Pineapple Express; is it a stoner movie? No. Is it an action movie? No. However it is a stoner/action hybrid jam packed with pot smoking, chase scenes and a whole lot of comedy. The new flick, directed by indie favorite David Gordon Green, tells the story of a stoner named Dale (Seth Rogen) who witnesses a murder-in-progress while working his job as a process server. Convinced the killer saw him flee the scene, Dale goes on the run, enlisting the help of his needy and annoying dealer Saul (James Franco).
Seth Rogen
Character: Dale Denton
Occupation: Process Server/Weed Smoker
Hollywood.com: You’ve got some pretty cool smoker moves, exhaling the smoke and then inhaling it back in. Where did you learn that?
Seth Rogen: It’s a pretty good one, huh… just growing up in Vancouver. You kind of learn that one early on, I guess [laughs]… I’ve heard someone call it a Ghost Face… It’s called The Rogen. Do it with your friends.
HW: You played a stoner before in Knocked Up. So is there some method acting going on here?
SR: [Laughs] I guess so. I mean, no. I don’t smoke weed on set all day. I just want to say that, you know, not all day. After lunch you get tired. What can you do? To me the fact that a character smokes weed isn’t really what I hang my hat on necessarily. To me Arthur and James Bond aren’t the same because they both drink. So I would kind of equate it to that. They’re different guys who both have a similar habit. To me they’re very different guys though.
HW: How much bro love is there between you and your costars?
SR: Mad bro love. Is that the right expression? I think. We get along. I don’t know. We’re all friends. It’s very bonding to beat the crap out of each other. You’re very physical and you’re in these somewhat homoerotic positions. There’s a lot of me on Danny McBride‘s back. I rode Danny‘s back for two days.
HW: I appreciate you bringing Huey Lewis back to the world of movie soundtracks. Can you talk about that inspiration?
SR: Thank you. I mean, we made this movie and I would say that it was somewhat of an homage to ’80’s action movies and in its own way an ’80’s action movie in and of itself. We thought ‘what’s the one thing that every great ’80’s movie has?’ which is a song by Huey Lewis that says the title of the movie [in the song]. I had actually been singing it in my head as we were editing the movie. I just kind of wrote a version of it. As I was driving to the editing room I would be singing, Pineapple Express – and then I ran it by these guys one day, I remember. I was like, ‘You know what would be crazy, if we could get Huey Lewis to do a song for this.’ For some reason I thought that would be like unattainable, but it was way easier than you’d think. Two days later we had a song from Huey Lewis [laughs]. I didn’t realize you could just call him up and he’d be like, ‘Okay.’
Next: James Franco
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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
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Danny McBride
Character: Red
Occupation: Pot Dealer
Hollywood.com: Did you read the script thinking you were going to be the dead head?
Danny McBride: When they gave it to me I was like, ‘I die 30 pages in? You motherfuckers.’
HW: You’ve got a great fight scene with Dale and Saul, in an even greater outfit.
DM: Yes. One of the first things when David [Gordon Green] asked if I wanted to do this movie he said, ‘The first thing is that you’re going to shave your armpits.’ I was like, ‘Why, David?’ He said, ‘Well, that’s what you’re going to need to figure out.’ The fight scene was actually a lot of fun. We spent like a week doing that… It was pretty hardcore. We would just beat each other all day long. Break fingers, yeah, It was fun.
HW: You sustained a pretty hard bong hit to the head – literally. How did you handle that?
DM: That was great. Franco is a dedicated actor and he obviously didn’t pull anything. It was a breakaway glass bong, but it was actually filled with water and so it had a little weight to it…I got a little concussed.
Next: David Gordon Green[PAGEBREAK]
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
