They used to be superbad

SCENE: A messy movie trailer on the set of “Pineapple Express,” a comedy about a pair of stoners who get a life when confronted with rapacious drug dealers and a kick-butt policewoman. Writer and costar Seth Rogen is decked out in a beige leisure suit circa 1977, with one ear doused in bloody movie makeup. Co-writer Evan Goldberg, in shorts and a T-shirt and sporting curiously long sideburns and a bushy mustache, stretches on the couch. Both are giant.

Rogen -- who also stars in this summer’s “Knocked Up,” opening June 1 -- has a basso profundo that booms out of his chest. Embarrassed, he points out that Goldberg’s facial hair is a gag, not a white trash badge of honor. The two longtime friends and writing partners are discussing not “Pineapple” but their first movie, “Superbad,” which premieres Aug. 17. They began writing it in Goldberg’s parents pink home office about a dozen years ago, not long after they met in a Vancouver, Canada, bar mitzvah class.

The story is about a pair of colossally sexually frustrated high school seniors named Seth and Evan who go on a quest to get liquor to impress, and hopefully seduce, girls. The film was turned down by some 18 production companies, before getting greenlighted under the aegis of producer Judd Apatow, who had cast Rogen in “The 40 Year-Old Virgin.”

Why the studio resistance? “Superbad” might be the most profane (and hilarious ) high school movie of the last 30 years. Rogen and Goldberg’s screen alter egos really talk as high schoolers talk -- particularly Seth, played with exuberant neurotic relish by chubby, schlubby motormouth Jonah Hill.

Rogen: I will say this is probably the only movie about virgins written by virgins at the time of its writing. We could really funnel a lot of those feelings into it. The desperation is ripped firsthand from the headlines.

Do you guys really talk like that?

Rogen: Yes, constantly.

Goldberg: My friends went to see a screening of “Knocked Up” in Vancouver. [One said:] “I really like it, but one of the reasons it was a little worse than I thought it would be is that I heard Seth say [stuff] like that all the time.”

Rogen: When you’re not around me, it’s probably very amusing, but it probably starts to grate on you if you’re forced to be around me all the time.

Goldberg: I just try not to look at you when I talk.

I’m surprised you were able to get away with the language.

Goldberg: Barely anybody’s walked out to our surprise. But when they walk out they walk out fast. Rogen quotes a line completely unprintable in a family newspaper in the opening of the movie.

Rogen: [That] is the barometer. If they stay for that, then people stay. It’s funny how desensitized I am to it. When I watch the first scene, it’s so true to how we talked to each other, it does not strike me as being dirty. There were a lot of versions of that opening scene. We wanted it to be offensive to get the tone.

Goldberg: The original version began with a black screen. You see Evan in bed. You then see Seth in bed and the phone rings and it’s Evan saying, “My parents are having sex, what am I supposed to do?” And he says, “You wait until your dad is finished,” and then we [finished] up [the scene] with a bunch of dirty stuff.

Now the film begins with Seth discussing all the various porn sites he plans on subscribing to once he hits college -- places like Perfect 10.

Goldberg: That’s one of our proudest things. I thought we should go with Vaginal Mystery Tour, and Seth thought up Vaginastic Voyage.

Rogen: We were like 14 or 13 when we started. I did stand-up comedy around then. The notion of writing wasn’t that weird to us.... We’d go to his house after school and we’d write almost every day.

Goldberg: My mom would say, “You go in there and laugh really hard. What are you doing?” and I’d say, “Something you’ll never be allowed to see.” She was one of the only people who said no to letting us use her name.

“Superbad” producer Judd Apatow, who put you in “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” as well as “Knocked Up,” says you’ve always been the most ardent proponent of the R-rated comedy.

Rogen: Even when we did ’40 Year-Old Virgin,’ I was the loudest voice in making it filthy. That was my whole thing. [Steve] Carell is the sweetest guy in the world, and what is funnier than surrounding him with the dirtiest guys you can possibly imagine? And Carell was against it in a lot of ways. I would get phone calls from him all the time -- “Let’s just make a version of the script without any swear words just to have it.” I’d be like, “No, I’m not doing that. I think that’s what will really draw people.”

Goldberg: I saw [Richard Linklater’s high school flick] “Dazed and Confused.” That movie is kind of real, but in reality, people are way meaner. Things are more intense.

Rogen: We had a hard time with how social scenarios are shown in high school [movies]. “Mean Girls” was a great movie, but it has that scene [in which one character delineates all the school cliques] -- “Those are the Asian kids who keep to themselves. Those are the cool kids.” In our high school, it was never really like that.

Goldberg: The popular kids were popular to themselves, but nobody else thought they were popular.

Rogen: No one liked them. We wanted to get across our high school experience being guys some people hated. Some people liked us. But generally we didn’t give a ... what people thought of us.

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rachel.abramowitz@latimes.com