Comedian Seth Rogen has revealed that he has been working on a new action movie over the past five years, one “heavily inspired by Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan” he says.
Titled “Escape,” the project will rely almost entirely on physical comedy instead of dialogue for humor – as a result there is no script but rather a flipbook-style storyboarded narrative.
Speaking with The New York Times, Rogen says that the things people most remember about his work are the outsize physical ones – the fights, the airbags gags, the foot through the windshield in “Pineapple Express”. So:
“We were like, ‘Why are those just the supporting things? Why are those, amidst a sea of talky jokes, these things that pop up once in a while? Why don’t we make a bunch of these jokes and not rely on verbal humor?'”
Various films over the years have tried a similar technique, one of the more well known being 1967’s “The Plank”. Rogen also talked about filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, who appeared virtually as a guest for a digital movie club Rogen hosted for his production company employees. Turns out he gave a speech that inspired Rogen:
“[Cuaron] talked about making [‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’] after he’d made some big studio films. And he said: ‘With this one, we wanted to make the movie we would have made before we even went to film school, as though we knew nothing. Any idea we had, we would do it, even if it seemed crazy or stupid or pretentious or whatever. We wouldn’t think about, Oh, it’s been done, or people will hate that, or that’s too weird.’
It was so cool to hear him talk about that. Because – speaking to experimentation – he’d been locked into this thing where he was making big, expensive movies very early in his career, and then he kind of went back and said, No, this is what I want to do: Reset what I’m known for and take insane swings.”
This suggests Rogen hopes to take a swing himself with “Escape”. Rogen will next be seen on screen in the “Pam & Tommy” mini-series for Hulu, and is attached as producer on a bunch of projects including “UNprofessionals,” “Console Wars,” “Darkwing Duck,” “The Something” and a new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.
