- Title: USA: New comedy film 'Pineapple Express'
- Date: 7th August 2008
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) SOUNDBITE (English) DANNY MCBRIDE, SAYING: "You would think that we were smoking marijuana on the set. It's not true. We smoked PCP, we smoked crack. David would do a lot of heroin. I don't know. Everything but weed was done on the set, and I think it shows. You see that on the screen. These are some messed up dudes."
- Embargoed: 22nd August 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Usa
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVA6VBDW6CUD8NTCWPUFT852WN8A
- Story Text: Last summer they took on the sex comedy with "Knocked Up" and
"Superbad." This summer, Seth Rogen and Team Apatow take on the action comedy with "Pineapple Express," the story of two stoners (Seth Rogen and James Franco) and their struggle to stay one step ahead of the killers who are out to get them.
In the film, Rogen plays a process server who is forced to go on the run with his drug dealer and friend Saul Silver (James Franco), after witnessing a murder by drug lord Ted Jones (Gary Cole).
The film manages to find just the right balance of humor and action, both making fun of the action genre, while still making a real action film.
According to Seth Rogen, there was never a question of crossing any lines, in terms of both the action and the comedic elements.
"We just wanted it to be fun and we wanted to try and kind of build up to this ending where it turns into an action movie," explains Rogen. "We wanted to have our cake and eat it too in terms of making fun of an action movie and actually making an action movie. When I watch it I think it's very violent and there's a lot of stuff like that, but I love it.
To me its not, yeah, it's not too far at all."
The film is a change for actor James Franco whose roles typically tend more toward the dramatic than the comedic. However, Franco, who began his career doing comedy for Judd Apatow with the critically acclaimed but viewer deficient television series "Freaks and Geeks," says he enjoyed returning to the comedic genre.
"It was great. I was pretty much sick of acting," Franco tells Reuters. "I had done "Tristan and Isolde" and "Annapolis" and I just said I didn't want to do this anymore, and they said 'James, it can be fun.' (Keep going James) and they were right. So I'm glad I did it. This is the only movie, the only kind of movie I'm going to make now. Actually, I'm only going to act as Saul from now on.
Just as different characters… you'll be like Abbott and Costello."
Considering that actors Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Danny McBride spend the 111 minutes of screen time high on "Pineapple Express,"
the particular strain of marijuana the story is centered around, one wonders what the actors actually were smoking on set.
"You would think that we were smoking marijuana on the set. It's not true," says Danny McBride, who plays Saul's drug dealer Red. "We smoked PCP, we smoked crack. David would do a lot of heroin. I don't know.
Everything but weed was done on the set, and I think it shows. You see that on the screen. These are some messed up dudes."
While the film is quite different from the previous works from Apatow Productions, Seth Rogen basically reprises the role of the lovable loser we've encountered in films like "Knocked Up" and "Superbad."
With so many similar roles, one begins to wonder how close Rogen really is to the characters he plays.
"I'd say not close at all, for the most part," says Rogen.
"I've never done any process serving. I mean, obviously I'm aware enough about these characteristics to put them in a movie as a dopey guy, I'm obviously, if I was really like that I probably wouldn't have the wherewithal to make one of the characters like that. So yeah, I don't, in real life, I'm like really successful. That's the difference."
In the end, the film steers clear of really making any judgments on marijuana, remaining the kind of light and funny action-comedy that summer audiences are looking for.
"You know, that's one of the beauties of this movie, is that, I don't think we really try to stoop to any sort of moral high ground on marijuana," Danny McBride explains. "It's definitely part of the movie, and marijuana is a character in the film, I mean, it's the title, 'Pineapple Express,' but, that's the one thing I like about this movie.
There's never any moment where it's like, weed's bad. Its just, you know, you take your own views on it and see, and its really just a bunch of idiots running around, shooting people, getting blown up, stoned."
"Pineapple Express" is directed by David Gordon Green, and opens in the United States on August 6th. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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