas, he said, "Ah, write a weed action movie." And we said, "Ok." And that's basically where it came from. He had the notion that there was a process server for some reason, which we went with, that witnesses a murder. And the notion, basically, was: Would you quit smoking weed if your life literally depended on it. That was kind of our starting off point. And then it really turned into this kind of examination of drug dealer/drug buyer relationship and how awkward that could be. All our movies are thinly veiled homoerotic love stories.
And this is no exception, I would say. So that's where the idea came from. We didn't even like the idea at first: "That sounds terrible. A weed action movie?" We really got into thinking like, but if that was good, it would be our favorite movie of all time. So we decided to kind of shoot for the stars, I guess. If we saw a trailer for a good weed action movie, we'd be the first ones there to buy a ticket. So it's tailor made for us. I know I'll enjoy it.
CS: How would you describe the comedic tone of Pineapple Express?
Rogen: By nature, just having two knuckleheads do physical things it becomes somewhat slapsticky. It definite â" in a good way, I think â" develops this kind of Laurel and Hardy feel to it, just kind of two idiots trying to avoid danger and violence whenever they can, but our big inspirations were movies like True Lies and Lethal Weapon and Midnight Run, these action comedies of the '80s and early '90s. We try to play it real. Our general mantra at all moments is kind of, what would you do in that situation? The situations are definitely ridiculous at times, but I think tonally we try to keep it as straight as possible and not reach for the jokes so much as kind of letting it play out. You just have two really stoned guys shooting machine guns, you don't really need to try to make that funny (laughs).
CS: You're the buyer and James is the dealer.
Rogen: Yes. It was originally written the other way actually. I was kind of the goofy sidekick and Franco was kind of the straight leading guy and we were like, "That doesn't seem as exciting as it could be." So we decided to flip it. And I think it's really funny. He's amazing doing the character. At the first table read, I was like, "F**k. He's way funnier than I would have been doing that." (laughs) Thank God we did that. He thinks we're friends, but I just think he's my pot dealer. And throughout the movie it comes out that I don't actually even like him. I just kind of pretend to be nice to him because he sells really good weed. But he really thinks that we're friends and kind of really wants to be friends. And then I kinda slowly realize that he's actually my only friend. (laughs) He's actually the only person that I talk to.
CS: What is surprising about working with Franco? He's basically a serious actor.
Rogen: I worked with Franco years ago, and what was surprising is that I always thought he was hilarious. He was really funny. I mean, most of our scenes in "Freaks and Geeks" were comedic ones. If anything, I was surprised when he was suddenly dubbed this "serious actor." That term is so weird. But he definitely seems to get that, being a serious actor. But it's exactly the same as it was. We both have a lot more experience, I would say. Personally, I'm much more comfortable in front of the camera than when we did "Freaks and Geeks." So it makes it a little easier if anything. But it's awesome. I love working with him; that's why we decided to do it. We always got along really well. He's funny as hell.
CS: How did he end up working with you guys?
Rogen: We just thought, let's ask Franco to do it. (laughs) It's really simple sometimes. Yeah, it was easy as that.
CS: And he had to leave for a little bit to finish Spider-Man 3?
Rogen: He left for his press tour. He had this giant run of publicity. He left for two weeks. But there's a good chunk of the movie that he's not in, so he didn't miss much.
CS: And you're about to do press for Knocked Up, which has a ton of buzz surrounding it. What's that like?
Rogen: It's nice that it's good buzz. It must suck doing this for a movie that no one likes. It's really nice that people seem to like it. That's kind of where it ends for me. It's nice. I don't feel insane. When we were making it, it's like, "If people don't like this, then we're crazy. 'Cause it seems really funny to us." So we're not nuts. That's nice.
CS: Has Judd stopped by?
Rogen: Yeah, he's come by quite a bit. They're doing "Walk Hard" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" simultaneously. [He] was around more at the beginning when we were kind of finding our legs. David's directed a lot of movies before. And I think it kind of becomes his own means of prioritizing where he needs to spend his time on set. It's funny, he describes it as he just pretends he's running a TV show and instead of episodes they're movies. And he just has different writers on them. It's funny because it's exactly like that. And it's all the same writers from "Undeclared." Nick Stoller is now directing "Sarah Marshall" and Jake Kasdan's doing "Walk Hard". It's literally like he's doing a TV show. (laughs) The writers are just running the episodes.
To read the rest of this interview, click here.
Brett Ratner will be directing a biopic about Hugh Hefner, titled Playboy.
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