Neighbors 2 Roundup: Moar of Everything!
moar zac words
. @zacefron on that dress scene from #Neighbors2: 'The picture was worth 1,000 words' https://t.co/3jIPSyeOg3https://t.co/vK5IhhaWKN
- USA TODAY Life (@usatodaylife) May 19, 2016
US Magazine:
Grow a pair - a plastic pair, that is! With summer movie season starting to heat up, the new issue of Us Weekly features chats with some of the biggest names from the season's blockbusters, including Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising's Zac Efron and Seth Rogen, who revealed what it was really like to film the scene where Teddy (Efron) shows off his family jewels.
"Those were not real testicles," Rogen, 34, assures Us of the memorable moment in the film in which Teddy gets his Magic Mike on.
As for why the prosthetic was used, Efron explains, "There were a lot of paparazzi on set. The best was my mom sent me a picture of me, looking right in the lens, holding my fake nuts. She was like, 'Please, what are you doing?'"
"I said, 'It's for the film, Mom,'" the Dirty Grandpa star, 28, continues. "She was like, 'Have some class!'"
The film, opening Friday, May 20, uses many college-age extras, which the leading men admit was a bit disorienting.
"I found myself running back to Seth to talk about old-people stuff," Efron jokes. The Night Before actor agrees, pointing out that the younger cast members would teach the two stars "how to Snapchat."
"I'm so out of touch with technology and Face Swap!" Efron says.
EW: Zac explains his almost meeting w/ Streisand
Judging by his devoted social media following, busy movie schedule, and frequent magazine cover appearances, it’s fair to say there are lots of people who’d flip over the chance to meet Zac Efron.
But Barbra Streisand is not one of them.
While discussing his new movie Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising during a recent SiriusXM town hall on EW Radio (ch. 105), Efron opened up about the time he almost got to make Streisand’s acquaintance - only to be rebuffed.
The near-introduction came about when Efron was visiting future Neighbors costar Seth Rogen on the set of The Guilt Trip, the 2012 mother-son comedy Rogen made with Streisand.
“Do you want to meet her?” Efron recalled being asked. “We can go see if you can meet her.”
But it wasn’t meant to be: “Somebody came back and was just like, no,” Efron said, laughing. “I’m going to say it’s because she was working.”
A supportive Rogen chimed in, “I think she was working. Let’s say that, yeah.”
Los Angeles Daily News, the one big excerpt (a couple of other quotes at source, but nothing really interesting tbqh):
Q Conversely, Teddy shifts from ultimate party guy to directionless post-nongraduate in the sequel.
A Efron >> This quarter-life crisis thing happening to more and more people; it’s real. Figuring out who you are at a younger age is becoming more important, and Teddy’s really struggling with that. He struggles with virtually everything except being a leader, a lover and a protector. If he can’t be any of those things, he really doesn’t fit in, and that’s the fun part about Teddy. He’s searching for any kind of real relationship, and he finds it with Mac and Kelly. Which is really beautiful and a little weird.
Rogen >> Superweird. He’s like our adopted 25-year-old son.
Efron >> People refer to Mac and Kelly in the movie as the Old People - even Teddy does - but that wasn’t really the case on set. I thought I would relate more to the younger crowd on this movie; I was really excited to work with them. But I found myself running back to Seth and Rose to, like, get on a real level of sanity.
Rogen >> You actually went through the same arc that you do in the movie. You had a moment when you realized that you were an old person!
Efron >> They know how to use phones and new technology in ways that I don’t and can’t relate to! I would show up and realized that I had virtually nothing to add to this scenario, couldn’t make them laugh or do anything.
moar junket
Regal Cinemas
Click to viewClevver News/Movies
Kjersti Flaa
Fandango
Complex ~4:20
CNN
Fuse
Second video, can't embed
Can't Embed: NERDIST, E! Neighborology with Seth, Rose and Zac, E! on the Red Carpet with Seth (about that sex scene), Yahoo
moar of other people's words
THR on Zac's absence from the red carpet:
The question of the night: where was the film's lead?
Less than seven hours before the Neighbors 2 world premiere an email was sent by Universal to reporters covering the event. It read: "Just a warning that Zac is stuck shooting Baywatch tonight ..."
One of the Neighbors stars, it turned out, didn't seem to have advance warning. "I was literally right over there. I just asked Seth [Rogen], 'Oh where's Zac,' " Rose Byrne told The Hollywood Reporter.
"I knew a few days ago. I've had a couple of days to reconcile this massive loss. I was bummed out, but I'll see him in two days or so," Rogen added.
Meanwhile, the cast weighed in on what laugh-out-loud jokes from the comedy were their favorite.
…
Efron's absence wasn't the only mystery of the night. Will there be a third Neighbors film?
Chloe Grace Moretz told THR of her ideal scenario for the next chapter: "I think they should go on vacation to Mexico and it should be one of those big sorority, fraternity conventions and they should run into Zac and I in Cancun and they're like, 'F- we tried to go on vacation and that didn't even work.' That's what I'm pushing. Let's make it!"
Den of Geek w/ Stoller, excerpts:
What about bringing back some of the guys from the first movie besides Seth and Zac? I wondered if we’d see Dave Franco or Jarrod [Carmichael], and how they’d fit into this scenario.
We knew that we wanted to bring them back, ideally because they’re so funny, and then as we built the movie, the Zac plot clicked into place first, so we were like, “When you’re turning 25 and you feel like all your friends are doing better than you, that’s a horrible feeling.” Very quickly we wanted to capture the quarter-life crisis, so we used all his friends to support that idea. That was something that we knew from early on.
Not sure if you consider this a spoiler, but the big turn that Pete takes in this movie, are you trying to keep that hidden? That was an interesting decision to make-I wasn’t expecting that.
Yeah, he turns out to be gay, but that was something on the junket of the first movie, a reporter asked me, “Why have you never had a gay character in any of your movies?” and I said, “I don’t know, that’s a really good point.” And there was also a great deal of homoeroticism between Zac and Dave in the first movie-Dave’s character is clearly in love with Zac on some level. It just seemed like a natural place to go. It created this interesting emotional story between the two of them, I thought.
Zac has been going further and further into comedy lately, since the first Neighbors, and he seems to be up for anything, which seems true of your whole cast. Especially the case of the airbag gag which is a really funny moment but it seems very dangerous. Everyone in my audience was freaking out a little during that scene, but that was a case where you took a joke from the first movie and put a twist on it.
Oh, yeah, thanks. You would definitely die if that happened. That would kill both of them. [Laughs] We decided we probably had to do some version of the airbag and that ended up being a reshoot. We did another version of the airbag in the movie that just didn’t work, and I thought the callback would be that they all thought there was an airbag at the office and they all panicked, but something that seemed really funny to me-which often is not how comedy sequels are-but the fact is that the first movie happened and there are a few ways that this would affect the people in it. If an airbag went off in an office where someone worked, everyone in the office, that would be the thing everyone talked about for years. So that was a funny way to call that back and then we ended up doing a reshoot where they used the airbags to try and escape.
Uproxx with Seth, excerpts:
We learn Dave Franco’s character, Pete, is gay. You avoided anything resembling a “gay panic” joke. When was the decision made to do that?
I can’t remember exactly when it happened. I don’t think I was in the room when it happened. I actually remember coming into the room and being told, “read this.” And I read it and I kind of experienced it the way the audience experiences it, where you’re not exactly sure what’s happening at first. And you kind of slowly realize what’s going on. And I remember loving it. I thought it was awesome.
What we did at first, we didn’t get into it enough. At first it was like, “Oh, Pete’s gay,” then we didn’t talk about it. And then we realized that almost felt like the wrong joke, which is just, “There’s gay people in the world.” You know? So we found a way to work it into the story. And then once we found a way to really make it really a part of Zac and Dave’s emotional issue with one another, how Zac feels like he’s been abandoned, and he’s self-conscious there’s been a secret kept from him - it fed into his story and his stakes. That’s what really made it work well.
A bad movie would have made Zac’s character mad that his friend is gay, or something like that.
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Or, they just would have had him been gay and not made anything else of it. And then he would have been gay just for the purpose of being gay, which also didn’t seem like it was doing anything for us. But, yeah, I love that scene. That was one of those things when we were first showing it to audiences, I was very happy with how well people responded to it.
In this movie, Mac and Teddy team up. I love it when former adversaries join forces.
[Laughs.] Yeah, exactly. It was fun for us to get to be on the same team as him. I think Zac is so fucking funny and I think his performance in this movie, especially, is so hilarious and would make me laugh so hard when we were shooting the scenes. He’s just so earnest and sad. Nothing makes me laugh harder than just a really sad man. He’s so sad all the time!
I love that Teddy has fallen on tough times because he can’t get a job because he has a criminal record because of the events of the first movie. That is both funny and realistic.
[Laughs.] “It’s hard to get jobs.” We ruined his life. And there are lots of young handsome guys out there in the world.
Interview w/ Rose, excerpts:
BROWN: When did you first hear about a potential Neighbors sequel and when did you know it was going to involve a sorority?
BYRNE: I think it was late 2014 that we started talking about it. There were many different incarnations of the script. That was what we were all waiting on, getting the story right and the script down before we all signed on. But I trust Nick implicitly. I've worked with him three times now. The characters are really what made that movie so special. People really delighted in this marriage between Mac and Kelly, which I think you hadn't really seen before. And Zac is so great as Teddy Saunders. He's very funny and slightly making fun of his own persona too, in the press anyway.
ScreenCrush w/ Stoller, excerpts:
It is surprising to see this feminist commentary come from only male writers. Did you consult with any female writers on the script?
Yeah, we had two writers on set who were both women comedy writers, Amanda Lund and Maria Blasucci, just to make sure we weren’t accidentally writing guy dialogue for women. I spent a lot of time working with Chloe, Keirsey Clemons, and Beanie Feldstein to make sure - like I always interview everyone [in] kind of a long interview process before we start shooting just to make sure everything’s in the characters’ voices. And we sent it to some writers who are women that we really respect. I sent it to Lena Dunham because she knows more about feminism than maybe anyone on the planet, just to make sure we weren’t accidentally doing anything that was offensive. And she also sent us jokes and stuff, so that was really cool of her. And I know Seth and Evan [Goldberg] sent it to some women directors. So we were very careful to make sure we weren’t accidentally doing anything wrong. But then honestly it ends up being, I think like the first movie, like Zac’s story, ultimately emotionally pretty gender-neutral. It’s just about a person who’s scared to graduate from college, and that could relate to women or men. And in the sequel it’s that 18-year-old entering college and they’re scared. And that’s true, again, for women or men. So I think emotionally the story was relatable for anyone.
Had you reached out to other writers before on your other movies to make sure nothing was offensive, or was this the first time you took that approach?
Um, offensive is kind of the wrong word. I would just say to make sure it wasn’t wrong. So yeah, I’ve always done that. For example on Get Him to the Greek, I’ve fortunately never suffered from addiction, but that entire movie is about addiction so I had long interviews with Russell Brand just to make sure it all made emotional sense, and that the character journey of that movie was correct. With Five-Year Engagement, for example, I’d gotten engaged, I’m married so I knew emotionally a lot of what that movie was going to be about, so I didn’t need to consult a lot of people. But yeah, on this one just because we were touching a lot of third rail topics, we just wanted to make sure we were doing them justice and being truthful and honest to those subject matters.
In addition, the [gay] wedding plot, I spoke to a friend of mine who’s a comedy writer who’s gay just to make sure we weren’t actually making the joke like, “Isn’t it funny that he’s gay?” We didn’t want that to be the joke, that needed to be an emotional story about Zac [Efron] being left behind by his friend. I try to do that basically with everything I do, this one just had more topics than most.
When Pete comes out as gay in movie it’s such a great surprise. It’s exciting to see since it’s really one of the first positive depictions of a gay relationship in a big comedy. What was the choice behind that?
On the first movie I was doing the junket and someone asked me why I’ve never had a gay character in my movies. And I was like, “I don’t know! That’s not great.” So it was a little bit of a response to that, but also there was so much homoeroticism in the first movie between Dave [Franco] and Zac that I was like, it actually just makes sense that he would be gay, it just does. You just kind of buy it. And that made me think that he was closeted while in college, which is certainly something, I mean it’s becoming fortunately less prevalent now, but it was certainly true when I was in college.
There’s some great moments in the movie could that lend to some spin-offs, like a gay wedding planner movie. Would that ever happen?
[Laughs] It’s certainly something we’ve discussed internally. It could be really funny.