Seth Rogen reflects on getting negative reviews for The Green Hornet and The Interview: “It is devastating”
"It is devastating when you are being institutionally told that your personal expression was bad," Seth Rogen says in a recent interview
Aux News Seth Rogen
Film reviews: sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad, and sometimes they’re just okay! In a new interview with the podcast The Diary Of A CEO (via Entertainment Weekly), Seth Rogen opens up about how his relationship with criticism has changed throughout the course of his career.
“It’s funny, I was saying to someone I work with the other day, ‘I’m at the point in my career where not a lot of people are in a position to yell at me in my job, but the New York Times will publish an entire article saying I suck at my job,’” the Fabelmans actor says. “That’s the trade-off, I worked my way up to not having to deal with that much personal conflict and face-to-face conflict, but I will have, like, a cultural institution tell everyone that I suck.”
While Rogen talks at length about being grateful for his success after coming from a modest, nepotism-free background in Vancouver, he admits that it can be challenging to not take negative reviews personally.
“I think if most critics knew how much it hurt the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things,” Rogen tells host Steven Bartlett. “It’s devastating. I know people who never recover from it honestly—years, decades of being hurt by [reviews]. It’s very personal, and so it is devastating when you are being institutionally told that your personal expression was bad. Like, that is devastating. That’s something that people carry with them literally their entire lives and I get why.”
The Long Shot star looked back at a pair of his less warmly-received releases that are firmly in the rearview mirror. In 2011, Rogen starred in The Green Hornet, which The A.V. Club’s C+ review described as “a buddy comedy in which the buddies have no chemistry, and an action film where the best moments feel more thrilling in concept than execution.”
“People just kind of hated it,” Rogen remembers. “It seemed like a thing people were taking joy in disliking a lot.”
The Invincible and The Boys producer cites being ahead of the curve on superhero stories; Iron Man and The Dark Knight had already started reinvigorating the genre in 2008, but The Avengers had yet to change the game. It also doesn’t hurt that, while the script was penned by Rogen and his longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg, The Green Hornet was based on pre-existing IP rather than fully being the duo’s brainchild. A few years later, the childhood friends co-directed and received story credits for The Interview, and Rogen recalls its lackluster reception as “more painful.” (For what it’s worth, it may have had a 52% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but The A.V. Club gave it a solid B.)
“On the grand scale of things in life, it’s not that bad. When I was younger I really did not have as much perspective as I do,” he says. “Now, I do not carry it with me nearly as much as I used to.”
While Rogen now has a better relationship with reviews and can channel his frustrations into his pottery side hustle, he admits that he still looks at his projects’ opening weekends with dread.
“It’s like birth,” he describes. “It’s just an inherently painful process. Even though it may be bringing something beautiful into the world, it is a painful act.”
135 Comments
I’m tired of this nepotism obsession. I just don’t care. There’s no such thing as a “self-made person.” Everyone has had some help, or just pure luck, along the way. I think it scares people that life is totally random, and even if you bust your ass, you still might not get anywhere.
Right? It’s the ultimate shaking-fist-at-cloud issue. So movie stars from an overstuffed, overvalued industry we all regularly fund are sometimes the sons and daughters of other movie stars. So fucking what? Unless you’re directly impacted by it, like if you’re a struggling actor or something, why would this chart on your list of prioritized issues to care about? And what does anyone think can be done about it? You want federal legislation targeting Colin Hanks? People need to engage with other stuff. There really is plenty of other stuff.
You want federal legislation targeting Colin Hanks?Colin? No, no. He’s great.
But we need to do something about Chet Haze.
I approve.
Well, maybe Chet Hanks.
Federal legislation targeting Chet Hanks might not be a bad idea, though.
it’s also weird because if i had a plumber fixing something in my house and he said his father was a plumber, and his father before him was a plumber, i would be like ‘i bet this guy is a great plumber’.
I’m not so sure about this. Anytime I’m hiring a contractor, and they say “I’m gonna bring my nephew in to handle this one,” it does not portend good things.
I had an accountant who always got me a hefty refund. One year, he had his son (also an accountant, not just some random kid) do my taxes instead, and to my shock, I owed five digits in taxes. I told my accountant and he redid it, and, lo and behold, I got a refund!Fast forward ten years, and about half my tax returns from that accountant have been subject to audits and huge penalties.
Sometimes… the newer generation does things better than “the old school.”
This is actually a great teaching story.I wager it didn’t occur to you that your accountant, and not his son, might be the one who was doing things not-so-great. It would not have occurred to me; I would have just thought, “where’s my usual refund?”
I think I saw what I wanted to see. When my accountant said “Just give me all of your credit card bills…” I kinda knew something might be up, especially after the vast gulf between his work and his son’s became evident. At that point it was more “Would the IRS waste their time on a little guy like ME?” The answer is… YES.(also the lesson is if you run a freelance business, don’t consistently claim losses year after year)
Honestly, this counter-argument against the whole nepotism issue always strikes me as a little silly and missing the point. The reason no one cares if your plumber got a hand getting into the industry from his dad or uncle or whoever is because that got your plumber an easy cheat-code fast lane into a life of fixing overflowing toilets and busted sinks, not an easy cheat-code fast lane into a life of fabulous wealth, fame, cultural influence and privilege.
You haven’t seen what plumber charge these days!In all seriousness. It’s true that plumbing isn’t the career of a Hollywood actor but it’s also not an industry that’s easy to break in to. Having family in the trade gets you connections that let you fast track the trade process and usually score you an easy in for an apprenticeship. This is honestly the same with any union trade that require schooling(electrician and HVAC also comes to mind)
right the issue seems to be less about nepotism and the fact that the child of someone rich and successful would want to continue being rich and successful in the same way.if my dad had a cool job i’d probably want to do it, too! i don’t begrudge the ‘please don’t destroy’ guys just because their dads all worked at snl…if my dad worked at snl i’d try to work there too!ben stiller is a good example of a guy who comes from hollywood royalty and still held the door open for dudes like wes anderson/owen wilson. the flipside is someone like judd apatow breaking jonah hill – jonah hill’s dad is an incredibly rich entertainment lawyer, so chances are he’d have been able to break in one way or another.
To be fair, plumbing wasn’t my example. But while I’ll definitely concede that plumbing isn’t the easiest career path to enter either, it’s nevertheless still a more difficult (and in many ways quite yucky) job that even in success lacks most of the privileges and rewards bestowed upon those in the entertainment industry. Hence why most people on average aren’t exactly beating down the door to get into it nor quite as concerned about who gets to participate and why.
still a cheat code, nevertheless.also like, if the rich famous actor’s kid gave it all up to be a plumber that would be much more performative than a life of literal performance, IMO.
Only if we’re being a bit reductive. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being a plumber, but I bet if you surveyed plumbers and gave them the option of instead getting an easy track into a career that gave them immense wealth and fame and adoration, cultural influence, and a pretty much zero percent chance of coming into contact with actual human poo among other gross substances during the course of an average day, they’d pick the non-plumbing one. It’s a fast-track that I suspect most people wouldn’t choose if they had better options available to them.As for performative, leaving aside the fact that if it’s what they actually want to do it’s none of your business, I suspect it would still be a lot easier for the child of a Hollywood star to find a way to enter the plumbing industry than it is for the child of a plumber to enter the Hollywood life.
You’re missing the point. The discussion is around wealth, class and privilege, and actors/celebrities are just the most obvious example.But, as you say, you don’t care.
no, youre missing the point. celebrities are the smallest point of the problem with nepotism yet most of the discussion is on them.
The conversation sure can be about wealth, class, and privilege, but 99% of the conversations that specifically mention entertainment-industry nepotism say nothing besides “Nepo babies, amirite?”
It’s not a “discussion”. It’s a bunch of uninteresting losers using it to garner attention and the moral high ground in whatever conversation they’re currently in.
Just feels like there’s a whole lot of confirmation bias in the discourse. Yes, there is nepotism in every business, but there are far more people who’ve been successful without connections than those that have, not to mention MANY “nepo babies” who have failed miserably.
But skip to the policy: how would you write it? With all the internet rage, what I never see is the 400-page prescription with workable solution after workable solution. Just a bunch of comments. What DOES work is, getting to work. So yeah a few of us don’t care, because I can make 10 phone calls today and juice my business for the month. Or I can shit on “nepo babies” or the latest sneer, and get nothing from it.
And you seem to care entirely too much.
I think it scares people that life is totally random, and even if you bust your ass, you still might not get anywhere.I’ve busted my ass for nothing in the past, yet I’ve had amazing opportunities come to me by doing nothing worthwhile to deserve it. In an instant, things can change, and I think that’s what scares/excites me most.
seth rogan has white male cis heterosexual privilege so no he did not become successful by himself
It’s a legitimate thing to talk about but bringing it up in completely unrelated stories is pretty weird and feels like shoehorning in a pet peeve.
It was briefly mentioned in the story, stuipid.
The irony…He knows, dipshit. That’s literally his entire f**king point: that it was mentioned in the article for no reason. Try to keep up, slugger.
I meant the writer shoehorning it in. Jesus dude, calm down.
This is true. Successful people, for the most part, have some sort of privilege to take into account. For Seth, maybe it’s that he’s white, a man, or grew up not in abject poverty, that sort of thing. For me, though I’m Black and a woman, I had a financially stable upbringing by two college-educated parents. That’s a privilege I can point to (plus I’m very light-skinned, so there’s that, too). For some people, it’s that their parents work in the same business they want to get into. I’m 100% for noticing privilege and pointing it out (because that’s the only way to pull the curtain back on this “American dream” hoax), but I don’t know why so much finger-pointing is happening at nepotism specifically. Pretty, tall, rich, white woman Gwyneth Paltrow would have done just fine even if her parents had made their money in oil rather than show business.
That simply isn’t true. Hollywood is filled with tall, pretty blonde women trying to get their foot in the door. Most of them don’t have famous actresses or film directors as parents and get cast in a blockbuster by their godfather for their first film role. It isn’t like being male (48% of the population) or white (75%).
And we aren’t talking a ‘family business’ like plumbing, this is something that involves earning millions upon millions of dollars while being able to affect the overall cultural climate. It absolutely needs to be called out.
I didn’t say tall, pretty, and blonde. I said tall, pretty, rich, and white. And I didn’t say a family business like plumbing. I said a family business like oil.
If you care about moving more towards a meritocratic society, then nepotism should be heavily discouraged, along with recognizing how much wealth warps the playing field (and lets add sexism, racism and other bigotry onto that pile). Studies have shown how badly nepotism corrodes workforce morale. Do we want the best of the best being rewarded for their talents? Then we need to think about the ways we tilt the system against the very talented people who don’t have the familial ins and privilege that other do. Will the system ever be perfect? No, but that should stop us from trying to create the most level playing field we can, where everyone can develop and use the talents they have to the best of their abilities.
> If you care about moving more towards a meritocratic society, then nepotism
should be heavily discouraged, along with recognizing how much wealth
warps the playing field (and lets add sexism, racism and other bigotry
onto that pile). Studies have shown how badly nepotism corrodes workforce morale.
You’re weakening your argument here by mixing three or four feel-good concepts that don’t really go together into a single paragraph. Pick a line of reasoning and follow it through to its conclusion.Also, “Studies have shown…” is a very weak argument for anything. Studies have shown that Cap’n Crunch is chock full of vitamins, but that doesn’t make it good for you.
Which would all be fine if anonymously snarking on Rooney Mara online had anything to do with creating a level playing field in the workplace. I mean whatever, I’m not saying there’s not valid things to vent about. Let’s just be honest that that’s all we’re doing. Politics, medicine, business, all places where nepotism in whatever form has a corrosive impact. Hollywood is the most obvious and least relevant place where it happens. We don’t focus on it because we care about who gets what part in a movie, we focus on it because it’s low hanging fruit and helps us get our frustrations out with no actual effort. The nepo baby discussion essentially does the same thing Hollywood does: elevate its own importance while providing little but escapism.
I agree that snarking at Rooney Mara is neither helpful nor the point. But Showbiz is a multi-billion dollar business that employs thousands of people and has massive cultural influence.
Sorry, but the length of this comment thread coming off a throwaway line in a post about how Seth Rogen struggles with criticism means that the writers here are gonna keep finding ways to bring it up. Expect at least five more contrived references to nepo babies this week!
Exactly. It’s what life rolls ya. Being mad at who someone’s parents are is about as productive as being mad other people are smarter or better looking than you.
Didn’t The Interview run into distribution trouble because people were afraid of upsetting N. Korea for some reason?
Is that why there were negative reviews?
yes, and then Netflix came along, picked up the rights and premiered it, which was a BIG deal at the time.
Yep, I don’t recall people hating the movie, I recall how upset North Korea was over Dear Leaders portrayal that they threatened Seth, James, and the studios in an attempt to stop its release.
Didn’t The Interview run into distribution trouble because people were afraid of upsetting N. Korea for some reason? I think it did – didn’t it go straight to streaming because of that? Or maybe I’m misremembering. I did see the movie, on Netflix I suppose. And it really wasn’t too bad. A kind of lazy but often funny comedy. What the hell, I didn’t think it was a waste of my time. (Whereas Green Hornet WAS a waste of my time…)
The Eminem bit at the start is worth the price of admission.
Hector’s rectum real??
It was also the reason for the Sony hack
Yes. Ostensibly because it featured Kim Jong-Un being killed. In truth because it revealed his love of Katy Perry.
Who doesn’t love Katy Perry?
Of course ..I mean he’s a monster…but not a MONSTER.
Green Hornet had its moments, but overall was pretty meh. The Interview on the other hand is damn entertaining.
I remember that turning out into a cult hit that played at indie theaters. Not to say that was a positive development (probably disaster control more than anything), but what a strange time.Especially strange because it was… Fine? The political humor was about as incisive as that scene in hot shots part deux where Saddam Hussein transformed into the t-2000.I actually saw the movie at a local indie cinema. It was fine.
I guess the world is lucky his old man never saw Team America.
Yeah it was a huge deal at at the time because NKorea. FFS how does nobody remember that factor? I found the movie pretty friggin brilliantly funny.
Yes, but also Metacritic has it as having “mixed reviews” and Rotten Tomatoes as “rotten” (but not really rotten, just a little rotten). Audience rankings were not great either.
It’s not that people were afraid to upset North Korea. NK committed the Sony Pictures hack and demanded that picture be pulled from release. I think there were some follow-up threats as well but I can’t remember what those were.
It was one of the big reasons for the sony hack, which as a tangential benefit, unstuck the Sony/Marvel negotiations about Spiderman.
The Green Hornet was actually bad. It could have been good, but it wasn’t.
The Green Hornet was actually bad. It could have been good, but it wasn’t. And it should have been good. Even with Rogen as Britt Reid (or Reid’s kid or however they worked that out) it could have worked. A lot went wrong starting with a script that didn’t seem interested in even going anywhere.Oh, and when someone mentions the Green Hornet I always like to note that Britt Reid was the great nephew (or something) of John Reid, the Lone Ranger. Not saying the movie needed to lean on that, but it could have been something.And now — it will be years before any studio thinks they can tackle Green Hornet again.
It’s been a long time since the one time I saw it, but probably script. Rogen wasn’t the problem, but it felt like he was restrained from being funny or charismatic by the writing.
I mean, he co-wrote it, so that does sound like it was partly his fault.
Hahahahaha
Hahahahaha
I bet there was some weird rights issues that prevented that from happening.
The Lone Ranger is in the public domain.
He’s not as his first appearance was in 1933.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Ranger
I mean, tying your century old franchise to a tie-in to another century old franchise might not be the best tactic.
Dan Reid was a recurring character in both of the original radio series. In The Lone Ranger, he was the son of the hero’s dead brother. In The Green Hornet, he was the hero’s father. But I don’t think Britt Reid (The Green Hornet) was even aware of his great uncle’s exploits. (Seems like the kind of thing dad might have mentioned, but vigilante crimefighter family dynamics are weird.) Britt was directly inspired by his family history to take up the fate in a comic book, but that was a much later change to the original lore. Now the two franchises are owned by different entities so any crossover or reference might be more trouble than it’s worth.
I think the reviews had it right, Seth and Evan were good at the sort of buddy movie where some man child grows into a man in the last act, so they leaned on that with Rogen, but it’s at odds with the superhero origin story where the hero has to start taking life seriously by the end of the first act, so that he can grow into his powers or skillset. They tried to smash it all together, but it was just a mess.
again the NOW comics adaptation of the Hornet from the 1990s would make an incredible movie. Open with Alan taking the mantle from old Britt and go from there
I’ll never forgive Seth for damaging what is perhaps my favorite IP, The Green Hornet. a BRILIIANT film could have been adapted from the NOW comics but instead we got this schlock. And he wants to pretend like he was surprised and somehow hurt that people thought the movie was garbage?
“And he wants to pretend like he was surprised and somehow hurt that people thought the movie was garbage?”
Well, you *literally* just cried about how his movie hurt *you*, but he’s not supposed to feel bad when people are critical of him?
Get the fuck over yourself.
I heard interview with Seth Rogan about “The Green Hornet”Interviewer: You must be a huge Green Hornet FanSeth: Not really, just bought the rights to it. No wonder is sucked so hard.
“I think if most critics knew how much it hurt the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things,” Do you, Seth? Do you really think that? Come visit the AV Club threads. There’s not enough weed in Canada to help you relax from that.
This website about criticism is just so damn critical
Not for the faint-hearted.
You know who I sometimes feel bad for? Bono. There’s a guy who needs attention and validation to his very bones. How does it feel to someone like that when, critically speaking, it’s over, and has been for decades?Yes, I know, Bono’s fine. For some reason I just empathize that particular soft underbelly ego.
Could be worse; if anything, Chris Martin’s ego is more fragile than Bono, which is why he’s collaborating with Chainsmokers and Selena Gomez and BTS and generally acting like your uncle who jokes a little too hard about hanging out at your parties.
What’s wrong with that? As long as my butthead uncle lets me drive his Challenger once in a while, he’s OK with me.
I find it very relatable. The only thing that separates me from these people psychically is the fact that they, perhaps briefly enjoyed the kind of success where a large chunk of the world paid attention and said “Hey, you’re pretty cool”, delivering the massive dose of validation that they would be doomed to spend the rest of their vainly attempting to repeat. Otherwise, they’re just like me!
During that brief period the world also paid them enough money to retire at 28 which, again, just like the rest of us!
Yes, that’s always important
They’re so tragic because they’re so relatable!
Also Bono was great at not paying tax on said money.
green hornet being, like, quentin tarantino’s 4th favorite movie of that year still makes me chuckle.
Seth, you made the Hot Dog Orgy Cartoon. You’re lucky every review of your work doesn’t mention that.
Why would he be embarrassed by a movie that did well and people seemed to like?
Did the Times really publish a hit piece on Rogen? It feels like he’s speaking more generally, but it’s still oddly specific. A casual search only brings up what looks like a few standard interviews with him. Maybe he’s talking more specifically about circa The Interview articles, but I just can’t imagine anyone spending much time discussing The Rogen Effect on our culture unless they had their wires crossed with the person several orders of magnitude more influential. I don’t really know what to make of him these days. I liked him generally as a comedic actor back in the 40 Year Old Virgin days, but that act proved fairly thin as time wore on. He seems to have shifted into a more meditative vibe these days, and good for him personally, I’m just not sure he ever had much more to offer than that. He turned in a “good enough” performance in The Fabelmans, though maybe not good enough when rated against the rest of the much better equipped cast. Most of the time I’m not dismayed to see his name on something, but it’s not going to get me to watch something like the new TMNT or anything.
celebs who cry about critics rarely have anything real to back up their complaints. they’re just crying.
Rogen’s next interview: “It’s funny, I’m at the point in my career where not a lot of people are in a position to yell at me in my job, but Yellowfoot can publish an entire hit piece about me on the Onion.”
Take that, Donkey Kong
That’s a reasonable take but I’m a big fan. He’s like Ryan Reynolds in that he’s not the world’s greatest actor, but I find him so likable that I’ll happily watch his movie just to spend two hours around him. He reminds me of so many of the fat, funny Jews I went to summer camp with and sometimes, that’s enough.
“He reminds me of so many of the fat, funny Jews I went to summer camp with and sometimes, that’s enough.”This comment feels slightly problematic.
I’m Jewish and like most summer camps in the northeast, my camp was almost all Jews. Relax.
Let’s not forget he’s he’s also one of the virtue signaling celebs who bailed out criminals from BLM as they continued to destroy peoples lives and property. He has defended outright criminality. Just my few cents, people like this should not be supported.
I think Rogen’s schtick now is more as a producer thank an actor, and he seems to be leaning into the stuff he loves (mainly comics from the early 00’s). I think he’s pretty successful at it! Nothing he’s made is going to change how I think about the world, but it’s a competent interpretation of things I generally like (that sands off the casual bigotry of creators like Garth Ennis).
Fuck it , are we supposed to hate Ennis now, fuck that ,I still like him.Also guy grew up in Derry/Londonderry ( AKA stroke city) in the 70s , he’s going to have a pretty black sense of humour having survived that shit .Except for Crossed that was basically a joke about English football hooligans, that turned into ‘how fucked up can this get and still get published)
Ennis can be a phenomenal writer, and he can also turn in the most puerile, edgelord shit imaginable. Preacher, for example, feels like 75% good to great, and then 25% absolutely DIRE.
Almost all of his Hellblazer run is rock solid, but then there’s the very iffy “Son of Man” arc. It’s just that, as a writer, when he’s left TOO much to his own devices, he has a poor tendency to dip into his bag of shit and dick joke tricks a little too often.
Hitman is, in my opinion, his real unsung classic.
Rogen is most active in recent years as an executive producer of TV and movies, with a list of strong successes such as The Boys. Also he does pottery and has a weed company.
the problem with “The Green Hornet” was that Kato came off like an extremely competent badass and Britt looked like an incompetent boob, so it was just another “white man gets all the credit for something a person of color did” movie
I generally like Seth Rogen and I can understand the shitty feeling of people saying something you spent time/effort on as an expression of yourself sucks. It’s hard not to take that personally. That said, not every personal expression is going to click with everyone and the Green Hornet was one of those things. I actually liked The Interview and can’t really remember any press about the movie being outright bad – it was more about how North Korea was gonna take it and then the whole conversation got overtaken by the Sony hack.Also, Rogen is fortunate in the sense that none of those movies killed his career. I am sure Hollywood is littered with the professional corpses of people who got a break in a big movie, that movie flopped and they were persona non grata. Its a lot easier to look back after having general success and lament the flops as personal injuries from which you recovered; its a lot harder to look back at your one bad movie being the end of your career.
“I think if most critics knew how much it hurt the people that made the
things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they
write these things”
If they did then they’d be bad critics. Reviews aren’t written for your sake, they’re written to inform the readers about what to spend their precious time and money on.
He didn’t say they should be written for his sake. Reviewers have a tendency to be gleefully cruel when they don’t like something. You can criticize something without being a sick about it.
This feels weird coming from him because the critical reception of his projects has been, if anything, kinder than what they probably deserve.
They can afford to be even kinder though!
My mom gives me reviews and it can be devastating. You think you do a really good sanding her toenails and then she draws blood while we’re in the bath.
Critics are parasites and scum.
Critics provide a service to the public, giving us advance knowledge of potential shows/movies/music we may or may not want to spend money/time on. They owe it to the public to be accurate in regards to the quality of the product. As long as they don’t get personal, they absolutely have the right to critique a performance. Yes it may suck to get bad reviews, but I suppose he can always dry his tears with 100$ bills to make himself feel better.
Seems like his beef with critics isn’t that they’re criticizing but that sometimes they go too far and feel like they have to take down somebody who they think got too big for their britches.
Sounds like he needs a pep talk from Udo Keir.
Rogen’s been in the industry long enough (both in front of and behind the camera) to know he has to be just as willing to accept harsh criticisms as he is to accept being lavished with accolades. He doesn’t get to say “review my material objectively…but please don’t hurt my feelings.” Film critics should rightfully prioritize shielding moviegoers from wasting their hard-earned money on material not worth spending their money on over sparing the feelings of those they’re critiquing. Are some critics “dicks/assholes” in general or have “personal vendettas” against specific actors/directors/writers/studios? Yes, but those biases (and critics themselves) are generally easy to filter out while judging the product on its merits.
Does Seth Rogen and company not understand the consequences of making bad stuff? It’s a fairly simple thing: you make a good movie, you get good reviews. You make something bad, you get bad reviews. But these idiots want to be called geniuses no matter what kind of crap they produce. Give me a break.
Yeah that’s not what he said.
“It’s like birth,” he describes. “It’s just an inherently painful process. Even though it may be bringing something beautiful into the world, it is a painful act.”Say it with me everyone woman in the room. FC*()ck you Seth Rogen.
Doesn’t sound inaccurate to me…
Of all the things today’s left is murdering, I might most miss the metaphor.
I think the demise of the descriptive verb is even more painful. “’It’s like birth,’ he describes.” Come ON!
Hey , women have never had to pull nasal hairs , they don’t know true pain!!( yeah , I’m joking, please don’t pull out my nose hairs!!)
Nah. He didn’t say it was harder and he didn’t say it was like literal birth. He used a metaphor. That’s it.
I like Seth Rogan, but both those movies did kind of suck.He was given millions of dollars to make them, and paid millions of dollars for his work. On that level, yes, you’re a cultural institution that will be judged by other cultural instititions.You can always go make small artistic expressions somewhere. Or go into a different, less public line of work. But when you’re a multimillionaire that’s part of a multibillion dollar industry, people will pay attention and have opinions, particularly when that money is all reliant upon other hard working people with little time paying you $15 and 2 hours for the benefit of seeing your work.
I think he is mixing up “personal expression” with “professional expression”. Critics aren’t criticizing his personal expression.
Hearing Seth Rogers ‘s take on birth makes me really glad I’m not his child
as a Green Hornet fan, his was the worst version. It seemed like there wasn’t a script and they were just making it up as they went along. I’m not even sure what they thought they were doing.
Oh boo-hoo-hoo. I hope the tens of millions of dollars he gets for being sporadically funny will help. There’s people who get shit on every day at work and can’t pay their rent.
Everyone has their own experience… be nice
Bro he didn’t bust down your door to say this and he’s not saying “feel bad for me NYCPaul!”
So go easier on the MCU, you hairy cunt
So what is Seth Rogen hoping happens because of this ? They ban & outlaw negative reviews ? No sane person would trust reviewers ever again
He’s not saying any of that.
I think the biggest sin of Green Hornet is that it’s entirely forgettable. I saw it in theaters once, I don’t recall hating it but I never thought about it much again
He’s not wrong, but if people actually thought about how their words and actions might make other people feel, instead of just themselves, we mights solve some much bigger problems. But to extent he’s got a point, there’s a special desperation in takedown media criticism that has it’s own particular odiousness that rivals celebrities’ preening need to be praised. Just look at the extreme end with the Razzies. And while society seems to have collectively woken up to the fact that the premise and spirit of that endeavor is in bad-faith, there’s plenty of mainstream critics who take a less severe, but equally still steeped-in-snark approach.(And I’m speaking as a former A.V.Club freelancer who tried pathetically—and was encouraged—to ape Sean O’Neal’s admittedly amusing snarkfests.)
Oh no I feel so bad for him that sometimes people were kind of mean about the things he was paid millions of dollars to do.
He should reflect on how he had a ton of money and the freedom to make a truly great Green Hornet action movie, and instead made a goofball vanity project with an incomplete script with the tone of a roomful of stoners making a podcast. He lost weight and hit the gym and spent 100 million dollars to look like Seth Rogan doing a filmed sketch for SNL, parodying comic book movies.
So, uh, The Green Hornet was a real personal film for Seth Rogen, huh. Real expression of his deep innermost feelings, baring his soul for the screen.Could have fooled me.