Blu-ray Evolution in SA

Sony Pictures has recently released Pineapple Express on Blu-ray disk (BD); a hilarious comedy about a pair of druggie losers (a lazy stoner and his dope supplier) where one witnesses a mob murder and drags his pal into a crazy flight from mobsters that are bent on silencing both of them -  permanently.

Together, these two guys with nothing in common except a fondness for a certain leafy, smokeable substance, must work together to avoid taking the wrong kind of hit from a drug dealer bent on killing them. What follows is an uproarious updating of the buddy action comedy from the outrageous minds behind the smash hit Superbad.

The movie is directed by David Gorden Green and stars new sensation Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad, 40 Year Old Virgin) and James Franco (Spider-man franchise) and it co-stars Rosie Perez (Do The Right Thing) and Gary Cole (The Brady Bunch Movie).  The BD version is crammed with special features and extra’s including:

Filmmaker and Cast Commentary
Deleted & Extended Scenes
Gag Reel
Direct-O-Rama- Featurette
Line-O-Rama - Featurette
Red and Stormy’s Guide to Marriage- Featurette
Injury Report -Featurette
Stuntmaster Ken Jeong - Featurette
Jonah Hill on Set
Ride The Express Game
Rehearsal Footage
The Making of Pineapple Express
Comic Con Panel Clip and Easter Eggs

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment recently got the ’scoop’ with interviews with main character and co-writer Seth Rogen (the lazy stoner) and writer Evan Goldberg as well as James Franco (dazed dealer) and Danny McBride (dope supplier).

Interview with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

How seriously did you take the research process for Pineapple Express?
SR: Pretty seriously! A lot like Daniel Day Lewis. We smoked a lot of weed and we made a whole movie about it! (Laughs)
EG: We did a lot of research on the action side.
SR: Yeah we’d literally walk around going ‘I’m the good guy car, you’re the bad guy car. We’d literally have toy cars that we would play with, and we read a lot of action movie scripts - that was the departure for us.
EG: But you can write whatever you want.
SR: It’s true - you think of whatever you like but it seems everyone just writes ‘action sequence’ in the script.

Did you find it hard to marry up the brutal action with the broad comedy?
SR: We didn’t think so, no. it was more difficult to convince people we were able to get it right. In my head brutal violence and comedy go hand in hand.
EG: To see as much blood as is in this movie is fine, I think, but to rip someone’s chest open, that’s different.
SR: We did learn it’s not funny to see people in immense pain but as far as the blood is concerned, it’s cool.
EG: We kept thinking of True Lies. In True Lies Schwarzenegger like runs around, shoots 17 people but you don’t see anyone sitting there going ‘I’m dying.’
SR: And in Pulp Fiction there’s that scene in the car where the guy’s head is blown off - it’s as gruesome as anything but it always gets a big laugh. Its how they deal with it, the whole attitude towards it is its just funny and it doesn’t deal with the real emotional side of it.
EG: And Sean Of The Dead - at the end of that they do something that I would normally be terrified to see.
SR: And with Craig Robinson where we shoot the guy’s foot off - it gets a huge laugh and we’re like ‘this is what we wanna hear!’

How much of the finished film was improvised and how much was tied down before you started?
SR: Tons of it was improvised. A lot of the hit man stuff was improvised. But watching the movie its really hard to tell what’s improvised and what wasn’t. The scene in the diner was 100 per cent improvised. It really ranges from scene to scene but we tell people to say whatever they want.

What are you like when you write together? Who’s tougher on who?
EG: There are subtle differences. I type faster. He’s slowly getting as fast as me.
SR: We write the exact same way we did when we were 13. But the way we write a screenplay has evolved quite a lot, we outline now, we talk about it more. We have our system down.
EG: We bought Final Draft!
SR: But that being said it still happens that we write the most commercial script we can think of and look at it and go ‘what the hell is this?’ We haven’t gone mainstream yet! We’re in our late 20s and doing the exact same thing we were doing when we were 13, we’re just in my house now instead of in Evan’s bedroom.

Interview with James Franco and Danny McBride

James, you suffered injuries making Pineapple Express?
JF: I did. And I didn’t even have to think about it, I just ran straight into the tree and it went ‘whack’. I had a huge gash on my head. The scene is where Seth and I are running through the woods like morons and I run into the tree. They set it up for me and it was really simple - run up and stop just short of the tree. It seemed very simple and easy to do as the stunt man was stationary when he explained it to me. I was running at a full sprint and, Judd likes to say I was very tired at that time because it was a night shoot. But there was a pad on the tree, but it was the size of a stamp and attached with washers.
DM: So they made it more dangerous.
JF: Yeah, I hit one of the washers and the actual take of me in the movie is me hitting the tree. I made a really stranger sound I’ve never made before, like I can’t quite laugh it off. As soon as I got off camera nobody was saying anything, they just had really wide eyes, but then I felt the blood running into my eyes.

Do you think the shot will make the DVD?
JF: I’m not sure. I guess so, so I tried to remain as cool as possible.

What research did you do for the role?
JF: Well, I went and killed some people.
DM: You did a lot of crack.
JF: I did.
DM: But it didn’t have anything to do with the film.
JF: no, I just said it was research.
DM: Exactly.
JF: So crack and killing. No, I used to smoke when I was in high school but I haven’t in a long time. The trick I used to look high was to pretend I was looking into the wind. You wanna try? You like high!
DM: He is!

Danny, how would you describe your character, Red?
DM: I’d like to think Red transcends sexuality. He’s kind of above it. There’s definitely some mystery to him. I mean he has this wife who’s in jail but then he wants to be with James’ character.
JF: It was improvised, I thought.
DM: But there was a realness to it, James. Nah, he’s like a gay hairdresser. He wears kimonos but he’s married. But people have found a way around that before so.