Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little one-on-one action with Danny Leiner, director of DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR? and the upcoming stoners on a mission extravaganza HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE. I did a small round of one-on-ones with a bunch of people from the movie and I'll have those interviews ready in the next day or so. If you're interested in hearing any more about the making of the film and are attending the San Diego Comic-Con, New Line's panel will include stars John Cho and Kal Penn and some of the filmmakers if I'm not mistaken. The panel is 5:30-7:30pm on Friday in the new "Hall H." New Line also has Goyer, Biel and Reynolds there promoting BLADE 3 and Billy Boyd and Faramir will be showing our first look at the Extended Edition of ROTK. Big, big panel. Anyway, on to the Harold and Kumar goodness!
QUINT: How did you come to direct HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE? Where did it all start?
DANNY LEINER: (Interview voice on) Well, it all started for me... as a small child... (laughs, and turns off interview voice). No, actually what happened was I got the script from my agent and I told him I really wasn't interested in it 'cause I had just directed DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR? I kinda wanted to avoid doing another one of those. It seemed very similar, at least the log line, which was "Road trip stoner comedy, takes place one day, one night." (AT THIS POINT KAL PENN, "KUMAR", WALKS PAST US... HE DIDN'T STOP. KEEP IN MIND, ALL THE BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THEM BELOW HAPPENED IN THE TIME IT TOOK KAL TO WALK ABOUT 10 FEET). Hey, Kal.
KAL PENN: What's up?
DANNY LEINER: How you doin'?
KAL PENN: Good. How're you?
DANNY LEINER: So, I was just resistant to even reading it. This executive, at the time Senator was the financier of the movie... they kept bugging me and my agent to at least have me read it. I read it and I thought it was really funny, but I was still really resistant because I just wanted to break out of doing that kind of comedy. Basically, I have this little indie film called THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL that I was trying to get off the ground, that I developed. They said they had $10 million for this movie, so I said, "Have them give me $2 million to make THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL and I'll make their movie for $8 million."
So, he read THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL and we had a meeting. I reread HAROLD AND KUMAR. And that time I just fuckin' loved it. I mean, every page I was just laughing. Whereas I really liked it the first time I read it... I didn't care, you know? I wasn't predisposed against it (the second time). Every page made me laugh, which very few scripts do. A lot of what's in the movie is what's in the script.
Once I read it again, I was like, "Fuck! I'm doing this movie!" I was really digging it. So, I went in and met. They didn't do my indie film, but I did this one.
QUINT: YOU HAVE THAT ONE COMING UP, THOUGH, RIGHT?
DANNY LEINER: I do. I'm in post right now. It's kind of a crazy time for me because with all the stuff that's going on with this movie... it's just really exciting, the fact that New Line put it out in Summer. We really fought to make that happen. Originally, they were like "Early Spring" and then they were gonna do Christmas, that slot where a lot of comedies come out now. DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR? was in that slot.
Anyway, I'm editing. The indie we shot on High-Def for $500,000. It was a really great experience for me, working in that medium.
QUINT: ONE OF MY GOOD FRIENDS, KNOWN ONLY AS "RAV", WOULD BE HUMPING YOUR LEG RIGHT NOW BECAUSE YOU DIRECTED A GIRL HE HAS A HUGE CRUSH ON...
DANNY LEINER: Maggie?
QUINT: YEP. MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL.
DANNY LEINER: I thought you were gonna say Maggie. But you know what I find? This is the interesting thing... Judy Greer's in the movie and when I tell people... Guys go crazy for Judy Greer. She's great! I love Judy. Maggie, everyone knows, but what I mentioned Judy people were like, "Judy Greer!!!!" She was great. I was blessed with the cast on that movie. Tony Shaloub and Maggie and Stephen Colbert and Olympia Dukakis. We got a good little group. Judy Greer, Tom McCarthy, the guy who directed THE STATION AGENT, and Edie Falco. So, that's how I got into this movie. I got recruited!
QUINT: WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE SCENE TO SHOOT? (pause) IT WAS THE BOOBIES, WASN'T IT?
DANNY LEINER: Hmm... That was a really nervous scene for me... The Freakshow one? With Lianne, who was really hot and amazing. Malin Akerman was really great. The nature of that night was we were pressed for time and Malin was not an experience actress, so she took a little while to warm up... And she was doing nudity. It ended up being great. I thought she did an amazing job. I was really happy and she was great, but shooting it wasn't that fun because it was a little tense.
But Freakshow... The first thing we shot with him was in the truck... where he's driving his tow-truck. Chris Meloni would do a totally different, like, every time and it would kill me. I mean, I was literally laughing at the monitor trying not to mess up the takes. What was really fun about it was Kal and John were scared shitless. Chris was in character as Freakshow. They'd have to sit in this van, this little cab in the tow-truck and I swear Chris would be, like, farting and doing crazy shit. Those guys were freaked out. The whole time! Like, they'd have to go back in for another take and they'd be looking at each other... There's probably a couple other things...
QUINT: LIKE THE MARIJUANA HAZE?
DANNY LEINER: Which one? The bag of weed? "Weedy"? I love that. That's actually my favorite. Weedy... we had a great time. We went to a park one day with Kal and just all the montage sequence... It was a little splinter unit. We just took off and it was an off day for everyone else... The one I was most worried about was the "Battleshits." It made me really laugh when I read the script, but I was really fearful... It's one of those scenes that you read is really funny 'cause you kind of can't believe it's going on, but then the execution of it... I was concerned we wouldn't pull it off and I was really happy with how it turned out.
QUINT: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF A WELL-EXECUTED SHIT JOKE.
DANNY LEINER: (laughs) Yeah, that's the lesson I learned. There's something just original and unique about it... Just the concept of "Battleshits" where it's a game. And the fact that the women... the two girls who are these proper, English girls... you know, there's something about that. I kind of modeled them after the Pigeon sisters on THE ODD COUPLE... the TV show or the movie. You know, where they kind of finish each other's sentences. And they're so proper! I think that's part of the fun of the joke. You just can't believe it's happening.
QUINT: YOU HAVE TO TELL ME A DOOGIE STORY.
DANNY LEINER: A Doogie story!
QUINT: A GOOD DOOGIE STORY! I GREW UP WITH DOOGIE HOWSER M.D. AND I'M A HUGE NEIL PATRICK HARRIS FAN. I LOVED "STARSHIP TROOPERS" AND HE WAS AWESOME IN "UNDERCOVER BROTHER."
DANNY LEINER: He was great in UNDERCOVER BROTHER! I'm with you. Here's the thing, I don't know if I have a great anecdote about him, but I have to say... Neil Patrick Harris was in the script and I was obsessed that we get him and not some other child actor as a substitute. He was in CABARET, so I flew to New York and went to see him, pleading my case as to why he should do the movie. He was interested in the movie, but he was concerned about it all being about Doogie and not about him.
What was really cool about Neil is he loved the humor. I thought it was one of the funniest parts of the movie and the script and he really got it. I actually think it's a brilliant move on his part. If you're gonna run away from that and avoid it... Here you confront this legacy head-on and you have fun with it and turn it on its head.
We were shooting the scene in White Castle where he comes in and says he found God and walks off with his sunglasses... It's really funny. But, we had this part where it's a callback to DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR? where John Cho says, "Dude, where's my car?" Neil's idea was to say, "Doog, where's my car?" which I thought was really funny and we shot a take of that. Then when we were looking at dailies, I was like, "Where's that take?" We heard it, but it was so close to "Dude"... Once you heard the Doo-, you just thought it was Dude. It was funny. I thought it was a funny idea.
But he was amazing. He came in and we were all blown away. You see in the movie... the whole trippy vibe that he did and the sweating and the humping the chair...
At this point we were politely interrupted by the super nice publicity lady from AGA, the New Line press rep in these parts, and I was pulled away and forced in front of two strange young men who claimed to have written HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE. Look for that interview as well as my brief chat with Harold and Kumar themselves, which should be hitting in the next day or so! Many thanks to Kraken for snapping pics of the interview! Oh, and be on the look out for a very super special interview coming up around Monday Morning... think bandaids, babes and blood and you might guess at what the coolness is. Until then, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu!
-Quint
