The “perfect storm of bad shit” that made Seth Rogen long for the days of a million dick jokes
He’d be the first person to admit that he built his career on the back of dick jokes, and as much as Seth Rogen has moved beyond those days and evolved as an actor and filmmaker, one particularly troubled production had him longing for the good old days of nonstop phallic humour.
As a core member of Judd Apatow’s ‘Frat Pack’, Rogen broke out in a big way in the 2000s, with The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad putting him on the map, with the latter also establishing his screenwriting credentials, which he’s since parlayed into becoming something of a media mogul.
These days, Rogen is a multifaceted actor, writer, director, and executive producer, winning four Primetime Emmys and two Golden Globes for The Studio alone, which saw him pulling quintuple duty by fulfilling all four of those aforementioned positions, as well as co-creating the satirical smash hit series.
Are his days of dick jokes behind him? Possibly, since it’s been a while since he starred in anything that relied entirely on raunchy, crude, and puerile humour to appeal to audiences, and now that he’s in his mid-40s, he’s probably too old to get away with it anyway, although someone should have a word with Adam Sandler about that, since he’s almost 60 and still knocking out Happy Madison horrors.
In a change of pace that proved far too drastic for anyone, not least of all Rogen, to take seriously, he even played the main character in a big-budget superhero flick once, but The Green Hornet is better left swept under the rug. It wasn’t a flop by any means, and it’s still one of his highest-grossing top-billed performances, but he knew he was fighting an uphill battle that he’d never win.
As the co-writer and star of a $120 million studio picture, the pressure was on, and matters weren’t helped by his paymasters exerting their influence, with Rogen admitting that he and Evan Goldberg were “completely naïve as to exactly how much of what makes us good would be basically stifled and evaporated, merely by signing on to do a movie of that budget and that rating.”
Essentially, he and his long-time creative partner had gone in with the best of intentions and their eyes wide open, only to quickly realise the studio was going to glue them shut, as you’d expect when there’s a nine-figure budget and a PG-13 rating involved, neither of which were Rogen or Goldberg’s strong suits.
Reflecting on the experience, he described The Green Hornet as a “perfect storm of bad shit happening,” but they were already in too deep, and the best they could hope for was to deliver something that wasn’t abjectly awful, seeing as it would never be reflective of either of them as filmmakers.
In the end, Rogen learned an important lesson: “We shouldn’t make expensive movies where we can’t just do a million dick jokes,” he said. “That’s what we’ve learned over the years. That’s our strength. Play to your strengths.” In the decade and a half since, he’s made a lot of dick jokes, and no expensive genre films as a writer, director, or leading man, so at least he’s remained true to his word.
