Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen have brought one of the most personal projects of their careers to Cannes, a hand-drawn animated film about Alzheimer’s disease that is based directly on their own family’s experience.
TanglesAdapted from the graphic novel of the same name by Sarah Leavitt, it follows a young illustrator named Sarah as she navigates her mother’s diagnosis.
For the Rogens, the story hit them from the first page.
They began dating more than twenty years ago, just when Adele, Miller Rogen’s mother, showed the first signs of the illness that would affect her during the last sixteen years of her life.
“There were so many similarities between my family and Sarah’s family,” said Miller Rogen, speaking at the Majestic Hotel in Cannes the day before the film’s premiere.
“Our mothers were teachers and were diagnosed in their early 50s. I identified with the denial, fear and sense of loneliness that can come with a dementia diagnosis.”
Rogen was equally candid about how deeply the story resonated.
“Everything we experienced firsthand was reflected in this story,” he said. “I remember being in the kitchen or around the dining room tables, yelling at people that something wasn’t right here.”
The film took more than a decade to make, partly because of Rogen’s busy schedule as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand comedy stars, and partly because the subject matter made it a difficult sell.
As Miller Rogen noted, “How many black-and-white animated movies are there about Alzheimer’s?”
Despite that, the pair assembled an impressive cast including Bryan Cranston and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, with Rogen himself taking on a supporting role as the well-meaning and musically desperate boyfriend of Sarah’s sister.
The character fancies herself a singer, which meant Rogen had to offer deliberately out-of-tune versions, including Melissa Etheridge’s. come to my window.
He was relieved to know that perfection was not required.
“They assured me, ‘You don’t have to be a great singer,'” he said. “That makes him a little tragic in his own way. But he doesn’t care. He has a lot of spirit.”
Beyond the film, the couple has long used their platform to advocate for Alzheimer’s research and family support through their nonprofit Hilarity for Charity.
Rogen was also in Cannes with news on another front, the second season of his award-winning Hollywood satire. The study will feature a sequence from the Venice Film Festival, recreated completely from scratch due to the show’s signature single-take format.
Madonna will be among the celebrity cameos, although Rogen kept details close to his chest. “It’s crazy,” he said. “I’ll leave it at that.”
