Scene Anatomy 101 05.07.08: Knocked Up

Posted by George H. Sirois on 05.07.2008

The Star Wars Trilogy of Comedy: Part 3 of 3… PLUS A Surprise Announcement!



And here we are, at the third chapter of this unofficial trilogy that Judd Apatow & Co. created from 2005 – 2007. Just like Back to the Future among others before it, parts two and three came out the same year. Unlike the other trilogies, however, part 3 came out and then a couple months later, we had part 1 with part 2 already on HBO by then.

But trust me, the order in which I'm introducing them is the proper order, and like I said before, the best way to look at this is how Seth Rogen is involved in each one. First, there was Superbad, in which he plays a character in the subplot. Then, there was The 40-Year-Old Virgin, in which he's a supporting character in the main ensemble. And then there was this film, in which he graduated to become the leading man. I'm talking about the 2007 Judd Apatow hit film…



We've seen Seth be so many different things in films, but the one thing we haven't seen him be is a grown-up. The only way that he can possibly become a mature man with a significant other and – dare I say it – a child is if a situation comes along that pushes him in that direction. His characters are not the types to make the move themselves.

The latest version of this character is Ben, a twenty-something guy living in a house in Los Angeles with his four friends. They spend all their time hanging out, smoking weed, coming up with different challenges for each other and preparing to run a Mr. Skin-style web site called "Flesh of the Stars." On the complete opposite spectrum of life, Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) is a twenty-something assistant for E! who just got a big promotion and is going out with her sister (Leslie Mann) to celebrate.

At this fateful bar, Ben meets Allison, they hook up and then head to her place and have sex without a condom. Of course, Allison gets pregnant and she decides right away to keep the baby. Plus, she doesn't want to raise the baby alone, so she asks Ben to help her through the next nine months. Once it is confirmed that she is pregnant, Ben warms to the idea and looks forward to becoming a father. The next hour in the film has Ben and Allison not only trying to work through this pregnancy together, but also developing a learn-as-you-go relationship. He even proposes to her using an empty box, promising to fill that box with a ring once he gets enough money.

Unfortunately, things hit a snag when Allison's sister Debbie and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd) are having difficulties, with Pete sneaking out to a fantasy baseball draft and not telling Debbie. This, along with Ben not giving up smoking weed and neglecting to read the baby books, plants the seed of doubt in Allison's mind and her hormones start acting up, letting her emotions start up a huge argument between the two of them.

Ben finally breaks away from Allison at the same time that Pete's not allowed to come home. So the two of them decide to deal with their problems by pushing them aside and going to Vegas. Pete adds to the situation by not only ordering Cirque Du Soleil tickets for them, but also getting his hands on some mushrooms for them to eat during the show.

After the show, Ben and Pete are in their hotel room and Ben is busy watching Cheaper by the Dozen as he tries to come down from the mushrooms. After having an intense freak-out during the Cirque show, we hear Ben sounding more mature than he ever had before as he watches Steve Martin try to handle 12 kids in this movie.

BEN: This isn't funny. Guy with 12 kids, that's not funny. That's… that's sick. It's a sick movie. There's a lot of responsibility to be joking about, that's not funny.

As he struggles to find the correct button on the remote control while simultaneously keeping his eyes fixed to the screen, Pete starts gathering up every chair in the hotel room and places them against each other like a starting lineup.

BEN: I gotta turn this off. It's freakin' me out.

Ben turns the television off and immediately Pete presents something that's really going to blow both of their minds.

PETE: There are five different types of chairs in this hotel room.

BEN: Holy fuck. What are they all doing in here?

PETE: These are five different types of chairs.

BEN: Get ‘em out of here, man. There's just too many chairs for one room.

PETE: There's a guy here that works for this hotel. His whole job is to find chairs.

Pete then starts looking at one chair in particular, one that literally shines above the rest since it's a bar chair. He rubs the fabric on the chair's seat, soaking it in like he's trying to sell it.

PETE: Look at this one. Look at it, it's gold and red, and it's got this kind of shiny thread. Unbelievable. And it feels… amazing.

But Ben's definitely not buying what Pete's selling since he's still struggling to come down from the mushrooms they had before.

BEN: The tall one's gawking at me. And the short one's being very droll. I don't like them.

Meanwhile, Pete crawls into the big chair that he had been hyping. Might as well see what it feels to actually, you know, sit on it.

PETE: Oh, wow!

BEN: It's weird that chairs even exist when you're not sitting on them.

That's an interesting statement to make, that would only make sense if you have some sort of psychedelic substance working inside you.

Pete holds onto the chair and sticks his feet out.

PETE: I'm up high! I'm really high up.

As Ben begins to come to his senses, the only thing he can really feel is guilt. No matter how many mushrooms he tried to eat before, he just can't shake it.

BEN: I should have read the baby books.

PETE: Why didn't you read the baby books?

This is the first time a sane and rational person has asked him this. Obviously, Allison doesn't count because the only time when she brought up the baby books was when her hormones were on a destructive rampage and they had their big blow-up fight. Obviously, none of Ben's roommates give a shit about the baby books; they're too caught up with farting on each other's pillows and giving each other pink eye. (I'm not joking.)

But Pete's been down this road before, and he's familiar with the baby books and all of the preparation that one has to do for when a baby is on the way. So Ben can actually talk to someone about these kinds of things.

BEN: Because then it's real, you know?

PETE: Dude, it's real whether or not you read those books. That baby's coming.

Pete gets out of the high chair and sits in another one. We can almost see him melting into it as he gets comfortable immediately.

PETE: Oh, man.

Ben now starts contemplating what's going to happen after they leave Vegas and come back to LA. Pete's quick answer shows that he was thinking the same thing, even though he obviously has a lot more to lose than Ben does right now. He's got some remorseful feelings in himself too. He's got a wife, a house and two cute daughters, and he's in danger of throwing it all away over fantasy baseball.

BEN: Think they'll take us back?

PETE: Yes. But I don't know why. You ever wonder how someone can even like you?

BEN: All the time, man. Like every day. I wonder how you like me.

PETE: How can Debbie like me? She likes me. She loves me. The biggest problem in our marriage is that she wants me around. She loves me so much that she wants me around all the time. THAT'S our biggest problem. And I can't even accept that? Like… that upsets me?

This is the first time that Pete's vocalized the only problem that he has with Debbie, and it's a problem that Ben would kill to have with Allison. Immediately, he's taken aback.

BEN: What?

PETE: She loves me. She's the one.

Ben doesn't even listen to Pete now. He's still hung up on the problem that Pete confessed.

BEN: You can't believe that people love you? I love you, man. Debbie loves you!

PETE: I don't think that I can accept her love. There's something wrong with me.

Pete's voice starts to crack as Ben's voice is getting louder. There is an interesting sort of role-reversal going on now since normally, it's the leading man that needs the pep talk or ass-kicking from the supporting character. Considering that Paul Rudd has played leading men before and Seth Rogen has much more experience playing a supporting character, they seem to be going into the roles that they are more comfortable playing. So what if Seth's the leading man this time around?

BEN: You can't accept love?!

PETE: I don't know what it is.

BEN: Love, the most beautiful, shiny warmy thing in the world, you can't accept it?

Pete tries to push away this remorse by thinking about something else. Thinking about, say, another chair.

PETE: I have to go to this other chair.

Pete gets up and balls himself up into one of the other chairs. It looks like he's trying to go to sleep, despite Ben's insistence that this conversation is nowhere near over.

PETE: Oh, this has a better energy.

BEN: You can't accept pure love? You can't accept Debbie? She's chosen to give you her life. She's picked you as her life partner!

Pete lets out a groan, showing that the mushrooms are definitely getting to him as well. Either that, or he's just in denial over everything that he's feeling.

BEN: And you play fantasy baseball because you can't accept her love? I can accept it, man. And Debbie's amazing, man. She's cool and she's funny and she smells good she's nice and her hair always looks different.

Pete is starting to feel some late effects. Again, either that or he's trying not to listen. Pete holds his hand in front of his face, watching the supposed vapor trails.

As Pete looks like he's not listening, Ben starts to get angrier at him. Pete's got the kind of life that Ben didn't even know he wanted until recently, and Pete was so quick to throw it away.

BEN: She's too good for you, man.

Pete's still looking at his fingers and the vapor trail.

PETE: It's like a rainbow.

And Ben keeps getting angrier and angrier and really starts to lay into Pete.

BEN: You're disgusting, you're an… urchin. And she busts your balls because you're a little bitch! You're a filthy bitch! And I bust your balls!

Pete starts to curl up even tighter, shoving his fist into his mouth. He starts groaning in agony as Ben's words are cutting nice and deep.

BEN: Debbie wants to give her life to you, and Allison doesn't want to do that with me. And it makes me sad all day.

There. Ben's got it all out. He wants to be with Allison. He's prepared to make whatever changes are necessary for her to see the good in him. And he's tired of feeling sad all day because she doesn't want to give her life to him. At least not yet. It's time for Ben to stop running away from his life.

BEN: I want to go home.

And Pete agrees, as he replies with his fist still in his mouth.

PETE: I want to go home too!

What makes this scene very different from all other comedies is that with all those other movies, the lead has a problem that they can't solve on their own and it takes a supporting character to provide him or her with a fresh perspective. Here, the supporting character is strung out on mushrooms and too busy caught up with chairs in a hotel room – and the vapor trails his fingers leave – to barely comprehend whatever the lead character is saying.

Therefore, Ben is stuck in this hotel room with a blathering idiot and he is forced to figure everything out for himself. If anyone other than Rogen was playing this part, then it wouldn't have worked nearly as well because he has all this experience playing the type of character that would be dishing out the correct advice. Sure, it took a few mushrooms and a warped Cirque Du Soleil show for Ben to see the truth about his situation, but he made that trip on his own. The only thing that Pete did of any significance to him was supply the mushrooms.

Fortunately, Ben comes to his senses and he does whatever he can to make Allison believe that he's a worthy father and maybe even a husband. But is it too little, too late? Well, I'm not going to spoil it for you, but let's just say that this major step forward for a Seth Rogen character shows just why Knocked Up deserves to take the third spot in this "Star Wars Trilogy of Comedy."


Now, as for the big announcement. May 26th of this year marks four years that I have been writing for 411Mania.com. It's been a fantastic ride, it's allowed my writing to improve and it's an experience that I will always cherish.

But this past weekend, I decided that a new challenge needed to be met. So from June 1 to June 30, I will be taking an extended hiatus from the site. Right after I hit my four-year mark, I will be participating in what is known as National Novel Writing Month. The official month is November, but I want to do it in June. The object of this is to use the Chris Baty workbook "No Plot, No Problem" and write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in only 30 days.

This is the perfect opportunity for me to get back into writing fiction, something that I haven't done regularly since working on my previous novel, "From Parts Unknown." And it will also give me a much-needed break from the weekly grind of both Scene Anatomy 101 and The UBS Evening Movie News. Much thanks to Ashish and Chad for giving me the green light to take this hiatus; very much appreciated.

I'll be going into further detail in the later editions of The UBS Evening Movie News as the big moment approaches. As for SA 101, this gives me a chance to finish up strong for the big four-year anniversary with a trilogy of columns that deal with something that a lot of people have been looking for. Something that can't be explained. Something that you have to see for yourself. You're probably asking what it is, which is what people have been asking since, say, 1999.

Hopefully by the time the month is over and this next trilogy is finished, you won't ask yourself why you didn't take the blue pill.

Until then, Class Dismissed!!!


-- George H. Sirois