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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