Seth Rogen’s Live-Tweeting of ‘Cats’ While ‘Pretty Stoned’ Is Purrfect Distraction Right Now

And he still doesn’t know what a “jellicle” is

Seth Rogen Cats
Getty Images/Universal

Like an act of divine intervention, Tom Hooper’s big-budget bomb “Cats” was made available for digital rental on Tuesday while the world is home alone and self-isolated, and thankfully, Seth Rogen took to Twitter to entertain us all by live-tweeting his surreal and “trippy” experience watching it.

Rogen on Tuesday night said he got high and watched “Cats” for the first time, and no, he still doesn’t know what a “jellicle” is or does.

“I’m pretty stoned and watching ‘Cats.’ I’ve never seen the broadway show. It is truly trippy. Am I supposed to know what a Jellicle is? They’ve said it 200,000 times but I don’t know what’s happening haha,” Rogen said to kick off his 27-tweet thread. “How many times they say the word ‘cat’ in a this?”

Rogen was astonished that filmmaker Tom Hooper managed to get his actors to train so diligently on how to act and move like a cat, even pointing out that the actors actually went to “cat school” to learn.

“I have a hard time getting actors to rehearse for like 20 mins. They got these people to train to lick their hands and rub them in their hair for weeks,” Rogen said. “CG cat people dancing is odd. Is it impressive? I don’t know!”

But it was the more specific observations that stood out, like that Judi Dench is wearing a fur coat, or that Ian McKellen legitimately has human fingers, or that Jason Derulo’s feet don’t seem to touch the ground when he dances. He did however refrain from criticism of Idris Elba, and for good reason.

“Some cats in pants. Some no pants,” Rogen added. “These cats are straight up wearing white chuck taylors!!! Did they commission little chucks from the cat shoe maker?”

He was impressed by the scale of the film’s production design but couldn’t process just what size the cats were supposed to be.

“Also the scale is bizarre. The behind the scenes features, which are amazing, said the set is 2.5 times scale but that would mean cats are like 60 pounds in real life,” Rogen pointed out. “These cats are like 2 feet tall in this world. That’s a huge f—ing cat.”

Shortly after Rogen and others completed their live-tweet experiences, the writer of “Howard the Duck” Jack Waz shared an anecdote on Twitter about a VFX artist he knew who worked on the film. He explained that his friend was hired to finish about 400 shots worth of special effects doing a very specific job.

“His entire job was to remove CGI buttholes that had been inserted a few months before. Which means that, somewhere out there, there exists a butthole cut of ‘Cats,’” Waz said.

This morning, Rogen and even filmmakers like Rian Johnson are now calling on Universal to #ReleasetheButtholeCut. While we don’t know for sure if that story is true, the world needs to know for the good of all jellicles.

As for star Judi Dench, she also had some advice on how to stay occupied during these trying times: “Just keep laughing. That’s all we can do,” she said in a short video while wearing a delightful set of floppy dog ears.

Check out Rogen’s tweet thread below:

https://twitter.com/jackwaz/status/1240135051288948742

Brian Welk

Film Reporter • brian.welk@thewrap.com • Twitter: @brianwelk

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