worried<\/span><\/a> that his successful navigation of Pineapple Express<\/i>\u2019s stoner-logic action-comedy plot would make him \u201cin demand by mainstream Hollywood.\u201d When Green did indeed chase that success with two more studio comedies \u2013 Your Highness<\/i> and The Sitter<\/i>, both 2011, both of which Ebert mercilessly panned \u2013 the director\u2019s admirers may have been justified in wondering whether they had lost \u201ctheir\u201d David Gordon Green for good. Those fears were quickly dispelled by the one-two punch of Prince Avalanche<\/i> and Joe<\/i> (both 2013), but on the occasion of Pineapple Express<\/i>\u2019s 10th anniversary, it\u2019s high time we put Green\u2019s detour into lowbrow entertainment into perspective.<\/span><\/p>\nOn the commentary for George Washington, <\/i>Green says, \u201cAs an audience member, I don\u2019t necessarily want things to be laid out: first act, second act, third act, here\u2019s how you feel, on the nose. It\u2019s, like, let\u2019s go see what\u2019s under this broken window for a little bit.\u201d That philosophy held true for his next three features as Green (as both writer and director) favored character study over plot mechanics, establishing a strong hangout vibe that inevitably gets punctured. The precedent for this was set by the accidental death of one of the young protagonists in George Washington<\/i>, and is echoed by Paul Schneider\u2019s falling-out with his best friend in All the Real Girls<\/i> (over the fact that Schneider is dating his sister), the fratricide in Undertow<\/i>, and the little girl going missing in Snow Angels<\/i> (2008).<\/span><\/p>\nThe same applies to Pineapple Express<\/i>, the key difference being that the plot simply gets into gear earlier, with Seth Rogen\u2019s process server witnessing a murder 22 minutes in and going on the run with his weed dealer. (In the more episodic Your Highness<\/i> and The Sitter<\/i>, the plots kick in even more quickly, a necessity in the latter\u2019s case since its theatrical cut barely runs 76 minutes without credits.) Up until that point, screenwriters Rogen and Evan Goldberg (working from a story cooked up with producer Judd Apatow) take time to establish the characters of Dale (Rogen), whose job is flexible enough that he\u2019s able to light up just about any time he pleases, and Saul (James Franco), whose service he requires fairly often in light of how much he smokes. Even after they\u2019ve fled Saul\u2019s apartment (a set crammed with so much detail \u2013 including a poster for the 1932 version of Scarface <\/i>\u2013 it rivals the real locations Green and cinematographer Tim Orr were accustomed to shooting in), opportunities for the two of them to bond are abundant, as in the scene Green\u2019s commentary cites as his favorite: the morning after they\u2019ve spent the night in the woods when \u201cthe real dynamic between the characters [\u2026] really starts to shine.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMuch like George Washington<\/i> periodically cuts away from its youthful leads to check in on the adults on the periphery of their lives, Pineapple Express<\/i> finds time for the supporting characters in its world, paying closest attention to two hit men played by Kevin Corrigan, whose primary concern of late has been getting home on time to have dinner with his family, and Craig Robinson, who\u2019s the one concerned about the growing rift between them. Similarly, Dale\u2019s relationship with the high school girl he\u2019s dating goes up in smoke, which echoes the trajectory of the tentative romance between Paul Schneider and Zooey Deschanel in All the Real Girls<\/i>, as well as the one between Jamie Bell and Kristen Stewart in Undertow<\/i>. Heck, George Washington<\/i> even opens with a breakup scene (necessitated by the real-life breakup of two of the young actors in the film), which demonstrates that Green has been concerned with such matters from the very start.<\/span><\/p>\nAlso carried over from All the Real Girls<\/i> to Pineapple Express <\/i>is Green\u2019s canny casting of Danny McBride (another North Carolina School of the Arts alum) as a comic foil. Looking at them side by side, there\u2019s not a lot of difference between Bust-Ass, who unwittingly comes between Schneider and Deschanel, and Red, the supplier who goes from ratting Rogen and Franco out to becoming best buds with them. Before that can happen, though, Red suffers the most abuse of any character that makes it out of Pineapple Express<\/i> alive, getting shot several times and being on the receiving end of multiple beat-downs.<\/span><\/p>\nOn the action front, Pineapple Express<\/i> features more car chases and gunplay than Green had ever tackled before (or since, really). It has its precedent in the thriller Undertow<\/i>, however, in which Green yielded to genre conventions for the first time with a story of two brothers who go on the run from their ex-con uncle after he murders their father over a stash of gold coins. A figure of menace on par with Robert Mitchum\u2019s Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter<\/i> (a clear inspiration), Josh Lucas\u2019s Deel also prefigures Gary Cole\u2019s ruthless drug lord Ted, who\u2019s equally prone to flying off the handle at a moment\u2019s notice. But where Undertow<\/i> traffics in biblical allusions to Cain and Abel and Abraham and Isaac, Pineapple Express<\/i> mostly falls back on Lazarus-like resurrections of seemingly dead characters \u2013 a veritable staple of action films.<\/span><\/p>\nThere are no clear-cut villains in Green\u2019s next film, Snow Angels<\/i>, which boasts an ensemble cast including Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Griffin Dunne, Nicky Katt, Tom Noonan, and Amy Sedaris. Its central character, though, is Arthur (Michael Angarano), an aimless high schooler cut from the same cloth as the unsupervised pre-teens in George Washington<\/i>. Whereas they were messing around in an abandoned building when one of them had a fatal accident, Arthur is the one who finds the body of Beckinsale and Rockwell\u2019s missing daughter, which is made all the more traumatic by the fact that he\u2019s high when he does it. This links him to Dale, who was high when he witnessed the murder that puts his life in danger and keeps getting high with Saul in spite of the danger they continue to be in. Unlike his spaced-out dealer, though, Dale has a modicum of self-awareness about their situation.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIn case you haven\u2019t noticed, which you haven\u2019t, because from what I can tell you never notice anything, ever,\u201d he says right before they part ways, \u201cwe are not very functional when we\u2019re high, which is all the f****** time.\u201d Functional or not, audiences responded to Pineapple Express<\/i>\u2019s mix of stoner comedy and take-no-prisoners action in a big way. With its $87 million domestic take, it remains Green\u2019s most successful film to date, out-grossing all his others combined. Subsequent attempts to replicate that success fell flat, though, failing to win over critics and doing little to please audiences, either.<\/span><\/p>\nOne reason for this may be that they\u2019re built around less likable protagonists. Where Pineapple Express<\/i> hinges on the growing bond between Dale and Saul, which admittedly has its highs and lows, Your Highness<\/i> is primarily concerned with pampered prince Thadeous (McBride) and his need to prove himself to his heroic brother Fabious (Franco), who needs help rescuing his fianc\u00e9e (Deschanel) from an evil sorcerer (Justin Theroux). In theory, that\u2019s not a bad plot to hang a series of comedic set-pieces on, but screenwriters McBride and Ben Best (co-creator of Eastbound & Down<\/i> with McBride and Jody Hill) are mostly content just to lay in a lot of lazy pot humor and a seemingly never-ending stream of gay-panic jokes about perverted wizards, randy minotaurs, and the like. They also strand Deschanel in such a thankless role, it\u2019s a wonder she bothered returning from All the Real Girls<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\nThe same could be said of Sam Rockwell and The Sitter<\/i>, in which he plays a psychotic drug kingpin (with an army of musclebound weightlifters at his beck and call) to whom lazy college dropout and substitute babysitter Noah (Jonah Hill) owes $10,000 for reasons too convoluted to get into. It\u2019s also not worth going over the personality quirks of the three problem children Noah is saddled with, even though the movie stops dead each time he has to have a heart-to-heart with one of them. In spite of the participation of such frequent collaborators as composer David Wingo, production designer Richard Wright, and cinematographer Tim Orr, The Sitter<\/i> feels like a mercenary work that was rushed into production to fill a gap in Jonah Hill\u2019s schedule. No wonder Green scaled back his ambitions and personally handled the scripting duties on the agreeably low-key Prince Avalanche<\/i> (2013), which pulled double-duty by allowing star Paul Rudd to show off his dramatic chops.<\/span><\/p>\nSince Prince Avalanche<\/i>, Green has stuck with the kinds of character-based films with which he made his name. (Tellingly, his only film to get a wide release in that time has been Our Brand Is Crisis<\/i>, a star vehicle for Sandra Bullock that failed to gain much traction.) Meanwhile, he has channeled his yen for comedy into his small-screen work as creator of the short-lived animated series Good Vibes<\/i> and director on such shows as Eastbound & Down<\/i>, Red Oaks<\/i>, and Vice Principals<\/i>. This sideline has kept him in touch with McBride, who co-scripted Green\u2019s forthcoming Halloween<\/i> sequel. A different kind of feint at the mainstream, this was met with some skepticism when it was announced, but if Green treats the saga of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers with the seriousness with which he\u2019s approached most of his other films, he might surprise a lot of naysayers. Or at the very least give them a good scare.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Pineapple Express was released in the summer of 2008, it was seen as a major departure for director David […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":9940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}