Taking the fast track to stardom

Seth Rogen wrote and stars in Pineapple Express, released in local cinemas this week. The actor reveals why he keeps returning to the subject of male bonding in his movies and discusses the film's ambiguous anti-drugs message.

Seth Rogen is slowly but surely conquering Hollywood - with a little help from his friends.

The stand-up comic-turned- movie star had his first lead role in last year's Knocked Up, written and directed by his mentor Judd Apatow. He followed that with his own film, Superbad, co-written with schoolmate Evan Goldberg.

Pineapple Express, his latest collaboration with Mr Goldberg and Mr Apatow, recently raked in $40 million in its first five days at the US box office - almost twice its $27 million budget - and it looks set to do just as well over here.

Not bad for a regular-looking 26-year-old who started out telling jokes at bar mitzvahs.

"I had no money when I was younger and in high school all my friends had jobs and I had no job. I just did stand-up," the fuzzy-haired actor explains in his distinctive bear-like growl.

"I started realising I had to treat this like a job, so I did a few bar mitzvahs and they paid me 150 bucks or something like that.

"I actually ran into someone recently, they came up to me and said 'I was at a bar mitzvah that you did stand-up comedy at'. It was so embarassing!" he chuckles.

The way Mr Rogen tells it, his teens were like something out of one of his films. At 15 he was spotted by a mohel - the man who circumcises Jewish boys - who hired him to write "icebreaker" jokes.

"They were all like bad haircuts jokes like 'so, a little off the top?'" he sniggers.

"He wanted jokes because everyone is a little on the edge, a few icebreakers, just something. But you don't picture raucous laughter and penile surgery going hand in hand."

It's really hard to keep a straight face around Mr Rogen, but there is serious business at hand, even if Pineapple Express is his take on the classic stoner film genre - and an action movie to boot.

He, Mr Goldberg and Mr Apatow all sat down and came up with the story - drawing on cult films like Pulp Fiction - and then Mr Apatow and Mr Rogen wrote the script.

Mr Rogen plays Dale Denton, a process server (someone who serves legal documents) and self-confessed loser, who is dating a high school girl and spends all day smoking marijuana.

He has a businesslike relationship with his dealer, Saul Silver (James Franco), but the two are thrown together when Dale witnesses a drug lord and a bent cop commit a murder - and accidentally drops the butt of a rare Pineapple Express joint at the scene.

Knowing the dangerous drug lord will work out who he is, Dale and Saul go on the run - and embark on an unlikely friendship.

Emotional male bonding is a signature trait of Mr Rogen and Mr Goldberg's films - and something they find hilarious.

"Those are the relationships that just seem funny to us, just two guys working stuff out," Mr Rogen says, laughing again.

"Our group of friends back home was really callous, then I moved to LA and became friends with all these actors and all they want to talk about is how they feel and how hurt they are emotionally.

"We were like 'we can't talk to these people like we talk to our normal friends, because we'll hurt their feelings'," he laughs.

"I honestly think that was the basis for our films, hurting other guys' feelings and having to apologise to them - and our own trouble navigating that."

As an action comedy, Pineapple Express is a new direction for the writing duo and the first time Mr Rogen has had to film big action scenes - from a car chase and gun fight to rescuing Saul from a burning barn, in his underpants.

The portly actor doesn't look like a typical action hero and he admits it was physically demanding, even if he was meant to look like an inept stoner.

"There were times when the fact that I wasn't in good shape would really hurt the movie. We got everything, but sometimes those 10 minutes I needed to recuperate between scenes could ruin the whole day.

"James had done Spiderman, so he didn't need that 10 minutes," he adds, laughing.

"So I would be sitting there with an oxygen mask on my mouth thinking 'if I was in better shape this whole thing would be going a lot better'."

Luckily injuries were minimal - Mr Rogen fractured his finger crashing into a coffee table in one fight scene and Mr Franco got a scar on his forehead from running into a tree.

For all their pothead glory, Dane and Saul realise by the end of the film that they should probably stay off the weed.

But Mr Rogen says Pineapple Express is not intended to be a moralistic stoner flick - it's all up to audiences' interpretation.

"Honestly, I don't care if you watch this movie and think you want to go off and smoke the biggest joint ever, or decide you're never going to smoke weed again," he says.

"I literally put zero thought into that when we were writing the movie, it was all from the point of view of the characters. And what's interesting is some people we sit down with say 'wow! I was really impressed at how anti-weed this movie is', and some people say 'I was blown away by how there's no anti-weed message at all!'," he laughs.

"But that's exactly what we wanted."

Mr Rogen moved from Vancouver to LA when he was just 16 and tried his hand at stand-up before he was cast in Judd Apatow's TV comedy Freaks And Geeks - alongside his Pineapple co-star Mr Franco.

Mr Apatow was so impressed by Mr Rogen that he asked him to write for his next show Undeclared. In 2005, Mr Rogen and his writing partner Mr Goldberg started work on Da Ali G Show in what would be its final season - and Mr Rogen appeared in Mr Goldberg's directorial debut The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Knocked Up and the semi-autobiographical Superbad, originally penned by Mr Rogen and Mr Goldberg when they were just 13, sealed Mr Rogen's move into the limelight.

But he's not fussed about his celebrity status - or the perks it brings.

"To me that's just not fun," he says.

"I don't go to movie premieres for movies that I'm not involved in. I saw that Daniel Craig came to the Pineapple premiere, and it's nice for the movie, but I would never come to this premiere if I was Daniel Craig.

"I actually prefer to see movies I want in a normal theatre with a real audience. Premieres are jaded, it's all agents and friends of the people who are in the movie, so it never feels like a real audience."

While Pineapple Express is flying high at the box office, Mr Rogen and Mr Goldberg are knuckling down to write their next project, a remake of the 1960s TV show The Green Hornet, which brought martial arts expert Bruce Lee to the West as the Hornet's sidekick Kato.

Mr Rogen admits he's daunted by the task, not least because he will be starring as the masked crime fighter himself.

"When we usually write movies we never think they're going to get made in a million years, so we don't have to consider what it will be like to actually make it," he says.

"But now we're writing The Green Hornet, it looks like they'll make it, so for me writing stuff like 'the Green Hornet leaps over this and jumps over that and runs two blocks' I'm thinking 'can't we just cut to the building as I'm running up to it? Do we really have to see all this?