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EW Video: See Michael Cera and Jonah Hill bring the funny to EW's revealing cover shoot. Plus, watch an exclusive video clip from Superbad below

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You don't get more satisfaction getting a laugh from —
JUDD APATOW: From a bitter comedian?

Yeah, the comedy experts — getting a laugh from them doesn't mean more to you?
APATOW: No, no, I turned on them a long time ago.
SETH ROGEN: There are jokes that our snobby movie friends can over intellectualize laughing at, but we didn't write it for them. We write it for regular people. We don't make these movies for people who are really into movies necessarily.
JONAH HILL: I make everything I do for Michael. If I see that little smile, it makes my whole day worthwhile.
MICHAEL CERA: I make my playlist on my iPod based on what Jonah would like — and he's never even going to listen to it.

A lot of comedy these days — Borat, Curb Your Enthusiasm, your movies — comes out of awkwardness and discomfort. Is it tough to find the line sometimes between funny-awkward and just plain painful?
ROGEN: When it makes me so uncomfortable I want to turn it off, that's when I know I'm watching something awesome. Like, I remember the first time I saw the British Office, I was like, Oh, my God. I literally couldn't watch it all at once, because it made me so uncomfortable. That's when I realized, like, F---, these guys are good. Especially when you know it's fake.
APATOW: When I was a kid, I used to watch The Honeymooners and as soon as they got to the moment where everything was going to collapse, I'd shut it off and didn't come back. I watched the first 12 minutes of every Honeymooners. Now I do almost nothing but cringe-factor comedy, but I just couldn't handle it at all. My favorite show now is Extras. It makes me laugh so hard. But that's another one where I have to pause.
HILL: I feel like in life sometimes I create those situations because I find them funny. Like I'm consciously trying to create an uncomfortable situation because I find that funny.
ROGEN: Michael does that.
HILL: You thrive on that, yeah.
CERA: I'll go to a party sometimes that I can't stand being at, and I'll just sit there listening to people. Just people I don't want to be around.

Do you all have a really high tolerance for awkwardness?
APATOW: In life? My whole life is an awkward moment. Every single day I'm awkward so much of the day.
ROGEN: It's funny hanging out with [Superbad cowriter] Evan [Goldberg] a lot, because he creates a lot of awkwardness but he is never uncomfortable.
CERA: I find that elderly people are like that. Elderly people have no sense of awkward situations. I can't wait to be like that.
ROGEN: I'm always so awkward and always reading into situations and thinking about how other people are interpreting something that they're probably not even thinking about. Then I just see Evan in his underwear in the middle of the street, like, ''So what are we doing, dudes?''

A lot of critics and commentators — the David Denbys and Maureen Dowds of the world — have tagged your brand of comedy as, essentially, immature guy humor about immature guys.
ROGEN: Made for, by, and about immature guys.
APATOW: Whenever I read any of that stuff, I always think, There's literally no history of mature-guy humor. Go watch Modern Times: Charlie Chaplin has two wrenches and he's chasing after a woman with nuts on her nipples! I mean, there is no mature comedy. Even those old Cary Grant movies, I think they're all immature and weird.
ROGEN: Is Preston Sturges mature?
HILL: Is Sideways a mature comedy?
APATOW: I reject the entire notion of maturity. Nothing is funny that is mature. Isn't it all just doing things wrong and screwing up and learning lessons?
ROGEN: Network is a good mature comedy.
APATOW: No, it's immature, because it's an old man screwing a young woman. He can't grow up! He has to cheat on his wonderful wife with Faye Dunaway.

COMING UP IN PART THREE: The fellas talk about the merits of improvisation, their sundry influences, and the softer side of Superbad. ''The movie always was about guys who are afraid of intimacy covering it up with this incredible bravado and talking about what they're going to do to women, and it's all bull----.''


Posted Aug 10, 2007 | Published in issue #948 Aug 17, 2007 | Order Article Reprints
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