Film Ireland EXTRA Interview: James Franco and Danny McBride on Pineapple Express
Film Ireland’s resident reporter Gordon ‘Gonzo’ Gaffney interviews James Franco and Danny R. McBride about their latest feature Pineapple Express.

Disclaimer: this is long, self indulgent and full of name-dropping and was written more or less as my own personal record of events.

It all started when I returned from holidays on Monday 11th August and our assistant editor, Niamh Creely tells me that we’ve gotten a 20-minute interview with James Franco, (the Green Goblin’s son and Tobey Maguire’s best friend in the Spiderman movies) and Danny McBride. No, me neither.

For the next few hours I could barely concentrate at work as I thought of the great time that me, James and Danny were going to have for 20 minutes.  It would be out of the ordinary, but they could easily end up inviting me out for pints, right?

I was determined that I would ask the questions that I wanted to ask without compromise. I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to be like Pat Kenny and ask questions, not listen to answers and then ask the next question on my list.

I got onto IMDb and started researching all I could about Danny in particular, as I didn’t know him. It ended up he was in The Heartbreak Kid. 

He is also in Drillbit Taylor which was co-written by Seth Rogen, who co-wrote Pineapple Express so that was a good place to start.  I got through it and at least now had some idea who this guy was.

Though I still had no idea what questions I was going to ask.

I was emailed the production notes from Sony and found them really interesting. I’m a fan of 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad (not so much Knocked Up) but as I read the notes, the whole community feel to the Apatow ‘Family’ was intriguing.

Here’s a group of guys, friends for years, who collectively write, produce, direct and star in a bunch of funny comedies together. I hate to have to describe a comedy as funny but it’s important to differentiate them from the likes of The Heartbreak Kid.

So on to the press screening. I get to the locked doors of the Savoy Cinema and spot someone equally bewildered as me and soon we are let in. All in all, about ten critics are there, including Donald Clarke (DC) of The Irish Times and Tara Brady of Hot Press, and there were lots of laughs throughout, even from hardened cynics such as ourselves. The film itself is a blast, great entertainment. It made me laugh and was a movie that I would actually choose to go to.

So, still with no ideas of questions, I decided to try and see as many of the movies that are mentioned in the production notes as possible, with All the Real Girls and George Washington my priorities as the director of Pineapple Express, David Gordon Green, and Danny McBride had worked together on them.

Delightfully, Laser had them both and I watched All the Real Girls.  All but the last 15 minutes of it.

I got the my hands on the Dictaphone and cable and tested it a couple of times with different volumes and different distances between parties to make sure I wouldn’t have any fuck-ups come interview time. (Is that a set up?)

After watching George Washington the whole way through, (but spacing out at regular intervals about the great time me, James and Danny would have on Friday) I now had a good feel for who Danny was. In Pineapple Express, the combination of this director, David Gordon Green, whose previous features were character-based dramas, with James Franco playing against type as the loser stoner guy, really appealed to me.

The Big Day

Researching Danny, I found a clip of him on Conan O’Brien playing the character Fred Simmons from The Foot Fist Club, a comedy he stars in and co-wrote. I read interviews with him from ABC, NBC and The New York Times. I also read more on James Franco and Pineapple Express on Wikipedia.

The fact that, at this stage, I was still struggling to come up with questions was starting to weigh on my mind, but I thought that they are there to talk, and talk they would.

As I entered the Merrion, the concierge gave me an overly friendly greeting and I blustered out I was looking for reception. I asked at reception for the Pineapple Express interviews, eliciting a blank look from the girl. The guy beside her was on the phone but said something indecipherable. I returned the blank look and after what seemed like an eternity, the penny dropped and I realised he’d said ‘Sony Pictures’.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ I replied.
‘It’s in 180,’ he said to the girl.

The girl nodded, came round the desk and we walked through the bar and around through beautiful corridors with views of the garden, to plain old room 101, opposite a bin and a set of lifts.

She attempted to swipe me into the room but we were greeted by flashing amber lights on the door handle and the door didn’t open. After a sigh, and some foostering of the door handle and a couple of knocks of ever increasing intensity, the door is opened by a woman in a bathrobe drying her hair with a towel.

All three of us look at each other and, without saying a word, communicate: ‘Nothing needs to be said, we all know this is definitely not the room we were looking for.’

A colleague comes out of the lift and she doesn’t know where the interviews are either. I offer: ‘180?’

A quick phone call to reception and it turns out it was 181.  We walk through the hotel and eventually get to a corridor that has been completely taken over by Pineapple Express promotional poster boards.

I get shown to a room, give my name and publication to a very pleasant girl from Sony and get shown to another room with a table of soft drinks and the Olympics on the television. I recognise DC and introduce myself as Gordon from Film Ireland.

DC gets out his Dictaphone so I wisely get out mine too. My name is called so I grab the Dictaphone and pad of not-so-many questions and follow a very friendly girl down the corridor where I get passed to yet another friendly girl and sit and wait outside the room. I can hear Seth Rogen chatting loudly next door.

The door opens and the previous interviewer leaves complete with friendly goodbyes from the two lads. They do seem friendly. The girl asks them if they want anything and James asks for a coffee. She introduces me, but my name and publication get lost in the refreshments order.

I introduce myself again and indeed they are very friendly. I take off my jacket and James immediately asks if my T-Shirt is a René Magritte. It’s not, but I tell them it’s not the first time I’ve gotten that. I tell them the design’s by the Imaginary Foundation and that I got them cheap via the States as they are expensive here. I have told that anecdote dozens of times but never to two less interested people.

So as I sit down properly, I make chit-chat, asking if I’m one of the last ones to interview them. They only got in last night and are off tomorrow morning. James tells me they ate in the Unicorn last night but didn’t have a chance to sample the Guinness. Danny assures me he’ll be ‘routing down pints’ tonight, once this is over.

I confirm it’s okay to switch on my Dictaphone and we are off and running.

I continue the chit-chat and James for the first time flashes this strange eyes wide open facial tic. My gut tells me he’s concerned I’m going to trap him into some story of debauchery on the town in Dublin, but we’ll never know.

My first question is to James. ‘Having you cast as the stoner loser probably made a lot of sense to the creative elements of the production, but did they have trouble from the financiers that wanted you as the…’

Before I finish my question, James is off on enthusiastic autopilot straight from the production notes.

James Franco: When Judd Apatow sent me the script for Pineapple Express, They didn’t tell me which role. I thought they wanted me to play Dale (the Seth Rogen character), and I was thinking, ‘Gosh, I really like it, but I really wish I could play Saul.’  And then they said, ‘We want you to play Saul,’ so it was perfect.

I was disappointed but not surprised by his response so I pushed further. ‘You made short films yourself. Did the financiers watch those?’

JF: Yes, I did The Ape.

GG: The…?

Franco: The Ape, you know, like –

The penny drops. Sort of.

GG: Oh! The Ape.

JF: Yes, The Ape, like a monkey.

He puts his hand to his face for some reason, to help explain things.

JF: Which I wrote and paid for and no one watched it, seriously they wouldn’t watch it. I had a cameo in Knocked Up and unbeknownst to me at the time that was my audition for Pineapple Express, and based on that they cast me.

GG: Seriously though, is it true they wouldn’t be bothered to watch your short films?

DMcB: Yep, unless someone paid 25 million on something, none of those guys are going to watch it. Yep, it has to look like 25 million, anything less than that, they won’t switch it on.

GG: Danny, you were part of the crew on director David Gordon Green’s George Washington, how was his approach on Pineapple Express different to that?

And he’s off with the production notes spiel.

DMcB: Yes, I was second unit director, we went to film school together and we lived on the same dormitory hall, he was a year ahead of me but lived next door to me, so that’s how we knew each other.

Eh, what was my question?

GG: How was his approach similar to Judd Apatow’s?

DMcB: A lot of it was improvised. He’s similar to Judd in just going ‘Shoot, shoot, shoot and we’ll sort it out in editing.’ All ideas were open, actors were given a chance to improvise.

JF: Both Judd Apatow and David Gordon Green are open to creativity and improvisation as it’s real and adds something to a scene. We ended up shooting about a million feet of film (I’m not sure if he’s serious), the camera kept on rolling all the time, it was always on.

DMcB: Yeah, this created challenges for Tim Orr (the cinematographer) as to lighting and shooting, as he had to have multiple cameras on people in order to not miss the reactions of any actor from an improv.

Then the coffee arrives, either mid-question or mid-answer. Either way, it throws me off my train of thought and makes me realise: ‘S**t, I’m almost out of questions.’

I go onto say how I think Irish audiences will like the movie, particularly the cynical satirical swipe at conventional Hollywood endings.

JF: That’s my favourite scene in the whole movie. They didn’t know how to end it and came up with the ending about half way through shooting. They knew they couldn’t put in a happy ending after all that happens.

That wasn’t really what I was getting at so I try again that the ending was taking the piss out of normal Hollywood endings and that type of cynicism goes down well with Irish audiences who often feel their intelligence is insulted with some of the endings coming from California.

GG: I find that the relationship between Dale (Seth Rogen’s Character) and Saul (James Franco’s character) is done very well, it seems genuine and believable and there is real heart there, like in all Apatow movies. In Irish movies, and I could but I won’t name any names (I think if I had named names they would not have been the least bit bothered) it would have been clichéd and unrealistic.

JF and DMcB: Thanks

GG: I’m curious to find more about the Apatow ‘Family’. You all know each other firstly as friends and in several cases for many years. What plans do you have to work together again?

JF and DMcB immediately say they’d love to work with each other again. Danny has three big movies coming out, including Tropic Thunder and Land of the Lost with Will Ferrell.

James is heading back to ‘School’. So it is true! (I read it in Wikipedia.) He’ll be studying American history and something else.

‘History is useless as the victors get to write history,’ says Danny.

At this stage I have finally run out of questions, and ask them if they have any questions for me. They don’t.

‘Hey man, grab a Red Bull,’ says James.

‘I think I will, actually,’ I say and then remember I hate Red Bull. I try to get a bottle of Coke but can’t see an opener.

They joke again that they are going to Amsterdam after this to continue on the movie. At least I think they were joking.

So, with my questions finally exhausted and with them having no questions for me, I gather my things and pick up the Dictaphone, which greets me with a blank screen.

Due to some random glitch, the whole interview has gone unrecorded. I shake hands with the lads and, to their puzzlement, end the interview early. The next journalist is out there waiting to go in and the Sony girl, on her way down to call me, is also slightly surprised to see me.

‘All finished?’ she says. ‘Yes,’ I reply, as I head off, trying to keep as much of the last eighteen minutes as possible in my head.

Pineapple Express - Official website