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We started when we're around 13 writing it - maybe 14. I'm a little older than Evan Goldberg is, like, only like six months. But like, I would say, like, the general structure of the movie, like, the series of events is very similar to what it was when we first wrote it.
I knew I just loved comedy, and I think it was my parents who initially brought up the notion of me trying to do stand-up. I think I actually tried writing jokes just at home, just kind of sitting around. But it seemed like a very real way to step into the world of comedy.
There was a year straight where every weekend, I went to at least one bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, and we would all go, and it was a lot of fun. We sneak some beer; we'd hang out; we would try to get with girls and not. And usually we'd just end up hanging out together alone.
It's definitely not true what they say about women wanting a guy with a sense of humour. What women mean is that they want a guy with a sense of humour who is really handsome. If a girl had a choice between Brad Pitt or me, she'd pick Brad Pitt. And I'm a lot funnier than he is.
I was looking to do a comedy and found a group of guys that were really supportive of my interests in it, though it was a little outside of my wheel house. Strangely, I visited the set of Knocked Up and met Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and Judd[Apatow] and Shauna [Robertson].
When I was 13 and 14, there were a lot of jokes about my bar mitzvah and my grandparents, and then when I got older, it became more about touching boobs and trying to get liquor, you know? I kind of ran the gamut of infantile behavior... And I haven't moved one step forward since.
It was a great time. We did hurt ourselves [on Pineapple Express set]. [James] Franco cracked his face open.[Danny ] McBride cracked the back of his head open. I punched Amber[Heard] in the face just to get her in the mood for things. 'Welcome to the set!' But it was a lot of fun. I loved it.
We just kind of wanted to play with these iconic moments of action. There's a really small one that always makes me laugh really hard, where there's a big shootout at the end, and the moment my gun runs out of bullets, I turn and there's just another gun sitting there, and I'm, like, oh, nice.
I've never had something - like, you know, drunk people have tried to do that to me, and I instantly shut it off. I say, don't to this, dude; you'll feel terrible about this later. It'll be - I'll bring it up all the time; I'll make fun of you. Just save yourself the embarrassment and don't do it.
I knew I just loved comedy, and I think it was my parents who initially brought up the notion of me trying to do stand-up. I think I actually tried writing jokes just at home, just kind of sitting around. But it seemed like a very real way to step into the world of comedy. I felt I could do it, so why not?
I did meet Steve Wozniak on several occasions leading up to the filming of the movie. It wasn’t really written how he is. So the second I met him, it almost was a relief, because I was like, "OK, good, the real Steve Wozniak is like one of the least confrontational people you would ever meet in your entire life."
I actually live right near a high school and I always walk by...I live in a high school. I actually live in the boiler room of a high school at night. When I see high school guys now I'm actually like, 'Thank f - king God I'm not in high school anymore because they look like they could kick the living s - t out of me.'
We don't have any changes in the movie [Pineapple Express] and so picking the right outfit was fairly important. So I wasn't a fan of the Guatemalan pants, but I was convinced that I should wear that. Then the T-shirt is a special creation by David Gordon Green. It's a kitten sitting in a shark's mouth, but he's happy about it.
I don't think that any scene [in Pineapple Express] is word for word how you'd find it in the script. Some of it was much more loose than others. The last scene with me, Danny [McBride] and James [Franko] in the diner - there was never even a script for that scene. Usually we write something, but for that scene we literally wrote nothing.
Americans whisper the word Alzheimer's because their government whispers the word Alzheimer's. And although a whisper is better than the silence that the Alzheimer's community has been facing for decades, it's still not enough. It needs to be yelled and screamed to the point that it finally gets the attention and the funding that it deserves and needs.
I think that, honestly, people's censorship issues are personal but I disagree with most of those personal choices that I see others make. You know, I watch television and there's a grotesque amount of violence on almost every show that you would watch that comes on past 8:00 pm. And I think my dirty brand of humor is far less destructive to a child's mentality.
One of the big things that we wanted to do was trying to kick out a car window as you're driving after it's been shattered obstructing your view. I mean, that's - I can't count how many movies I've seen that in, and we just thought, you know, like, it could be funny if it just kind of goes wrong and this foot just kind of punctures through the window and gets stuck.
We were really fortunate to work [on Pineapple Express] with a studio that was really supportive of these guys. It was before Superbad and Knocked Up had even come out, but everyone just felt really great about them and the energy surrounding Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and Judd [Apatow] - all of these guys - and the idea of getting Franco back into comedy as well.
I think I was just so ecstatic that I was working, and then as it went on, you know, I started to really appreciate that it ["Freaks and Geeks"] was good and that we were doing something a little different and that, you know, everyone was really cool to work with and that it was really talented group of people, and it was just when I was realizing that, that it got canceled.
You can actually improvise a lot as a voice actor. It's not that entirely different than shooting a live action movie; the characters mouths are quite easy to manipulate once all the information is built into the computer. So you can improvise a lot and it doesn't matter really how far along they are in the process they can really just make the character say something different.
Years and years of talking and writing versions of the script [Sausage Party] and looking at various versions of the animations - I mean, it's really a lot of workshopping and trying different things, and using the cast to try different voices and characters. And that's the good thing about animation. Because it takes so long, it allows you to explore in a way that you can't in live-action movies.
It's just kind of seemed like a funny way to explore action movies, I guess. I mean, I'm a big fan of them always. It's always people who are very equipped to deal with the situations that they're thrown in. So, the notion just seemed funny, because it's, like, basically stoners are kind of the last guys in the world who are equipped to deal with that. And the humor possibilities just seemed somewhat endless.
I'm not entirely comfortable saying I'm an actor, because it seems like a very weird, almost dorky thing to say you are. I laugh after every take just out of the discomfort I feel that I'm even on film. It's an awkward thing for me to be doing. Once we get going, it's always fine, and as we're shooting, I'm never thinking about it. I'd say that all my time in front of the camera is equally uncomfortable for me.
I was, like, a brown belt, which is pretty good. I entered a tournament once, and I punched the guy in the throat and got disqualified. I realized - I don't know if you're familiar with "Karate Kid," but the bad guys in that are called Cobra Kai, and they're, like, the evil karate guys. And then when I went to the tournament, I realized that's what we were; we were like the Cobra Kai of the Jewish karate community.
It was amazing how much their [Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Shauna Robertson] process seemed familiar to me, translating that into the work that I had done and giving actors a lot of freedom and doing a lot of improvisation and a total respect and collaboration with all the department heads and all the crews, and just really making it an enjoyable industry rather than just clocking in and doing a job which a lot of movies are.
I was pretty young. I guess I was in high school, so I was probably 13 years old. It was crazy. I remember it very vividly. I remember - it was actually kind of horrifying, because one of my friends - we smoked out of a bong, and one of my friends - this was so stupid - he didn't want to bring - it was after school on a Friday, and he didn't - we smoked weed in this park called the Ravine that was across the street from my high school.
I read the script [ of 'Steve Jobs' movie ], and it was very, very good. I wasn't sure they would want me to be in the movie, but I auditioned for it. Which I hadn't done in a few years. But I had auditioned in the previous few years for another movie that I did not get the part. And so my track record wasn't good. But I really wanted to audition because I was worried that I was going to blow it, and I wanted it to be on them for choosing me.
It never seemed like that much of a mystery why shows I was acted in failed. When you're doing a show called Freaks And Geeks about young people in high school, and it's on Saturday nights at 8 and there's no promotion for it, it's not really hard to guess why no one's watching it. And when you're doing a college goofball comedy that premières three weeks after Sept. 11, it's not that hard to piece together why that's not the most important thing on the radar.
I have become a giant fan of the testing process, especially with a comedy. I mean, they tell you what's funny. It's almost tailor-made for people who shoot the way we shoot, trying a million different options and versions of things. Because the audience doesn't laugh at a joke, we put in another joke. If they don't laugh at the next joke, we put in another joke. You just keep doing them and you can get the movie to the point where every joke is funny, if you have enough options in the can.
I remember thinking as I was doing the jokes for the first time, "If I can hear that very clearly, I'm not hearing laughter." It just became deafening, this buzzing noise. I mean, it was brutal. It was really terrible. Then I remember thinking, "At least nobody important, or anyone who I really respect, saw that." And then literally right when I went off the stage, Jerry Seinfeld got up and went on. So I was like, "Oh great. Seinfeld saw me bomb." On the other hand, I thought, "At least no one will be thinking of me anymore. They'll just be focusing on him."