superbad

Last week my Development Exec and I attended an advance screening of Superbad at the WGA Theater, followed by a Q&A with co-writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The movie was, except for one short lull in the second act, a non-stop laugh riot. It was a relentless barrage of laugh out loud moments. There were times when I, along with the jaded industry audience, was screaming at the screen in glee and laughing so hard that I couldn't hear the rest of the scene.

Check out the R-rated trailer for Superbad:


They didn't use all the funniest parts for the trailer, that was just a taste of the hilarity that ensues. There will be the inevitable comparisons to other teen comedies, but Superbad is so funny - it makes American Pie feel more like Dancer in the Dark in comparison. Superbad opens this weekend. Do yourself a favor and watch it. Unfortunately, it's not playing at my Laemmle, but to see Superbad again I would willingly leave downtown.

The Q&A wasn't that illuminating, but I blame that on the moderator's lame questions. Seth Rogen was pretty damn funny. They wrote the first draft of the screenplay when they were fourteen years old and named the principal characters "Seth" and "Evan" after themselves. In later years, when they tried to change the names to "Sam" and "Eric", it sounded stupid so they didn't change it. The guy who plays "McLovin" is a high school drama student making his major motion picture debut, and they knew the minute he walked in the room to audition that he was McLovin. Let me think, what else? Oh yeah, Superbad is the comedy screenplay I wish I had written and I think my Dev Exec now has a crush on Seth Rogen. It also became evident through all the questions that Judd Apatow protects his writers and directors from studio interference.

Now I really hate the screenplay I'm rewriting.