One of Canada’s favourite sons Seth Rogen brought the house down in an on-stage talk at TIFF on Sunday (September 13) as he reflected on a life-long friendship with business partner Evan Goldberg, how the hit Apple series The Studio has changed the way Hollywood looks at him, and the best and worst advice he has ever received.
Rogen grew up in Vancouver and recalled making home videos with his eventual Point Grey Pictures business partner and frequent co-writer and director Goldberg. He first performed stand-up at the age of 13 in a lesbian bar called Lotus Club. “I knew what I wanted to do with my life and my parents were very supportive,” Rogen told the Visionaries panel at Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
The multihyphenate relocated to Los Angeles around the age of 17 and experienced the Hollywood school of hard knocks when Freaks And Geeks and Undeclared, two shows he acted in, got cancelled and his scripts for Superbad and Pineapple Express initially struggled to get the greenlight.
”I was good friends with Jason Segel who was getting cast in movies […] many of which I was also auditioning for,” he said, adding later: “I was getting angry and resentful and I tried to funnel that into working harder, so you’re not mad at yourself. It’s healthier to be mad at everyone else.”
Rogen cited frequent collaborator Judd Apatow for dispensing a valued piece of advice that he only came to understand over time. “When we were shooting Knocked Up we would improvise a lot and Judd screamed from the other room, ‘Less semen, more emotion!’. As I’ve gone on to big films, it’s amazing how much I come back to ‘less semen, more emotion’,” Rogen said. ”To be clear he didn’t say no semen; he said less semen. [It’s about] understanding how to balance humour and emotion and reality, and comedy.”
The worst advice came from an acting coach who many years ago told the aspiring creator that his voice was “terrible” and unless he changed it, he would not get a career. “I didn’t do that,” Rogen said, to loud applause.
Rogen and Goldberg established Point Grey Pictures many years ago and have been lifelong friends. “Luck has a lot to do with it,” he said. “I know a lot of great creative teams who’ve broken up over the years. We’ve been working together for 30, actually writing together for 31 or 32 years, which is insane. We started when we were 12. The fact we’re both still inspired by the same ideas […] and our tastes and sensibilities have remained aligned after all this time is really lucky. We also have different lives … and we’re very forgiving of each other.”
The Studio
This time last year Rogen and Goldberg won multiple Emmys for Apple comedy and Hollywood pastiche The Studio, including best directing, best series and best writing (shared with others), and acting for Rogen.
Rogen drew one of the biggest laughs of the session when he was asked if the show has changed how he operates in Hollywood. “I don’t feel like I’m moving through the world any differently than I was before the show,” he said. “It’s just people maybe treating us a little differently because for 20 years people just didn’t think we were paying that close attention: “Well, these guys were stoned, they’re not really clocking any of this stuff’. Then the show came out and they were like, ‘Oh they really were attention.” A second season is expected in 2027.
It has been a big year for Rogen, with the critical success and $55m global box office of A24’s Sundance smash The Invite, the sex comedy four-hander in which he stars opposite director Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz, and Ed Norton; and TIFF selections Babies, the parenthood comedy directed by his wife Lauren Miller Rogan, and Leah Nelson’s animation Tangles, which premiered in Cannes and deals with Alzheimer’s disease.
Tangles carries particular relevance for Rogen and his wife, both of whom produced with Evan Goldberg and Nelson, among others. Lauren Miller Rogen’s mother was diagnosed with the disease two decades ago. “It became a huge part of our lives and became a terrible burden in many ways, but something my wife bravely and honestly decided to speak about very publicly,” Rogen said. The hand-drawn project was adapted from a graphic novel and took 10 years to make. Point Grey came on board to help find financing and Rogen features among a distinguished voice cast that includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, and Sarah Silverman.
“It’s a very beautiful, personal film, and it’s very funny, and it’s also very sad,” said Rogen, who reflected on the therapeutic function of finding humour in sadness. “The first movie that we [Point Grey] produced was 50/50, a cancer comedy based on our friend… Even though it was about something so sensitive – a young man with cancer – we felt we could be irreverent with it because it was our story and it was reflective of what we actually went through. If you can make cancer funny, you should also try to make Alzheimer’s funny.”
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