erin_broadley

Seth Rogen is not a pothead. He only plays them in movies. His Knocked Up character sat around smoking all day, and his newest movie, Pineapple Express, is an action comedy about a stoner and his dealer on the run after witnessing a corrupt cop shooting.

"I don't smoke weed on set all day," Rogen assures. "After lunch you get tired. 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."

Pineapple Express is another script by Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg (Superbad) and now they are working on a new draft of The Green Hornet. Rogen is also busy acting in Kevin Smith's upcoming Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

SuicideGirls caught up with Rogen at a recent press conference and as his booming voice delivered deadpan one-liners punctuated by his guttural cackle, we noticed that everything seems to make Rogen laugh.


Question: That was a pretty cool move, exhaling the smoke out and then inhale it back in.

Seth Rogen: It's a pretty good one, huh?

Q: How did you learn to do that?

SR: Just growing up in Vancouver. You kind of learn that one early on, I guess. Is there a name for it? I've heard someone call it a Ghost Face. It's called The Rogen. Do it with your friends.

Q: What was the idea behind writing this?

SR: The original idea came from Judd [Apatow] actually. He had the loose notion of like, "What about a weed action movie?" Me and Evan thought that could be rad and basically we started thinking about making a movie that was kind of a weed movie and action movie and had a real kind of friendship story to it, that would be our favorite movie ever. We originally actually wrote Franco's part for me, and the part I ultimately played for someone else, and then when we got Franco involved we thought it was a good idea to switch the roles. I think it worked really well.

Q: What action or drug movies were some of your influences?

SR: Drug movies, we liked Friday a lot when we were growing up. For action I really like Die Hard a lot. The Last Boy Scout. Total Recall. Pulp Fiction. I love that movie and Reservoir Dogs and the Coen Brothers movies are really violent, a lot of those early ones like Miller's Crossing and Raising Arizona. They have these crazy fight scenes in them. We were inspired by that I would say. Anything with Brian Bosworth in it. Anything with an ex-football player turned actor we were big fans of.

Q: Are you meticulous describing action?

SR: We describe the stuff that we know we want. Pineapple was a really helpful educational process in that, basically, all of it we way overwrote and we learned that we didnt need to do that. It's good in some ways like the fight at Red's house, the fact that we overwrote it made it that it's basically punch for punch how it was in the script. But the big shootout at the end of the movie, we could have just wrote, "Then a giant shootout happens" [instead of] "Three guys descend from the ceiling, four come from the left with machine guns unloading rounds, three more come in from the right side as another man comes down from the top." None of that was necessary so we've learned where you need to be specific and where you don't. I'd say in reading it you get a pretty good sense of what you will see on screen.

Q: Superbad was inspired by your 13-year-old [selves]. Is Pineapple inspired by experiences when you were a little bit older?

SR: Definitely. It's definitely inspired by stretches I've gone through where I do nothing but smoke weed for months and months on end, and relationships I've had with the people that supplied me that weed, and just pothead relationships in general. We take it obviously to a somewhat ridiculous extreme in the movie but the core of the story is definitely based around prior experiences.

Q: You've brought Huey Lewis back to the world of movie soundtracks. How did that come about?

SR: I mean, we made this movie and I would say that it was somewhat of an homage to '80s action movies and in its own way an '80s action movie in and of itself. We thought, "Whats the one thing that every great '80's movie has?" which is a song by Huey Lewis that says the title of the movie. 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. I didn't realize you could just call him up and he'd be like, "Okay."

Q: What really happened at the MTV Awards?

SR: I will tell you exactly how this went down. Around two and a half weeks before I was told that they wanted us to do the MTV Awards and I sent this idea where wouldnt it be kind of funny The number one question we get asked is, "What do you guys smoke in the movie? What is it?" And I get sick of saying, "It's fuckin' fake weed." So we thought we'll just put all those rumors to bed and at the same time, in a playful way, say, "What is it? It's fake weed." And we'll light our fake joint and it'll be all in good fun. I made it clear, if they have any problem with this, tell me now because I will be more than happy to come up with another idea. I just want enough time that we can come up with something we like, but if you like this idea, then we're more than happy to do it. We heard, "Go ahead, sounds great."

They sent us a script a few days later that is word for word the script that we said on Sunday night. We showed up at the awards, went backstage literally while Coldplay was on, a minute and a half before we were supposed to go on, and all of a sudden someone goes up to us and says, "You can't do the bit with the props." We said, "That's the whole bit, the props. What are we doing if we're not doing the bit with the props?" They said there was a kafuffle. I said, "You sent this to us." I had the physical script that they sent me. I said, "This is what you sent us." And they said, "Okay, you can go out and do it." We went out and did it. It played great in the room. We lit that joint, it fuckin' blew up in there. Then later on someone told me, "Oh, they pulled out really wide and made it seem like you weren't supposed to be doing that." Again, we literally didn't say one word that wasn't on that teleprompter. They handed Franco the bag of weed. They gave me the lighter. They gave me the fake joint. It could not have been more planned. I don't know if they did that to make it seem like we were doing something we shouldn't or someone chickened out at the last second, but it's all very amusing to me.

Q: Is 227 actually watchable if you're high?

SR: It's only watchable if you're high. Dave [Gordon Green] had a lot of really strong opinions about really weird things. It was like, "This cannot be Family Ties. I'm walking."

Q: I take it that there's no pot smoking in The Green Hornet script?

SR: We put the green in The Green Hornet. No. There isn't at all actually.

Q: No one knows what to expect from that movie.

SR: Because no one knows a goddamn thing about the Green Hornet.

Q: Where are you with it?

SR: We're done with the script. It looks like they're going to make it. We got a release date. June 25th, 2010. So mark your calendars because its gettin pretty busy. It was actually helpful having made this movie, in the writing of another kind of action movie. We learned exactly how specific you can or can't be.

Q: Is it a big adjustment writing something that is obviously going to be PG-13?

SR: No, not necessarily. Luckily the MPAA decided that violence is fine. When you're doing an action movie you can really have as much violence as you want. In writing The Green Hornet we haven't hit many situations where were like, "You know what would make this scene better? If Kato said cocksucker." That hasn't come up that many times. I mean, I'd say that action-wise we've been able to do anything that we could've ever wanted.

Q: Are you going to play the Green Hornet?

SR: Yeah, I will. Don't say it like that. Soon we want to do a Green Hornet/Green Goblin crossover movie in 2012. Green to the 2.

Q: You also did a movie with Kevin Smith, who is another master of vulgar comedy. What kind of stuff do you guys come up with when you get together?

SR: What kind of stuff do we talk about? A lot of comic book stuff. The nerdiest shit that you can ever imagine in the entire world.

Q: How dirty is the movie?

SR: I would say that it's pretty dirty language wise. To me it literally doesn't even register in my brain anymore. It doesn't seem that dirty to me. I actually just saw it at a test screening about a week ago and it was really like a romantic comedy to me. Yes, it is dirty, but more than anything it's like a romantic relationship movie with a lot of porn and balls. I said balls.

Q: Your balls?

SR: No. My balls are not in it.

Pineapple Express is in theaters today, August 6. For more information go to www.sonypictures.com/movies/pineappleexpress/.