september 2019 / 69it won an audience award, Long Shot has been boosted
by enthusiastic word of mouth on the strength of
Rogen’s chemistry with his co-star, Charlize eron.
e lm, in which eron plays the secretary of state
and presidential hopeful, as well as Rogen’s former
babysitter and love interest, is both a return to form for
Rogen and an evolution of the type he’s probably still
best known for: the fuzzy slackers of Knocked Up,
Pineapple Express and Th e 40-Year-Old Virgin. As in
many of those lms, Rogen is romantically paired with
a cool blonde and ingests his share of recreational drugs.
is time, though, his character, whom Rogen described
as ‘an almost good-case scenario of other people
I’ve played,’ has at least the pretense of both a real job
and a legitimate ethical core. Progress!s both producer and star, Rogen was deeply invested
in the project, having shepherded it through years of
development, and though he’s too seasoned to ever
assume that success is a foregone conclusion, he was
pleased with the lm and cautiously optimistic about its
prospects. ‘When I like it and I’m proud of it, I’m de nitely
more relaxed,’ he said. ‘It’s awkward to promote a movie
that you yourself would not be that excited to go see.’ Like
what? ‘I remember You, Me and Dupree was the rst time
I had to do that, and that movie’s ne, I just didn’t love it. It
honestly was not a movie I would have gone out to go see.
It’s OK, the Russo brothers [Joe and Anthony] did ne,’
he added, laughing. ‘I actually remember standing in my
closet in my apartment, doing a radio interview, being like,
“Yeah, go see it, it’s great,” and being like, “Ugh.” Never
again do I want to have to tell people to go see a movie that
I myself actually wouldn’t see. It’s hard enough to promote
a movie. When you’re also morally corrupting yourself, it’s
a real bummer.’
Early on in his career, ush with youth and the
success of some lms he was plenty proud of, Rogen
and Goldberg were o ered what seemed to be the
opportunity of a lifetime: to write – and for Rogen, star
in – a lm adaptation of Th e Green Hornet. ‘At rst we
were like, “Great!”’ Rogen recalled. Till then, the pair
had enjoyed a large degree of creative input over the lm
projects they’d written together, the comedies Superbad
and Pineapple Express, which had both proved to be
whopping hits and
recouped their
budgets many
times over. ‘ ey
were cheap-enough
movies that the
studios always
had bigger sh
to fry,’ explained
Rogen. But going
from relatively
inexpensive
comedies to
a $120 million
(R1.6 billion)
VFX-laden action
lm was a sudden,
vertiginous climb.
‘What I didn’t
appreciate was thatnow we were the bigger
sh and we would get all
the attention that was
being absorbed by other
movies on our earlier
movies. I remember
telling people, “ ey don’t
fuck with us, it’s great,”
and then we were sitting
in a meeting where [the
executives] were like, “All
right, notes. Page one,”
and I was like, “Page
one! What the fuck?
I’ve written two movies
for you guys over the last
few years, I thought we
were cool. What are we
doing here?”’
From that point,
Th e Green Hornet was
besieged by troubles- director replacements,
tensions on the set – and
when it was released,
in 2011, it was critically
savaged. But, Rogen
pointed out, ‘on the
grand scale of superhero
movies, it isn’t even on the
low end of the spectrum
of how these movies are
received. It’s viewed as this
catastrophic disaster, but
on the grand scale
of catastrophic disasters,
it’s not that bad a
catastrophic disaster.’
Since then, Rogen
and Goldberg have rarely
strayed from their tried-
and-true formula:
‘$20-$35 million
(R279-R489 million)
is where you’re never
going to be their biggest
problem. at’s literally
what it is,’ said Rogen. ‘As
long as they’re making
some $150 million
(R2 billion) movie that’s
a fucking disaster, they’re
not paying attention to
us. We’re the smartest
business decision they
made that week, because
they just don’t have to
worry about us. A lot of
our career is just based
on not being their biggest
headache. Every once in
a while, I meet someone,
or one of my friends,
[who] is their biggest
GQ.CO.ZA
‘A LOT OF OUR CAREER IS
JUST BASED ON NOT BEING
THEIR STUDIO EXECS
BIGGEST HEADACHES.
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE,
I MEET SOMEONE WHO IS
THEIR BIGGEST HEADACHE,
AND IT’S LIKE, “THANKS TO
YOU, WE CAN DO WHATEVER
THE FUCK WE WANT”’
headache, and it’s like, “Oh
yeah, thanks to you, we
can do whatever the fuck
we want.”’
For Rogen, recovery
from professional knocks
has always come in the
form of more work,
di erent work, and that was
true post-Hornet as well, so
that in the end what might
have capsized other careers
barely rocked his: ‘It was
a bummer, and I always
hate being the centre of
thousands of articles telling
you how shitty you are- that’s not fun. But if you
can get through that, which
I have, many times, then
you can just keep working.
Again, that’s the thing: you
just keep working. With
the hope that in general
I will produce more good
work than bad work, and
that will hopefully carry
me onwards.’
r
ogen was raised on the
east side of Vancouver,
the younger of two
children (his sister,
a social worker, is three
years older) in a family
of liberal values in
a progressive city.
e Rogens are a family
of distinct personalities. His
parents both worked for
government agencies, his
mother as a social worker
who specialised in teaching
parenting skills, and his
father for the Coalition of
People with Disabilities.
Sandy, Rogen’s mom, has
a popular Twitter account
(@RogenSandy) that
indicates a strong comedic
voice of her own. ese
days, she teaches kundalini
yoga. ‘We did it in my living
room once, but I mean, if
there’s one thing that’s not
relaxing, it’s the sound of
your own mother’s voice,’
said her son.
Of the two, though,
Rogen said his dad, Mark,
is the more indelibly
eccentric: ‘My dad has
fully undiagnosed OCD,
I would imagine. A a