OK, can you just get out of here,
and we'll talk about this later?
What the [BLEEP], Evan?
We're down two points.
[BLEEP] calm down, Greg.
It's soccer.
They're right.
It is just soccer.
Nobody cares, and--
People don't forget.
Superbad is a movie about not forgetting and revisiting
the past.
This was how two middle schoolers released
one of the defining teen movies of the 2000s
just a while after they wrote it.
Though released in 2007, screenwriters Seth Rogen
and Evan Goldberg met years earlier in bar mitzvah classes
while attending the same high school.
The two would later base the main characters, Seth and Evan,
on themselves.
They've stated that from a young age,
they never really related to the teen movies of the time.
And who could blame them?
Most of the movies aimed at teens throughout
the '80s and '90s were glossy affairs--
handsome outcasts with rich parents
without any sense of consequence or stakes.
They bought it.
At 13, though, those moments for Rogen and Goldberg
were concentrated and deep.
You're going to miss each other?
Yeah, I'm going to cry myself to sleep every night--
Me, too.
--when I'm out partying.
They were, put simply, current.
It was genuinely their lives.
The two took things that happened to themselves
and worked them into a script they had started writing.
So many of the iconic moments of Superbad
were the real lives of two kids with a great sense of humor
and the drive to make art they could relate to.
After they completed the first draft,
they continued to tweak the script throughout high school.
Rogen was eventually cast on Judd Apatow and Paul Feig's
Freaks and Geeks, where Apatow first found out Rogen
was writing his own screenplay.
At the time, the script was a sort
of quest about two boys trying to buy booze for a house party
their senior year.
The idea was rough, but Apatow saw the potential immediately
and began workshopping the script with both Rogen
and Goldberg.
After years of rewrites and table reads,
Superbad was ready for production.
Rogen had initially intended to play Seth himself.
But after such a long development,
he had aged out of the role.
While they initially believed Jonah Hill was too old himself,
Hill was insistent he was perfect for the role.
No one's McLovin.
McLovin's never existed, because that's a made-up, dumb [BLEEP]
fairy tale name, you [BLEEP]!
Both he and co-star Michael Cera, as Goldberg's Evan,
walked a tightrope of childhood innocence, swagger,
and misguided confidence.
The film would also be the feature debut
of Emma Stone, as Jules, and real high-schooler Christopher
Mintz-Plasse as the unforgettable Fogel, a.k.a.
McLovin.
Have you actually ever met anyone named McLovin?
No!
That's why you picked a dumb [BLEEP] name.
The entire cast had an undeniable chemistry
under the careful lens of director Greg Mottola
from Undeclared.
Finally, Superbad was released into the wild.
The film was an immediate and critical crowd favorite.
Its hard R-rating properly reflected the way kids spoke,
or at least the way teens wanted to speak--
with quick comebacks--
Nobody said anything about you, [BLEEP] mouth.
--and inventive profanity.
You don't want girls thinking that you
suck [BLEEP] and [BLEEP], OK?
Soon-to-be movie stars Jonah Hill, Michael Cera,
and Emma Stone were exactly what kids wanted to see
on the screen--
themselves.
Straight from the opening beats of "Too
Hot to Stop" by the Bar-Kays, we're immediately
transported back in time.
Silhouettes of Michael Cera and Jonah Hill
dance against the bright technicolor
backdrops of warm tones.
As the credits begin, Mottola is assuring us
that this will be something different.
Superbad followed the same basic plot
as Rogen and Goldberg's first draft--
two high school seniors desperate to find booze
for a house party where they each hope to hook up in order
to practice before college.
But after years of revisions, Rogen and Goldberg
had added a proper story on top of that plot.
While their initial draft had a realism
and reactionary crassness to the PG-13 movies of the time,
adults Rogen, Goldberg, and Apatow
knew there had to be more than adolescent want.
In order for us as an audience to really care about the film's
surrogates, Seth and Evan, we have
to relate on some sort of emotional level.
The surface plot that moves the characters
along may be their adventure, but it's
their relationship to one another
and the world around them that makes us care.
And that feat is due mostly to Superbad's unique development.
From an adult perspective, Rogen and Goldberg
are able to truly examine how they felt as children.
Come with me on this voyage and just stopping a [BLEEP]
for once, and we can [BLEEP] some girls already!
Part of that experience means knowing sometimes
the things we thought made us cool actually made us jerks.
There's a point where Seth makes a joke to Jules
after she says--
You know, if you scratch our backs, we'll scratch yours.
Well, Jules, the funny thing about my back
is is that it's located on my [BLEEP]..
While Rogen and Goldberg have said
this joke was in the original script,
you have to imagine the 13-year-old boys thought
it was clever.
And even though the joke on its own
is funny and clever in its steering of language,
that's not how it's presented in the film.
There's a small pause from Jules and then
a slightly awkward laugh.
[AWKWARD LAUGH]
Hill sells the moment beautifully,
wavering between self-assured and desperate
as he grasps for approval.
I'm getting that for show.
Adult Rogen and Goldberg know this
is a terrible thing for a teen boy
to say to anyone, let alone someone they have a crush on.
Not only are they poking fun at Seth,
they're poking fun at themselves.
That awareness is something that comes from experience.
That's part of why the party later in the film
is so heightened.
Adult Rogen and Goldberg can look back
and see how truly dangerous it was for a couple of teen kids
to be at a party with adults.
While it might have felt exciting and dangerous
as children, it's the hindsight of their rewrites
that makes the movie go bigger, more terrifying.
When we are kids, we feel almost invincible.
It's almost indescribable to an adult-- an alien word
that our tongue just refuses to pronounce.
It's so engrossing that everything else
pales in comparison.
Through the eyes of Seth and Evan, the world of Superbad
feels small.
Everything is a beat to hit and an obstacle to overcome.
But Rogen and Goldberg, as adults,
know the world is so much bigger than that.
For every bumbling cop, addict, and bully in Superbad,
the biggest threat to Seth and Evan
is them losing one another.
Losing your best friend is hard, and there
are small moments throughout the film's final script
that foreshadows this.
They rebuke jokes about how they'll
survive without one another.
They live in denial of the very real and horrifying question,
"How can I manage this world without you?"
The two are so dead-set throughout the entire film
that they'll do this together that they both get practice
before college because it may very well be
their last adventure together.
But a young Rogen and Goldberg never would have realized that.
It's only as their adult selves examine their script
they understand this could be the end.
And that's a nostalgic thought for two adults,
trying to pinpoint when a relationship fizzles out.
Not through any sort of dramatic experience,
but just the natural course of life.
So we mythologize the last big event
and make it bigger in our mind and heart
because, as we look back, we realize
this is the end of an age--
an age of innocence and invincibility
before stepping into a much wider world.
I love you.
I'm not even embarrassed to say it.
I just-- I lo--
I love you.
This video has ebbed and flowed between which
is the more earnest version of Superbad's script--
the idealistic, youthful voice of two 13-year-old children,
or the slightly wiser lens of the adults who crafted draft
after draft.
And the truth is, just like hindsight and nostalgia,
it's a little bit of both.
Despite its retro opening, Superbad is, at its heart,
a contemporary movie.
Goldberg and Rogen were keen to not use
the past or old characters to tug at our heartstrings.
There are no call outs to childhood toys or needle drops.
But part of what makes Superbad so special
is that we are witnessing a form of time
travel-- two friends across multiple points
in time expressing a genuine adoration of their youth
and one another.
I just love you.
I just want to go to the rooftops and scream,
I love my best friend Evan.
And truly adoring something isn't just
glamorizing or condemning.
It's an understanding that nothing is perfect,
but there are absolute moments worth celebrating.
And by looking into their past, Rogen and Goldberg
were able to cement that future generations would
be able to celebrate a truly absurd and beautiful
friendship.
But luckily for all of us, the two
had begun crafting one of the greatest
teen comedies of all-time as a couple of middle school kids.
That's the coolest [BLEEP] story I have ever
heard in my entire life!
That's insane!
Can I hear it again?
So what do you think?
Are there moments of your youth that you've
documented and revisited?
What would you want your younger version of yourself
to tell you today?
And if you enjoyed this video, check out the windows
below for more videos on Apatow or Rogen. As always,
thank you for subscribing to Nerdstalgic.