Generally, franchises are desperately wringing out the last drops of profitability once they stray beyond film number two, but Todd Strauss-Schulson's A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS is that rare second sequel that actually outdoes the previous entries in the series. And by "outdoes", I mean it blows past the boundaries of acceptable R-rated bad taste into a realm where babies ingest narcotics, cocks gets whipped out early and often, and Neil Patrick Harris... well, that's better left unspoiled. No hyperbole: this is one of the raunchiest studio comedies I've ever seen.
While Kal Penn and John Cho certainly endure their share of humiliation, the abasement is doled out fairly evenly across the impressive ensemble cast. No one emerges unscathed. You'd think this wouldn't be a problem for Tom Lennon, a sensationally funny actor who's delighted in his own degradation for years in everything from THE STATE to VIVA VARIETY to RENO 911! This is not a man who shames easily. And yet, when I spoke to Lennon earlier this week, he seemed somewhat stunned by what made it to the screen. As the square, suburbanite friend of the recently domesticated Harold, Lennon's character could've simply been a straight-laced guy who gets caught up in some wild sexual shenanigans; instead, he's forced to watch in helpless horror as his baby daughter gets coked to the gills and worse.
Though Lennon is terrific playing off a drugged-out two-and-a-half-year-old, it is not an experience he's keen to revisit. As he vividly explains in the below interview, working with a baby in nearly every scene made for a pretty miserable three-month shoot in Detroit (which, lest you get the wrong idea, he found charming). Now that it's over, he's pressing forward with a number of projects, including several with longtime screenwriting partner Ben Garant. Though they're still writing big-budget product for fun and profit, they're also hoping to shoot two "microbudget" (i.e. $2 - 3 million) comedies next year. This will allow the duo to take more substantial roles in front of the camera, and basically get them back to conjuring the improvisational magic of RENO 911! As for the rumored RENO 911! revival at Netflix, it's still a nascent thing, but Lennon has a killer concept that would move the series into more David Lynch-ian territory.
We also discussed Lennon's participation in one of the best Funny Or Die shorts I've seen this year, a reality show parody called "The Vote-Off" (embedded below). It's always a blast catching up with Mr. Lennon...
Tom Lennon: Did you see the movie?
Mr. Beaks: I did. That's a rough little piece of work.
Lennon: Yeah, it's basically like FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, but not as upbeat. It's a version of that that's not good-natured at all, and with a two-and-a-half-year-old in it.
Beaks: And, as far as allowing a baby to ingest marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy, you get to participate in some of the more deviant aspects of it.
Lennon: First off, it's probably the most perverse big-budget 3D film that's ever been made. And as you just mentioned that list [of drugs], I don't know if we were asleep at the wheel or what, but there probably should've been some sort of scene where the baby takes mushrooms, too. That's just a glaring omission. Those are some pretty fun drugs that you listed there, and that would've been just a light dose of some stems and caps.
Beaks: And why not go to heroin while you're at it?
Lennon: Well, heroin's bad for you. Here's the thing with heroin: best case scenario is you record a couple of brilliant albums and then kill your girlfriend in the Chelsea Hotel. Is that a message that we want to be sending our kids?
Beaks: I don't know. If that baby had two great albums in it, I'd be okay with that.
Lennon: Or just one great album. Maybe our American teens need to be doing more heroin at the Chelsea Hotel to see if they've got that one great album in them. But this is a perverse film, and it's probably going to annoy a fair amount of people.
Beaks: Watching it, I was trying to place it in the context of some of the rougher drug comedies of the '70s or '80s. But this is nastier than any I can think of.
Lennon: For sure. Even when I read it, I thought, "Is this a good idea?" And then I thought, "Fuck it, it'll never turn out. We'll never shoot scenes with a baby getting cocaine all over it and crawling on a ceiling." Then, of course, we went to Detroit for three or four months and shot all of those things that were in the script. By the way, it was the worst experience of my entire life.
Beaks: (Laughing) That bad?
Lennon: People are so concerned about "Oh, was it hard on the babies?" The babies had a lovely time. The babies had their own wrangler who'd play Beyonce for them, and we'd all dance around and they'd get a reward. Every thing the babies do - like the brushing the teeth thing, which looks like they're rubbing their gums with coke - was like some fun game the baby wrangler made up, and would then give them a prize. The [triplets] had a relatively good time doing the high-on-coke scenes. I think it was the adults that had a really bad time for the most part.
Beaks: And why was that?
Lennon: The film really is demoralizing to the adults who are in it - like the things that happen to John Cho's penis. The baby is weirdly maybe the only person who comes through the film with her dignity intact. Look, the babies' parents, who are very nice people, decided that their triplets would be in this movie. The adults all chose to be in a HAROLD AND KUMAR 3D movie. That's the real question. Not "Why would you let babies be in a movie like this?" No, why would you let adults be in a movie like this?
But honestly... something really connected on this movie. Because of the Christmas thing, it's not a mean-spirited movie. Even though it's really gross and really filthy, ultimately it leaves you feeling very upbeat and positive.
Beaks: As far as your acting career goes, how do you choose which projects you'll go after?
Lennon: Well, I'm in that weird character actor [place]. Hopefully, I'll be getting some movies that I'll star in. Ben Garant and I have been writing some great $2 - $3 million movies. But as of right now, the studio system has made it clear that I'm not starring in anything above $3 million. So this is a role I auditioned for, the same way I auditioned for 17 AGAIN. I don't get offers on most things, very seldom. This one was a tough decision. It was like, "Wow, this is going to be really intense. It's filming in Detroit in the summer, and I've got a two-and-a-half-year-old in my arms every single scene." And I will say that I did want to quit almost every day of filming. It was really, really impossible. [Beaks laughs] I'm not kidding at all. The second we would stop filming, I would think, "Should I quit? This is dreadful. It's so hard." And I'm a pretty lazy actor, which you can tell by looking at my career. But I think the stuff with Todd and the baby - which I was very worried about heading into the movie - is actually some of the funniest stuff in the film. I was surprised that it all worked out.
Beaks: When you say it was "hard", are you referring to the baby or to Detroit?
Lennon: Oh, Detroit was lovely! We had a nice time. I think Detroit gets a bad rap. I had a really fun time. My son came out and stayed with us for a while, and that was really fun. But working with two-and-a-half-year-olds... I can't stress enough... it was basically like that Werner Herzog movie, BURDEN OF DREAMS, dragging that ship through the Amazon. There were days with the babies before the baby wrangler came in where we were getting, like, thirty seconds of footage with them at best. That's just insane. As you can tell, the 3D is not slapped together in this film. It's really impressive. But making it just sucked, honestly. It was just a perfect storm of shit.
And the little girls, they're lovely girls! Honestly, when we were hanging around off camera, palling around and playing paddycake, it was great. But for some reason, half the time the camera would roll, and... the problem with three two-and-a-half-year-olds is that one of them will always be melting down. Always. It's just mathematics. It was a nightmare of the highest order.
Beaks: I recently saw your Funny Or Die short "The Vote Off", and thought it was one of the most inspired reality-show parodies I've seen.
Lennon: Oh thanks! [Chris Kelly] came up with that. I thought, "Boy, I don't know if that can be done." We really did take ten strangers off the street. One of the ladies in the front row was very tipsy; I think she'd just staggered out of a bar. What you see on screen is about ten minutes; what you don't see is that, to shoot that, was a ninety-minute process of me improvising with ten strangers off the street. I gave every one a lengthy farewell speech and a hug. But I do think it struck on something, which is just, "What the fuck are these shows about?" It's just so stupid. These people are never given any introductions to each other, we don't know anything about them, and within three seconds it's like, "One of you has got to fucking go." A lot of people at Funny Or Die helped make that happen. There's a million ways that could've not worked out.
Beaks: In recruiting these people, did you have to be coy with what you were up to?
Lennon: No, they knew exactly what it was. It was a Funny Or Die video, a game show, and they'd get $200. I think we might've fudged how long they'd be there. I think we might've said it'd be maybe a half-hour, but the shooting of that scene was ninety minutes straight - with Arsenio Hall and everything. It was actually one of the hardest days of my life - other than the days with the triplets on HAROLD & KUMAR. Maybe one day they'll put out the full, unedited clip of me and all of these people.
Beaks: I have to ask about this Netflix revival of RENO 911! Is this moving forward? How would you approach it?
Lennon: For me, the only way I would ever do that - and it's something that the cast has never discussed, not even for a second. Hopefully, we'll all get together and talk about it soon. It was a pretty recent thing. But there were a couple of things we said. We'd do it if we could bring back the original cast - bring back Wendy [McLendon-Covey], Carlos [Yarbrough] and Mary [Birdsong], and sort of make amends with the cast for how we split up the show. The other thing that we would do... I don't know if we'd do just more episodes. That would feel a bit like, "Why?" But do you remember when David Lynch did TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME?
Beaks: Absolutely. It's one of my favorite David Lynch films.
Lennon: I'm not saying we're doing this; I'm just saying this would make me think about it really hard and take it seriously. If we were to do almost a miniseries - like a ten- or thirteen-episode run with the same sense of humor, mostly improvised, everything you loved about RENO - but sort of like the FIRE WALK WITH ME version. It'd be like telling the beginning, middle and end of one murder case we're working. If we picked one miniseries-length story of a crime that we have to solve - and I'm not sure what it is - that would, to me, be really interesting. The only idea I have for it is it starts with Lt. Dangle standing down by a dry river bed, and Terry Bernadino, the roller-skating hustler played by Nick Swardson, is dead and wrapped up in plastic. And then we just start.
Beaks: (Laughs) That's great.
Lennon: The only other thing I'd say is... if you were to make a movie of THE SOPRANOS, does it exist before the series or at the end, after the great diner scene? I think the way I'd want to do it for RENO is to tell a story that exists in the middle of the series that hasn't been seen yet. We're not picking up where we left off, and it's not an origin story. Again, I have no idea if anyone wants to do it. We haven't even discussed it amongst ourselves. But if we choose to "David Lynch" the fuck out of it, I'm interested for sure.
Beaks: What's going on with THE BOONDOGGLE?
Lennon: Rob Riggle and I are still trying to get it made. We're learning that small movies fall apart as fast, if not faster, than big movies these days. Ben Garant and I have also written two other... what the studios would consider "microbudget movies". One is called MURDER HOUSE. It's sort of a ROSEMARY'S BABY type movie. Basically, it's a version of RENO 911! that's about the Vatican exorcism team. It looks like we're making that. And we wrote another one called ACTION NUMBER ONE, which is a comedy heist movie. It looks like next year we'll be making both of those. Basically, what we decided is that all of the energy we've been spending on RENO 911!, we'd take that energy and put it into microbudget movies where we have tons of creative control. So we've written a bunch of them. We're also working on some big-studio stuff. We have a movie we're writing for Disney called THE WHEELMAN, which is about a Vegas limo driver. And there's a big movie for Ben Stiller at Fox called RENT-A-GHOST, which is based on the old British series. But we're just trying to break into that movies-that-don't-have-to-cost-$100-million range.
Beaks: What's been the reaction from your fellow screenwriters to your book [WRITING MOVIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT]?
Lennon: We've had a ton of responses. We weren't really sure how it would go, but it's actually been overwhelmingly positive - even from the studios. Even Disney, and we talk about the whole HERBIE FULLY LOADED process in the book. But they're surprised by two things. One is our incredible candor. We're very honest about everything. Two, I've noticed that we've gotten less negative comments on Deadline Hollywood when writing projects are announced. I think it's mainly because there's nothing you say negatively about our screenwriting career that we don't go ahead and say about ourselves in the book. I think we took the wind out of people's sails a little bit. We describe the process good and bad, the times that we've written movies that we thought turned out great and the movies that turned into absolute shitfests. We clearly pointed out the times when it's completely our fault, and the times where it's way beyond your control. I think we certainly own up to a lot of stuff.
Beaks: Some people I know found the book depressing.
Lennon: It does sound crazy to people, the notion that you'll be fired and that maybe one out of ten of your scripts will actually get made - and that if the movie is half of what you wanted it to be when it comes out, that's a huge accomplishment. But this is how the sausages are made.
A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS is in theaters now. Check it out. Also, I highly recommend picking up a copy of WRITING MOVIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT, the funniest and most practical book on Hollywood screenwriting ever published.
Faithfully submitted,
