Yearbook

by Seth Rogen

  Me: I guess not.

  Amy stepped down that February and set up a production company. She always joked that if she wasn’t the head of the studio, she’d be in our offices—the “schoolhouse,” as it was known on the lot. Turns out it wasn’t a joke. She kicked us out of our offices to set up her own. There was a news story about how she had to let them air out for a week to get rid of the weed smell, which seems like an exaggeration of at least a day or two.

  We were moved into one of Adam Sandler’s storage rooms. For real. We never got full ownership of one of the closets in the office, and every few days, someone from Happy Madison Productions would come into our reception area to grab toilet paper.

  Since stepping down, Amy’s won two Oscars and been nominated for another two.

  Michael Lynton, who always claimed there was no way he could have seen any of this coming—even though I saw him warned about it months earlier—left the company soon after and is now on the board of Snapchat. So, the next time some high school senior sends his girlfriend dick pics, Lynton will be cashing a check. He also remains the Lord of the Underworld and its Flaming Dominions of Torment (L.U.F.D.T. for short).

  * * *

  Cut to 2018. A charismatic yet completely moronic TV-show host (who is also president, but I’m sure critics would have said that was way too broad for our film) gets an invite to go to North Korea. He accepts with the intention of showing Kim Jong Un who’s boss. Trump had always been hard on Kim. He would make fun of him, calling him “Rocket Man” and stupid shit like that. But once he got there…he actually liked him! When he got back from his trip, he had this to say about his meeting:

  Trump (in stupid, dumb fucking voice): When I did it, and I was really being tough, and so was he, and we’d go back and forth, and then we fell in love. No really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they’re great letters. We fell in love.

  He fell in love with the motherfucker. In the movie, the stupid talk-show host eventually finds out that Kim was tricking him and exposes him as a fraud. Trump hasn’t quite gotten there yet.

  In early 2020, after there were rumors that Kim Jong Un had died following a botched surgery, he resurfaced, and Trump couldn’t have been more psyched. “I’m glad to see he’s back and well!”

  I shudder when I think about what would have happened if Trump was president when all this shit went down. He’d have sent my fucking head to North Korea in a box in exchange for some beautiful letters.

  As strange a time as it all was, there were a lot of bright spots. Lauren couldn’t have been more supportive and wonderful. In the midst of the mayhem, I got an email from Russell Crowe, who I’d only met a couple times, inviting me to his ranch in Australia to hide if I needed to. I said no, but it always struck me as nice. George Clooney tried to get all the heads of the major studios to sign a letter in solidarity with Sony and the film. None of them would sign it, but I appreciated the attempt. The fact that Clooney spent even one afternoon thinking of me is flattering.

  Every once in a while, I’ll be flipping channels and see the movie playing on FX or Comedy Central. At one point, this was the most controversial film in the world—people thought they could die if they screened it. And now it’s playing on basic cable at 3 p.m., and it’s brought to you by Charmin, which is a superior toilet paper in both thickness and softness, so I take that as a win.

  In our extensive research about North Korea, one of the most interesting tidbits that stuck out to us was that there are wild tigers there, and it seemed like it could potentially be interesting to include that in The Interview in some way.

  We had a scene where the CIA is trying to drop a little remote-controlled missile with a poison strip in it in a field outside Kim Jong Un’s fortress, and my character has to sneak into the field to retrieve it. We thought it would be funny if I encountered a tiger, which attacks me and is ultimately killed by the missile that I was sent to retrieve.

  At first, the obvious idea was to use a CGI tiger. The movie Life of Pi had recently come out, and the fake tiger in that movie was pretty fucking great. But we very quickly deduced that we didn’t have nearly the budget to make a convincing fake tiger. So the idea came up to use a real tiger.

  If you’ve ever made a movie or TV show or know anyone who has, the phrase “children and animals” comes up a lot as the two things you want to avoid filming if you can. And there’s good reason: They’re dangerous and difficult and time-consuming.

  Once I did a photo shoot where I had a small monkey on my shoulder and was fucking BLOWN AWAY when I met the monkey, because it was MARCEL! The monkey from Friends! This was a famous-ass monkey. Honestly, this monkey had a better résumé than I do, from both a quality and box-office standpoint. This was as professional a monkey as you could ask for. I was psyched.

  “Oh, man! Can I hug him?”

  “No. Don’t make any sudden movements. Don’t raise your voice. Try not to laugh too loud. If he’s startled, he may try to bite your nose off.”

  Fucking Christ. The headline that I had my nose bit off by the monkey from Friends was not really something I wanted to see, mostly because it for sure would have made me laugh if it happened to another celebrity.

  And a tiger, on the grand scale of animals you don’t want to work with, is pretty fucking high. And, as with children, the animals themselves often aren’t the worst part. It’s their parents/owners.

  But we liked the joke, so we plowed forward.

  We were filming in Vancouver and were told that the tiger itself had to come from Canada, because I guess getting a tiger over the border is hard, which is probably a good thing. There was really only one option: hiring a tiger wrangler from Calgary named Randy.

  We were sent some photos of his tigers, and they were, in fact, big-ass fucking tigers. He sent us a link to a video of him using a big fishing rod–type thing with a lure, having the tigers run around, jump up on boxes, wrestle with him—you know, crazy tiger dude–type shit. The guy himself looked and dressed kinda like Indiana Jones…if Indiana Jones had gained sixty pounds and was not as attractive as Harrison Ford in the first place. If you’ve seen Tiger King, you get the general vibe of one who works with tigers, and that vibe, my friend, is a weird one.

  We were like, “Perfect. Let’s send him the script so he can read the scene in context, and we’ll see what he says.”

  In the scene, I climb out of a window under the cover of night and crawl into a big open field to retrieve the missile, and that’s where I encounter the tiger. We’re about a dozen feet apart, staring at each other. Then the tiger charges and I try to run, but it tackles me, just as the missile hits it in the head, killing it.

  A few days later, we got a message that Randy had read the script and thought it was no problem whatsoever, which made sense: In the grand scale of tiger shit, this seemed simple. It was supposed to stand there looking at me, roar, then run at me and tackle me (this part would be Randy, in my wardrobe), then it would be replaced by a fake dead tiger.

  We were scheduled to shoot the scene in about six weeks, and Randy said he would lose weight to make sure he could fit into my wardrobe and effectively double me in the scene. “I’ve been looking for an excuse anyway! It’s perfect!”

  We began shooting, and about a week before the tiger scene, we had a call with Randy to go over all the last-minute details before he drove the tiger from Calgary to Vancouver.

  If there was a checklist of things you did NOT want to hear a tiger trainer say, he hit every single item.

  Me: Hey, Randy! How’s the weight loss going? I hope good! I’m not trying to be in a lot of scenes with this tiger.

  Randy: Oh yeah! It’s great. Perfect. I feel great. Alright, I just wanna go over some details.

  Me: Alright, cool.

  Randy: So…this scene—it’s not literally being filmed in a big open field, is it?r />
  Me: Uh…yeah. Of course it is.

  Randy: …Okay.

  Me: Is that bad?

  Randy: It’s just a bit harder to contain them in big open areas.

  Me: Okay…is that a problem?

  Randy: No…it should be okay.

  Me: …Okay. As long as you’re sure.

  Randy: I am. As long as there’s no chance that, like, a deer or something might be in the area.

  Me: Well, we’re filming in Squamish, which is in the mountains outside Vancouver, and there’s actually a VERY good chance there’ll be deer in the area.

  Randy: …Okay.

  Me: Is that bad?

  Randy: Well, if the tiger sees one, he might run after it, and that might be hard to contain…but, you know, as long as there’s lights and crew around, I’m sure the deer will stay away. It’ll be fine.

  Me: You sure?

  Randy: Yep! Completely.

  Me: Okay…

  Randy: As long as we’re not shooting at night.

  Me: Well, the scene is set in the middle of the night, and we are filming it at night.

  Randy: Oh…

  Me: Is that a problem?

  Randy: Well…tigers hunt at night.

  Me: Okay…

  Randy: So…you know, they’re a lot more aggressive at night.

  Me: Well, is that going to be an issue?!

  Randy: …You know, it might be good! He’ll be more lively, give a better performance.

  Me: Are you sure?

  Randy: Yep! Completely! It’s fine. This is a good tiger. He’ll be great. As long as it’s not raining.

  Me: Well, it’s the Pacific Northwest in February; it’ll almost definitely be raining.

  Silence.

  Me: Is that bad?

  Randy: …Well…the rain really agitates them.

  Me: Should we not do this?

  About fifteen seconds of silence.

  Randy: No, it’s fine! We’ll be fine!

  Me: You sure?

  Randy: Yep!

  The night the tiger arrived, I was incredibly nervous. I turned to Evan, who was co-directing the film with me, and I was like, “There’s no actual reason for me and this tiger to be anywhere near each other. We can just shoot it in halves and combine the shots; you’ll never know I wasn’t near it.”

  Evan: If we have time. We didn’t really schedule it that way; it’ll take twice as much time to shoot it like that.

  Me: I just don’t wanna be in the same physical vicinity as the tiger.

  Evan: As long as Randy lost weight and doubles you well, you shouldn’t really have to be.

  We walked up to the set and saw an animal trailer parked to the side of the giant valley we were shooting in. Then I saw Randy, in my wardrobe, but not a pound smaller than he was before. He looked nothing like me at all. He might have even gained weight.

  Randy: You lost weight!

  Me: No I didn’t! I’ve been wearing the same suit for the last five weeks!

  Randy: Well, I guess I was going off of how you used to look, because you lost weight, it seems.

  As a side note, people are always treating me like I just lost a ton of weight, even though I’ve basically been the same weight since 2009, which is kind of nice and also kind of insulting.

  Me: Well, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to double me.

  Randy: Then let’s have you meet Frank!

  Me: Who’s Frank? A thinner tiger trainer?

  Randy: No! He’s the tiger! If you’re gonna shoot with him, he should start getting used to you!

  Me: I don’t want to shoot with him or get to know him at all!

  Randy: Then what should we do?

  I looked over at Evan, who looked at me like: “Fuck you, go meet the tiger.” (This is one of the instances where directing and acting really come in conflict with each other.)

  Me: Fine.

  I walked over to the trailer with Randy and his sixteen-year-old son, who is also a tiger trainer, as Evan and the rest of the crew stood a few hundred yards away, watching.

  The trailer door opened and out walked a tiger. He came right up to me. His head was the diameter of a manhole cover and went up to my chest. It was truly terrifying, and it made me think that anyone who thought that keeping these things in cages was a good idea was a complete weirdo, which made me further question the judgment of Randy, who held my life in his hands at this point, which then made me REALLY question my own judgment, ’cause I was actively trusting my life with this weirdo and his tiger.

  Frank nuzzled against me a few times, walking around me in circles. It was astonishing.

  Randy: He likes you!

  Me: How can you tell? He’s not eating me?

  Randy: Exactly!

  Me: Where did you get this tiger?

  Randy: I bought it from a stripper. She had a tiger cub as part of her act, and then she realized it was gonna eat her onstage eventually! Ha!

  Me: Yeah! Hilarious.

  As we began filming the scene, I realized I would actually have to lie on the ground on my stomach in front of the tiger, which is wayyyyy scarier than standing in front of it; I couldn’t have been more vulnerable. The tiger was doing what it was supposed to do, for the most part. At one point we wanted a shot of it roaring, but it wouldn’t do anything other than just sit there with a normal tiger face.

  Randy: I know what to do. Don’t tell anyone about this.

  He proceeded to go behind the tiger trailer, piss in his glove, and approach the tiger.

  Randy: You rolling?

  We were.

  He rubbed his pissy glove in the tiger’s face, which didn’t make it roar but instead open its mouth wide and recoil as if it was saying, “Really, motherfucker? After all this, you’re rubbing piss in my fucking face?”

  Randy turned back to us, proud. “You can put a roar sound in there in post! It’ll look like he’s roaring!”

  What’s annoying is he was right.

  I’ve never been more relieved than I was when I saw Frank get loaded back in his truck, but I honestly felt terrible for the animal. I eventually found an online campaign with the mission of shutting down Randy and his tiger zoo, and I donated a bunch of money to it. Today, Randy and his tiger farm are no longer in operation. I still think of that tiger and hope he’s doing okay and that, before they closed the zoo, he took a big bite out of Randy’s fat ass.

  “What would you do if the president told his followers to kill a specific American citizen?” I asked Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter.

  Long silence.

  Jack: I’d like to think that would be something that would require some action.

  Me: You’d like to think?! You haven’t talked about it?

  Jack: Not that specifically.

  Me: So, you’d like to think it would require some action, but you’re not SURE that it would? Maybe you’d just let him tell his followers to kill someone?

  Jack: Well…

  The call was not going well.

  I vividly remember my dad telling me at a young age: “People hate Jews.” I didn’t really believe him. It just didn’t make sense. Jews? Us? What’s to hate? But, as I got older, I realized that for sure, yes, people hate Jews.

  My “friends” in high school would say “wej” as a word for “cheap,” which I didn’t realize until YEARS LATER was “Jew” spelled backward. We said so many stupid things, and my antenna was so not tuned to anti-Semitism that it didn’t even register. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I was like, Oh, those guys were all being horrible to us.

  I think one of the reasons people hate Jews is because we pass for non-Jews. We’re interlopers. Shhh�
�we could be anywhere. And we might look like white Christians, but we don’t believe what they believe, which just freaks the fuck out of people. There’s almost an implicit deception at play. People feel tricked by Jews. And people only like being tricked by magicians and wizards, who, not coincidentally, are very likely visually based on Jews.

  Once I started working in Hollywood, anti-Semitism was more hidden for the most part. There are a lot of Jewish people working in the entertainment industry—an industry that was essentially created by Jewish people, so it adds up—just like there are a lot of Swedish people in the assemble-it-yourself furniture industry.

  The first really overt act of aggressive anti-Semitism happened in the last place I would have expected it: an elevator with Eddie Griffin at the opening of the Planet Hollywood Las Vegas Resort & Casino.

  It was 2007, and to help celebrate the opening of the new Planet Hollywood, they offered to fly a bunch of famous people to Vegas to essentially go to parties for a few days. Me and Lauren thought it sounded fun, and a few of our other friends said they would go, too.

  The first night, we went to a party where I met Sylvester Stallone. Sylvester Stallone is a name that has been in my life for as long as I can remember. He’s been famous since I’ve had any real cognition, and his name never sounded that strange to me. But then I met him.

  “Hi, I’m Sylvester.”

  His voice rumbled my loins, like a lion’s roar.

  “Hi, Sylvester.” That’s when I realized that there is no other human on earth named Sylvester. There’s a cartoon cat named Sylvester, but literally no other human I’ve ever met. I’ve been alive almost forty years. I’ve met a grand total of one Sylvester, and it was Stallone. It’s a VERY rare name. And to say the name “Sylvester” out loud to a person named “Sylvester” really makes you realize just how strange a name “Sylvester” is. It’s bizarre. For some reason “Sylvester Stallone” isn’t that weird. The “Stallone” somehow anchors it in normalcy. But you take that away and find yourself with just “Sylvester” dangling out there like a dick in the breeze, and you understand how odd it is.