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 draws directly from their own family’s experience.
Tangles, adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s graphic novel of the same name, follows a young illustrator named Sarah as she navigates her mother’s diagnosis.
For the Rogens, the story hit close to home from the very first page.
They began dating more than twenty years ago, just as Miller Rogen’s mother Adele was showing the earliest signs of the illness that would affect her for the final sixteen years of her life.
“There were so many similarities between my family and Sarah’s family,” Miller Rogen said, speaking at the Majestic Hotel in Cannes the day before the film’s premiere.
“Our moms were both teachers who were diagnosed in their early 50s. I related to the denial, fear and sense of aloneness that can come with a dementia diagnosis.”
Rogen was equally candid about how deeply the story resonated.
“All this stuff we experienced firsthand was reflected in this story,” he said. “I remember being in kitchens or around dining room tables, screaming at people that something was not right here.”
The film took more than a decade to make, partly due to Rogen’s packed 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 couple assembled an impressive cast that includes Bryan Cranston and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, with Rogen himself taking a supporting role as the well-meaning, musically hopeless boyfriend of Sarah’s sister.
The character fancies himself a singer, which meant Rogen had to deliver deliberately off-key covers, including Melissa Etheridge’s Come to My Window.
He was relieved to learn perfection wasn’t required.
“They assured me, ‘he doesn’t have to be a great singer,'” he said. “That makes him kind of tragic in his own way. But he doesn’t care. He has a lot of spirit.”
Beyond the film, the couple have long used their platform to advocate for Alzheimer’s research and family support through their non-profit Hilarity for Charity.
Rogen was also in Cannes with news on another front, the second season of his award-winning Hollywood satire The Studio will feature a Venice Film Festival sequence, recreated entirely from scratch due to the show’s signature single-take format.
Madonna will be among the celebrity cameos, though Rogen was keeping the details close to his chest. “It is crazy,” he said. “I’ll just leave it at that.”
