Ridin’ High on the ‘Pineapple Express’
By Emily Christianson, Hollywood.com Staff
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008
David Gordon Green
Director
Hollywood.com: What was it like entering the Hollywood system from the Indie world?
David Gordon Green: Making it was a blast. I'd kind of gotten to the point professionally where I was pretty emotionally exhausted from making dramatic films. So I was looking to do a comedy and found a group of guys that were really supportive of my interests in it though it was a little outside of my wheel house. Strangely, I visited the set of Knocked Up and met Seth and Evan and Judd [Apatow] and Shauna [Robertson] and it was amazing how much their process seemed familiar to me, translating that into the work that I had done and giving actors a lot of freedom and doing a lot of improvisation and a total respect and collaboration with all the department heads and all the crews and just really making it an enjoyable industry rather than just clocking in and doing a job which a lot of movies are. We really decided to blend the two teams and see what would happen and it was a great opportunity for all of us to do something outside of the expected and contrast and push each other to do our best. We had a lot of fun.
HW: What was the biggest challenge then in working on this picture?
DGG: Honestly, the biggest challenge was that we had a comedy budget. We really got excited the more we got into the development of it about blowing stuff up and having shoot outs. That stuff costs money. When you want to have a car chase and they give you a day to do it and you say, 'Well, we need like a week –' and then you compromise and do it in four. It's all the kind of negotiating the financial things, but we were really fortunate to work with a studio that was really supportive of these guys. It was before Superbad and Knocked Up had even come out, but everyone just felt really great about them and the energy surrounding Seth and Evan and Judd – all of these guys – and the idea of getting Franco back into comedy as well. Then also it was bringing in Danny who I went to college with and a few new faces like Amber [Heard] and Gary Cole and Rosie Perez. It was just making a lot of friends and trying something new.
HW: Is 227 actually watchable if you're high?
DGG: That's one of the things that when I read it in the script, in the script it was Family Ties and I was like, 'Absolutely not.'
Pineapple Express opens in theaters on Aug. 6, 2008