James Franco Interview
James Franco – 'Saul' in Pineapple Express
How comfortable is it to get back into the world of comedy?
James Franco: "Great, yeah. I mean, I did Freaks and Geeks and that was probably the last kind of comedic thing I did."
Why?
James Franco: "One can say the same thing about dramas, but it's hard to find a good comedy. I mean, it' s just hard to find a good movie. And so I was certainly offered like comedies, romantic comedies, it just didn't seem really…"
Like the teen romantic comedies?
James Franco: "Yeah, certainly I was offered those when I was younger. I don't get offered teen comedies anymore."
You still look very young.
James Franco: "Oh, thank you. Thank you. So when Judd [Apatow] and Seth said that they wanted to do a movie, it was like I think they make the best comedies today. So it was a great opportunity, so I decided to do it."
And the stoner aspect of it, how tough is it to play that part?
James Franco: "It's not that hard for some reason. I mean, I usually don't smoke weed but the way that they make movies is very relaxed. There's a lot of improvisation. They're friends of mine. So it truly felt like sitting around, telling jokes with your friends, making a movie with your friends, and it was very, very relaxed and easy ."
That whole improv thing, how easy is it for you to work back and forth with Seth?
James Franco: "It just depends. I think it really just depends on who you are working with. You have to feel…you know, they just keep the camera rolling. You can say whatever you like. They'll throw out suggestions. And then if you trust the director, trust the director's sense of humor, his taste, then you know you just let it fly. You know he's not going to put the stuff that's not funny in so you just try whatever. And it's great."
And there's also action in this. It's not just a stoner comedy. So how do you like the action part? You've handled that before.
James Franco: "I've done a fair amount of action and this I think was the first time that Seth had ever done action – and he wrote. I don't think he had a concept of what it was like. You just write really cool action scenes and then he didn't realize that if you say you have to run down the street, that's like six hours of running on film. So, and then the other thing about it is, you know I did the Spider-Man movies and those are like very expensive movies, especially compared to this. So on Spider-Man you have weeks and weeks and weeks to do one action scene. On this, you know, you have days. And so it was very rushed and actually what resulted was a lot of injuries. So I actually got three stitches in my forehead. I think Seth sprained his finger, his ring finger. Danny [McBride] got his head busted open by a bong. Lots of stuff happened, yeah ."
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