Seth Rogen at the premiere of 'Observe & Report,' which reminds me... since there are ten best picture nominations now...
Big day for Seth Rogen. He's one of the people invited by the Academy to join as a voting member today, along with his "40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" co-star Paul Rudd. I love that many of the names on the list are people under 40 today. That's important. We need to get as many young Academy members in there and active as possible to help counteract the votes of the 130-year-old mummies who keep voting for things like "Driving Miss Daisy" to win Best Picture.
Seth's starring role in "Funny People" this summer is impressive, and a real sign of just how much he grows as an actor from film to film. I like that he's challenging himself to do something outside his comfort zone on "The Green Hornet," and that he seems open to anything that interests him and not just movie star vehicles that "serve his brand," like some actors.
He's developing about 300,000 projects at the moment, and any one of them could or couldn't happen, depending on how the stars align. I heard about one today, though, that's worth a mention just because of the rather unorthodox casting that could happen if the film makes it through development.
Would you go see a road comedy with Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand co-starring? Because I'm pretty sure I would.
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Streisand has always been far better in comedy than straight drama, in my opinion. Her work with Bogdanovich is a great example, but even in "Meet The Fockers" a few years ago, she proved that no matter how big her image is, she still seems game for tweaking it and playing against expectation onscreen. I give her a lot of credit for being willing to explode a public persona as carefully cultivated as hers has been over the years.
And a movie called "Mother's Curse" sounds like a natural pairing of these two. I still think one of the great delights of Albert Brooks's "Mother" is the simple energy between Brooks and Debbie Reynolds. We all have mothers, and the humor that comes from those relationships as we become adults is pretty much an endless source of material if played right.
I know that they're still working on the script to this one, and there may be more rewrites ahead in the near future. When I asked Seth about the film, he referred to it as "one of the many projects I may or may not do in the next fifteen years," which is a fair description. So keep in mind... I'm not saying this will or won't happen... just that it could. This is one of the pet projects of Adam Goodman, the Dreamworks executive who just made the jump to Paramount as the new head of production, so I would expect that if this gets made, it'll get made as a Dreamworks/Paramount co-production at this point.
I love that I live and work in a Hollywood where Seth Rogen is that busy. Something's gone terribly right somewhere, and that gives me hope. Let's see how things shape up on this one, and if it does come together, I'm curious to see exactly what the "Mother's Curse" is.
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