UCLA Awards Seth Rogen Degree in Film Criticism

by Staff

WESTWOOD — It’s been a while since the Sack covered UCLA. Well guess what? Time’s up. And it’s not even football season.

Our report begins at the Arclight Hollywood movie theater, where Seth Rogen recently went to watch the newest Clint Eastwood film, American Sniper. The film stars Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle, a character with personality traits somewhere between Rocket Raccoon (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Faceman (The A-Team).

Rogen, after seeing the film, took to Twitter, where he drew a comparison between Sniper and the Nazi propaganda short film featured in Inglorious Basterds. Normally, this report would wrap up with some minor coverage of the backlash that Rogen was subjected to, but the Bruins just had to take things a step further.

Rogen was awarded an honorary degree in film criticism from UCLA’s Film School, based on his “poignant and introspective analysis of the cinematic mise en scene in Eastwood’s opus,” according to his degree. (Editor’s note: his degree was printed on wide ruled notebook paper, which has proven easier for UCLA students to read.)

Rogen becomes the third UCLA graduate this week to have received a degree solely based on a critical cinematic analysis of less than 140 characters. A prestigious program like UCLA’s gives no more than one credit per character, so Rogen did have to get at least two sentences in there, both of which had to be about film.

UCLA’s Film School was unavailable for comment, but the Sack was able to find their school’s resume online, for more background:

The UCLA Film School has turned out a number of industry-leading professionals in the film industry. Industry leaders like Francis Ford Coppola have graduated from our industry-focused program. Alumni in the industry have made films such as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and Twixt. The industry daily benefits from the industry insight presented by our graduates. Go see Twixt, we heard it was pretty good, and it’s totally on Netflix Instant.

When asked if they planned to award an honorary degree to Rogen, the USC Film School staff simply remarked, “We only give honorary degrees to Steven.”