Ridin’ High on the ‘Pineapple Express’
By Emily Christianson, Hollywood.com Staff
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008
James Franco
Character: Saul Silver
Occupation: Pot Dealer
Hollywood.com: Did any of the great pot smokers of the past influence this character?
James Franco: Yeah. I watched a lot of pot movies before we did this. My favorites were always the characters in movies that weren't necessarily in stoner movies. So, Spicoli in Fast Times which isn't exactly a stoner movie or The Big Lebowski which I think is more than a stoner movie or Brad Pitt in True Romance. I don't know. Somehow they're like goofy stoner guys, but there's something more going on, I guess. So maybe that's the kind of inspiration that they gave me.
HW: Is it true you got a concussion while filming a scene?
JF: No. Danny [McBride] got the concussion. I took a head shot but I’ve got a hard head. In the woods when we're running around like morons there's a shot where I run into a tree and that's actually me hitting the tree and I make a sound like that…My head got cut and I got stitches. Evan [Goldberg] took me to the hospital…But you can see that I finished the shot. I got up and ran off-camera…Then I looked around and everyone had very wide eyes because blood started pouring down my face. If you buy the DVD I'm sure it'll be on there in the behind-the-scenes.
HW: It didn’t make the final cut, but can you tell us why you decided to bite Rosie Perez’s ass in the movie?
JF: We were kind of just [riffing]. We had a fight scene and it was kind of unusual, a male/female fight scene which is fairly unusual. Then we had one take where were like, 'Let’s just wrestle and see what happens.' I had my shot and I went for it. I didn't think I bit her that hard, but she said there were teeth marks and I think that one of her cousins was after me after that she said, one of her family members. I'm joking.
Next: Danny McBride