THE BIG PICTURE: PATRICK GOLDSTEIN

John Hughes’ imprint remains

He’s still revered in Hollywood, but whatever happened to the king of the teens?

By Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
3:38 PM PDT, March 24, 2008

JOHN HUGHES hasn’t set foot in Hollywood for years, but his influence has never been more potent. The king of 1980s comedy, Hughes now qualifies as something of a Howard Hughes-style recluse — he doesn’t have an agent, doesn’t give interviews and lives far away, somewhere in Chicago’s sprawling North Shore suburbs where most of his films were set.

But he has an entire generation of fans in the industry who grew up infatuated with his films, especially a string of soulful mid-1980s teen comedies that helped capture the eternal drama of modern teenage existence. They include “Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “The Breakfast Club,” which no less an authority than Courtney Love once called “the defining moment of the alternative generation.” Any number of successful actors and filmmakers, from Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith to Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller and Wes Anderson, are fans, having soaked up Hughes’ keen observational humor, love of mischief and shrewd dissection of social hierarchies.

“John Hughes wrote some of the great outsider characters of all time,” says Apatow, the writer-director-producer whose new film, “Drillbit Taylor,” is loosely based on an old Hughes story idea. “It’s pretty ridiculous to hear people talk about the movies we’ve been doing, with outrageous humor and sweetness all combined, as if they were an original idea. I mean, it was all there first in John Hughes’ films. Whether it’s ‘Freaks and Geeks’ or ‘Superbad,’ the whole idea of having outsiders as the lead characters, that all started with Hughes.”

Hollywood is full of older masters who’ve been mentors to younger acolytes. But Hughes, 58, is the only one who’s disappeared without a trace; he quit directing in 1991, moved back to Chicago in 1995 and has basically stayed out of sight ever since.

“He’s our generation’s J.D. Salinger,” says Smith, whose film “Dogma” shows its heroes, Jay and Silent Bob, on a pilgrimage to Shermer, Ill., a mythical town that only exists in Hughes’ films. “He touched a generation and then the dude checked out. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be doing what I do. Basically my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words.”

Smith says whenever he’s in Chicago promoting a film he asks his local publicist if they know how to find him, to no avail. The one person who made contact was Vaughn, who grew up in the North Shore suburbs and met with Hughes when shooting “The Break-Up” in the area in 2005. It’s in keeping with this aura of mystery that while Hughes came up with the idea for “Drillbit Taylor,” the Owen Wilson comedy that opened Friday to lackluster reviews, his name isn’t anywhere on the film. But his handprints are everywhere.

The story evokes memories of Hughes’ teen sagas, being a comic tale about a trio of nerdy high-school freshmen who recruit a supposedly fearsome bodyguard to protect them from a nasty school bully. As the film’s scruffy hero, Wilson is something of a throwback to John Candy’s character in “Uncle Buck,” Hughes’ 1989 comedy that stars Candy as a bedraggled bachelor forced to look after his brother’s three smart-aleck kids.

Based on a treatment Hughes wrote some years ago, the “Drillbit” story is credited to frequent Apatow collaborators Seth Rogen and Kristofor Brown, who also wrote the screenplay, and Edmond Dantes, a favorite Hughes pseudonym. Susan Arnold, who produced the film with Apatow and her partner, Donna Arkoff Roth, is married to producer Tom Jacobson, who is one of the few people in Hollywood still in contact with the reclusive filmmaker.

“Tom is the unsung hero here,” says Roth. “He’d always remembered the story and knew there was a great movie in there. He got permission from John to use it and got us involved.” Arnold and Roth were fans of Apatow, who once had offices on their floor at Revolution Studios. “We’d always felt we were lucky to get Judd involved,” says Arnold.

If anyone is a repository of Hughes lore, it is Jacobson, who calls him “one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met” but is scrupulously tight-lipped when it comes to offering any speculation about the filmmaker’s retreat from view. When Hughes was looking for someone to produce “Ferris Bueller,” Paramount executive Dawn Steel introduced him to Jacobson, who spent a decade working on various Hughes films.

Jacobson says Hughes could write the first draft of a script in a week. “Once he had the characters and a strong idea, it would carry him all the way through,” he recalls.

Hughes’ method of shooting comedy has become virtually an industry standard. He’d often let the camera roll through four or five takes in a row, looking for the right tone and rhythm for a scene. “He loved his actors and loved language, so he’d shoot a lot of film,” says Jacobson. “It became a big thing in comedy after John did it — listening to the actors and looking for those great moments. John would hear a line and get the actor to go with it. It really wasn’t the actors who were improvising. It was John improvising.”

No one who knows Hughes is eager to theorize about why he dropped out of sight. It’s possible that the filmmaker, who gave studio executives headaches when he was riding high, simply grew tired of the messy business of making movies and chose to pursue a simpler life.

Still, it’s hard to find a thirty- or fortysomething writer or filmmaker who doesn’t credit Hughes as a seminal figure in their movie education. “You see Hughes’ influence on all TV comedy, especially the stylized single-camera comedy,” says Apatow. “His great film characters, starting with Anthony Michael Hall in ‘Sixteen Candles,’ were big inspirations. When we were growing up, we were all like Hall — the goofy skinny kid who thinks he’s cool, even if nobody else does. ‘Superbad’ has that same attitude, that mix of total cockiness and insecurity.”

Hughes’ influence remains so lasting that when Paramount Vantage needed an iconic image for the poster for “American Teen,” a documentary due out this summer that chronicles the lives of five high school seniors, it re-created the look of the poster from Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club.”

It’s interesting that for all of Hughes’ identification with teen films, some of his biggest fans, notably Apatow and “Wedding Crashers” director David Dobkin, cite his “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” as a favorite film. The 1987 picture offers a distinctive Hughesian riff on the odd-couple buddy picture, pitting Steve Martin’s sophisticated marketing executive against John Candy’s garrulous salesman when the two are thrown together trying to get home for Thanksgiving after their flight to O’Hare is canceled.

It is perhaps Hughes’ most grown-up film, especially in the way it shows how the caste system in his teen films could carry over to adult life. Stuck in a dumpy motel far from home, Martin erupts, making no secret of his contempt for Candy’s mindless chatter. Though clearly wounded, Candy throws us off guard with his response. “Yeah, I talk too much” he says. “I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. [And] I’m not changing. I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I’m the real article.”

Dobkin says scenes like that are great examples of what he calls Hughes’ “clear voice. That argument in the motel is pitch-perfect. . . . It’s the great thing about Hughes’ films. He made them for himself, but when you watch them, you always feel that he made them especially for you.”

This sense of personal attachment is a big part of the Hughes mystique. Producer Scott Stuber was such a fan that, as a teenager, when he wanted to impress a girl, he’d get her a soundtrack from a Hughes film. “He somehow knew we were all struggling with the same things,” Stuber says. “Whenever I watch a Hughes film now, I remember the euphoria of being 13 and falling in love with movies.”

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The cocoon, plus the cast and crew for Kevin Smith’s “Zack & Miri Make a Porno,” are gone.

“The whole show, we’ve been kind of in a cocoon and not really talking to anybody,” the writer-director said earlier this week in Monroeville as filming wrapped. “But it was incredibly productive for us to work that way.”

Moviegoers and members of the media generally left the production alone, even though some knew about locations or spotted tell-tale trucks around places like Monroeville, McKeesport, McKees Rocks and Hazelwood.

“Everyone was really nice about it. If we were shooting any place else, we wouldn’t have gotten the kind of privacy that a movie like this kind of requires. There are a lot of naked people walking around.”

Still, Smith added, “Some people think it’s a nonstop party, but you’re talking about 12-, 15-hour days that take their toll. You’ve got a lot to accomplish in a very short window.”

Nevertheless, he managed to finish two days ahead of schedule, which prompted Seth Rogen to chime in: “All I keep thinking is I wish I did more takes. That’s about a thousand more jokes.”

He and Elizabeth Banks star in the comedy — dirty, sexy but sweet, Smith promises — about two friends who decide to make a porn movie for the money but discover they have feelings for each other.

Rogen was a trouper, returning to Pittsburgh the day after he was a presenter with fellow funnyman Jonah Hill at the 80th Academy Awards. “It was a little hectic, schedule-wise, because I had to fly out of here and fly back and I worked on Monday, but not till the afternoon.”

Smith said Rogen could have insisted he pick another scene to shoot that day, but he didn’t. “He was a true champion, man,” the director said.

As for Rogen’s red-carpet and Oscar experience: “It was really weird. It was a lot of fun. I kept expecting someone to ask me to leave. It was great, I was shocked that they asked us to do it. The whole thing was just kind of thrilling, it was really cool. … It was great watching Philip Seymour Hoffman not laugh at my jokes.”

Oscar-winner Hoffman, a nominee for “Charlie Wilson’s War,” was among the A-listers in the front rows of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. “Never before have I not made such famous people laugh,” Rogen quipped.

Smith and the table of Pittsburghers had no trouble laughing. In fact, the director said of Rogen and Banks: “Both of them were, hands down, the two best actors I’ve ever worked with. I know you’re supposed to say that cause it’s the current movie but I’ve worked with [expletive] Matt Damon.”

Not to mention the likes of Alan Rickman, Rogen volunteered. “Make a list of all the people we’re better than,” he said, laughing. (Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette movie editor)

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It’s a wrap on Kevin Smith’s ‘Porno’

By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It’s not exactly the sort of slogan you’d put on a license plate or town stationery but Monroeville is “the last place in the world you’d imagine someone would make porn.”

And that is why Kevin Smith’s $25 million comedy, “Zack & Miri Make a Porno,” is set in Monroeville, where shooting wraps up today. It’s about a pair of cash-starved friends, played by Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, who decide to make a porn flick.

“In terms of the stuff I’ve done in the past, it’s probably closest to ‘Chasing Amy.’ It’s very frank, it’s very dirty but it’s very sweet,” Smith said, calling it a very touching love story.

“We shot a scene yesterday that was about as dramatic a scene as I’ve ever shot in anything I’ve ever done,” Smith said, with his star confirming it. “This is in the same movie as all that other stuff?” Rogen said.

Yesterday, Smith and Rogen sat down with two reporters and a radio team to field questions on everything from driving in Pittsburgh (GPS is invaluable for newcomers) to strippers (hired locally) and Pittsburgh as a winter wonderland (how Smith sold the city to his 8-year-old daughter, who loved her time and uniform at Winchester Thurston).

The director and actor took two of the seats at a big round table at Tolerico’s, a real Monroeville restaurant down the strip mall from the fictional Bean-N-Gone Coffee Shop where Rogen’s character works.

Smith, layered in a hoodie and long black coat, smoked throughout and Rogen, unmistakable with his loose corkscrew curls, dark-rimmed glasses and distinctive hearty laugh, sampled the sugary fried dough the restaurant placed in the center of the table.

Tonight, if all goes well, Smith will trade his rental bed for his home model, and Rogen will prepare to fly to Las Vegas to receive the ShoWest Comedy Star of the Year Award. He’s one of the go-to guys for comedy, with “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!” “Superbad,” “Knocked Up” and “40-Year-Old Virgin” among his credits.

In a relaxed, good-natured, 30-minute session, here is some of what they had to say:

On the stars’ chemistry: “They had crazy, sick chemistry, it was really nice,” Smith said of Rogen and Banks. “There was a familiarity there, but beyond that, their performances read like they’re lifelong friends who slowly kind of realize they’ve fallen in love.”

On picking Pittsburgh: Smith said, “I spent a lot of time here,” after high school because a then-girlfriend went to Carnegie Mellon University. He shot “Dogma” in Pittsburgh in 1998 and that positive experience, along with the state’s tax incentives for filmmakers, helped to lure him back.

On shooting here: “It went so swimmingly, it was crazy,” said the director, who finished two days early.

“We were fighting weather issues at the beginning because we tried to do most of our exteriors up front,” Smith said, as Rogen added, “The weather was too nice.” But some of the real snow allowed Rogen to fishtail as he drove, lending authenticity to the wintry setting and man-made white stuff.

On navigating the city: Rogen got lost a lot at the beginning but said, “I slowly narrowed down where I go to a few places. Now I get to the Waterfront easy,” to go to the movies, eat at Red Robin and — like all the out-of-towners — shop like mad at Target.

Off-set diversions: Smith favored NHL 08 (he also went to a couple of New Jersey Devils games at Mellon Arena, clad in his home-team colors) while Rogen is a “pretty mean drummer” on Rock Band and pretty good at Guitar Hero. “I’m like your utilitarian game player.”

On casting: Smith wrote “Zack & Miri” with Rogen in mind. “I saw ‘40-Year-Old Virgin,’ and I was, like, that [expletive] dude’s hysterical.” Steve Carell? “No, the other guy.” Then Rogen got famous and Smith worried he might lose him, but he didn’t.

Sneak preview: Smith has been editing as he’s shooting and recently hosted an early rough cut for cast and crew in the Strip District. “We set up two big monitors, two big flat screens, and I think 80 people came over and watched 80 percent, 85 percent of the movie. … It’s pretty watchable.”

Release and rating: Smith said the movie is expected to be released in November and he’s “praying for an R rating. … the initial porno scene that they shoot in the movie is one of the funniest but most graphic.”

When studio chief Harvey Weinstein visited the set, he asked Smith if he was shooting “TV coverage as well,” which would allow the movie to air on television or in other tame outlets. “I was, like, dude, I’m having a hard time shooting an R-rated movie, let alone a PG-13- rated version of the movie.”

The story is set at Thanksgiving-Christmas, and the fall release prompted Rogen to say, “We’ll get that ‘Enchanted’ audience.” And then let loose with a big laugh.

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Director waxes philosophic on his ‘dirty, dirty movie’
By William Loeffler - Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Zack and Miri couldn’t make a porno movie just anywhere.

For writer and director Kevin Smith, choosing Pittsburgh to shoot his latest comedy was “a no-brainer.”

Smith, who filmed the controversial religious comedy “Dogma” here in 1998, began shooting “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” in January.

On Tuesday, with one night of shooting left before flying home to “sleep in my own bed,” Smith talked about his latest visit to Pittsburgh.

“We had such a good time with ‘Dogma’ in 1998,” said Smith, a bearish man with a neatly trimmed beard and horn-rimmed glasses. “It seemed like a no-brainer to shoot here. It had to be shot in a place that you’d think was the last place someone would shoot porn. And that’s Monroeville.”

OK, the $75 million tax incentive passed by the state Legislature last year helped, too. The grant provides a 25 percent tax credit to film companies that spend 60 percent of their production budgets in the state.

“We could have gone to Massachusetts,” Smith said. “They were pushing Connecticut pretty hard.”

Strippers from the local labor force benefited from the movie.

“It would seem inauthentic to bring in strippers from Los Angeles,” Smith said.

Budgeted at $25 million, “Zack and Miri” stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as two cash-strapped friends who make an X-rated film to get out of debt. During the making of this movie within a movie, the pair discover that they have feelings for one another.

Rogen — playing Bud Abbott to Smith’s Lou Costello — talked about how real-life porn star Katie Morgan was invaluable in helping to make a fake sex scene.

The two had not previously worked together. Smith said he was worried he wouldn’t be able to afford Rogen after he became famous as the star of Judd Apatow’s smash comedy “Knocked Up.”

“I saw ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin.’ I said, that dude is hysterical.’ ” Smith said. “Then he got famous.”

Smith said he knows he’s taking a risk with the word ‘Porno’ in the film’s title.

But love trumps sex, he said. Like his other films — “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy” — there’s an old-fashioned romantic sensibility beneath the raunch.

“It’s a dirty, dirty movie,” said Smith with perfect deadpan. But then, he added, “I hope the balance is there. It’s a really touching love story, no pun intended. In terms of the stuff I’ve done in the past, it’s probably closest to ‘Chasing Amy.’ ”

His family — wife, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, and daughter, Harley Quinn, 8 — moved to Pittsburgh during the shooting.

“We put Harley in Winchester Thurston for about three months,” he said. “She had a great time. … I think she found the idea of wearing a uniform every day incredibly novel. She felt like she worked for the government.”

He caught a couple of Penguins games at Mellon Arena, including one where the Pens lost to the New Jersey Devils.

“It was odd being one of the only three Devils jerseys in the building,” Smith said.

“Zack and Miri,” which is set for a November release, features Traci Lords, Jason Mewes and Craig Robinson, who plays glowering warehouse manager Darryl Philbin in the NBC comedy “The Office.” Betty Aberlin, who most people remember as Lady Aberlin from “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” makes her third appearance in a Smith film.

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USAToday - If the title says ‘Porno,’ will moviegoers say ‘no thanks’?

By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY

MONROEVILLE, Pa. — It sounds like the most dangerous title in movies —Zack & Miri Make a Porno — but in comedy these days, the riskier the better.
Kevin Smith’s film, now shooting in western Pennsylvania, stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as broke friends who embrace their desperation by making their own X-rated tape to pay off their debts. In the process, they uncover romantic feelings for each other.

Smith readily acknowledges that having “porno” in the title could turn off some potential viewers.

“We’re just hoping that by the time the movie comes out, if the marketing people do their jobs right, it’s a word that people will kind of get over,” he says.

This is the era in which the nation just spent weeks chattering about Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel’s dueling videos about having sex with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. (Banks released her own spoof video about Rogen.) And R-rated films such as Knocked Up (co-starring Rogen), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (co-starring Banks and Rogen) and Superbad are major comedy hits.

Industry analysts say Porno fits right in. “It’s one of the best titles of the year,” says Jeff Bock, an analyst with movie tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. “It sells the film for exactly what it is.” It helps, he notes, that Smith (Clerks, Dogma) has a dependable fan base. “They’ll follow him anywhere. I don’t think anything is too risqué for Kevin Smith fans.”

But that base is somewhat limited; Smith’s films tend to gross $20 million to $30 million. (Knocked Up brought in nearly $150 million.) With star-on-the-rise Rogen and the success of Knocked Up, “expectations are up for this particular film,” Bock says.

Those behind the film point out that it’s more than just a filthy movie (though it’s plenty filthy).

“What’s weird about it is, it’s dirty. But it’s so incredibly sweet,” Smith says, noting that Porno will be rated R (obviously, there’s no actual porn in it). Banks says grown-ups are mature enough for immature jokes. “These kinds of comedies, these sweet and sexy comedies, have all started to push the envelope. This movie takes it even further, that’s definitely true. But if you’re over 15 years old … you know what sex is, and in comedy you’re always trying to find those taboos that you can break for a laugh. Sex in America is a huge one.”

And Rogen? For him, there’s no safety in safety: “Oh, we are going too far … ” He laughs and adds: “The first thing people should think is: ‘Are they allowed to do that?’ ”

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Daily Variety - Half the work for twice the pay
By STEPHEN SCHAEFER

Seth Rogen has always had a talent for making people laugh. The only difference now is that the genial comic generates laughs on a global scale.

With writing and acting credits for “Superbad,” a starring role in “Knocked Up” and four movies due this year, the comedian has scaled Hollywood’s hits list.

“Definitely, I’d say careerwise that things are going good,” Rogen acknowledges. “It’s becoming increasingly easier to work. I’m in the position at times to actually choose what I’m going to do instead of whatever will pay me.”

With his sudden success, the 25-year-old Canadian has discovered a whole new way of working. “Before the only reason I got cast in a movie was that me, or someone I knew, wrote it for me to. Now other people have opened up to letting me be in their world of movies. It’s a whole other experience!”

Case in point: Kevin Smith’s latest, “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” in which Rogen plays Zack.

“It’s one of the first movies that I’ve just acted in, and it definitely feels like I’m doing half as much,” he says from the film’s location at Pittsburgh’s Monroeville Mall.

Working with Smith is a big deal for Rogen. “‘Clerks,’ when I saw that, was one of the defining moments of my career,” he says of Smith’s early success. “It’s the first movie I saw where the characters were talking like me and my friends talk to each other — about ‘Star Wars’ and blowjobs and what have you. That was tremendously influential in my writing. And then Kevin Smith told me he wrote a movie for me and I’m in. Thank God I really liked it,” he says of “Zack and Miri.” “It was a very simple process. Usually you have to put a gun to my head to make me finish a script, and I read ‘Zack and Miri’ in one sitting.”

Rogen has a slew of other yet-to-be-released features: He is a co-writer and actor on Owen Wilson’s “Drillbit Taylor” and does the same duties on “Pineapple Express,” which reteams him with James Franco, another alum on “Freaks and Geeks,” the Judd Apatow TV series that launched Rogen’s career in 1999. He’s also the voice of Hogsqueal in the current “The Spiderwick Chronicles” (including a marvelous digestive sound as he eats the ogre), Morton the mouse in “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!” and a mantis in “Kung Fu Panda.”

Of performing for animated films, Rogen says: “It’s a chance to play around more than anything. You’re all alone. It’s all about you, which is the opposite of a real movie set where it’s the extras, the background, the talking, a million elements at play. You can explore the dialogue in a way you never can on a real movie set.”

It seems unlikely that success will change this multihyphenate’s ways, however.

“For me, it’s very simple,” Rogen says. “Would I say, ‘Holy fuck! I’ve got to go see that!’? I want to do movies that I would really want to see, and that’s the only way I want to navigate that now.”

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