Smokers wild

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg talk up their
stoner action comedy, Pineapple Express

JOINT VENTURE: Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride

by MALCOLM FRASER

Though recent output from the Judd Apatow machine has ranged from crapola (Drillbit Taylor) to decent (Walk Hard, Forgetting Sarah Marshall), the cabal still has leverage from Knocked Up and the minor comic masterpiece Superbad. The latter two, of course, owe much of their charm to unlikely superstar Seth Rogen, the native Vancouverite who’s been part of the Apatow crew since the tragically cancelled series Freaks and Geeks.

Now, Rogen and childhood friend/Superbad co-scribe Evan Goldberg bring us Pineapple Express, which Apatow calls “a very important weed action movie” starring Rogen and fellow Freaks and Geeks veteran James Franco as two stoners mixed up in a crime caper. The hallmarks of the Apatow/Rogen style are all present—improv-driven dialogue, note-perfect stoner banter, juvenile yet somehow touching displays of male bonding and inspired casting.

After a press conference at this year’s Just for Laughs Film Festival, where Rogen and Goldberg cracked wise with Apatow and co-stars Danny McBride and Craig Robinson, I was escorted from room to room (with a level of seriousness and security befitting the Pentagon) for a brief interview with the screenwriters. In truly Canadian style, Rogen politely introduces himself with a handshake, stating “Hi, I’m Seth” as if I didn’t know. His profane but laid-back manner and booming laugh are much the same as onscreen. The barefoot Goldberg, meanwhile, looks and talks just like a Vancouver dude still surprised to be mixed up in the Hollywood game.

Mirror: This film and Superbad seem like a new genre, the bromantic comedy, where women are kind of peripheral and it’s all about the male bonding.

Seth Rogen: That’s what’s funny. To me, there’s nothing funnier than a guy telling another guy that he’s hurt his feelings.

Evan Goldberg: When I first came to L.A., Seth was friends with all these people, a whole bunch of actors. I’d never dealt with actors. And I remember one of the first things he said—he was like, “A dude cried to me today. Actually, half of my friends here have cried to me. These emotional guys, I don’t know what to do about it.” And we just found it so funny.

SR: Our group of friends is, I guess, kind of callous. And then as I moved out and started meeting more creative types, it was kind of like, “Oh, these people really talk about their emotions a lot” (laughs). Now, every idea we think of involves guys working out their relationships.

STONED TALK EXPRESS

After an introduction dramatizing the moment where pot was declared illegal, the film introduces Rogen as a process server and chronic pothead. On his rounds, he visits his dealer (Franco), who turns him on to a new, highly rare and potent strain of weed called Pineapple Express.

FRIENDS INDEED: Rogen, Franco, Apatow, Green, producer Shauna Robertson and Goldberg

But when Rogen witnesses a gangland slaying and flees, dropping a half-smoked joint at the scene, he and Franco get caught up in an escalating adventure involving rival criminal gangs, corrupt cops, a hapless middleman (McBride) and a sinister duo of hitmen played by Robinson (who stood out as the beleaguered club bouncer in Knocked Up and as warehouse foreman Darryl in The Office) and top-notch character actor Kevin Corrigan.

Subverting expectations, Pineapple begins as a light comedy, and eventually turns into a surprisingly violent action flick. Even more unexpected is the man in the director’s chair, David Gordon Green—previously known for indie dramas such as All the Real Girls and Snow Angels with a decided lack of either comedy or action.

M: On the face of it, David Gordon Green seems like a strange choice to direct the movie. You guys said in the press conference that he has a really unique directing style.

EG: He’s the weirdest man on earth.

SR: Yeah, he’s a really weird guy.

EG: If you met him, you’d be like, “Oh, Pineapple Express.” But his other movies…it’d be like if I made Schindler’s List. No, that’d make more sense.

M: Can you give any examples of this directing style?

EG: Rewatching his movies, the way he gets his actors to get a face that’s really dramatic and intense, and makes you think they’re thinking something, is he says, “Now take a shit.” (both laugh)

SR: Or he tells you to sing the lines.

EG: He made Rosie Perez literally say, (singing) “I was down at the police department and I saw them there…” And he used it!

M: Early in the film, your character expresses some strong opinions about legalizing pot. Does that reflect your own opinions?

BOTH: Yeah!

EG: Pot not being legal is the stupidest fucking thing in the whole universe.

SR: The whole opening, we thought it’d be fun to show the moment when weed became illegal. To us, it’s just a funny scene, but if you wanna really think about it, it’s kind of saying that nothing else would have happened beyond that point if weed was not made illegal. There’d be no drug dealers, there’d be no murders by drug dealers—there’d be no illegal drug trade.

EG: It’s a conduit for criminals to make money instead of us benefiting from a trade. Pharmaceutical companies don’t want it to happen, because they’d lose money. It’s all just a big pile of bullshit.

M: The film starts off as a straight-ahead stoner comedy, and then goes in a different direction.

EG: ’Cause we duped you! (laughs)

SR: We used the word “escalade” a lot when we were writing the movie.

EG: We constantly talked about a ramp.

SR: We wanted you to take a scene from the beginning and a scene from the end, and not be able to fathom how you would get from Point A to Point B. But we didn’t want there to be a distinct leap, at the same time. We wanted it to be a gradual progression into madness—it slowly just keeps taking you in this more extreme direction.

HOLLYWOOD HOSERS

The film’s release schedule makes it seem like a triumphant return, and at the press conference, Apatow self-deprecatingly referred to the crew cashing in their chips after Knocked Up. But as Rogen and Goldberg reveal, many of the projects actually got rolling in the same time period.

M: When did this project come together—was it after the success of Knocked Up?

SR: Knocked Up hadn’t come out yet when we shot it. We shot this right after Superbad, a few weeks after.

EG: I remember exactly. Judd said, “One day, [Sony Pictures chair] Amy Pascal’s gonna wake up in the morning and suddenly say ‘I’m gonna buy it.’”

SR: It was a script we’d been trying to sell. It was no secret.

EG: They’d all read it.

SR: I think a studio hates nothing more than when another studio makes a movie that they could have made. And I think that’s what it was. People woke up one day and said, “Someone’s gonna make this movie, it might as well be us.”

M: Is it weird to come back to Canada after working in Hollywood?

SR: Not really. We have lots of Canadian friends in L.A.

M: But how is the vibe different?

EG: That’s like asking how black is different from white.

At this point, a publicist enters to signal the interview’s end. After a brief discussion of the Barenaked Ladies coke bust (“Steven Page parties a lot harder than I thought he would!” laughs Rogen, surely speaking for a nation), the duo head out to their next engagement, leaving me to ponder their achievement.

A stoner action comedy directed by a noted arthouse filmmaker seems like pretty much every young male film geek’s wet dream. And though it may puzzle non-stoners, David Gordon Green fans, and a great many women, it’s good to know that something this odd and unpredictable can still make it to your local multiplex.

Pineapple Express is now
in theatres



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