With some comedies, the laughs start with the title and absurd premise.
Take “An American Pickle,” which features Seth Rogen in dual leading roles as 1920s immigrant Herschel Greenbaum, who is brined alive for 100 years after falling into a factory vat of pickles and re-emerges in 2020 to live with his Brooklynite app developer great-grandson Ben.
“There was a real sense from people I know that thought maybe it was a joke and not an actual movie that we were spending huge amounts of time and energy working on,” says Rogen, whose “Pickle” will silence skeptics. The film is bypassing a theatrical release to stream on HBO Max (Aug. 6, with a trailer that dropped Friday). “It was in fact real. So I’m excited to show it to people.”
