Seth Rogen Wanted To Cut TMNT: Mutant Mayhem's 'Stupid' Director Cameo [Exclusive]
This post contains minor spoilers for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem."
Early in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem," the title characters walk despondently through the sewers, melancholic and ashamed that they have to live their lives underground and hide from society. It stinks. Literally. The tragedy of the moment is then emphasized by one of the biggest low-key laughs in the film. Through the open drain, the Turtles hear a human exclaim "I love being young and free to go places!" It's not a super-obvious joke (it's deliberately mixed into the background just a bit), but it's an amazing background gag, one that manages to layer humor on top of a moving moment without undercutting it.
The voice behind that gag? None other than director Jeff Rowe. But this joke didn't seem like a winner at first. In fact, producer Seth Rogen wasn't a fan of the joke at all and insisted they cut it from the movie. Then a test screening turned it all around.
'This is stupid. We have to kill this.'
In an interview with /Film's Ethan Anderton, Rowe shared the story behind the cameo, and Rogen's initial opposition to it:
"When the Turtles are sadly returning to the sewer, they overhear a human remark, 'I love being young and free to go places,' which is a joke that we had. We just scratched into a screening and Seth was like, 'This is stupid. We have to kill this.' And then we showed it at a test screening in Burbank and it killed. It was a huge laugh. And then I think Seth was begrudgingly like, 'Okay, fine. I guess we'll keep that.'"
Seth Rogen, a veteran of the "Judd Apatow School of Using Test Screenings to Hone a Movie" (not a real thing, but it should be), clearly knows that, sometimes, no one is more correct than the audience.
With the joke intact, Rowe and his team tried re-recording the line with other actors, but his delivery "happened to be the funniest." So now, his voice is immortalized as "Guy Who Likes Being Young And Free To Go Places." Yes. That is what the character is named in the closing credits. Rowe calls this "my dumb embarrassing joke to myself," as it's a sequel of sorts to another one of his cameos:
"I also have a cameo in [The Mitchells vs. the Machines] as 'the guy who likes fun.' And I think I'm credited as 'Guy Who Likes Fun.' It's when the robots are taking over and it's like, 'Hey, I like fun. No, people say that about me, I really do like fun.'"
And considering how much fun "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" is, that checks out.