Art sort of imitates life in writer/director Judd Apatow’s comedy movie, Knocked Up. Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl star as two strangers who share one night of drunken sex and wind up discovering weeks later that their one-night stand has led to an unplanned pregnancy. But that's definitly not the part where art imitates life. The art/life connection came with Apatow's decision to cast a group of actors to play Rogen’s roommates/buddies who are actually close friends outside of work. Their off-screen friendships help sell the relationships in Knocked Up and really played an important part in helping the actors come up with dialogue to contribute to the film.
Knocked Up and the Improv Process: Jay Baruchel explained how Judd Apatow likes to work. “…Judd always gets us together. The same with Undeclared, we got together about a month before we shot the pilot and just sort of workshopped and rehearsed, and came up with whatever was funniest. It’s kind of like comedic Darwinism. You gotta bring it or else it’s not getting into the movie.”
Even though a lot of what each actor came up with on their own couldn’t make it into the film, Jonah Hill believes it all worked out for the best in the end. “It’s like especially after seeing every version of the movie while it was coming towards the final cut of it, you know, from the longer ones thinned down, it’s all appropriate to pushing the movie. It’s what makes the movie best. You can’t think of like, ‘Man, my joke’s not in there that I really like.’ It’ s like there could be a lot of funny jokes in the movie but the best version of the movie makes the movie good, and that’s all that counts is if people like the movie. They don’t want a four hour version with more jokes. Maybe for us…”
Some Jokes Will Live On in the DVD Bonus Features: In addition to behind the scenes footage, the Knocked Up DVD will apparently feature an extended version of the abortion (referred to as ‘shmeshmorshion’ in the film) debate. Asked how controversial that conversation got, Jonah Hill replied, “I think a lot of that stuff got pretty controversial. I think when you’re in the moment of improvising, and especially when you’re in a heated argument, you kind of take it to a place you would take it in an argument where the goal is try to make it as real as possible.”
Jay Baruchel said, “It’s kind of being like ridiculous and funny, but in keeping with the parameters that they set up for the scene. It’s got to make sense in the scene sort of, but we’re both getting animated screaming at each other so obviously it’s going to elevate. There’s a little sort of healthy improv one-upsmanship thing happening too, so we’re both trying to outdo each other. I don’t know. It was a really fun scene to shoot. I had my shirt off the whole time. That was wicked.”
Despite Their Characters Names, Hill, Baruchel and Starr Aren’t Playing Themselves: Starr believes the reason why their real names are their characters’ names was just to make things easy. “It’s just easier because we’re all friends for so long before that it’s easier just to call us by our names so you don’t get [confused].” Hill says it was all part of the joke. “Also like Judd wrote it, he likes to write I think for actors and I think he wrote it with all of us in mind so the names in the script were always our names,” explained Hill. “I think a week before we started shooting, we were rehearsing in Santa Monica and someone was like, ‘So, uh, we just keeping the names like our names?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, it’s kind of funny. All right, we’ll just keep it like that.’ I think it’s actually funny but until the movie comes out, it will be a little bit odd.”
Shooting in 120 Degree Heat: Jay Baruchel says that since he’s from Canada, he wasn’t used to the heat and so filming Knocked Up was, at times, miserable. Hill says Baruchel was literally melting on the set in Northridge. “One of the funniest things was when we shot the opening scene of the fight club stuff kind of,” recalled Hill. “It was 120 degrees outside and you would go inside and me and Jay everyone would be like passed out with fans in front of them, then me and Seth and Jason had oxygen.”
Baruchel remembers, “They made fun of me because I kept saying to everybody, ‘Make sure you drink your water. Drink your water. Drink 2 liters of water.’ And Jonah and Jason [Segel] are from California. Like, ‘Man, we grew up in this. I don’t need to.’ And like stupid Jason drinks like no water - he smokes 5 cigarettes and drinks a coffee. And of course within a half an hour he’s like, ‘I don’t feel so good.’ So I’m the water police, which is very cool.”
Page 2: On the Munich Rant, Fanboys and Other Film Projects
