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James Franco, Seth Rogen ride 'Pineapple Express'

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

August 3, 2008

Dude! Is there, like, a pineapple local? Then how can there be a "Pineapple Express"? Whoa, step off. Too many alternative realities.

Like, for example, what's James Franco, "Spider-Man" Goblin and erstwhile James Dean impersonator, doing in this movie? What's David Gordon Green - at one time one of the last great hopes of independent (as in, financially stressed-out) American art-house cinema - doing directing a big-budget stoner movie? Or Seth Rogen, the star of "Knocked Up," playing a pothead? OK, some things are predictable enough, such as the fact that this "Pineapple" upside-down movie, which opens Wednesday, is yet another film out of the Judd Apatow-produced catalog of slacker-stoner cinematic subterfuges aimed at undermining what's left of America's moral fiber. How do these things happen? The obvious conclusion is drugs. But that's not true (adding, a la Hillary Clinton, "... as far as I know.")

"It's really something I've been trying to do for a while," Green said, in the air-conditioned sanctity of a downtown Manhattan hotel. His films - beginning with the ethereal "George Washington" of 2000 - have been rigorously independent in concept and execution. Yet comedy is his first love.

"Most of the short films I made in film school were comedies, and the one film I made then that I didn't feel good about was a short film that 'George Washington' was based on," Green said. "In trying to fix it, it became my first feature, and that becomes your calling-card film; it becomes who you are and what you do."

He wanted to do something different. And he picked the logical guys - Apatow, Rogen and the latter's co-writer, Evan Goldberg ("Superbad"), with whom to do it. "They've done all right for themselves," Green deadpanned.

Seriously, he's funny

He said the surprise - to him, at least - was Franco. Despite the serious mien the actor's assumed in recent movies, he was also part of "Freaks and Geeks," the short-lived but influential TV comedy that involved Rogen, Apatow, Jason Segel ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall") and Mike White ("The School of Rock"). "All these guys think it's funny when they see him in a drama," Green said of Franco. "They think it's bizarre because they know how funny he is. I said, 'Are you kidding me?' 'No trust me.'"

"In some sense, I was waiting for it," Franco said of his role as Saul Silver, pot dealer and marijuana casualty extraordinaire. Talking on the phone while driving to Comic-Con last week in San Diego, he said it's Saul's relationship with process server Dale Denton (Rogen) - and their flight from two groups of angry mobsters - that fuels "Pineapple Express." And it was Franco's assumption that the producers wanted him for the role of Dale Denton.

"In life, Seth is this proud, pot-smoker guy," Franco explained. "But I think it's hilarious that Seth gets to play the role I thought I was going to play."

"Pineapple," according to producer Apatow, has been in the works since 2002, "but we could never get anyone to make it. For some reason no one wanted to do a weed-action movie with no stars." But once Sony saw the "Superbad" dailies, he said, they got on board. And "Superbad" had been around since 1998 - but, again, a movie with no stars and a story "about two guys who spend the whole movie trying to get alcohol so they can have sex with a couple of high school girls" wasn't on Hollywood's radar.

They're really running scared

Green said the intention was to give "Pineapple" the sensibility of a '80s buddy-action movie - he cited as examples "48 HRS.," "Running Scared" and "Tango and Cash." But he wanted to make the violence more real and immediate. "Seth and I agreed that it's about guys who are ill-equipped to be in an action movie," Green said of Saul and Dale. "They're not flexible - they pull a muscle really easily. They bruise easily. They don't know how to fight. You put them in a situation where they just have to react and the more violent it becomes, the more interesting it is, because the more fish out of water they are."

As action movies go, "Pineapple's" mayhem could hardly be called excessive. It's just more real - innocent bystanders get shot, for instance. And there's a certain strategy to it.

"If this movie can grab the horror-movie crowd, and the 'Hostel' crowd, and also have the sweet, emotional approach - it's a love story between these guys - then there's something for everybody. And there's nothing more exciting than watching the crowd squeal when someone gets shot in the ear."

Apatow said the success of the films that he Rogen, Goldberg and now Green have been involved in is probably because they're so "relatable."

"They touch on areas that people think about but usually don't talk about," he said. "And they've all been very hard to get made. Hollywood tends to imitate what's working, but once you've kind of shown you know what you're doing, and people seem to like it, they say, 'Hey, maybe it is time for a weed-action movie.'"

FRANCO SAYS THESE 5 FILMS ARE SMOKIN'

To quote the immortal Mr. Hand of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High":

"What are you, people? On dope?"

Yes, indeed, Mr. Hand. "Stoner movies" - the grandmother of which was 1936's "Reefer Madness," the PSA-melodrama about the evils of the "devil weed with roots in hell" - is full of people gone to pot. But according to "Pineapple Express" star James Franco, the true classics need to "transcend by uniqueness" the mere ingestion of hallucinogens. Here are Franco's five favorite fired-up features:

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982) - Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn), who orders a pizza to history class and plans to "wing over to London and jam with the Stones," is the sine qua non of wake-and-bakers. "Fast Times" is about a lot more than the perpetually stoned Spicoli, but he's one of the truly memorable dementos in the history of grass-fired idiots.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998) - The Dude - Jeff Bridges' immortal character in this mid-career Coen brothers comedy - is an easygoing, beverage-balancing hipster who wants his rug replaced after he's mistaken for another Lebowski. Movie's tagline: "They figured he was a lazy, time-wasting slacker. They were right."

TRUE ROMANCE (1993) - Tony Scott-directed, Quentin Tarantino-scripted, blood-splattered road thriller is notable in the canon of pot-head pictures for the performance by Brad Pitt as the reefer-addled Floyd. "One of the best things Brad's ever done," says "Pineapple" director David Gordon Green.

FRIDAY (1995) - Craig (Ice Cube) and Smokey (Chris Tucker) sit on the porch, talk, smoke, drink, deal with an angry pot dealer, talk, smoke, drink, consider the problems of the world and try to figure out where they're going to get 200 bucks, in this comedy by F. Gary Gray. "Chris Tucker is the funniest thing ever," Franco says.

DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993) - The stars-to-be in this Richard Linklater comedy included Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Cole Hauser, Parker Posey, Anthony Rapp, Adam Goldberg, Joey Lauren Adams, Nicky Katt and Rory Cochrane. Set on the last day of school in 1976, this movie has an almost revolutionary ethos - pot use as a symbol of rugged American individuality.

-JOHN ANDERSON