Rogen lives his dream with ‘Zack and Miri’

Rogen lives his dream with ‘Zack and Miri’

TORONTO — All Seth Rogen really wanted when he came to Hollywood was to make a movie with Kevin Smith.

His dream came true, and more: Rogen got to make a dirty movie with Smith.

Rogen stars with Elizabeth Banks in Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” a romantic comedy with a whole lot of skin showing.

The 26-year-old actor recalled a meeting nearly a decade ago with a prospective agent who asked what his career goals were. That’s when he confessed his desire to work with Smith, whose profanity-spewing raconteurs were an influence on the sort of films Rogen eventually would make himself.

The agent “said to me that’s probably easier than you think. I hadn’t realized that Kevin Smith movies didn’t make any money,” Rogen said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “To me, he was like Steven Spielberg. I didn’t realize the difference between good movies and movies that make a lot of money.”

With the “Clerks” movies and films such as “Chasing Amy” and “Dogma,” Smith has built a huge cult fan base but has yet to break widely into the mainstream.

Inspiration delays U2

Scratch the new U2 album off your Christmas list. Singer Bono says the album, which had been anticipated for release this fall, will now arrive sometime in 2009. But he says there’s a good reason for the delay.

“We’ve hit a rich songwriting vein, and we don’t want to stop,” Bono says on the band’s Web site, U2.com.

The group has been at work since last year in studios in Dublin, Ireland; Morocco; and France.

Today’s birthdays

Comedian JoAnne Worley is 71. Country singer David Allen Coe is 69. Singer-bassist Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) is 65. Actress Swoosie Kurtz is 64. Comedian-actress Jane Curtin is 61. Actor-comedian Jeff Foxworthy is 50. Country singer Mark Chesnutt is 45. Rapper Noreaga is 31. Rapper Foxy Brown is 29.