Action!

"Judd says that he doesn't like making action movies because he's afraid that someone is going to get hurt, but Pineapple Express - which seemed like it would be a comedy with some action elements - really became a true action film," says producer Shauna Robertson. "None of us had made a movie like this before, but we were excited to do it and up for the challenge."

Rogen was not afraid to put his body on the line. "I love action movies," says Rogen, "and even though we knew Pineapple Express was going to be funny, we didn't want to make fun of action movies - we wanted to make an action movie. To make it funny, we added a silly twist to many of the sequences, but it's still exciting and awesome."

James Franco puts it succinctly: "It's an action movie with characters that are the opposite of action heroes," he says.

Franco, who has the most experience in the genre, says that the action of Pineapple Express was some of the most thrilling for him to perform in his career so far. "This actually feels like there's a lot more action in this movie than Spider-Man(tm) just because the nature of it is so different. In Spider-Man, we'd take a month and a half to film an action scene. On this, we did it in three or four days and it's not in front of a green screen. It's much more down and dirty. It feels like an action movie."

Although the actors did do some training, they were careful not to train too much. "It was important that we didn't look like we knew what we were doing. If Dale looks comfortable holding a machine gun, it's not funny anymore," says Rogen. "So we always said, 'Tell us as little as we need to know, just so we don't get hurt. And I had fighting experience from my karate days as a child - just enough not to accidentally elbow Gary Cole in the head. We trained exactly as much as we needed to, but not so much that we actually looked good doing it."

As Franco puts it, "We are the two guys that are least equipped to deal with any kind of danger, and we're thrown into a lot of danger."

Rogen surprised himself when it came to shooting scenes he wrote. "I never thought about actually doing any of it," Rogen says of the action sequences. "We wrote a sequence where Dale would go into a fire to rescue Saul - I never saw myself doing that. But then, when we filmed it, they lit everything on fire and told me to stand in the middle of it. It was safe and I didn't get hurt - all I could think was, 'Dude, it's just like it was in my head.'"

"Seth got so excited whenever there was a fire or somebody got punched," laughs Franco. "He'd never done action before, and it was fun to watch him."

According to Gary Hymes, a veteran stunt coordinator whose credits include Jurassic Park, Speed, The Italian Job, Jet Li's The One, and many other films, Pineapple Express did not skimp on the action. "When I was first approached to do the movie, it was a bit on the tame side - three small sequences. And then we started to embellish those sequences. It was constantly growing and growing and growing, and by the end, the comedy-with-some-action turned out to be an action picture with some comedy."

The film even represented a challenge for Hymes. "The easiest kind of action to do is where it's not tied into the characters; it's gratuitous action for its own sake. On Pineapple Express, we had to make it exciting, of course, but also character-driven - what can these characters do and what can't they do? Where do we draw the line? That took awhile to figure out, and it was a great experience."

For the director, that meant walking a fine line. "I don't think the stunts really quite play realistically," says Green, "but, as outrageous as it gets, we do want the audience to feel like these are real people stuck in ridiculous situations. These are people that aren't equipped to be in an action movie - guys for whom a big Saturday evening is chewing their fingernails and smoking a joint - who suddenly find themselves in one of these circumstances where they're holding a machine gun and have to blow a bunch of people away."

The reality of the situation sank in during location scouts. Rogen goes on, "We were able to go to locations and see, 'Oh, I can jump off there with wire. That'll be cool.' We talked to Gary and asked, 'What could I actually do? What could Franco actually do? What's safe?' I think we're doing more than I ever thought we would."

Rogen adds that Hymes was the perfect collaborator to bring the sequences to life. "He's really overqualified for this movie," says the actor. "I'd say, 'I want to jump off of there,' and he'd say, 'Yeah, in Jurassic Park, we did something similar to that.' Ohhh, you've got this covered."

An example of a scene in which the action reveals the characters, says Hymes, is "the fight sequence in Red's house between Dale, Saul and Red. I think it really captures the characters. The hardest thing for me was to sit behind the monitors and not ruin the take because I was laughing so much. These guys are so, so funny."

Filming the car chase was also a highly memorable experience. "I was shooting second unit about a block away from David's first unit, so we had to be careful not to be filming each other," says Hymes. "David knew exactly what he wanted from the sequence, in terms of both the action and the comedy. David and I discussed everything thoroughly and it had all been storyboarded, so I focused entirely on the action, with Rosie in one car and Franco in the other - and he can't see, because the window is full of Slushee, and he gets his foot caught in the windshield, and we cut outside the car to see him driving like that. It's a great example of the way the action outside the car accentuates the comedy inside the car - and vice versa."

Perez had a happy accident during the scene, in which she was supposed to fire her gun. "David says, 'You pull up, you roll down the window, you point and shoot. But you miss, and you take off, still shooting, and you hit a pedestrian.' OK. So the DP comes up to me and says, 'I want you to shoot right here.' I'm thinking, but that's my eyeline, with an X on the camera frame. 'You sure you want me to shoot right there?' 'Yes, yes! We gotta go, we're losing the light.' OK. Action. Car takes off. I roll down the window, and bang-bang-bang! I shoot the freaking camera. And the camera is still rolling. I yell, 'Sorry!' and I take off in the car. David and Evan are standing behind the camera and they crack up and yell, 'Print, we're done!'"

Perez was also at the center of one of the more hilarious moments of the shoot - one that didn't make the final cut. "We're shooting the fight and doing choreographed stunts and James goes, 'How about we just wing it this next take?' I said, 'OK. What are you going to do?' He said, 'I don't know - just follow my lead, go with it, and don't say anything.' We started fighting and he starts putting his weight on me - I'm really fighting and struggling with him. We get into this wrestling match, and then he flips me onto my stomach and bites me on the ass. James Franco bit me on my freakin' ass. It hurt so much! And right at that moment, David put the camera on slo-mo, so I have this lioness roar, 'Raaaaaaaaaaa!' David cut, and James said, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' and I said, 'No, that was great! It was hilarious! I'm gonna kill you now.'"

In the end, the actors all acquitted themselves well. "We were so fortunate to have such amazing actors who are also great athletes," says Hymes. "Seth did about 80% of his own stunts in this film and Gary Cole did a lot, too. Rarely do you work on a film where you can have the actors do so much of their stunt work."

Which is not to say that there weren't some bumps and bruises. "I fractured my finger," Rogen says. "Danny cracked his head open on a breakaway bong. Franco ran into a tree our first week and got stitches in his forehead."

Franco interjects, "I guess they want to say I was tired, but whatever. It was a pretty ridiculous stunt."

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