I would imagine that it’s always a pretty good time to be Seth Rogen, the actor/writer/director whose latest film, Neighbors, opens this weekend. But now it would seem to be the best possible time: not only is Neighbors, which stars Rogen as a new dad in a rivalry with the frat house next door, one of the first big films of the summer season, but he’s also recently been announced as the producer of “Preacher,” an AMC television series based on the classic, award-winning and seriously sacrilegious comic book series. Add to that mix The Interview, an action-comedy about a TV reporter and producer who score an interview with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and then assigned by the CIA to assassinate him, and he’s got every reason in the world to pepper our exclusive interview with his trademark laugh (which he does).
We got Seth Rogen on the phone to talk frat house comedies, proper baby maintenance, why it’s important to make “Preacher” funny and the curse of The Green Hornet and The Lone Ranger. In case you were wondering, Neighbors opens this weekend, and you can watch our exclusive video interviews with co-stars Zac Efron, James Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, as well as filmmakers Nicholas Stoller, James Weaver and Evan Goldberg as well.
CraveOnline: You don’t seem like a frat guy. Did you have a lot of experience with fraternities, or did anyone on set?
Seth Rogen: I did not. I did not go to college, and if I did it would have been in Canada where we did not really have fraternities to the same degree as Americans do. [Laughs.] One of my producers, James Weaver, who we work with all the time, he was in a fraternity. So he probably had the most insight out of anyone on the set, generally speaking. But yeah, most of what I knew came from movies, basically, like with most things. [Laughs.]
My whole frame of reference is Revenge of the Nerds.
Exactly. Revenge of the Nerds, Animal House, that’s basically all I knew about it.
This film has a real sense of rivalry about it. One of things that struck me about Neighbors is that this thing escalates really quickly.
Yes it does!
This is one step away from a horror movie, if you just had a meaner ending.
It’s true. We really go crazy. It escalates fast. [Laughs.] But you know, people get primal about their property. There’s no way around it. It’s an untenable situation.
Was there anything in the film or in the script that you felt was too far? Like, “They shouldn’t kill their cat?” Was there anything that extreme considered in development?
[Thinks.] Yeah, there was a lot of versions of the script. I don’t think it was ever too far for any reason other… If it feels funny then we’ll always try to do it. Nothing ever is “too far,” but sometimes things are just not funny enough. You know?
The crux of this, I feel, is someone who finally feels old enough that they can call the cops on a party, which is someone whom I never want to be.
Yeah.
Is that familiar to you? Or are you still the guy who goes over to them and goes, “Hey, cool! Party!”
It would take a lot to get me to call the cops on a party. I don’t think I would go over though, either. I would probably just hope that they stopped.
You and Rose Byrne go over to the party quite a bit. I kept worrying about the baby. You have the baby monitor, but I was like, “I don’t know… that baby’s really far away.” I was worried that was going to go somewhere dangerous after a while, like Baby’s Day Out.
That’s a very paranoid outlook. [Laughs.]
What can I say, I’m a paranoid guy.
Yes, you are!
I’m very, very sorry about that.
Yeah, it was definitely some dramatic license we took, I think. I don’t think you should leave your baby unattended to the degree that we did in the movie. [Laughs.]
Is it fair to say that you’re a straight man in this one? All the frat guys get to do Robert De Niro impersonations, and Rose Byrne goes nuts in this movie sometimes.
I think it swings from scene to scene, basically. Some scenes I’m the straight and some scenes I’m not at all the straight guy. It’s pretty well rounded. I love a movie like that, where everyone in the cast has an opportunity to do everything.
Would it be fair to call this a “broad comedy?” Because it is a flat-out comedy. I don’t think it would be fair to call this a serious drama…
No, I wouldn’t say… I don’t know. I wouldn’t use that word because to me, the connotation of “broad” is “unrealistic,” I guess. I think the movie, although a little ridiculous, isn’t completely… it’s naturalistic, which to me makes it not broad. But it’s pretty broad.
I guess my question is when you’re doing a comedy that’s dedicated to being a comedy, which Neighbors is, you can fall back on some familiar comedy tropes, ideas or characters. And I’ve always enjoyed that your films touch upon that but don’t rely on them as a crutch.
Thanks. I mean, we try to – even in the dumbest of movies – inject some emotional story that at least to us feels original and new. I think it keeps them from being only gross. [Laughs.]
I remember the first time I saw Green Hornet, and I thought, “I just love this friendship…”
Thanks, yeah. We try to center our craziness around a nice emotional core.
Although it was weird seeing Tom Wilkinson play the Green Hornet’s dad, and then… did you see The Lone Ranger?
I actually did! He plays the evil guy in The Lone Ranger!
And the Lone Ranger is the Green Hornet’s great-great-grandfather…
I know, it’s pretty funny actually. I wonder if Tom Wilkinson knew that. I bet you a lot of money he did not.
I was wondering if something had gone on with him and Ruth Wilson, and the family line had been affected. Like the royal family line had been tainted by William Wallace.
The real lesson is, don’t make a movie about the Reid family.
Hey, I liked The Green Hornet.
Thank you very much. I actually thought the third act of The Lone Ranger was awesome.
Once it really kicked in?
Yeah, that whole end sequence was really, really cool, I thought.
I had no idea how long The William Tell Overture really was.
I know, they going. I liked it. I was on board.
So you don’t think we’re ever going to see another Green Hornet someday?
No, I really don’t. [Laughs.]
Do you have another action movie in you, though?
Yeah, I mean The Interview is a movie we just directed with me and [James] Franco, and I’d say it’s like an action-comedy. There’s quite a bit of action in it.
I gotta ask, since I think it’s the most exciting thing ever… You’re producing “Preacher” for AMC, right?
Yeah.
You look at Pineapple Express and then you look at “Preacher,” and it seems so dark.
I think “dark” is the obvious, easy route with “Preacher.” I think what people have struggled with is bringing the humor out of it. Like, when you read it, it’s also very funny. It’s fun, inherently, in a lot of ways. I think that’s kind of, from our understanding, where it hasn’t really come together in all these previous incarnations. But we’ve been trying to do it for seven years. We’ve really been pursuing it for a really long time, and we’ve always thought it would be better as a TV show than a movie. So the fact that we are able to do it like that is really exciting.
Is there anything you’re going to have to change? Is Arseface going to have to be a little yes, “Yikes?”
We don’t have to change that. We are going to change stuff just because it seems pointless to do a literal, exact representation of the comic. There’s a lot of ideas that we can expand on, and there’s other ideas that we can explain more and get more into. We’re working with Sam Catlin, who was a producer on “Breaking Bad,” and it’s been very educational to talk to him about how they structured the series and the different twists and turns. Honestly, my ideal situation is that if you read Preacher and you love Preacher, you’ll love the show and have no idea what the fuck is going to happen on it.
I kept hearing in “Breaking Bad” that they were originally going to kill Aaron Paul very early on…
Yeah, in the first season he was saying. And the Mike Ehrmantraut character was only going to be in one episode, and they just kept bringing him back. So I think you have to be fluid and go with new ideas and expand on things if they seem good, and again it would be great if we could make Preacher fans happen and completely surprise them at the same time.
Are you going to play Saint of Killers?
No, I don’t think so. [Laughs.]
Is there a part for you though, a character or a walk-on you’d like to jump in and play if you could?
Right now nothing that we’ve come up with, honestly. Yeah, no, not so far. [Laughs.]
I just can’t stress how excited I am for that. We’ve been waiting for so long.
It’s been totally crazy. The scale of it has been totally fun to work with. We’ve been trying to come up with the best scene to introduce Herr Starr. We’re trying to plot out the whole series, in a way. Again, we’ll probably change it all once we actually get going, but it’s fun to think of the landscape of it.
Do you have any idea of who you want to cast, or is it going to be an open call?
I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about it at all, honestly. We try not to get too ahead of ourselves. We’ve seen these things fall apart too many times.
What’s coming up next-next? What’s the next thing we’re going to see with Seth Rogen?
The Interview is next. That comes out October 10.
I love the idea for that one. It almost sounds like, did you see V/H/S/2?
Yes.
It almost sounds like the second part of V/H/S/2 but without the cult.
[Laughs.] It’s similar in a weird way. That one was good. Yeah, I mean it’s kind of like a spy movie and an espionage movie. There are really elements of Argo and Frost/Nixon, but at the same time it very much is me and Franco acting stupid and yelling at each other a lot. [Laughs.]
That’s what I pay to see!
Exactly. You can’t ruin that.
Do you two ever get in an argument in public and then charge people?
Exactly, we should. [Laughs.]
Is there anywhere else to go with This is the End, or do you think that’s a done-in-one?
I think it’s probably… We’ve never really done a sequel before. We joked around about an idea. We always joke around about what the idea would be but we never actually go ahead and do it. [Laughs.] It’s funny. Maybe if we make a Pineapple Express 2 we’ll film This is the End 2 in that movie.
What I loved about it was, I look at a lot of comedies, like a Will Ferrell movie, I never remember his character’s name. He’s Will Ferrell.
Exactly.
And there it was just Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel… Could we just have more of those?
It almost became weird for us to keep working together without acknowledging that we all knew each other. That’s the place the idea came from. Everyone knows we’re friends, we might as well just acknowledge it.
Is there room for Zac Efron to just show up in anything you do from now on, just take his shirt off and walk out?
I hope so. He’s a really talented guy, and it does not hurt the ladies. [Laughs.]
I really liked that scene in Neighbors where you took your shirt off too. I know a lot of people who have a huge crush on you…
That’s very nice. I don’t think Abercrombie & Fitch is one of them. [Laughs.]
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
