The Jack Nicholson movie Seth Rogen called “everything we could ever hope to accomplish”
One of the greatest comedies of the 21st century is 2007’s Superbad, the coming-of-age movie directed by Greg Mottola, produced by Judd Apatow, and written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The plot tells of three high school friends – played by Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse – who are desperate to lose their virginity during graduation party season.
Rogen, sitting down with Rotten Tomatoes, once named his five favourite films, offering a peek behind his creative curtain. It was a feature that saw Rogen draw particular attention to a Hal Ashby movie starring Jack Nicholson that apparently clarified Superbad, even though he had watched it after he’d written the original script.
Rogen said of 1974’s The Last Detail: “I saw [it] more recently in life. Hal Ashby shoots very simply. He kind of takes a step back and shoots stuff as it happens. Things are never about the shot, you know? It’s always about the joke.”
“It’s never about how the camera moves. That’s a very interesting style,” Rogen added. “Superbad is very Last Detail-ish. We wrote Superbad before we saw Last Detail, but after we saw it, it helped clarify what we were going for, I think.”
The Last Detail was directed by Ashby from a screenplay by Robert Towne, based on Darryl Ponicsan’s 1970 novel of the same name. Alongside Nicholson, it stars Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Clifton James and Carol Kane. It tells of two sailors who are tasked with taking a reclusive recruit from their base in Virginia to a naval prison in Maine.
In an Academy interview, Rogen had once opened up on the influence of Hal Ashby’s work on Superbad. “The Last Detail had a major influence on Superbad. It’s kind of a ridiculous thing to say, but at the time, me and Evan [Goldberg] were very against what we considered Hollywood conventions,” the actor and writer began.
He continued: “It seemed like any attempted emotion [in a comedy] was sell out and stupid. You couldn’t have a great comedy and be emotional at the same time. Then we watched Harold and Maude, and I just cried hysterically, but it’s also really funny, so I thought, ‘this Hal Ashby guy is on to something.'”
Rogen went on to explain how the script for Superbad changed after he saw Ashby’s work. He said: “We had this script Superbad, and it was just filthy, just profanity. Judd [Apatow] was imploring us to add some sort of undercurrent of emotion. We watched The Last Detail and thought, ‘This is everything we could ever hope to accomplish in a movie.'”
Check out the trailer for The Last Detail below.
