When Sausage Party hits theaters on August 12, it'll be the first R-rated animated movie to get a wide theatrical release since 2007's Aqua Teen Hunger Force. And while it may look like a straight-up Pixar spoof on the outside, Sausage Party is so much more than a spoof in that it works really hard to be just as funny, emotional and memorable as anything from the animation wizards at Disney and Pixar.

Part of that authenticity comes from its music, as Sausage Party -- like many classic animated movies before it -- includes a fun tune called "The Great Beyond," which is what the various supermarket foods and products call the world outside. And if there's a reason the song is so catchy, it's because a Disney legend helped craft it: Alan Menken.

Menken isn't just good with music, he's one of the best. We're talking eight Oscars for songs from Aladdin ("A Whole New World") to Beauty and the Beast ("Beauty and the Beast") to The Little Mermaid ("Under the Sea"). Menken is a Disney legend, and when Fandango sat down with Sausage Party cowriter and star Seth Rogen, we wanted to know exactly how this filthy R-rated comedy landed the Disney great.

"It wasn't as hard a sell as you would think," Rogen said. "I think [director] Conrad [Vernon] was working with him on something, and was telling him we're making a movie that's kind of an homage in many ways to the movies he made that the writers grew up on... and there's a song in it. And he was like, I'll do that song! We were shocked."

Warning: This song is NSFW and includes foul language

The idea for Sausage Party bounced around Rogen's close group of friends for years, first presenting itself during a dinner with recurring Rogen collaborators Evan Goldberg and Jonah Hill, and then continuing to pop up at random times, including in between takes while Rogen and friends were making other movies. 

"Whenever we're about to write or direct something, we really try to do our homework as to what we want to rip off throughout the process," Rogen said. "A lot of those movies that came out while we were growing up -- Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, stuff like that -- and the Pixar movies. Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo -- pretty much every Pixar movie is pretty f*****g dope. We knew we could never do that, so we thought we'd do the version of that we could accomplish, which is the more subversive version of it. The version that isn't trying to appeal to every single human. We just can't -- we're not that smart."

Part of making an homage to classic Disney and Pixar movies came with the realization that they actually had to hit many of the same notes... literally.

"At first we just thought we'll do our version of one of those [Disney/Pixar] movies, but we realized in doing that we had to kind of do our best to make a movie that was as good as those movies and had a lot of the same traits as those movies," Rogen said. "Alan [Menken] then said he'd do the whole score for the entire movie, and it made sense. Why do the ironic jokey version of a Disney score when we can get the guy who does the Disney scores!"
 
 
That's the big difference between something like Sausage Party and a straight spoof like, say, Scary Movie. Rogen and his team aren't just manufacturing a bunch of jokes that serve only as references to pop culture and other movies. Sure, there's some of that, but what sets this film apart is that it's actually a really funny and inventive animated film all on its own. You'll definitely spot its influences, but they don't in any way overpower its original story.


 

"It was the same thing when we made This Is the End," Rogen said. "We couldn't just make fun of the horror-apocalyptic movie, it actually had to be a horror-apocalyptic movie -- which was somewhat attainable, because they're generally not that good. It was the same thing with this -- we couldn't just make fun of a Pixar movie, it kind of had to be a Pixar movie, which was an incredibly intimidating realization because they're the best movies. At that moment, I remembered thinking...f**k. We have to really dump every ounce and thought and creativity and intelligence we have intro trying to make this live up to the things that it's kind of commenting on. And I don't think it does, but I think it's our best shot!" 

Sausage Party hits theaters on August 12. We'll have more with Seth Rogen later this week, so stay tuned!