Numerous actors have played multiple characters who appear together in the movies on screen. Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, Mike Myers in Austin Powers, and Michael Keaton in Multiplicity are just a few of the more famous examples. Traditionally, this is accomplished through a split-screen process in which the actor shoots the same scene multiple times as each different character on the same day and uses stand-ins for shoulder shots. But in the case of Seth Rogenhis dual roles in An American Pickle, a revealing new featurette shows how to direct Brandon Trost took a much more ambitious route to pull it off.
Making of An American Pickle
As you saw An American Pickle, you might have thought that Seth Rogen only wore a fake bear when he played 1920’s worker Herschel Greenbaum, and then removed the beard to shoot the same scene against himself as his grandson Ben Greenbaum. But Rogen hates how fake beards look on screen, so he took the time to actually grow Herschel’s big big busty beard himself. However, that made the process of shooting each scene with both characters on screen infinitely more complicated.
As you would expect, Seth Rogen would record every single scene as Herschel first. Then, after all that was done, the crew had to return to the same real locations and studio sets to shoot the second half of the scenes with a clean shaven Rogen as Ben. The length to which the crew went to make sure the set looked exactly the same with the cameras placed in the same spot with the same lighting and props is insane. Yes, they used a double to help Rogen play against himself, but all the double did was to react with his face and body while playing a recording of the previous recordings in his ear, and sometimes, the double was not once in the scene, but would say lines off-camera and describe what the other character did for timing purposes.
This looks infinitely harder to pull off when shooting for real store fronts than places that actually exist. But there are also sequences where a green screen was used, making it easier (for a degree) to double Rye in a particular environment. Sometimes also used scenes on location green screen, such as when Seth Rogen has to ride an electric scooter around himself. It’s hard as hell, but it seems to have paid off, because this is a wonderful film in which Rogen gives a career-best performance.
An American Pickle, directed by Brandon Trost, is based on Simon Rich’s New Yorker short story and stars Seth Rogen as Herschel Greenbaum, a struggling worker who immigrated to America in 1920 with dreams of building a better life for his beloved family. . One day, while working on his factory job, he falls into a barrel of brine and is burned for 100 years. The brine preserves him perfectly and when he arrives in present-day Brooklyn, he finds that he is not old one day. But as he traces his family, he is frightened to learn that his only surviving family member is his grandson, Ben Greenbaum (also played by Rogen), a mild-mannered computer coder that Herschel can not even begin to understand.
An American Pickle is now available on HBO Max.
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