‘Sausage Party’ Writer Seth Rogen Warns Film Is ‘Very R-Rated’

Who would guess that Pixar’s beloved Toy Story and sequels would have inspired Seth Rogen to deliver the first R-rated cartoon? He’s done it with Sausage Party and Rogen makes no apologies for the very adult-oriented story about lively meat products in a grocery store cooler. Instead, Seth proudly cautions parents against bringing children along to the theater for this one. Mr. Rogen suggests that the kids might be better off at home with a sitter and a Toy Story DVD, while the parents take in a Sausage Party matinee for their own entertainment.

BYOB: Seth Rogen Comes To The Sausage Party Premiere With His Own Stash

When Seth Rogen declared that Sausage Party is an adults-only affair to the New York Daily News, he’s not just talking about the film. Apparently, he was also talking about the red carpet premiere for the film he co-wrote with Evan Goldberg and Jonah Hill, because Rogen showed up on the red carpet with his own supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon. While Seth and company may very well be the first to create a full CG animated film for adults, he wasn’t the first to bring his own booze to a red carpet premiere. Rogen says famed director Martin Scorsese deserves that honor.

But creating an animated comedy strictly for adults is Rogen’s own special idea, and he says as raunchy as Sausage Party is, some scenes were actually cut because they were deemed too smutty.

“(This film is) Very R-Rated,” the Sausage Party comedian bragged. “One of the most R-rated movies most people will probably ever have seen… It’s the first ever fully CG R-rated movie.”

Below is the official red band trailer for Sausage Party:

One Sausage Party scene that was trimmed comes at the end of the film, and even though it was edited for content, Seth says it’s still the wildest shot of the film.

“There is a scene at the end that will probably turn out to be one of the dirtiest things you’ve seen in a movie,” Rogen warns. “It was a little bit dirtier. And we had to just trim it back microscopically in order to get it where it was.”

How Toy Story Inspired Seth Rogen To Create Sausage Party

While Sausage Party is as far removed from a children’s film as one could possibly get, Rogen reveals that the very popular Toy Story film franchise was the inspiration for his adult-oriented film. Seth says that both he and co-writer Evan Goldberg have always been very big fans of Toy Story with Rogen telling the New York Times that he felt the franchise actually improved with each consecutive film. In fact, the Sausage Party creator says the entire line of Pixar films was very inspiring, driving him and Goldberg to pursue the idea of creating a film that shared Pixar’s general quality in tone and style.

In fact, Seth knew that quality had to be a very important focus in creating Sausage Party, or else the film would fall limp with audiences.

“We kept saying, in order for this to work, it really has to look as good as people are expecting, or else it’s just a bunch of dirty jokes.”

When Rogen pitched he idea to director Conrad Vernon, he sold the idea as the story of hot dogs who escape their supermarket coolers to have sex with their corresponding buns in the bread section. Vernon loved the idea. The future Sausage Party director also knew that animators would be equally excited about Seth’s idea.

“People who make these movies are adults with adult senses of humor,” says Vernon. “We have a lot of funny stuff in our heads that we want to do, and probably 75 percent of it can’t go into a children’s movie. So over the long term, if the only place you get to work as an adult is in a child’s world, you’ve got a lot of screwed-up thoughts in your head that you want to get out on paper.”

Once everyone was on board for Sausage Party, the creative concerns took over with Rogen, Vernon, and company getting together with animators and trying to decide on the look for their main characters. In the beginning, hot dogs were too meaty and too naked. Salma Hayek’s taco character also created a dilemma when it came to placing the character’s arms and legs, but even that limb placement was easily solved with a process of trial and error.

Rogen cites Brenda the Bun as the greatest challenge, because every design seemed to make the character too overtly sexual, even for the R-rated Sausage Party.

“At some point, one of the animators showed us a design where she had that mouth — once you saw it, you could never un-see it,” Mr. Rogen said. “There was a point we were worried that the M.P.A.A. wouldn’t let us have that in commercials.”

Sausage Party, featuring the voices of Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, and Jonah Hill, hits theaters on August 12.

[Image via Sony Pictures]