What makes a bad neighbor?
Is it someone doing construction every day starting early in the morning, a pair of young actors stuffing lunch through your mail slot or a house full of boozing college kids next door?
In the new film “Neighbors,” out Friday, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne are a young married couple with a new baby who find their quiet suburban life in upheaval when a hard-partying fraternity — led by Zac Efron’s Teddy and his right hand man Pete (Dave Franco) — moves in next door. From there, the film unfolds into a rowdy, lewd, violent battle between the two generations.
amNewYork spoke with Rogen about the film.
Do you relate more with Zac’s character or yours?
Way more with mine. I’m 32. I’m married. A lot of my friends are married with children. So yeah, I mean I definitely relate more to the idea that I wish I could party more than I’m afraid that I’m going to have to stop partying soon. I’ve already had to stop.
When was your last big, throwdown party?
We had the premiere for “Neighbors” [last week] and I was out until 4:30 in the morning so …I choose my moments. Every once in a while, I’ll break through, but now it just takes me two weeks to recover from it.
What was your worst neighbor experience?
My current neighbors suck. I hate him. He’s been building his house for two years. 7:30 in the morning it starts every day and he’s just an [expletive] about it. So yeah, I’m living it.
In hindsight, have you ever been a bad neighbor?
Yeah, that’s for sure. I used to live with Martin Starr and we weren’t that cool to our neighbor. We would put cheeseburgers in his mail slot. We didn’t like him very much. Which is not cool to do.
Was there any retaliation?
No, he would just call security on us a lot.
You work with James Franco’s brother, Dave, in this movie. What was it like working with a second generation of Francos?
I’ve known Dave for a very long time. Me and Dave are closer in age than I think me and James are. Dave was in “Superbad” so I’ve known him since then. It’s great. It’s nice when you get to work with people you’ve known a long time and you’re very comfortable with. When we did “Superbad,” part of me was like, “Oh, that’s funny. James’ brother wants to be an actor too.” And now he’s done so many movies and he’s amazing in them.
It’s always great having Rose Byrne as your wife.
Yeah, she’s awesome. She was great. She was super funny and I really like how our relationship is not combative or adversarial. Like we’re really on the same team for a lot of the movie, so that was fun.
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a relationship with a woman in a movie that was positive.
Does doing a movie like this make your fearful for potential fatherhood?
Well, it makes me more fearful that I just won’t be able to do all the fun [expletive] that I’d like to, which is kind of what the movie is about.
