PINEAPPLE EXPRESS - The Film Babble Blog Review

So THE DARK KNIGHT is still holding steady at #1 at the box office but riding on its ass at #2 is: 


PINEAPPLE EXPRESS (Dir. David Gordon Green, 2008)

“Stoner Action Comedy” - those are the key words in all the publicity blitz surrounding this movie. Also the ‘buzz’ (Can't resist) was that this entry in the juvenile yet thoughtful Judd Apatow produced movie sweepstakes was helmed by David Gordon Green, best known for film fare like ALL THE REAL GIRLS, GEORGE WASHINGTON and SNOW ANGELS. 


What we’ve got here is a self-effacing Seth Rogen re-united with his Freaks And Geeks (also an Apatow creation) co-star James Franco as the leads going through some of the same stressful stoned situations that Cheech and Chong (or more recently Harold & Kumar) went through back in the day but this time out we’ve got more heart (of the John Hughes variety), more inventive sideline characters (of the Quentin Tarantino ilk), and lots of sloppy yet involving action (shout outs to the white trash fight scenes of the Coen brothers’ RAISING ARIZONA) to keep us rolling. 


Sure, on the surface this is SUPERBAD with murder but look closer and you'll see that PINEAPPLE EXPRESS has a movie mojo of its own. Rogen plays a process server (funnily called a protest servant at one point by Franco) who spends his days smoking weed between delivering subpoenas, dreaming of being a talk radio personality, and visiting his 18 year old girlfriend (Amber Heard). 


Rogen's new dealer (James Franco), who seems to spend his days watching reruns of 227 while dreaming of being a civil engineer, hooks him up with a rare species of super potent marijuana called “Pineapple Express” which as events go places Rogen at the scene to witness a murder committed by an evil drug kingpin (Gary Cole) and a corrupt cop (Rosie Perez). 


After that the buzzed buddies are on the run wrongly thinking a fellow dealer named Red (Danny McBride) will help them and that it's a good idea for Rogen to still make a dinner engagement with his girlfriend and her parents (Ed Begley Jr. and Nora Dunn) while eluding Cole’s hired thugs (Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson). 


Gross-out humor prevails as our high heroes endure a rowdy car chase, clashes with each other, and finally a warehouse shoot-out with the Ninja-like attack of an Asian gang and many many grotesque woundings.

The premise is so slight that it nearly disintegrates but that hardly matters as there are so many funny lines and a smile inducing joy throughout. The leading duo have a hilarious chemistry especially when disagreeing on their next move with Rogen's bemused reactions to Franco's mangling of old cliched sayings: “the monkey’s out of the bottle, man!” 


Danny McBride, such a stiff in THE FOOT FIST WAY, plays an incredibly amusing character here who steals every scene he's in as he gets abused more than any one else and even killed over and over a la Kenny on South Park. The only weak scenes are the ones with Cole and Perez who, likable as they are, don’t match the over the top tone as they gruffly flirt while their crooked worlds collide. 


Likewise Rogen’s girlfriend subplot could be cut altogether which would confirm McBride’s repeated “bros before hos” stance. These are minor grumblings for PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is the funniest movie I’ve seen at the theater this year and has enough laughs for many repeated viewings. 


With Green’s sturdy direction and Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s gloriously silly screenplay the Apatow universe expands once more with another of a strong line of consistent comedies; movies so full of mayhem and mirth that you don't have to be stoned to enjoy because they’re baked enough for all of us.


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Hey, I Finally Saw...ERASERHEAD!

When it comes to being a film buff/geek admitting that you've never seen a particular classic film used to be a shameful act, one to be avoided for fear of scorn, and derision, but thanks to the wave of blog confessionals all over the internets it’s a welcome entertaining way of coming clean.

The Onion AV Club has a ongoing column entitled “Better Late Than Never" in which a different staff member finally watches what has been long considered an essential important movie - they’ve covered HAROLD AND MAUDE, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, RAGING BULL and a handful of other movies that most people assume everybody (or at least every film fan with a blog) has seen.

Fellow blogger Graham Culbertson on his fine site Movies Et Al. has a series called “Film Ignorance” which also deals with catching up with highly touted cinema that he or a guest blogger is only now getting around to.

So when I saw that the Colony Theater in Raleigh * had obtained a 30th anniversary print of what could be the definitive cult classic, a notorious film that I’d heard about for decades but for one reason or another I never saw, I thought it would be a good time to start my own “Hey, I finally saw...” forum. I went with a friend, who had also never seen the movie, to the Saturday night late show and now I can declare: Hey, I finally saw ERASERHEAD!

Despite having not seen it before last Saturday night, the iconic image at the top of this post, which is used on the poster, is as familiar an image to me as paintings by the great masters or pictures of the pyramids. 

It’s an intriguing and fitting portrait because to view David Lynch’s debut film ERASERHEAD is to get very acquainted with the face of the late Jack Nance. Nance plays Henry Spencer who says he’s on vacation from his occupation as a printer and lives in a sparely furnished one room apartment. The squalor of the slum he toils in is reflected in his eyes as is incredible sadness, desperation and above all - confusion. 

I entered his grainy gritty black and white world cautiously but curiously absorbing every intense corner not caring if a plot would actually rear its ugly head. What does rear its ugly head is a limbless mutant baby his timid girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) presents him with. The grotesque reptilian offspring constantly shrieks, so much so that Mary leaves Henry to take care of the whatever it is himself: “You’re on vacation now; you can take care of him for a little while!” 

From there on out Henry’s life dissolves into a series of dream sequences and surreal set-pieces. There is a low industrial hum under the surface of the soundtrack as he drifts through real or imaginary experiences involving his neighbor (Judith Anna Roberts credited as “Beautiful Girl Across The Hall”), a cabaret singer (Laurel Near) with hamster-like puffed-out cheeks who appears on a stage from deep within Henry's radiator - “Lady in the Radiator” who sings “In Heaven”, and the ginormously overwhelming “Man in the Planet” (Jack Fisk) who haunts the film from beginning to end. 

As bizarre as this all appears, the film’s title is surprisingly from one of the more linear tangents - Henry dreams of his severed head being sold to a factory and being processed into pencil erasers. Though it was shot over 6 years in the 70’s not one frame looks tied to that period. Actually not one frame looks tied to any period - it exists in a time and world completely of its own creepy creation. 

The powerful draw of such bewildering and unpleasant aestetics is hard to explain; I thought often that I couldn’t believe anyone would pick this as their favorite movie but I’ve heard a number folks do just that. I have to take into account that having seen it for the first time just the other day may not be enough time to process the experience. 

For a first time director it is a incredible piece of work - Lynch has the most fascinating yet frustratingly obtuse filmography of any noted director over the last 30 years and seeing ERASERHEAD for the first time gives me a perspective on his work I was sadly lacking. 

The last half hour of the film I had to use the restroom but could not remove myself from my seat. I could not stand to have a broken viewing of the ERASERHEAD experience. It was an experience that I loved and hated; that was disgusting yet beautiful and one that I could do without ever seeing again but still am looking forward to revisiting.

The Colony Theater in North Raleigh showed ERASERHEAD as part of their Cool Classics @ The Colony series and I was amused to see that they dug up a couple of old trailers of a few obscure 70's flicks to screen beforehand. The first was for THE CHICKEN CHRONICLES which was Steve Guttenberg’s first film and the second was for a Robbie Benson (a forgotten teen heart-throb) vehicle called DIE LAUGHING which featured turns by the late greats Bud Cort and Charles Durning. They were both hilarious additions to the marvelous mid-night movie-show. 

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The Could’ve Beens: 10 Recast Roles (That Were Re-cast While The Film Was In Production)

-->The Onion A.V. Club recently did a few round-ups of famous parts from moves and T.V. shows that were played by more than one actor over the years - The Darrin Effect: 20 Jaring Cases Of Recast Roles (July 14th, 2008). The article/list and its sequel (What About Seinfeld’s Dad?), both entertaining reads, made me think about the roles that were recast before the character was finalized - the ones that a drastic change of the leading part seemed to make all the difference in the world. An alternate history of modern cinema can be glimpsed when we consider: -->

The Could Have Beens: 10 Crucial Recast Roles (That Were Recast When The Film Was In Production)

1. Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK This a mother of a 'could have been’. Selleck was cast by Spielberg and Lucas for the iconic adventurer but he was under contract at Universal and had a commitment to star in the TV series Magnum P.I. Even with the video of Selleck’s screen tests (with Sean Young and Debra Winger reading for Marion!) that are featured on a “Making Of” doc on the Indiana Jones DVD boxset, it’s hard to imagine him in the part that is so defined by Harrison Ford. Incidentally Tim Matheson (ANIMAL HOUSE, FLETCH, The West Wing) read for Indy too.

2. Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly in BACK TO THE FUTURE
This is another doozy - almost half the movie was shot with Stoltz in the role but director Robert Zemeckis and producer Spielberg thought that his performance simply wasn’t working. Screenwriter Bob Gale said of Stoltz: “He is intense, and he’s more of the method school of acting, and he’s a very internal actor, as opposed to a guy who has a lot of physicality to him.” So they fired Stoltz and replaced him with who was actually their first choice but tied to Family Ties - Michael J. Fox. They worked out a scheduling deal with Fox and the rest is history. The approximately 40 minutes of footage of Stoltz as McFly has never surfaced but there are quite a few stills floating around (see above) on the internets to give us some idea of what it would have looked like at least.

3. Michael Keaton as Tom Baxter/Gil Shepherd in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO - Another case of the actor in the lead not jelling with the material according to the director. Woody Allen thought Keaton was too “contemporary” saying in a later interview with Eric Lax: “You got no sense of a 1930s movie star from him; he was just too hip.” After replacing him with Jeff Daniels, Allen promised Keaton that he would work with him again on a more appropriate project but that has so far not materialized. Seems like these days Keaton wouldn't come off as too hip so maybe they can still get it together.

4. Frank Sinatra as DIRTY HARRY In the November 9th, 1970 issue of Box Office magazine this trade ad appeared promoting the then 'in prodcution' Warner Bros. release of DIRTY HARRY. Sinatra had to pass on the part of the uncompromising cop Harry Callahan because of a hand injury and after several re-writes and Paul Newman flirting with the role, Clint Eastwood took it on. Eastwood more than made the role his own in 4 more movies, each getting bloodier and more extreme than the last, which is unimaginable had the ole blue-eyed crooner kept the part.

5. Harvey Keitel as Captain Willard in APOCALYPSE NOW - This one is harder to figure out. After 2 weeks of shooting, Keitel was replaced by Martin Sheen. No photos or footage can be found of his work, just random reports that he and Coppola were clashing on the set. Keitel reportedely was dispondent over being fired and considered leaving the business but biographer Marshall Fine wrote that he experienced a spiritual epiphany listening to a lounge singer’s rendition of the Sinatra standard “My Way” in a bar in the Phillipines that somehow got him back on his feet.

6. Sylvester Stallone as Axel Foley in BEVERLY HILLS COP Stallone himself puts it best: “When I read the script for BEVERLY HILLS COP, I thought they’d sent it to the wrong house. Somehow, me trying to comically terrorize Beverly Hills is not the stuff that great yuk-festivals are made from. So I re-wrote the script to suit what I do best, and by the time I was done, it looked like the opening scene from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN on the beaches of Normandy. Believe it or not, the finale was me in a stolen Lamborghini playing chicken with an oncoming freight train being driven by the ultra-slimy bad guy. Needless to say, they dropkicked me and my script out of the office, and the rest is history.” (from an interview with Ain’t It Cool News) Stallone went on to use his script ideas in COBRA and Eddie Murphy went to be one of the biggest box office stars in the world and then on to crap like NORBIT and MEET DAVE. There are rumors of Murphy resurrecting Axel Foley but I doubt INDIANA JONES or RAMBO kind of numbers are in the cards for that.

7. Eddie Murphy as Winston Zeddemore in GHOSTBUSTERS - The role of the black Ghostbuster (Ernie Hudson) always felt unneccessary, tagged on as a token but it was originally written for Murphy which would've given it more clout. Murphy declined the part to take BEVERLY HILLS COP and the part was reduced considerably. In an interview with Kotaku Australia Hudson revealed: “I was the guy who got slimed in the hotel, but I guess the studio felt they wanted more stuff for Bill Murray”. Seems like he’s lucky the part wasn't dropped completely.

8. River Phoenix as interviewer Daniel Malloy in INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE Phoenix was signed for this part but sadly died of an overdose before shooting began. He was replaced by Christian Slater and the film appeared with this dedication: “In memory of River Phoenix, 1970-1993”.

9. Dustin Hoffman as POPEYE This is also perplexing and hard to imagine. The story goes that Hoffman was unhappy with the screenplay by cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and left the project. Gilda Radner and Lily Tomlin were also considered for Olive Oil but director Robert Altman wanted his reporatory regular Shelly Duvall in the part. Glad he held out - Duvall is the spitting image of Olive. Robin Williams, definitely a better choice physically for Popeye got the role and 10 years later duked it out with Hoffman in HOOK. Bet plenty of POPEYE jokes were cracked on that set.

10. Chris Farley as SHREK Another role unrealized because of an untimely tragic death. Farley recorded much of the dialogue but it was scratched when he died in 1997 ostensibly because the studio smelled a franchise. Mike Myers took the part but according to the IMDb: “A remnant of Farley remains when Shrek uses ‘finger quotes’ - a trademark of Farley’s character Bennett Brower.”

Okay! 10 recast roles. There are other great ones - Steve Martin in EYES WIDE SHUT (Stanley Kubrick was a big fan of THE JERK) and Steve McQueen in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND both almost made this list. If you have any overlooked recastings or comments you know where you can put them.

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