Flickering Myth sat down with Seth Rogen to talk about Bad Neighbours, now today on DVD…
FM: How did you get involved with this project?
SR: A few years ago, Evan Goldberg and I had been trying to find something to work on with the writers, Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, and they came to us with this idea one day. It was originally about three guys in a town who go to war with a frat. It was about them not wanting to grow up and dealing with that kind of struggle. They wanted Zac Efron to be the frat guy. I thought it was a funny idea, which seemed simple and clear, so we pitched it to Zac. He liked it and got on board. We wrote the script, and Nick Stoller came on to direct.
You and Nicholas Stoller have a history that stretches back to the television series, Undeclared. How did your relationship develop?
I think we met in 2000. We actually shared an office on Undeclared. We were the two youngest writers. I was eighteen and I think he was twenty-four. It was ridiculous. We wasted a lot of time, but we were both very fast writers. Considering how lazy we were, the two of us wrote a proportionately large amount!
Do you have an instant rapport with Nick Stoller now?
Yes, Nick and I have been good friends this whole time even though we’ve never actually worked together since Undeclared. I would go to his screenings, and he would come to ours. I was the producer on this film, so depending on how you look at it, we were both calling the shots in our own way! It was great. I was excited that he was very enthusiastic about trying to make a different type of movie than he had made before. I love his other movies, but I knew this story wasn’t going to be like his other films. It was exciting to hear that he was willing to reimagine his visual and editing styles as well as the overall tone because this film is somewhat dirtier in humor than his other movies. It was exciting to watch him do something so different.
The film still feels like a piece of Nick Stoller’s other works, as it has a balance of raunchy and real emotion.
Yes, I think that’s something that Judd Apatow instilled in all of us. That’s why we all have a similar sensibility in that regard. Almost everyone who came from Undeclared and Freaks & Geeks as a writer feels that way, including Jenni Konner who does Girls, which is different and explicit at times but also emotional.
Could you relate to the character of Mac?
Yes, that is one of the reasons I wanted to be a part of the movie and get it made. We couldn’t think of a movie that was explicitly about the struggle after you have a kid of not going out and having fun anymore. That to us was a funny, fertile, relatable area. It’s probably why I don’t have kids!
Now that you have experienced directing, did that make you want to show up on the set of Bad Neighbours with your own megaphone?
No, it didn’t. Many times I’d show up on set and say that I’m so glad I’m not directing this movie. It’s nice to not direct if someone extremely great is directing. It probably would have been frustrating if Nick didn’t do a good job and we had to stand around and take over! I was mostly thinking, “Thank goodness I don’t have to tell the extras to do this in that scene.”
There are some pretty huge party scenes in the film. Was it shot on stages or on location?
The party scenes were all shot in houses. There was almost no soundstage work in the entire movie. The only set in the movie that I can think of is the bedroom that Zac and I fight in. Other than that, we packed tons and tons of people into real houses! It was crazy and really fun.
Did the party scenes in the film ever turn into real parties?
There were a few moments with little sequences in the movie where it looks like you’re actually walking around at the party. We gave out cameras to the background people in the scenes, and Evan and I went around with little cameras as well. Sometimes, if they were shooting in the other house, we would have a hundred people in the frat house with music playing telling people to just party for ten minutes and we’d film it. There were definitely times it felt like a party.
How did you go about the fight scene with Zac? Did you train at all?
No, there was no training involved. We blocked out the scene with the stunt coordinator, and we shot the fight scenes in such small chunks. We’re not trying to display the action; it’s more about the jokes. When we were walking through the scene the day before, we would come up with a lot of the ideas that were used in the scene. Then, you film ten seconds at a time. You isolate every moment. It’s still fun because you get your little moments. You can riff and do stuff there in the connective tissue.
What is the ratio of material you came up with on the fly to the material in the script? Was there material from rehearsals that was used?
We didn’t necessarily rehearse for this movie. We maybe had a day or two where we sat around and read the script, but we did have a lot of conversations. It’s not what you would call a traditional rehearsal. We improvised a lot because we wanted the film to feel loose and natural. The structure and the scenes are so funny and ridiculous that it’s not too hard to come up with funny areas. If you just act normally, the scenes are so ridiculous that it is funny. That is the best place to be when you’re not relying on verbal intricacies for laughter. The situations themselves are funny.
There are a lot of moments that require large genitalia in the movie. Was there a dedicated prosthetics team?
There actually was a prosthetics team on the movie! There were also a lot of prosthetic butts, although you only see a few of them in the movie. There was every prosthetic body part you can have!
Is it awkward shooting a funny sex scene?
It is a little awkward. The fact that it’s funny makes it a lot less weird. Sex scenes are generally always a little weird.
People always say never to work with babies, but you have babies in the film.
The kids were so good that it was actually really easy. What you see in the movie didn’t take hours to achieve. They were the happiest babies ever, and it makes the movie so much better. They gave us so much extra stuff that we didn’t end up using. They didn’t love the scenes where they were dressed up though.
This movie is looking at immaturity — the frat guys not wanting to grow up, and the adults having to grow up while raising a kid. Do you personally relate to that at all?
To some degree, yeah. I think inherently I have been working since I was a teenager, and there have been a lot of times when I had to grapple with the desire to just get drunk all day and do nothing and then the inability to do that.
In the movie, when we go through the fraternity’s history, you have Andy Samberg and The Lonely Island guys in one scene and the Workaholics guys in another. It seems like such a great Easter egg hunt for people who know them.
Yes, exactly. Jake Johnson is also in the third scene. I always know how cool the audience is by how big an applause the Workaholics guys get. That’s one of my favorite parts of the movie, and the soundtrack in those scenes is amazing, too.
Bad Neighbours is out now on DVD, read our review here.
