Actor Seth Rogen Says It's OK to 'Make Fun of Christians'
It's OK to make fun of Christians, says actor Seth Rogen who mocked the book of Revelations in the 2013 comedic flop "This Is the End," and now stars in a raunchy, drug-addled Christmas-themed comedy.
"[Y]ou can make fun of Christians, they're cool," Rogen told Sydney Morning Herald during an interview about his latest film, "The Night Before," which he hopes will become a Christmas classic. "Christians have their own [expletive] to deal with, they're not worried about us. So on the scale of controversial waters one could possibly navigate, this movie was very low on that list, I would say. If anything, we may offend Jews because we made a Christmas movie."
"The Night Before" stars Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie as lifelong friends who reunite every Christmas Eve for a night of "debauchery."
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Rogen said his aim was not to discredit Christmas or make fun of it, and insisted that the flick was made in the spirit of traditional Christmas films.
"Our film is set at Christmas and carries a lot of the tropes and themes that Christmas movies do, but it doesn't set out to alienate people," he continued in the Herald interview published Wednesday. "One of our actual goals was to make a movie that would get played on television every year so you can't do that if you're mocking the holiday that you want to be played on."
With it's sexually explicit content, language, nudity, and a scene in which Rogen vomits in a cathedral during Christmas Eve mass, it's unlikely "The Night Before" will ever become a Christmas film that Christian families will watch together every year, like the iconic Jimmy Stewart classic "It's A Wonderful Life."
The Catholic News Service has classified the movie as "morally offensive" for containing "blasphemous humor, constant, benignly viewed drug use, full nudity, semi-graphic casual sexual activity and pervasive rough and crude language."
In it's review, the Toronto Sun noted that the film aims to offend Christian viewers: "Transgressions are plenty. They include seeing Rogen's Isaac wearing a Star of David 'Christmas' sweater while puking his guts out at midnight mass where he rails loudly against the charge that Jews killed Jesus. That scene alone tells you that 'The Night Before' has no compunction about being offensive to anyone who is uptight about the true significance of Christmas."
