‘American Pickle’ Director on Seth Rogen’s Very Jewish Double Role

Seth Rogen’s new HBO Max movie “An American Pickle” hits HBOMax on Aug. 6, at the same time he’s found himself in a pickle with Jews around the world following his recent comments about Israel. 

However, “An American Pickle” director Brandon Trost is focused on discussing the film, a comedy, in which Rogen plays both Herschel Greenbaum, an immigrant laborer who has been preserved in pickle brine for 100 years, and his great-grandson Ben, a frustrated app developer. Written by Simon Rich and based on his short story “Sell Out,” it’s a heartwarming fish-out-of-water fable about the American dream, Jewish tradition and the familial bond.

Trost, a cinematographer who first met Rogen and co-producer Evan Goldberg on the 2013 comedy “This Is the End” and went on to collaborate on two “Neighbors” films, “The Interview,” “The Disaster Artist” and others, is making his feature film directing debut on this very ambitious, technically difficult project.

“I really responded to the message of the movie,” Trost told the Journal. “There’s something really relatable about learning to live with and understand family and respecting family traditions and legacies and dealing with all the things that come with hardship and family. That’s what the movie is at its core: what it means when Old World customs meet new ones. It seemed like a fun, allegorical fairy tale, and that’s how we approached the movie from the get-go. It was very important to us that the movie be very sweet and earnest.”

With a nod to Hal Ashby’s “Being There,” about a simple man who becomes an unlikely icon, “Pickle” satirizes social media, the obsession with fame and “the ridiculousness of the current political climate,” Trost said. “We’re making fun of ourselves and the country at the same time. That’s part of the allegorical aspect of it.”

Trost isn’t Jewish, “but it was important to me to represent [the Jewish aspects] as accurately as possible,” he said. “We had an adviser helping us with the Yiddish to make sure we got it right. I wanted to make sure that people who aren’t steeped in Jewish culture can understand the movie, and I think we achieved that. There’s something about the movie that’s very universal.”

Although Rogen and Goldberg contributed bits and pieces of lore from their own Jewish backgrounds, it’s Rich’s tale about Old World Jewish ethics clashing with modern mores that drive the story. “I love the Jewish influence in this movie and how much we lean into it,” Trost said. “It feels right.” 

 “I wanted to make sure that people who aren’t steeped in Jewish culture can understand the movie, and I think we achieved that. There’s something about the movie that’s very universal.” — Brandon Trost

Not to give away too much, but Barbra Streisand makes an appearance in a funny end-credit bit that Rogen improvised. Streisand, who played Rogen’s mother in “The Guilt Trip,” agreed to be included as long as her surname was pronounced with the proper S, not Z, sound.

Filming began in October 2018 in Pittsburgh, which stood in for Brooklyn, the Canadian border and Eastern Europe. “The shtetl was built at an old horse stable in a national park, and we used effects shots to make it bigger,” Trost said. That was the least of his technical challenges. “It was monumentally difficult” to accomplish the double Rogen effect, Trost said. He later learned that the movie had the same amount of visual effects shots as “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”

“Herschel’s beard is what drove the entire process,” he said. “Seth and I strongly feel that fake beards are not great and hinder performance. When you see Herschel and Ben together, it’s split-screen technology,” but with a twist. “Traditionally, you set the camera in one place, shoot the actor on one side of the frame, have them change clothes and hair, film them on the other side and put both together. We had to shoot Herschel first for everything and then return later to shoot Ben. 

“It was extremely technical in terms of note-taking and getting the camera back to the right spot, matching the lighting and set dressing exactly. Seth wore an earpiece so he could hear his own voice as Herschel and get the correct timing. There were beats in the audio track to tell him when to look at different spots. It was very tedious and difficult. We essentially had to shoot the movie twice, but I think that helped his performance in a way none of us anticipated.”

Trost, a third-generation filmmaker who grew up assisting his father with special effects work, believes his cinematography experience was great preparation for directing the movie. “We storyboarded every single shot with the two characters so we knew how to shoot it. We had to know how many shots, if we could afford it and if we couldn’t, how to adjust to support the story,” he said. “If I didn’t have this technical brain to approach it, I don’t know what I would have done.”

He would like to do more directing, “but I have such a love of cinematography, it’s hard to let that go,” Trost said, noting that he’ll serve as director of photography on a “Sesame Street” movie, postponed due to COVID-19, and “Dear Evan Hansen,” with Ben Platt reprising his Broadway role, now underway in Atlanta. “And Seth has a movie that he wants me to be part of,” he noted.

The father of children ages 5 and 11 months, Trost has found the last months to be “terrifying and lovely at the same time. I have my hands full,” he said. “But being home with them has been nice, too. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a dad now, but I’m more interested in putting out films that bring some positivity back to the world. That’s why I’m so happy to be a part of ‘An American Pickle.’ It feels like a hug at the end of it. We’re all good friends and we love this movie, and hopefully that comes out on film.”

“An American Pickle” begins streaming on HBO Max on Aug. 6.