Oh, stop it Seth Rogen.
The comedy actor is making headlines today after an interview he gave on the Diary of a CEO podcast. Rogen discussed film reviews and their impact on the mental health of filmmakers:
“I think if most critics knew how much it hurts the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things. It’s devastating. I know people who have never recovered from it honestly – a year, decades of being hurt by [film reviews]. It’s very personal…It is devastating when you are being institutionally told that your personal expression was bad, and that’s something that people carry with them, literally, their entire lives and I get why. It fucking sucks.”
Art should be dissected. Publicly and personally. Film critics exist for that reason, they start discourses, and, quite frankly, can have the effect of turning filmmakers and actors into better artists.
It’s not like Rogen has been the target of critics for much of his career, sure, there was “Green Hornet, but, in this specific interview, he’s actually referring to the negative reviews he received for “The Interview.”
“That felt far more personal, “The Interview” reviews, “‘Green Hornet’ felt like I had fallen victim to a big fancy thing. That was not so such much a creative failure on our parts but a conceptual failure. ‘The Interview,’ people treated us like we creatively failed and that sucked.”
So everyone has to like your movies? Isn’t it a conflict of interest to let creators dictate what can be said about their work. Regardless, Rogen has done pretty well for himself. His films don’t really get outright panned, save for a few exceptions.
He’s starred in critically-acclaimed fare like “Superbad,” “Pineapple Express,” “Knocked Up,” “The Disaster Artist,” and “This is the End.” Maybe those films wouldn’t have been as successful without some of the very good reviews they received.
Now, please excuse Seth Rogen as he heads off to his beach house to unwind.