Sausage Party was a surprise hit in 2016, but the R-rated animated sex comedy has generated
plenty of controversy.
Interestingly, not all of the uproar has centered on the film's on screen madness — there's
also plenty of back stage drama as well.
Here's a look at the untold truth of Sausage Party.
It started as a punchline
Back when Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Michael Cera were promoting their 2007 hit Superbad,
Rogen says journalists would ask them what their next movie was going to be.
As a joke, they'd say "Sausage Party," reasoning that a title like that would fit with journalists'
expectations of the kind of movie they'd make next.
Nearly a decade later, when Rogen had the idea of making an R-rated cartoon, he kept
coming back to the name of that fake movie, and ultimately he and his writing partner
Evan Goldberg devised a concept and a script around the name.
Nobody wanted to make it
After Rogen and Goldberg developed a story and artwork, they teamed up with co-directors
Conrad Vernon and Nitrogen head Greg Tiernan.
And then, well, nothing happened for years.
They pitched the movie to literally dozens of studios, and even considered seeking private
investors when they invariably got shut down.
Even with Rogen and Jonah Hill attached to star, there seemed to be no studio willing
to gamble on a raunchy adult cartoon tackling religious themes.
Rogen's mission of making an R-rated Pixar movie dragged on for eight years, until the
team eventually got the support of Annapurna and Sony Pictures, who apparently just really
wanted to see horny food come to life.
And, really, is that so wrong?
"You're all alive, and looking at me!
With your..
With your gloves!
And little shoes, and your arms and your legs!"
The MPAA said NO
The version of Sausage Party that ended up in theaters pushed plenty of buttons, but
believe it or not, the movie's original cut took things even further.
Rogen told Howard Stern this was by design, as they "added six things" to the climactic
food orgy as "sacrificial lambs" to appease the MPAA and avoid an NC-17 rating.
Much to their surprise, though, most of those things actually made it into the final cut.
The board instead focused on just a single bit: the hairy genitalia belonging to a piece
of pita bread, which they "digitally shaved" in order to make an R rating.
A whole new world
If you picked up a distinct Disney vibe while watching Sausage Party, it probably wasn't
just because of the animation.
Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken, whose credits include such classics as The Little
Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, was hired to compose the score, as well as
the show-stopping opening number.
"In here!
We keep our wieners in our packages.
That's how it is."
"It sucks, but that's the way our buns keep fresh."
It may seem surprising to longtime Disney fans.
But according to Menken, his decision to take the job wasn't much of a shock to people who
know him in real life.
He told The Hollywood Reporter, "I remember telling my daughters that I was doing a project,
Sausage Party, and they looked at me and went 'Dad?
Sausage Party?'
In real life, I'm actually a very R-rated person."
It almost had a different ending
Rogen screened an early cut of Sausage Party at the South-by-Southwest film festival in
the spring of 2016, telling attendees that they were "truly seeing something that no
one will ever get to see in the world" — and it turned out he was right in more ways than
one.
That version's ending found the characters exiting the animated world and entering real
life, like in the last act of The Lego Movie.
But Rogen ultimately opted to go a different direction…for now.
As he later told Fandango, they may actually end up using that idea for a potential sequel.
"The idea of a live-action/animated movie, like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit?-style hybrid
is also very exciting, mostly because Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is one of my favorite
movies of all time."
Drawn and quartered
Conditions may have been bad for some unlucky food in Sausage Party, but if allegations
prove to be true, they weren't the only ones to suffer.
According to allegations from former workers at Nitrogen Studios, the company responsible
for the animations kept its costs low by forcing employees to work overtime for free under
the threat of losing their jobs.
Dozens of animators left the studio over the course of the production, claiming that if
they didn't stay late or work the weekends for free, their work would be given to someone
who would.
The subsequent exodus of talent forced Nitrogen to hire recently graduated students to complete
the film, while some animators claim Nitrogen even threatened to smear their reputations
as well.
Further, allegations have also surfaced that many of the animators who worked on the project
were uncredited.
Nitrogen has denied all claims, but it may be worth noting that of the 83 Sausage Party
animators listed on IMDb, only 47 were listed in the credits.
Surprising Dory
Sausage Party poked some gentle fun at industry leader Pixar by having the character Druggie
drive a car with a "Dixar" bumper sticker, and the license plate A113, which is a recurring
Pixar Easter egg referring to the animation classroom at the California Institute of the
Arts where a lot of animators got their start.
But the biggest prank Sausage Party played on Pixar was entirely accidental.
Shortly after the monster hit Finding Dory opened to record-breaking crowds in June 2016,
a theater full of kids at the Brenden Concord 14 movie house in California were accidentally
shown the ultra-filthy red band trailer for Sausage Party.
Whoops!
The theater's VP of operations, Walter Eichinger, quickly issued an apology.
"Playing that trailer was a one-time honest mistake by a theater manager moving screens
around in effort to accommodate several large last-minute groups wanting to see Dory.
We regret it, apologize for it, and we are not happy that it happened."
But I will do that
Theatrical classic rock singer Meat Loaf makes a cameo as — what else? — a boxed meatloaf.
"I would do anything for love.
I'd never lie to you and that's a fact."
Literally nobody else could work for that role, so Rogen had no choice but to lock down
Mr. Loaf.
During a Q&A after a screening of Sausage Party at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con, Rogen
said he personally met with Meat Loaf to pitch him the part.
Afterward, Rogen says, he was met by "Just 20 seconds of silence, and then he said, 'Yeah,
I get it.'"
"But I just won't do that.
I would do anything…"
Diddy?
No, he didn't
Speaking of cameos, Sean "Puffy" Combs was almost in the movie.
Rogen's team approached Combs for a cameo, to voice a bottle of Courvoisier cognac . But
when it came time to record his lines, Diddy dropped out.
The reason: he didn't want to provide a voiceover for a cartoon.
Rogen says Combs understood that the movie was about food come to life, but he apparently
thought it was live-action.
And he thought he and the other performers would be wearing food costumes.
Now that would have been amazing.
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