Beating The Odds!

With 50/50, Buddies Will Reiser and Seth Rogen Deliver A Cancer Comedy With Heart.

by Marci Miller (intro by Bret Love) 

(l to r) 50/50 Writer Will Reiser with Seth Rogen

When you think of Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express), "warm heart" is probably not the first characteristic you'd think of to describe his comedy. But in many ways it has been there all along, and it's on full display in his latest film, 50/50.

Directed by Jonathan Levine (the criminally under-appreciated The Wackness), the film is based on the true story of Rogen's buddy Will Reiser, who learned at age 27 that he had a rare form of cancer that left with him with a mere 50% chance of survival. Reiser's script doesn't wallow in mawkish morbidity, instead focusing on the bromantic friendship between Adam (the always-excellent Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Kyle (Rogen) that helped him get through the harrowing ordeal.

We recently had the opportunity to get some face time with Rogen and Reiser to discuss their real-life friendship, how closely the film mirrors Reiser's experience with fighting terminal cancer, and how Joseph Gordon-Levitt saved the film.

What made you want to do this movie?

WR: We realized there was no movie that accurately portrayed what it was like to be young and go through something like this. Most cancer movies are really over-dramatic, they are not realistic, the character is a curmudgeon or misanthrope who has some big epiphany at the end and then dies. That's a Hollywood cancer movie.

SR: As much as we wish that was Will's real story.

At what point were you comfortable taking this experience on as a script?

WR: When I was sick we discussed the idea of a cancer movie. A comedy that felt real and true to the experience.   But I didn't start actually outlining an idea for the movie until about a year later. Seth and Evan Goldberg urged me to write about it and I handed them the first draft and even then they had to push me to go a little bit further into the process of fleshing out some of the more dramatic stuff. The first draft was a little bit more comedic, I was just trying to figure out the tone. But with the process of writing it I was able to get it all out.

And you actually had the same diagnosis that you did in real life?

WR: Very similar. I had a massive tumor. The MRIs in the movie are my real MRIs...and a lot of what the doctor says, the diagnostic stuff, the surgery... that's all from my reports.

Did you really have a doctor as awful as the one portrayed in the film?

WR: During that experience I had many doctors, some of whom did not have the greatest bedside manner. But I kind of found that the bigger the d*ck, the better the doctor.   So, I had some doctors who were really nice and really personable and they made me feel comfortable and I had some that made me feel like I was a car, like I was going in for a tune-up or something. It sucks...it's totally alienating and de-humanizing for sure.

The film did such a good portraying just how lonely a cancer patient can feel. Did you find that to be the case for yourself, and how did your friends help you?

WR: I was lonely. I was 25 and I had no clue how to express my feelings whatsoever. And the only way I was able to cope with the ordeal was by making jokes. We would joke about it. I did spend a lot of time by myself...because I didn't want people to see how worried and concerned I was. I was quite scared but I had no idea how to talk about it. So when I was out with friends I wanted the situation to feel as normal as possible. So I never told Seth "this is really scary" or "I'm having a really hard time."  

SR: We assumed that was the case, we didn't need to hear him say that. But we didn't ask him either. We never sat him down and said let's talk about it.

WR: It's weird. I had one friend and he was like, "Dude, what do you need? Do you need to go for a walk? Are you okay?" He was so freaked out, I had to make him feel as comfortable as possible. I just made fun of the situation.

What made you select Angelica Huston to play your mother?

WR: She was an actress that director Jonathan Levine and I both really thought would be great. She really loved the script. So it seemed like a perfect fit, so we offered her the role and she accepted right away.

What happened with James McAvoy who was originally scheduled to play the role of Adam?

SR: He was in King of Scotland when we were writing the movie and we thought he would be a cool guy to work with. We worked on it with him for a while and then he had to leave for a very understandable emergency. So we were left in a position where we literally had to find a new actor in like a day or else the whole movie would have been cancelled. So I called Joe and explained very honestly the situation we were in. And he was nice enough to read the script immediately and then he got on a plane and flew to Vancouver and got real drunk with us for a night and he agreed to do the movie the next day. We started filming a week later.

Bryce Dallas Howard just came off playing evil Hilly Holbrook in The Help and now plays the awful girlfriend in this film...why does she always take these roles?

WR: I do feel like we need to find a part for her to counteract that.

SR: I'm writing a "Mother Theresa" movie for her.

WR: Bryce is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet...she's incredibly sincere and nice, but she loves playing those roles. She loves picking apart the psychology of someone who is in that position.

SR: That's why we cast her because she seemed like she really got it. She could explain it. She could intellectually articulate exactly what this person was going through. We didn't want the audience to necessarily sympathize with the character, but we wanted them to understand the position they were in. And it became clear because she understood it so well, we thought she would be able to portray it in a way that's fair enough that people could get where this girl is coming from.

You describe Anna Kendrick as the "lightness" of the film. How was it working with her?

SR: I think the first scene she's in the movie, you can feel the audience give a sigh a relief that I'm not the only supporting character in the movie.   Oh thank god, there is someone else!

WR: Anna is such a great person and she does such a great job with that role of playing

Katherine.

Seth, how was it both producing and acting the film?

SR: I've always kind of done that, since I worked on Undeclared. I was a writer and actor on that show. And as the writer of an episode, you were really in charge of producing it. And it's something I've been used to juggling from a young age, writing, producing and acting at the same time. To me it feels very organic, like its one job of making a movie. I don't divide it up into a bunch of tiny little things. And so it's not stressful to me. It's more stressful to me to not know what's happening, to not know to who's being cast, to not know what the next rewrite is and to not know what the locations are... I do well with more information, not less information. And it was a pretty relaxed set. It was pretty mellow. And we had just come off of Green Hornet, which was one of the most difficult, large scale experiences we ever had... in comparison, this seemed really easy.  

Now Playing!

Click here for film's website.