Yearbook

by Seth Rogen

Two great things came from the night: Will did write the movie, and I produced it and acted in it, and it became 50/50, which is definitely one of the best things we’ve ever made. Also, Lauren seemed to stop talking about the other guy and shifted her focus to me instead.

Will called me the next day and told me that Lauren liked me, so I phoned her and asked her out. I asked her if she wanted to play mini golf, which is a good couple of hours of straight talking, which is a risk, but I bet on myself conversationally.

What happened next shocks me to this day and, if you’re a movie fan like I am, is really quite special and miraculous: Steven Spielberg came into the room with George Lucas. The two people responsible for most of the cultural touchstones of my childhood, together. I’m meeting my HEROES! I thought, not remembering the apt saying about just such an occasion.

We left the meeting in a daze. I remember Evan saying in the car, “If we’re gonna rip off The Last Starfighter, I’m not sure we need Steven Spielberg to do it with us. We can probably just rip that shit off by ourselves.”

Years later, we helped create the show Future Man, which is about a loser who’s amazing at playing videogames and realizes his skills will allow him to save the world. That very same year, Spielberg released Ready Player One, about a loser who’s

amazing at playing videogames and realizes his skills will allow him to save the world.

Some of the only times in my life where I truly thought, Wow, I am TOO FUCKING HIGH, have come after eating weed food. Once I ate a weed lollipop at the Golden Globes and got so high, I had to leave early. Weed brownies, in general, are wildly unpredictable. They range from being bad-tasting brownies that do nothing to heavy narcotics that make you feel like a character in Trainspotting.

As far as fast food goes, I rank it like this: There’s the better-than-normal fast-food chains, like Shake Shack and In-N-Out Burger, which are at the top. Chick-fil-A is delicious, but they’re religious bigots, so we’ll just put them in their own bucket. There’s “fried chicken–based fast food,” which Popeyes dominates, followed by Church’s and KFC. Then there’s the “normal” ones, which go:

He’s propped up in kind of a Weekend at Bernie’s–esque way. If he had sunglasses on, he would almost look normal.

(I will now revert back to past tense. Thank you for going on this amazing literary journey with me.)

He knew getting too high was nothing to be embarrassed by. It happens to the best of us.

Nicolas Cage is an odd, magnetizing, confusing man, whose bravery and talent are almost unmatched in his field.

Because Jay Chou was an Asian megastar, they sent us all over Asia to do press. Every airport we landed at had throngs of screaming fans, like, for real. I’ve never seen anything like it to this day—and I know Zac Efron.

We had a premiere, but there are laws against groups of people congregating, so the party was uncomfortable. I remember there was someone from the government there who kept telling people they were allowed to cheer for Jay.

I’m only including this story on the off chance that the person who got the harmonica is reading this book. PLEASE GIVE ME THAT SHIT! You’ve had a good run with it! Let me have it. I’ll give you something else cool. I’ll make you four vases. Thanks.

Some movies are really hard to get made. Superbad took over a decade. Sausage Party, Pineapple Express, This Is the End, each took six to seven years, all because studios just couldn’t wrap their heads around how any of these movies could possibly make money.

They went on to say the film was a “wanton act of terror” that was the work of “gangster moviemakers,” which is hands down the coolest thing a foreign dictator can call you.

I try not to publicly malign the work of other comedians (unless I genuinely dislike them on a personal level), probably because I’m so sensitive to it that the idea of subjecting anyone else to it seems crazy. But around the release of the movie, and in the months following, people I really respected started mocking the movie—not just what happened with it; they literally were saying it was shitty. A joke Amy Poehler and Tina Fey made at the Golden Globes that year was particularly painful, not only because I look up to them so much but because I knew they were right and that the movie itself wasn’t as good as it could have been.