What Do The Critics Say?

"The only problem is that hardcore action and a touchy-feely love story do not the best bed-fellows make and the final reel ill-advisedly juxtaposes an over-sweetened romance with a gross-out gag that will having you gulping for clean air." Tim Evans SKY MOVIES "It's the funniest one I have seen in ages. It does feature an awful lot of swearing and cheerfully bad taste comic moments, it is also engagingly sentimental and sweetly romantic." UK DAILY MIRROR "Crude, hilarious, if a little corny, Smith's latest hardcore comedy is right on the money shot." Simon Crook EMPIRE MAGAZINE "If you are broad minded, or are in the right mood for some naughty silliness, then you should find this film as entertaining as I did." HEART 106.2 "Smartly directed, superbly acted and frequently hilarious comedy – this is Kevin Smith's best film since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." Matthew Turner VIEWLONDON "It is amazing how the crudest of comedies sometimes have the biggest of hearts." JimmyO FLO JO'S MOVIE EMPORIUM "A romantic comedy that's both as sweet and as obscene as anything you'll see this year." Frank Wilkins REEL TALK MOVIE REVIEWS "The audience where I watched the movie laughed so hard that we all probably missed a third of the lines, and it was still one of the funnier movies I've seen this year." Peter Hartlaub SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE "There's foul language, nudity and simulated sex, while the comedy includes the ultra broad and aims to shock. But couched in this R-rated bubble is the sweet romance between Rogan's Zack and Elisabeth Bank's Miri, who discover a world of possibilities when their platonic relationship crosses new boundaries. It's a credit to Smith that this collision of moral extremes is such fun." Louise Keller URBAN CINEFILE

"With its potty mouthed language, smutty boys night out sex scenes, an abundance of titties, penis exposure and simulated sex, 'Zack and Miri' is another example of why this great country of ours is in the grip of a moral recession. Smith's film is aimed at vulnerable young men and women whose morals are constantly under attack by a barrage of advertising and sex ladened films that suggest sex is the only panacea for all our woes. Sex, my friends, is Satans most powerful tool. And don't be fooled by the films final chapter when Smith tries to redeem himself by disguising this smutty, trashy little film as a 'love' story. If you have any class, you'll give this pile of dog poop a big miss." The Reverend Hardlie Ghetzhithoff COMMITTEE FOR A PORN FREE AMERICA "What's the difference between 'Zack and Miri' and a real porn movie? The porn movies cheaper, the sex is better, the acting is far superior and, you don't have to line-up at the candy bar. Don't accept an inferior product. Have some balls! Buy genuine porn and keep hard working Americans on the job." Mary Melons PORN ACTORS GUILD OF AMERICA "Zack and Miri isn't very funny. Laugh-out-loud bits here are as rare as real breasts in an adult film." Linda Barnard TORONTO STAR "Concentrates on juvenile obsessions with foul language, free sex, and genital humor attempting to reduce American culture to its lowest common denominator." Tony Medley TOLUCAN TIMES "It's films like "Zack and Miri Make A Porno" that are leading Americans and this great country of ours down a steep road to hell. Don't tell me pornographies harmless. It's not, and I should know. It's worse than crack cocaine, heroin, alcohol and caffiene. Once it gets a hold it never lets go. I blame the internet and those high and mighty film critics who keep telling us its art imitating life. Don't believe them! I wore out two LCD screens, four keyboards, six mouse's and, a couple of damn expensive hard-drives thanks to porn. Even worse: my eyesight has detriorated so bad I now need prescription glasses." 'Addicted' (name withheld as requested) PORN ADDICTS ANONYMOUS "This film is a fine example of living the American dream. It shows how anyone who is prepared to pursue their dream, can, by initiative, vision and ingenuity, still make it to the top. It's hard working, selfless people like Zack and Miri, who have helped make the United States of America the envy of the free world. Pornography has been the backbone of this country for decades. Take pornography out of this country and what are you left with? A big empty hole that needs filling." Spokesperson for the KEEP PORN IN AMERICA COALITION

Synopsis

Lifelong friends and roommates Zack and Miri are facing hard times and a mountain of debt. The two have maintained a chaste sexual relationship even agreeing on how to split the utility bills and rent payments. Disaster strikes as they make plans for their their high school reunion when both the electricity and water get cut off. In a twist of fate, the reunion will provide an answer to their problems thanks to the very handsome Bobby Long, who it turns out, Miri still has a crush on. Her dreams are shattered when Bobby's partner, Brandon St Randy reveals he stars in gay porn films and that Bobby is a closet gay. Zack seizes upon the idea of making a homegrown porno movie for some quick cash, enlisting the help of their friends. The two vow that having sex will not ruin their friendship. But as filming begins, what starts out as a business proposition between them, may turn into something more.

The Verdict "It's down-right disgustingly filthy, but then it is a Kevin Smith of "Clerks II" and "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" fame. And with Seth Rogen in the lead, you'd have every right to expect that there would be some very potty mouthed language in the dialogue. Thankfully, parents of young boys under the age of eighteen years have nothing to fear, thanks to an R18+ rating. That should ensure the little wankers don't end up completely blind by the time they reach 'manhood', whatever that is. Those who think they are missing out on some passage of rights film need not be disappointed, they can get plenty of titillating fun and oodles of nudity each Friday evening on SBS Television. The special screening audience I sat in with was young, between eighteen and say twenty five. Just the mention of 'porn' would have been enough to send them scampering to the theatre. For many of the guys in the audience, the carrot on the string here was, would the totally horny and gorgeous blonde Elizabeth Banks would get it all off (one way or the other). For 80% of its running time, "Zack And Miri Make A Porno" is outrageously, laugh your tits off and piss your pants humour, but then it coasts into a love story, something I'm sure audience members truly expected would happen anyway. If you go, don't leave like most of the sex starved drongoes did when the feature finished, because about a third of the way into the closing credits there is a segment worth hanging around for. Yes it is fun. Yes it will be both offensive and confronting for some audience members who probably shouldn't have come in the first place. Leave your brain and morals at the box-office to fully enjoy what is basically a very funny film. 4 STARS." The Inside Story What happens when two best friends up to their eyeballs in debt decide to have sex on camera for money? Kevin Smith was desperate for answers. He took a group of ragtag actors to Pittsburgh for two months to find out. Not many actors have successful directors sitting around, writing movie scripts with them in mind for the lead character. But for Kevin Smith, Zack was tailor written with Seth Rogen in mind. Kevin explains that when he watched "The Fourty Year Old Virgin", he fell in love: with Rogen. "I thought he was hilarious," 2006 Edinburgh International Film Festival Audience Award winner Smith ("Clerks II") explained. "I started thinking about him for this film, but I didn't get around to writing the script for while. When I finished the script, I started seeing his face everywhere. He was on billboards all around LA for KNOCKED UP. I figured he’d never consider my flick anymore." Harvey Weinstein introduced the pair casually a year earlier while Smith was working on "Clerks II" and Rogen was shooting a cameo in Kyle Newman's "Fanboys". Kevin took a chance and emailed Seth about the project. Smith recalls Rogen replied five minutes later. Seth’s email said, 'No bullshit.' "When I first got to Los Angeles and an agent asked me what I wanted to do, I said that I wanted to be in a Kevin Smith movie. And that hasn't changed," Rogen ("The Spiderwick Chronicles") says. "I was stoked." Smith personally delivered the script to Rogen’s door. The curly-haired comedian was roaring with laughter and couldn’t put it down. "I almost never do that with a script," says Rogen. "I just loved it. I thought it was great, I thought the idea was really funny, I thought it was sweet, and I thought the romance of it worked really well. I then gave it to my girlfriend to read, and she’s a really good gauge of this stuff also. If we both like a script, then I generally think its good, because we kind of have pretty different sensibilities. And she really liked it too." The simple truth of it made the humble actor pretty flattered. "Its rad," says Rogen. "I was really psyched. I was always a big fan of his. It’s crazy that this happened." And how does he descibe his character Zack Brown? "Zack is the kind of guy who never really did much after High School," Rogen explained. "I assume he never really went to college, although it’s not explicitly explained, and I’m the type of actor who does no back story whatsoever for himself. So, you know, he works in a coffee shop, and he lives with his best friend who he’s known his whole life, and he’s definitely not the happiest guy in the world, but he’s not miserable. He’s just kind of floating through life." When Rogen and Smith finally met again in Pittsburgh to shoot, "we got along really, really well, and I thought, this is a guy I would spend two months in Pittsburgh with," says Rogen. Smith and Rogen hit it off so well that when Rogen suggested Elizabeth Banks would be 'funny' in the female lead of Miri (having worked with her on "The Fourty Year Old Virgin"), Smith said, "done." Banks read the script, which she said she "loved immediately." A week later, the spunky blonde actress was in. Rogen pulled in some other friends too, like Craig Robinson (as Delaney), Gerry Bednob (as clueless Mr. Surya, a coffee shop owner), and Ricky Mabe (who plays porn star/sex machine Barry). Rogen also mentioned, off the cuff, how hilarious it would be to make Brandon Routh and Justin Long a gay porn couple. "They kind of look alike, and one’s really tall, and one is kinda short," he says. Two days later, the two actors were in Pittsburgh. So why are all Rogen's friends in the film? "Because it was my first time really working outside of my group of friends," says Rogen. "I felt I had to bring them on board just to keep me comfortable. Basically because I’m chicken shit. So, I tried to make sure familiar faces were around." 2003 Young Hollywood Award winning actress Banks (Exciting New Face Category) and Seth Rogen had amazing on-set and offset chemistry. They really each impressed the other. "I think we have been cursed with the 'adorable stick' as I like to call it," says Banks ("Role Models" & "Meet Dave"). "We’ve just been beating adorable over the head. And cute, there’s a lot of cute between us, a lot of 'meet cute' as they like to say in the romantic comedy world." How did she describe working with Rogen? She says it was "a constant surprise. And I mean that on a lot of levels actually. He does a lot of improvisation, so I have no idea what’s going to come out of his mouth half the time. But also, he is such a great actor. He’s a really legitimate romantic lead in this movie. I think it’s thrilling, and it’s going to be so fun for audiences to see him play something like this. He’s got that sort of stoner quality to him, like he has in most of his other roles, but in this one, he is truly a leading man, and I think that’s really special." Former adult porn star Traci Lords ("Adventures Of Tracy Dick", "Beverly Hills Copulator" & "Holly Does Hollywood 1") was also in awe of Rogen and Banks chemistry. "It blows my mind that he is in his twenties. He’s so young, and he is so completely on the money, and he’s really hilarious," says the former porn star."I’ve enjoyed standing across from him, and next to him. He’s got impeccable timing and he is really good." Of her co-star Banks, Lords offers: "I think she's absolutely charming in this film. I'll go on record as saying this will be the movie that makes Elizabeth Banks a huge star. I think she is that good in this." From his raunchy reputation, you would think Rogen would relish shooting sex scenes, but he says his favorite scene to shoot was actually a simple scene with him and Banks, where the two are walking and talking in the snow. "I also liked shooting the scene where we walk up to our high school reunion. That was one where I felt very in-tune with Elizabeth." They were almost too in-tune on set. The two would laugh off camera constantly and keep the energy flowing. They spent one entire afternoon figuring out every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that could be turned into a porn title, like "Total Recock" and "Kindergarten Cock". The playful thespians have no qualms talking about their first interaction with pornography. "I’d say the very first time: I mean the first time I saw dirty pictures, like Penthouse and Playboy were under my uncle’s bed," Banks recalls. "And he had a water bed. So, my cousins and I used to climb under there, slide under there. I think we were like seven. We’d try to get a page out perfectly, so he wouldn’t notice." Rogen’s first porn experience wasn’t as playful, but even dirtier: literally. "I think I was around eleven years old and I was doing a play in Chinatown in Vancouver, and my mom had dropped me off, and I was a little early, so I walked around. And bunched up in the gutter was a few pages of a porno magazine. It was kind of in a ball, and I remember I walked by it, but I saw there on the street, and I just kept walking. I walked like ten feet and I stopped. I was like fuck: I have to go back and get it, and so I like circled it a few times like a shark." "When the coast was clear, I just grabbed it and shoved it in my pocket, and it was all wet I remember because it had been raining. And I shoved it in there, and I didn’t look at it. I went in and rehearsed my play, it was in the pocket the whole time, and then I went home and I looked at it and I remember it was all kind of like wrinkled, and it was stuck together, and when I finally looked at it: it blew my mind." When Seth Rogen was in high school, he remembers overhearing his friends singing the "Berserkers song" and asked where that was from. They told him they had just seen the movie "Clerks" and that it was filthy, and real, with guys who actually spoke like them, and not some made-up, phony Americanized suburban language. It was a precise portrayal of the real thing. "It’s the first movie that anyone had really seen that was like that," Rogen notes. "I mean, I guess movies like "Diner" started that trend in a way, but "Clerks" was the first one where the guys really talked how we talked to one another. We would just have a ten-minute conversation about blowjobs, you know?" Ironically, "Clerks" is what inspired Rogen to start writing the first drafts of "Superbad". Being an improvisation whiz, Seth Rogen is used to winging scenes, adlibbing and not sticking to the script religiously, or even memorizing lines. So, working with Smith, a filmmaker who is notorious for sticking to his script, was a lot different than what Rogen is used to. Banks's experience with director Smith was new to her. She went to his house and they spoke, but there was never any major audition process. She remembers him asking, "do you want to do this?" That was it. "The next thing I knew, it was official. I was Miri." But what about the 'naughty' scenes? "Shooting nudity and simulated sex could’ve been off the charts uncomfortable, but since it was with folks like Mewes and Katie; folks who're inordinately comfortable with their bodies either dressed or no, it wasn’t Hell on Earth for me," says Smith. "The two of them didn't seem to mind wearing next to nothing during the scenes." "It got real the day that we went to the strip club," said Banks. "When we were sitting there staring up into this girl’s voluptuous bum, you could see her brains I think. Uh, and her pierced clitoris." Elizabeth Banks enjoyed working with Jason Mewes ("Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"), who played sex maniac Lester, mostly for the fact that his penis is an "amazing character" in the movie. In a scene within the faux porno movie, called "Swallow My Cockaccino", Mewes takes on Stacey, (who is played by adult film icon Katie Morgan), a "whorista" behind the counter of "Ween and Dong", a faux espresso joint. "God, it was awesome," says Morgan ("Blonde Crack Attack", "Double Decker Sandwich 9" & "Goin' Deep 3"), who counts this as her first mainstream movie, after starring in over two hundred adult porn movies. "Wow. I don’t even know quite how to put it into words." So how 'porno' is the film? Banks admits to doing "way worse things in movies than I did in this," and said "it was kind of fun and tame, actually". Rogen also said that he’s done "unquestionably more graphic stuff," especially compared to the explicit sex scenes he did in "Knocked Up". "My ass isn’t even in this movie. I shaved my back for nothing." "In terms of the stuff I've done in the past," Smith admits, "it’s probably closest to "Chasing Amy". It's very direct and dirty but it's very sweet." "It’s about two people who actually didn’t know they loved each other and then find out they do," Morgan says. "See, it’s a good, happy movie. The boobs are just for, you know, looking at. A little bit extra." Crew Bytes "ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO" was .......
directed by Kevin Smith ["Clerks", "Mallrats" and "Chasing Amy"]; written by Kevin Smith ["Clerks", "Mallrats" and "Dogma"]; set decoration by Diana Stoughton ["Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh", "Dogma" and "The Mothman Prophecies"]; costume design by Salvador Pérez Jr ["The Man in the Iron Mask", "Drumline" and "Catch That Kid"]; production design by Robert Holtzman ["Chasing Amy", "Dogma" and "Diary of a City Priest"]; director of photography David Klein ["Wish You Were Dead", "Fool's Gold" and "The Devil's Hand"], edited by Kevin Smith ["Clerks", "Dogma" and "Jersey Girl"]. Who's Who?

Elizabeth Banks Seth Rogen Jason Mewes Gerry Bednob Edward Janda Jennifer Schwalbach Smith Kenny Hotz Brandon Routh Anne Wade Justin Long Tom Savini Jeff Anderson Ricky Mabe Katie Morgan Craig Robinson Traci Lords Tisha Campbell-Martin Lauren Anne Miller

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Miriam Linky Zack Brown Lester Mr Surya Customer Betsy Zack II Bobby Long Roxanne Brandon St Randy Jenkins Deacon Barry Stacey Delaney Bubbles Delaney's Wife Moaner and Groaner

Run Time 101 minutes Rated R18+ [AUST] Copyright ©2009 - The Weinstein Company - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected ©2000-2009 The Movie Pages & impact Internet Services All Rights Reserved