Seth Rogen’s An American Pickle debuts on HBO Max today. The film is based upon the 2013 short story “Sell Out” by Simon Rich, who served as screenwriter for the adaption.
The film follows Herschel Greenbaum, a struggling laborer who immigrates to America in 1920 with dreams of building a better life for his beloved family. One day, while working at his factory job, he falls into a vat of pickles and is brined for 100 years. The brine preserves him perfectly and when he emerges in present-day Brooklyn, he finds that he hasn’t aged a day. But when he seeks out his family, he is horrified to learn that his only surviving relative is his great-grandson, Ben Greenbaum, a mild-mannered computer programmer whom Herschel can’t even begin to understand.
