BOP Interview: Seth Rogen and Will Reiser Part II
By Ryan Mazie
September 27, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Can you introduce me to Christopher Nolan?
Seth, I read that you said, “When anything remotely interesting happens, my first instinct is to try and think of a movie based on it,” but for a comedy where a young guy gets cancer, you couldn’t come up with anything. So Will, as a writer, and Seth, as a producer, was it freeing to have a story that there was no template to base it off of or for audiences to go in with pre-set expectations?

WR: I know when I write, if there is a template, that actually messes with what I write. It’s easier to do something that’s just your own.

SR: Like I remember with Superbad, we had to think about American Pie all the time, because they were all movies about high school kids just trying to fuck. Even that, they were totally different movies; they were close enough to put some fear in our head of becoming too similar to something else. But this movie, we didn’t have that. There was no movie about a young dude getting cancer, so we didn’t have to worry about “Are we stepping into this territory? Are we crossing lines?”

I remember Funny People actually was getting made while we were working on the 50/50 script. [I got the script], we all sat down and read it and we were like, “Oh, there’s nothing here that we are stepping on.” (laughs)

WR: There was an initial fear. The 50/50 project we were writing was before Funny People was even in development.

SR: I probably wouldn’t have done Funny People if it felt too much like this, because we were working on this first.

Did that influence your character in Funny People? Just being the friend? Thematically it is different, but you are in a similar position.

SR: Yeah, but again, I knew the characters were so different. The guy in Funny People was so dopey and puppy-doggish. To me it felt different enough that it didn’t bother me that they were thematically about similar things.

Seth, as an actor, you are the comedy element in this film. Would you agree about that?

Seth Rogen: Uhhh, sure, why not (laughs)?

Your character provides most of the comedy in the film, but it can also get really dramatic, like the scenes with Angelica Huston, which get very heavy, very emotional. So I was curious how you approached your role without breaking the tone of the movie?

SR: I just tried to be as natural and as real as possible, honestly, sometimes with the movie your concern is more to create a character like in Observe & Report or something like that and try to sell a persona that really isn’t yours. That really wasn’t my goal with this.

… I knew that my scenes would definitely help lighten the whole movie, but it had to tonally fit in with the rest. The character is trying to be funny a lot of the time which is a nice luxury. It is just a guy making jokes.

WR: And a guy who doesn’t know how to say the right thing.

SR: Right, so I could make completely bad jokes, jokes that were in horrible taste, and it all fit within the character, so it wasn’t all too hard to be honest. I didn’t try to do much.

WR: It’s almost that every character in the movie goes to the extreme. Like when the Rachael character runs away, his character rather than talking about what he’s feeling, just keeps making more and more inappropriate comments. It’s just sort of how everybody in the movie is reacting. Anjelica Huston, the more worried she is, the more she wants to smother her son.

One thing I thought was really great was how the film smoothly represented the five stages of grief, but not on a forced timeline.

WR: Yeah, I based that on what my own emotional trajectory was and what felt honest to the character and the movie and that just happened to work out that way.

SR: It wasn’t until we were cutting the trailer that we thought about that. I remember talking to the trailer people about doing something where we show grief and shock. Then we watched it and went, “Oh! He did that, it totally coincides.” (both laugh). I thought it was gonna be a real stretch.

WR: It just naturally came that way. I wish I was smart enough to have seen that while writing.

SR: (laughs) I did too. That would’ve been helpful, Will.

Will, were you really as straight-edge as the Adam character in the film?

WR: (deadpans) I am totally straight-edge. In what way?

SR: (to Will) Well the character works out and never smokes or drinks. But you smoked.

WR: I did smoke. I would have a few cigarettes.

SR: That’s how we became friends. We both smoked.

WR: Well on Da Ali G Show you worked in this office and there were no windows or anything, so the only way [Seth & I] could get out of the office was on cigarette breaks.

SR: It was the only acceptable reason to leave for five minutes (laughs).

WR: And that’s how we became friends. Neither of us smoke anymore –

SR: (cutting off) cigarettes (both laugh).

WR: I should’ve specified (laughs). But I didn’t drink. I was a very neurotic, worrisome person.

SR: But you are much healthier than you were back then. You ate fried food and stuff then. Now you are the healthiest person…

WR: (overlapping) I am the healthiest person you’ll ever meet.

SR: It’s hard to go to dinner with him (laughs).

It sounds like the two of you carried around this script for a long time. In what ways did the dynamic of it change once you let other people on board such as the director and the cast?

SR: It changed quite a bit. I think a director really adds a lot to a movie. It’s like a whole other person that comes in and you want them to take ownership of the movie in a way, so it changed a lot when Jonathan Levine came.

WR: Jonathan was very nice, because a lot of times a director will take the script away from a writer, where Jon & I were very collaborative.

SR: Yeah, you guys sat together and re-wrote it.

WR: I feel like Seth is very fortunate, because every movie you’ve ever worked on, you’ve had a lot of creative input, because you’ve been a producer as well.

SR: For the most part, not for every single movie.

WR: But for most writers, that’s not how it works. So Jon was really awesome in making it a collaborative effort. Most of the changes had to do less with the overall arc, and more with the individual scenes – just pushing the conflict or dramatic elements a little bit further. Just getting to know the characters a little bit better. … I mean [Seth & producer Evan Goldberg] pushed me really hard … being friends they knew that they could push me.

SR: Yeah, me and Evan are not an easy audience for scripts. We are really hard on the material and with every scene go, “Why is this in here? Why is this in here? Why is this line here? Why the fuck is he doing this? Who would do that?” (banging the table with each question).

WR: When it came time to shoot every scene, the day or a few before we would go over the scene, and those guys would push me and raise all those questions, and I would just re-write the scenes as we were shooting.

SR: Which actors hate (laughs).

WR: But our actors really liked it. For me, I thought it was so great, because the scene I am most proud of is with Joe and [Anna Kendrick] where she calls him out and goes, “Your mother’s got a husband who can’t talk to her and a son who won’t talk to her,” and that I wrote literally two hours before I shot the scene –

SR: Because we were screaming at him that it sounded like bullshit advice (both laugh). “What fucking therapist would say this?!” (laughs)

WR: They were pushing me really hard. I was just working on the scene and we shot it without the approval of the studio. I knew when I wrote that, it was an awesome…

SR: (rolls eyes) Approval of the studio (laughs).

Did you find the script cathartic to write at all?

WR: Yeah, 100%. The way Adam is throughout the movie, having so much trouble talking about how he is feeling, that was very much how I was. We just joked about things, never sitting around talking about what my feelings were and how painful it was at times. Being able to write about it and process it all; and in the process of writing to talk about it with Seth and Evan, that really enabled to get a lot of it out of my system. I think there is this tendency when you go through a situation like that where you just want to run away… and that was very much my initial reaction. After I had my surgery and rehabilitated, I just wanted to get back to my normal life. Actually having to sit down and write this movie, I found that there was so much that I wanted to get and out and say. Even though the movie is fiction, that emotion is very true to how I felt.

In the movie, it is clear, however, that the second best catharsis besides friendship was medicinal marijuana.

SR: (laughs) It helps the character.

WR: Yeah, that’s real. [Seth] was my pusher. He really does have a prescription.

SR: I do, and I’m fine (laughs).

WR: Weed was really the most helpful thing going through that for me, because I had so much pain in my back that it was the only way I could sleep through the night … without Seth holding me (both laugh).

Are you guys working on any scripts right now?

SR: Yeah, the same exact group of people that made this movie – Will is writing the script, Jon is supposed to direct, and me and Evan are producing.

WR: It’s loosely inspired by a vacation I took with my grandmother when I was 14. It was just my grandmother and I, we went to Jamaica and somehow, accidentally ended up at a couples resort, and my grandmother had just developed Alzheimer’s and no one knew it so I lost her. She took a tour bus into Kingston, which is the murder capital of the world.

SR: And you have to find her! (laughs)

WR: I know, it sounds hilarious.

SR: That’s our next “comedy.” (both laugh)