There are 25 cans of Red Bull on the rider in front of me. There’s a quiet awe in the corridors. Yep. This room must belong to Seth Rogen, the closet thing Hollywood has to a rock star.
It is, quite simply, the biggest success story of the decade. In the past three years, Judd Apatow and his celebrity mates have written, produced and directed comedies that have generated an astonishing $1 billion in box office receipts. The success of films such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and The 40-Year-Old Virgin has, in turn, produced a new breed of unlikely matinee idol, most notably Steve Carell and Apatow’s onscreen-offscreen collaborator, Seth Rogen.
Rogen, an affable stoner with a Yogi Bear laugh that seems to punctuate his every utterance, has been a key factor in the Team Apatow’s rise to power. At 26, he is an old pro in industry terms, having left behind his “radical Jewish socialist” parents in Canada for the bright show business lights of LA at the tender age of 16. A Canadian and a Jew, Mr. Rogen possesses the two key attributes behind every name American humorist.
“It’s totally true”, he says. “We totally own America. I’m not even practising. I went to Hebrew elementary school though it was always more of a cultural thing for us. But there’s a definite humour that comes with Judaism. I guess it comes from all that persecution. You got to laugh if you can cry. The Canadian thing is different. Canadians are totally immersed in American culture. We just learn to view America in a different way, as an outsider.”
This outsider status has inspired Rogen to write movies that deal with all-American squeamishness. Superbad followed the misadventures of two teens valiantly struggling against the prohibitive US over-21 rule on the consumption of alcohol. Pineapple Express, the latest Apatow/Rogen product, does something similar for cannabis.
“In Canada cannabis is just not that illegal,” says Rogen, who co-wrote the screenplay and headlines the film. “A lot of our writing, in that way, comes from not being American. It’s from looking on and thinking, ‘What the fuck?’.
An ambitious, misfiring ode to the stoner-comedy and the 80s buddy picture, Pineapple Express never quite works on its own terms; the laughs are few and far between, director David Gordon Green’s style has been flattened and sanitised beyond recognition. Yet a rambling amiability and superb faux-romantic chemistry between Rogen and co-star James Franco has made the film a huge hit.
What is it, I wonder, about Team Apatow and ‘bromance’? Why do the man-children protagonists ignore women in favour of each other? Isn’t a film like Superbad or Pineapple Express just as homoerotic as most Pasolini titles?
“Well, first of all, I think all men are men children,” says Rogen. “I don’t think I have ever met a man I’d consider mature. If you think otherwise it’s because you don’t see those guys when they’re alone with other guys. I guess the gay thing is the joke of the movies. But also not really the joke of the movies. It’s an emotional nature. We do know that male friendships aren’t often that different from love stories.”
There is, however, a dark side to this sort of male bonding movie. With most contemporary American comedy, the potential for causing offence is offset by surrealism and equal opportunities bashing. On Planet Apatow only boys want to have fun. The naturalistic banter among straight, white, middle-class males in Knocked Up may be funny, but it’s discriminatory in a film where the women are shrewish killjoys.
It’s not just me. A radio producer on a national station once told me about the time they canvassed opinion outside a Dublin screening of that film, only to discover there wasn’t a single female with anything nice to say. Even Katherine Heigl, Knocked Up’s glittering star, felt obliged to speak out about the sexism of the script.
“I do know some women,” Rogen protests. “I have a sister and a mother and a girlfriend. I think it’s kind of insulting that the fact that a woman would like me is sexist. Hur Hur. Hur. That’s how despicable I am? It’s comedy. Everybody gets pissed off about comedy if you’re doing it right. I don’t think every movie should be really insulting. But I feel movies should get people talking. I’m not sexist. I sleep fine at night. On my pile of money and ladies. Hur Hur Hur.”
There remains something impossibly romantic about Mr. Rogen and his chums. It’s nice that they all get on so well. It’s nice that they’re always stoned when writing their screenplays.
“Always when writing,” confirms Rogen. “But never while we’re shooting. You just need to focus a bit more on set. There’s a lot of logistics and a certain energy level required. You just can’t do cannabis. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.”
If only, you feel, they’d pass the joint along to some smart-mouthed homosexual or a wannabe Juno, they’d really be on to something.