Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising isn’t your usual comedy sequel. Once star, co-writer and co-producer Seth Rogen joined up with Nicholas Stoller (director, co-writer and co-producer) and started thinking about the plight of sororities (something they wanted to do for the sequel to the frat-centric Neighbors), they realized that there were so many restrictions on college women when it came to throwing parties or even having a sorority house of any kind. When that came to light, it changed everything.
“Social consciousness became one of the themes throughout the movie. Once that happened, it made our brains start going in different directions. I think it just started to funnel in that direction once the theme of social justice became one of the jokes of the movie,” Rogen said to The Movie Mensch at a recent press day.
The film is still a balls-to-the-wall comedy that will have audiences laughing with delight (our review is coming soon). Rogen doesn’t want people to get the wrong idea. Although they are raising awareness, this is still a summer comedy sequel that isn’t out to teach people how to party responsibly.
“I think there’s probably much better things to teach college kids how to party safely than the Neighbors franchise, so I would not look to us specifically for that. But if in any way, it inspires someone to go seek out a much better source of how to party in a safe manner, than I hope they go do that,” Rogen said.
“Obviously, a theme in the movie is the fact that women aren’t allowed to throw their own parties in sororities. If you delve deeper into that conversation, it certainly brings up conversations about whether or not they would be safer, if they were able to do that. But, there are probably a lot smarter things written about that subject than this film.”
Co-star Rose Byrne is back as Rogen’s wife and in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, the couple is expecting their next child. Meanwhile, their first little girl is a little older now and the family feels that they need to move to a bigger house to make room for the second little child.
As they sell the house, it goes into escrow. So, for 30 days our Mr. and Mrs. are on pins and needles hoping nothing happens. Then… the ladies of NU movie in and throw parties every night. They’re driven off the campus by archaic rules about sororities and hosting bashes. Suddenly, Rogen and Byrne find themselves looking at having bought a house, and a house that can’t sell because there is a sorority next door. What to do?
Enlist the frat-king from the first film to fight the ladies at their own game… and yes, Zac Efron is back. Byrne reported it was fabulous to be on the same side of the fight with Efron’s Teddy this time around.
“It was great! I think we have a very paternal role in Teddy’s life,” she admitted.
“It was good to nurture and support him while he was lost, and to have him become a part of our family,” Rogen added. “It was nice to not be fighting with him in every scene, and to teach him about boiling water.”
For one particular scene in Neighbor 2: Sorority Rising, Byrne took one for the team and was forced to rub grease all over Efron’s ripped body. “It was a new experience. I’ve never felt anything quite as hard,” she said and laughed before actually getting quite serious. “They had injected the meat with baby oil, so it was really disgusting.”
“It was a real ham with lube in it,” Rogen interjected.
Byrne said it was far less enticing than one would think. “It was also seasoned with things, like peppercorns and thyme.”
Efron sure didn’t seem to appreciate it much either. “They made it edible with seasoning,” he said. “So, that mixed with the smell of baby oil was pretty gross. It wouldn’t come off. I tried to get it off, forever. But, watching Rose’s face was worth it. She was really funny.”
One of the most memorable series of laughs from the first film involved the fraternity using airbags to do their best to ruin Rogen’s day. There is also an airbag gag in Neighbors 2, and Rogen cannot believe how much response the airbag gets, given the simplicity of how they did it.
“It’s something they’ve been doing since Buster Keaton times. It’s almost entirely in camera. You just stand on a thing, and then we go, ‘Freeze!’ Everybody freezes and you move and then you put a dummy there — in the same position — and blast it up in the air with an airbag,” Rogen said.
“Then it lands and we go, ‘Freeze! and we look at the position that it landed in. Then, the actor flops their body into that position. That’s pretty much it! It literally only costs a few thousand dollars in visual effects to stitch those shots together.”
Neighbors was never intended to be a franchise. But, once it was a hit, Rogen said ideas of how to handle the sequel started permeating. “First, we were thinking of where the characters could go next. We knew that Teddy would probably be a guy who would graduate college, but have no skills, and he’d probably be pretty depressed about it. That gave us a good idea of where his story could go. We didn’t really want to get into us wanting to party anymore. It seemed like maybe we’d have another kid and enter the next phase of parenting and wonder if we were bad parents — if our kids would relate to us,” Rogen said.
“That’s really what gave us the idea about the sorority. We were like, ‘Okay, we have a daughter and we’re about to have another daughter. They seemed like a good personification of what your worst fears for your daughter might be, as far as not being able to communicate with them and them not liking you.’ And then, we heard that sororities aren’t allowed to throw parties. An intern in our office was in a sorority and we were talking about how they’d throw all these parties, and she was like, ‘Oh, they’re actually not allowed to do that.’ And we were like, ‘Oh, that’s (expletive) up!’”
Rogen has made sequels before, and he was just hoping that this one would resonate as much as the first film did (it does).
“Our goal with every film, essentially — anything better than humiliating is fantastic for us. That’s a success. We really tried to make sure it had an idea that was strong enough where, even if there was no first movie, we would be excited about this for a movie. And we really liked the characters. That was the thing that we talked the most about. It was about where these characters would go next in their lives,” Rogen said.
“We found that that was a good guiding principle and it made everything a lot easier. As we were making it, it seemed funny and it was fun — but you never know. I’ve made a lot of things that seemed really funny and they’re not.”