Can you guys tell us a story from the set that typifies your experience of making this movie, especially as first time directors?
Evan Goldberg: Seth had this incredible idea which I think it should go down as the “Seth Rogen Rule in Society or in Film.” [Traditionally], you’ve got six different actors in six different trailers. You’d tell them to come and they’d ask, “Is Jonah there yet? Is Franco there yet?” So Seth, it just hit him, he had this idea, and we made an actors’ lounge beside the stage.
We asked each actor, what do you want, one thing, what do you want. Craig wanted a pool table, and Jonah wanted a comfy chair and these four magazines. Jay wanted the latest hockey video game and a TV, Danny just wanted some beer in the fridge. Franco had a little painting corner, most of the paintings in the movie he painted personally.
So, the typical moment is we’d plan something and we’d have 10 minutes to relax, and we’d go into the green room they’d made for the actors, and we’d be saying “come on, guys!” And then no one would come. We’d corral one guy to leave, and then all the other guys would get nervous and we’d all rush in there.
Seth Rogen: But what’s funny is what would happen in that rec room is almost exactly what we’d be filming in the house. We’d say, you can do what you’re doing, just move 10 feet over. Literally, Franco would be painting, it was just all the guys just hanging out in one little area. There were so many times we would have a conversation in real life and then we’d film the same conversation three days later. It was weird in that regard. It was kind of surreal, at times, how meta the movie would get, and every time we’d think it was as meta as it could be, we’d realize some other weird layer to it that made it even more meta.
Evan Goldberg: There’s one moment that’s the single most meta moment in the whole movie which is when Seth and Franco are talking about the sequel to Pineapple Express that you don’t know is going to happen later in the movie. James Franco describes the sequel ending in the way the movie actually ends, and while that’s happening the song playing is by James Franco and his band because, yes, of course, he also has a band that you don’t know about. They do Motown.
What discussions go into deciding which songs to use as punchlines?
Seth Rogen: I think some of the songs were written in.
Evan Goldberg: We generally write every song, two of them make it, and then in the editing process, the music supervisor, Jonathan Carp and the other producers, Jason Stone, Kyle Hunter, just all pitch in.
What I think is the best music that we’ve been connected to is the MIA song in the Pineapple Express trailer. The dude who did that, he was just driving to work, heard the song and he pictured it all in that moment. A lot of what we have put in this film, it’s the same thing, we’re driving to work alone or together and we hear a song and it’s like, “hey, that would work.”
Seth Rogen: What’s weird is once we had Gagnam Style in our f**king drug sequence, nothing could replace it. We tried like 20 other songs and we were just like “none of them are as good as Gagnam Style, what do we do, they don’t get the same reaction that Gagnam Style gets.” So now we’re the assholes with Gagnam Style in our movie.
Evan Goldberg: And the other weird thing is the first assembly of the movie, and this is what we planned from the start, was all gospel music. Our initial plan was all gospel music. We recorded a gospel choir and videotaped them singing a gospel song that our executive producers wrote called Please Save My Soul.
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