Disaster for dummies

But now,comedians are having the last laughor at least,a Last Days laugh. Up next is Seth Rogen and Evan Goldbergs This Is the End,in which the rapture arrives in the midst of a Hollywood party at James Francos house.

The Worlds End will follow while earlier this year,there was Its a Disaster,where nuclear calamity interrupts a New Orleans couples brunch. Last year,Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,with Steve Carell and Keira Knightley,put a romantic comedy twist to it.

The movies are particularly fitting if you consider that,ultimately,all comedy is laughing in the face of death.

We always say the worse off the characters are,the funnier it generally is, says Rogen. And theres no situation much worse than this.

In This Is the End,easily the funniest,the cast including Jonah Hill,Danny McBride and Michael Cera play warped and exaggerated versions of themselves. When Los Angeles goes up in flames,they bicker selfishly among themselves over dwindling supplies,cattily referring to each others movies.

We wanted to take the people who were the least prepared to deal with something like this and put them in this situation, says Goldberg,the co-writer with Rogen of Superbad. And the least skilled humans on Earth,arguably,are actors. Seth and I always talk about how he learned how to cook chicken for the movie Take This Waltz. Id rather be with an electrician or a carpenter or a hunter.

Ironically,comedies like This Is the End actually feel more personal than the majority of actual disaster films,where spectacle often dwarfs humans. Todd Berger,writer and director of Its a Disaster,was inspired after talking to his sister,a nurse,about her experience in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

I asked her: So was it like a disaster movie?, says Berger. She was like,No. Some people were freaking out,but you can only freak out for so long. Some people eventually started reading magazines.

There are,of course,other movies to satirise the end of the world,most notably Stanley Kubricks 1964 classic black comedy about Cold War nuclear fallout,Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Goldberg recalls an inspirational meeting with screenwriter and eventual Iron Man 3 director Shane Black to discuss their script for The Green Hornet,which aimed to be a funnier superhero film. He told us: You guys take things and you flip it on its head. We hadnt done it enough with The Green Hornet yet. And he told us we needed to do it more. Shane Blacks one of our idols,so we really took it to heart. We realised: This is what we do and do well. Were just attracted to big,crazy things. We love aliens and the end of the world and things exploding. We just like it big.

Goldberg and Rogen acknowledge they have long considered doing their take on a space adventure. Next,though,they will turn to another genre: the political thriller. Rogen says the film,currently titled The Interview,is their version of Ben Afflecks Argoa political thriller with idiots.

Thats pretty much our whole deal, says Goldberg. Add idiots to an existing genre.