One of the pitfalls of making autobiographical art is that any comments or note you get about the characters in it are, essentially, also comments about yourself. Like, say, having one of your corporate bosses tell you that a character based on your own teenage self is too vile to be seen holding their products by the general public.
Such was the bizarre case of Seth Rogen on the set of Superbad, the film that helped turn him from “that funny guy in Judd Apatow movies” into a major creative force in Hollywood. Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg were never shy about the fact that the main characters of the movie were based on themselves, with Michael Cera playing Evan and Jonah Hill playing Seth. But it was still apparently a bit of a surprise for Rogen to be told by the movie’s producers at Sony-owned Columbia Pictures that the Seth character was so gross that he wouldn’t be allowed to be filmed playing the company’s PlayStation game consoles. Rogen revealed this tidbit at SXSW this week, while premiering his new Apple TV+ series The Studio:
“They were like, ‘We can’t have him interact with our products as a character, because it’s too vile a character.’ And I was like, ‘It’s based on me, that’s very insulting,’” Rogen is laughing while telling the anecdote (to Rotten Tomatoes), but Sony was apparently dead serious about not wanting to see Hill’s hands on a Dualshock. “Sony made the movie and we were told that Jonah Hill’s character, Seth, was so reprehensible to the studio. There’s a scene where they’re playing video games and it was like, ‘Jonah can’t touch a PlayStation.’”
Rogen says he and his fellow creators ultimately acquiesced; Cera’s Evan plays a PlayStation 2 game in the movie, but Seth’s obsessively dick-drawing hands are never shown wrapped around any fine Sony products. Such are the strange moments and compromises from which classic comedies are built.
[via Variety]
