Seth Rogen's Monster Year

With Superbad and Pineapple Express, Rogen and Goldberg scored by delving into male sexual anxiety. “We were just horny guys in high school when we wrote Superbad,” Rogen says plainly, “so there was no other movie to write. Evan and I think the funniest thing is guys awkwardly trying to explain their feelings to one another. Some guys will make their whole career making these love stories between men and women, and we’re making these love stories between two men. They’re not really meant to be outwardly romantic, but we’re seeing what weird different normal genres we can apply them to.”

Insulated under Apatow as a writer or producer, and working as voice talent on animated films (his fifth animated feature, Monsters vs. Aliens, opens this weekend), Rogen finally met some turbulence during the release of Zack and Miri last year. He tried to talk to Harvey Weinstein about backing up the film with a marketing campaign that stuck with the controversial title. (The R-rated comedy grossed a disappointing $31 million.) “He didn’t listen to me,” Rogen says, laughing, but clearly still frustrated. “Harvey should listen to somebody. He completely mishandled that entire movie in a horrific way. If they could remove someone’s moviemaking license for gross misconduct…It tested higher than most of our movies tested generally. He’s insane.”

After that experience, Rogen insisted on retaining some control over his next projects. “I was more than happy to hand the control over to someone else,” he says, “but I wanted to make sure that that person had the control that they needed. I’ve seen a lot of movies get made where no one has control. No one likes it. The person making it is doing it for a studio, the studio thinks they’re doing it for an audience, and the audience gets some piece of shit in the end.”

Hill credits Rogen with pushing Observe and Report into production after it was dawdling in development limbo, watered down by each succession of studio notes. An admirer of Hill’s first movie, Foot Fist Way, Rogen invited the director to the set of Knocked Up. “Judd and Seth making each other laugh is an amazing thing to watch,” says Hill. When the filmmaker showed Rogen his script about a mentally unstable, lonely mall security guard who wants to save the world, Rogen was immediately game. “He got it right off the bat,” says Hill. “He was playing a serious character. We wouldn’t play anything for laughs.”

But Rogen insisted that the studio sign off on letting them shoot the first draft of the script. “’If I’m going to do this I want it to be wildest thing you’ve ever done,’” Rogen told Hill. “Seth could probably make a comedic career doing stoner-type roles and making movies like Knocked Up,” Hill says. “But he wants to make the weirdest movies he can.”

Rogen admits that he never expected to be a movie star. When he was in his early 20s, he says he threw himself at everything to see what would stick, auditioning for jobs as a writer or actor. Apatow has said that he’s never worked with anyone who improvises in character better than Rogen. For his part, Hill calls Rogen’s brand of improvisation “emotional improv—rather than trying different jokes, Seth will do each take differently: ‘Do cocky, do insecure.’ That keeps jokes from coming out of the head instead of the heart.”

Rogen sees himself as a writer first, actor second. Like Quentin Tarantino? “No.” Jon Favreau? “No…maybe Albert Brooks.”

“I feel very comfortable telling someone I know how they could improve their script,” he says without a hint of arrogance. “I feel much more comfortable as a writer than an actor. I feel like I am a much better writer than I am an actor. So that’s why I improvise, maybe, because it’s a sneaky way I’ve discovered of using my actual talent, heheheheh.”