Q&A: Judd Apatow

Judd Apatow (Credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

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The last few years have been pretty good for Judd Apatow.

After watching helplessly as his acclaimed TV series “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared” were cancelled by heartless network executives, he turned his attention to films and produced a series of smash hits including “Superbad,” “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and two films he personally wrote and directed: “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up.”

His latest production, the action-comedy stoner buddy movie “Pineapple Express,” reunites him with “Superbad” writing team Evan Goldberg and actor Seth Rogen, and Rogen takes the lead role opposite former “Freaks and Geeks” star James Franco. Apatow treats filmmaking as a family effort, using many of the same actors and crew project to project, but “Pineapple” also gets a big boost from the fresh perspective of idiosyncratic indie director David Gordon Green (“All the Real Girls”).

We spoke with Apatow about the genesis for this atypical stoner comedy, his own experiences with weed and what the stars were really smoking.

How did you come up with the idea for “Pineapple Express”?
I was watching “True Romance” back in the late ‘90s on laserdisc, and I thought, “Brad Pitt is so funny as this pothead character but there’s only one scene. I kind of wish there was a whole movie about that guy.” And then I started thinking they never have stoner movies with great Jerry Bruckheimer level action—wouldn’t it be funny if you were chasing guys who were so high that it makes it hard for them to get away? So we spent a few months, had a meeting every once in a while, kickin’ around that line and then before you knew it, we have [“Pineapple Express”].

But it wasn’t quite that easy. You originally had the idea around the time of “Undeclared” or a little bit after?
We started maybe around 2002, after “Undeclared.” We were trying to get “Superbad” going and we couldn’t really get anyone to make it, so we started working on this.

You’ve said that you thought it would be a really commercial idea, are you still convinced?
I gave [Seth and Evan] the idea because no one would make “Superbad” and I thought “well maybe if I give you a really commercial idea we can get it made.” In my head this was commercial. As soon as [we] wrote it—everyone we sent it to was just like “no way, you can’t do this.” After “[40-Year-Old] Virgin” no one would make it, after “Talladega Nights” nobody would make it. I kept thinking someone would want to make it, and then in the middle of the “Superbad” shoot, Sony was looking at the dailies every day and said, “maybe we could make that crazy pot movie.”

It is very edgy. The action elements are going to catch some people by surprise.
It’s “Superbad” with a high body count. [The director] David Gordon Green did an amazing job with the action on the movie and it’s a fun merge of sensibilities. David is a real artist and has a very peculiar sense of humor.

Was there anything that you put into this script yourself that came from your own personal experiences, did you ever throw up on a printer or put your foot through a windshield?
No, I’m not a pot guy… When I smoke pot I just wind up laying in the corner, sucking on my fist, crying, saying “When’s it going to end? When’s it going to end?” I’m the guy who thinks this is an anti-pot movie. I see it as an example of what could happen to you if you smoke pot: You have Asian assassins coming after you.

Do you think the characters change by the end, did they learn from their mistakes?
It’s subtle. I think it’s there, Seth thinks it isn’t. I like that Seth says [in the movie] that all of this is happening because of pot. We made a choice not to hit that too hard because then it becomes an “After School Special.” We did shoot some funny things for the end of the movie where Seth hit the lesson of the movie really hard but we didn’t feel it was necessary.

Were there any stoner movie conventions that you purposely tried to avoid?
One thing that was important was to have an honest portrayal of what it looks like to be stoned. We didn’t want these guys to be laughing and crazy the whole movie. There are a lot of functional potheads who are just a little spacey most of the day, and that’s a little more of what we went for. We didn’t want it to be the giggly movie. They are high most of the time but you forget, which I think is a good part of the movie.

Find out what the cast was really smoking... and more from Judd Apatow.