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How the Greatest High School Movie Ever Was Written by Middle Schoolers
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Mar 31, 2025
When Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's Superbad first debuted, it took audiences by storm. It was a coming of age High School story, about two best friends out for one last night of partying before college. This simple premise captivated it's fan base, and Superbad instantly became one of the best High School comedies ever produced. But the most interesting element of Superbad's production, was it was actually written by 2 kids when they were in middle school.
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OK, can you just get out of here and we'll talk about this
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What the f***, Evan, we're down two points. F***ing calm down, Greg, it's soccer
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They're right. It is just soccer, nobody cares, and people don't forget
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Superbad is a movie about not forgetting and revisiting the past. This was how two middle schoolers released one of the defining teen movies of the 2000s
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just a while after they wrote it. Though released in 2007, screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
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met years earlier in bar mitzvah classes while attending the same high school
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The two would later base the main characters, Seth and Evan, on themselves
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They've stated that from a young age, they never really related to the teen movies of the time
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And who could blame them? Most of the movies aimed at teens throughout the 80s and 90s were glossy affairs
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Handsome outcasts with rich parents without any sense of consequence or stakes
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They bought it. At 13, though, those moments for Rogan and Goldberg were concentrated indeed
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You gonna miss each other? Yeah, I'm gonna cry myself to sleep every night. Me too
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When I'm out partying. They were, put simply, current. It was genuinely their lives. The two took things that happened to themselves and worked them into a script they had started writing
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So many of the iconic moments of Superbad were the real lives of two kids with a great sense of humor and the drive to make art they could relate to
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After they completed the first draft, they continued to tweak the script throughout high school
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Rogan was eventually cast on Judd Apatow and Paul Feig's Freaks and Geeks, where Apatow first found out Rogan was writing his own screenplay
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At the time, the script was a sort of quest about two boys trying to buy booze for a house party
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their senior year. The idea was rough, but Apatow saw the potential immediately and began
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workshopping the script with both Rogan and Goldberg. After years of rewrites and table reads
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Superbad was ready for production. Rogan had initially intended to play Seth himself
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but after such a long development, he had aged out of the role. While they initially believed
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Jonah Hill was too old himself, Hill was insistent he was perfect for the role
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a made dumb f fairytale name you f Both he and co Michael Cera as Goldberg Evan walk a tightrope of childhood innocence swagger and misguided confidence The film would also be the feature debut of Emma Stone
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as Jules and real high schooler Christopher Mintz-Plasse as the unforgettable Vogel
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aka McLovin. Have you actually ever met anyone named McLovin? No, that's why you picked a dumb
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f**king name! The entire cast had an undeniable chemistry under the careful lens of director
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Greg Mottola from Undeclared. Finally, Superbad was released in To The Wild. The film was an
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immediate and critical crowd favorite. Its hard R rating properly reflected the way kids spoke
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or at least the way teens wanted to speak, with quick comebacks, and inventive profanity
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Soon-to-be movie stars Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Emma Stone were exactly what kids wanted to
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see on the screen themselves. Straight from the opening beats of Too Hot to Stop by the Barcase
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we're immediately transported back in time. The silhouettes of Michael Cera and Jonah Hill dance
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against the bright Technicolor backdrops of warm tones. As the credits begin, Mottola is assuring
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us that this will be something different. Superbad followed the same basic plot as Rogan and
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Goldberg's first draft. Two high school seniors desperate to find booze for a house party where
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they each hope to hook up in order to practice before college. But after years of revisions
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Rogan and Goldberg had added a proper story on top of that plot. While their initial draft had
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a realism and reactionary crassness to the PG-13 movies of the time, adults Rogan, Goldberg, and
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Apatow knew there had to be more than adolescent want. In order for us as an audience to really
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care about the film's surrogate, Seth and Evan, we have to relate on some sort of emotional level
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The surface plot that moves the characters along may be their adventure, but it's their relationship
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to one another and the world around them that makes us care
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And that feat is due mostly to Superbad's unique development. From an adult perspective Rogan and Goldberg are able to truly examine how they felt as children
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Part of that experience means knowing sometimes the things we thought made us cool
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actually made us jerks. There's a point where Seth makes a joke to Jules after she says
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You scratch our backs, we'll scratch yours. Well, Jules, the funny thing about my back is that it's located on my c**t
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While Rogan and Goldberg have said this joke was in the original script
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you have to imagine the 13-year-old boys thought it was clever. And even though the joke on its own is funny and clever in its steering of language
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that's not how it's presented in the film. There's a small pause from Jules and then a slightly awkward laugh
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Hill sells the moment beautifully, wavering between self-assured and desperate as he grasps for approval
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I'm getting that for sure. Adult Rogan and Goldberg know this is a terrible thing for a teen boy to say to anyone
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let alone someone they have a crush on. Not only are they poking fun at Seth, They're poking fun at themselves
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That awareness is something that comes from experience. That's part of why the party later in the film is so heightened
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Adult Rogan and Goldberg can look back and see how truly dangerous it was
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for a couple of teen kids to be at a party with adults. While it might have felt exciting and dangerous as children
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it's the hindsight of their rewrites that makes the movie go bigger, more terrifying
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When we're kids, we feel almost invincible. It's almost indescribable to an adult
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an alien word that our tongue just refuses to pronounce. It's so engrossing that everything else pales in comparison
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Through the eyes of Seth and Evan, the world of Superbad feels small. Everything is a beat to hit and an obstacle to overcome
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But Rogan and Goldberg, as adults, know the world is so much bigger than that
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For every bumbling cop, addict, and bully in Superbad, the biggest threat to Seth and Evan is them losing one another
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Losing your best friend is hard, and there are small moments throughout the film's final script that foreshadows this
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They rebuke jokes about how they'll survive without one another. They live in denial of the very real and horrifying question how can I manage this world without you The two are so dead set throughout the entire film that they do this together that they both get practice before college because it may very well be their last adventure together
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But a young Rogan and Goldberg never would have realized that. It's only as their adult selves examine their script
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they understand this could be the end. And that's a nostalgic thought for two adults
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trying to pinpoint when a relationship fizzles out, not through any sort of dramatic experience
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but just the natural course of life. So we mythologize the last big event and make it bigger in our mind and heart because as we look back, we realize this is the end of an age
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An age of innocence and invincibility before stepping into a much wider world
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I love you. I'm not even embarrassed to say it. I just, I love you
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This video has ebbed and flowed between which is the more earnest version of Superbad's script
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the idealistic youthful voice of two 13-year-old children, or the slightly wiser lens of the adults who crafted draft after draft
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And the truth is, just like hindsight and nostalgia, it's a little bit of both
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Despite its retro opening, Superbad is, at its heart, a contemporary movie
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Goldberg and Rogan were keen to not use the past or old characters to tug at our heartstrings
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There are no call-outs to childhood toys or needle drops. But part of what makes Superbad so special is that we are witnessing a form of time travel
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Two friends across multiple points in time, expressing a genuine adoration of their youth and one another
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I just love you. I just want to go to the rooftops and scream, I love my best friend Evan
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And truly adoring something isn't just glamorizing or condemning. It's an understanding that nothing is perfect, but there are absolute moments worth celebrating
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And by looking into their past, Rogan and Goldberg were able to cement that future generations would be able to celebrate a truly absurd and beautiful friendship
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But luckily for all of us, the two had begun crafting one of the greatest teen comedies of all time as a couple of middle school kids
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That's the coolest f***ing story I've ever heard in my entire life. That's insane. Can I hear it again
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