Cut to the chase: It's a different kind of comedy

In 'Pineapple Express,' first-tier artists salute second-rate films

From left: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Judd Apatow, David Gordon Green, Shauna Robertson, and Evan Goldberg on the set of "Pineapple Express." The film stars Rogen and Franco as a process server and a pothead fleeing from a drug kingpin. (Dale robinette)

Practically everyone has flipped channels late at night, settling on a mediocre action flick: absurd dialogue, hyper-stylized violence, aggressively cheesy synthesizer music, comically evil villains. These Grade-Z movies are made for just such occasions; mindless and filling, they are the cinematic equivalent of fast food. So what happens when Grade-A filmmakers and actors decide to pay homage to the kind of movie that might have been featured in a 1988 Cinemax rotation? Director David Gordon Green, co-writer/producer Judd Apatow, costar/co-writer/executive producer Seth Rogen, and the rest of the cast and crew of the tongue-in-cheek tribute film "Pineapple Express" are looking to find out.

And yes, that is the director of shambling indie charmers "George Washington" and "All the Real Girls" behind the camera for this big-budget stoner-adventure epic.

When Green visited the set of Apatow's "Knocked up," he says he "realized that my style was pretty similar, in terms of giving the actors a lot of freedom, doing a lot of improvisation, trusting your department heads."

"They were doing the same thing in big-budget comedies that I was doing in low-budget dramas," Green says.

Screenwriters Rogen and Evan Goldberg had already turned in their script when Green came onboard. After a particularly successful table reading, it was decided that James Franco ("Freaks and Geeks," "Spider-Man"), he of the chiseled good looks and diffident manner, would play Jewish pothead-dealer Saul Silver; and Rogen, who had initially been intended for the role of Saul, would play straight man Dale Denton, a process server who stumbles into a world of trouble when he witnesses a murder.

Saul and Dale, two milquetoast outlaws more comfortable handling a bong than a Beretta, would try to keep a step ahead of ruthless drug kingpin Ted Jones (Gary Cole) and his police officer henchman (Rosie Perez) while childishly trusting everyone they encounter, including Saul's double-dealing drug-middleman buddy Red (Danny McBride). Everything about "Pineapple Express," from its bloody US-Chinese drug war to its pounding, synthesizer-heavy soundtrack, screams parody, yet the film is not quite that.

"I don't particularly like jokes, or that kind of funny stuff," says Green, noting he prefers "two people who are funny by the fact they're in the same frame together, and the composition of the movie and the situations they're in."

To prepare for the film, the team watched a lot of "Tango & Cash," referencing the legendarily mediocre 1989 Sylvester Stallone-Kurt Russell gunshots-and-fireballs epic, Green says. Having loved the realistic fight sequences in the Thomas Jane action vehicle "The Punisher," Green hired stunt coordinator Gary Hymes from that film to give "Pineapple" a similar DIY vibe.

The film is a mash-up of Green's low-key realism and Apatow's potty-mouthed guy comedy. Saul and Dale are standard-issue Apatow heroes - charming, crass, sexually immature - but rather than struggle with their far more mature girl-friends, or come to terms with adulthood, they must flee for their lives.

"Putting unbelievable circumstances around real people" is how Green describes it. "Because you don't get lost in the stereotypical cliches of Hollywood musculature, you're seeing them as if they're the guy that lives down the street."

Saul and Dale try their best to be action heroes, and repeatedly fail. Saul attempts to kick out a police car's windshield, and gets his foot firmly planted in the glass; Dale fights a drug dealer, and gets clobbered in the head with an ashtray. Even the criminals are less than fully professional: "I look like Hamburglar!" a baddie moans after being clocked with a coffee pot.

"Pineapple Express" also takes the half-submerged brotherly love of Apatow's earlier films and fully exposes it to daylight. The "bromosexuality," as the film calls it, is explicit, repeated, and without letup. There are declarations of undying love and scenes of mock intercourse. Green shrugs off the implications - "I think Saul's character is just an openly loving, physical guy" - but "Pineapple Express" ventures beyond the R-rated jokes of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" or "Knocked Up"; there is only one love affair here, and it is between Saul and Dale.

The comedy extends past the script and actors into Green's choices in the editing room. The panoply of wipes and transitions that Green and editor Craig Alpert utilize are funny in themselves, a canny reference to the slam-bang MTV cutting popular in the mid-1980s, and Graeme Revell's score knowingly echoes the synthesizer symphonies of that era's cop films, like "Axel F," Harold Faltermeyer's smash-hit theme from "Beverly Hills Cop."

"We talked a lot about the music from '48 Hours,' and 'The Warriors,' and wanted to make sure it had enough of a synth edge," notes Green.

All the homages and references are intended "to give people a little nudge and a smile," says Green.

It also indicates that the filmmakers have done their homework.