Seth Rogen's Monster Year

Mario Anzuoni, Reuters / Landov Hollywood’s most lovable schlub has lost weight and started to flex his creative muscle. He cracks wise on bro-mantic comedies, making Green Hornet, and why Harvey Weinstein is insane.

At 26, Seth Rogen is losing weight—and gaining muscle.

And he’s not afraid to use it. When the time came to fight for Jody Hill’s dark comedy script Observe and Report, which opens April 10, Rogen persuaded Warner Bros. to let them keep the film’s deluded bipolar antihero, and a brutally violent ending. It seems that Rogen has gained some movie-star clout in the past few years.

“As long as it’s on the cheaper side,” says Rogen with his infectious “heh, heh, heh” chuckle. We’re talking in Austin, Texas, at South by Southwest, where Observe, his $25-million mall comedy, debuted to a raucous crowd. The festival strategy is not a coincidence: Viral buzz from SXSW started the Knocked Up juggernaut back in 2007.

“Harvey should listen to somebody. He completely mishandled that entire movie in a horrific way.”

Commercial prospects are not as high for this realistic indie action comedy, which deconstructs movie clichés about hero fantasy and self-delusion. Without Rogen, it is unlikely that Observe and Report ever would have been made, says writer-director Jody Hill, sitting next to the dramatically slimmer Rogen—who has been dieting to play the newspaper publisher/superhero in Green Hornet—in a sunny Austin hotel room.

In Observe and Report, “Seth plays a lonely guy, and it’s kinda sad,” says Hill. “Parts are vulgar, parts are action-packed, and the tone is different from most comedies out there. Seth is a risk-taker at heart. He’s not into playing safe. It was a risk to be unlikable in a role like this.”

Rogen insists that he would never take on such a “tragic tale” if it wasn’t funny. “It’s an odd comedic take on stories that have been done before, like Taxi Driver,” he says, “about guys who see the world as a filthy, disgusting place, and they’re the ones chosen to clean it up, as ill-advised and ill-equipped as they might be to do it. To me, what separates a funny movie from a good movie is something personal. Even when we made Pineapple Express, a stupid weed action movie, we put a lot of personal stuff into it.”

Rogen shot Observe and Report within weeks of wrapping Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and both movies took him out of what he calls his safety zone. A one-time standup comic from Vancouver, Rogen admits that he has enjoyed a charmed life—nurtured and protected as a member of Judd Apatow’s resident company in the TV shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, then smoothly moving into features with 40-Year-Old Virgin and Rogen’s breakout romantic comedy Knocked Up, and on to the Apatow-produced R-rated comedy hits Superbad and Pineapple Express, which were written with Rogen’s childhood friend Evan Goldberg.

The two pals honed their comedy writing skills working with Sacha Baron Cohen on Da Ali G Show. Some of their original pitches made it into the show and helped build the Bruno character; they’re still giving Baron Cohen feedback on the feature film Bruno.