A lot has changed in the lives and careers of Kal Penn and John Cho in the four years since the last installment in the adventures of Harold & Kumar, in which the pair smoked some amazing shit with the then-leader of the free world. Cho is now in the cast (as Mr. Sulu) of the monster STAR TREK franchise, the second film of which is about to go into production early next year. Meanwhile, Penn had a nice run on the Fox series "House," and, oh yeah, he worked in the Obama administration as the associate director of the White House's Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs. So there.
And the future looks pretty good for both, with Cho appearing in the TOTAL RECALL remake, the AMERICAN PIE sequel AMERICAN REUNION, and gearing up for that second STAR TREK movie. Penn just joined the cast of "How I Met Your Mother," which just happens to star HAROLD & KUMAR scene stealer Neil Patrick Harris. And blessedly, the boys have been reunited for A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS—their riff on Christmas movies, as well as a nice testament to the healing power of friendship…and elicit drugs. The boys start the film having drifted apart after Harold got married, and with the help of friends, family, weed, and Santa, they try to mend their friendship. And the 3D is kick ass.
What else do I really need to say? The movie is damn funny; NPH reveals a secret about himself that I'd always suspected was true; and the film has great cameos and supporting work from the likes of Danny Trejo, Thomas Lennon, RZA, Elias Koteas, and Patton Oswalt. If you have any affection for the HAROLD & KUMAR series, there's no way this one will let you down in any way. Just go enjoy it, and enjoy my interview with Kal Penn and John Cho…
Capone: Hi, how are you?
Kal Penn: Hey Steve, good. How are you? It’s good to see you.
Capone: Hello John, it’s good to meet you. Kal, we actually spoke many years ago on the phone when you were kind of doing the rounds for RISE OF TAJ, I think it was.
KP: Oh yeah, yeah.
Capone: But I had a sneaking suspicion that THE NAMESAKE was what you really wanted to be talking about, so that’s pretty much what we talked about at the time.
KP: That’s right. That seems fairly accurate. [Laughs]
Capone: It was coming out like three months later and I think you were slightly more excited about it.
[John begins to laugh very hard when he realizes what we're talking about.]
KP: There’s the stuff you do to pay the rent and the stuff you do to fulfill your artistic wishes.
Capone: So first of all, John, I can’t believe you showed your dick in this movie. That’s pretty much what this whole movie comes down to, I think.
John Cho: Well, it was a prosthetic piece.
Capone: I don’t believe that.
JC: You don’t believe that? Well then, America, you’re welcome.
Capone: Was that something you contractually wanted to do?
JC: [laughs] It’s really weird to don a penis prosthetic.
KP: So weird. It’s also, can I say, weird to be your costar when you're doing it.
Capone: You did have a front-row seat to it.
JC: It’s weird to don a penis, look down, and then have three heavy-set guys handle it.
KP: It had to be bolted.
Capone: Is three your maximum?
KP: You could’ve have handled more. They had to bolt the prosthetic penis to the pole, and it’s all these three burly dudes. I know you are recording this, and we don’t have photography here, but their faces were like this [imitates someone touching something truly foul] as they were bolting the device.
Capone: Obviously, that was a reference though to a very famous scene in another Christmas film. Was that one of the objectives with this film, to sort of twist these classic Christmas visuals into these horrible moments?
JC: I think we are tipping the old cap, and even though we are definitely, just by virtue of it being a HAROLD & KUMAR movie, subverting the genre a bit, I really think that they wanted to write a straight-up, honest-to-goodness Christmas movie, and I think we have made that movie. It just is dirtier, but otherwise I think it does affirm traditional Christmas values in a way--friendship, love, and all of that stuff.
KP: The hat tipping also I think is a big distinction between… You know, our sense of humor both tonally on the film and even in the characters, is never mean spirited, and that’s something that I think is important to [writers] John [Hurwitz] and Hayden [Schlossberg] as well as to us that any time we, as the Brits say, “Take the piss out of anything,” it is actually a hat tip…
JC: You are so cosmopolitan…
KP: There’s no American version of that, you know what I mean?
JC: Yeah.
KP: “Making fun of” doesn’t really capture, but it’s A CHRISTMAS STORY and the claymation stuff, those are all things that we love. The references to THE KARATE KID in the first movie--we love KARATE KID.
JC: [In a British accent] “We love karate.” [but he pronounces it kah-rah-tay]
KP: Now you’re… Okay… Now you're… I get it.
[Everyone laughs]
Capone: Well let’s talk about the claymation sequence, because stop-motion and claymation is a big staple of some of Christmas specials. Was that always in the script or did somebody say “Hey, let’s take this moment and claymate it.”
JC: I believe it was in every draft. There was always an intention to do a claymation sequence and, yeah, I think that was born out the original desire to make an honest-to-goodness real Christmas movie.
Capone: Did you panic a little when you saw that "Community" went the claymation route for their Christmas episode last year?
JC: No, I didn’t see that.
KP: I didn’t see that. That’s cool though. The whole episode?
Capone: Most of it, yeah.
KP: Oh, awesome. It’s a great show, so that’s very cool.
JC: It is cool. Well I guess that means we are doing something right, since "Community" is great.
Capone: This seemed to me--maybe I’m wrong since I didn’t time it out--to be the least drug fueled of the three films.
KP: Really? I felt the exact opposite with it. Sorry, I don’t want to cut you off…
Capone: Well, John is constantly saying “No, no, no” until towards the end. There are quite a few scenes of drug usage in the movie, but tt seemed at least between the two of you that it was less. Of course the baby is a whole other issue. I'm guessing that baby is a junkie now.
JC: The baby has problems. You know what’s weird is for a stoner comedy, we have done very little weed in the three movies.
KP: That’s true.
JC: We've done very little drugs. You did in this movie, but did we even… We must have done it twice in the first movie or something? I think that the legend as it were is larger than the reality. We don’t really do much on screen.
KP: I think that’s true. Tell me if this is true for you, but when I read the first script, I didn’t recognize it as a stoner movie. I recognized it as a buddy comedy about a road trip and crazy characters and everything, and then it wasn’t until it got it’s resurgence on DVD that I really saw it for what it was. So it wasn’t even when we marketed the theatrical release that we realized, “Well the fanbase that actually kicked this thing off were college students and stoners and folks that kind of saw what they wanted to get out of the movie.”
JC: People ask me all of the time “Did you get stoned for research?” One, I didn’t have to…
[Everyone Laughs]
JC: But secondly, I guess I would have if there were scenes where we were stoned, but I think there was like a scene in the first one. But after that, I don’t think we even got high. It’s strange. Now I feel like we are outing ourselves. I don’t want to disappoint the fans
KP: Yeah, we don’t want to disappoint you by telling you the truth. Maybe the reason I feel that way about the third movie is because Kumar is the extreme of what Kumar was in the first movies; he’s smoking weed all of the time in the third movie, he needs it. It’s obviously screwed up his life, because he’s so dependent on it at the beginning.
Capone: Maybe that’s what I mean. There’s almost that negative connotation to it for the first time.
KP: Well that’s always been in it, if you look at all of the three films. Any time they are either stoned or trying to get stoned, bad things happen. It does not glorify marijuana in my opinion. Kumar is stupid enough to try and smoke up on a plane, and they get sent to Guantanamo Bay. Lesson: don’t do that. First movie, where do they end up? They end up on this insane road trip, because of what happened while they were high. Right?
JC: But they learn stuff on the road trip, Kal. [leans into the recorder] So it is good to smoke weed.
KP: No!
Capone: So you say that on the one side, but, Kal, you're saying it’s a cautionary tale.
KP: I think it’s cautionary.
Capone: Somewhere in the middle, I’m sure, lies the truth. Why was now the time to revisit these guys? I mean your lives have changed so much since the last film, and I think it’s fair to say you’ve done a lot since the previous one.
KP: If not now, then when? If not us, then who? We are the change we wish to see.
JC: Wow, you are speaking very strangely. I felt that from talking to John and Hayden that that was part of the excitement about it, “Okay, you guys have changed.” A lot of the creative core went through a lot of changes in their lives. John got married, had a baby, and all of this stuff. I had a kid. He was at the White House. All of this stuff was happening, and we thought it would be an interesting project to undertake trying to translate that to the characters as well. So they decided to make Harold married and trying to have a baby and do a movie where Harold and Kumar actually were separated and weren’t friends any more and thought that might be an interesting jumping off point.
KP: For movies like this you sign an option, so the studio has an opportunity to shoot the movie--they have a certain amount of time to do it--so I think they also had a calendar, which was interesting, because the plot line they ended up going with was us in our separate places. The audience also has aged with the characters, so those two things together kind of… The first two movies take place within a minute of each other, so I love that both in reality and in the film there’s now some space there.
Capone: Right, and there is an emotional element to this one. I’m not saying it wasn’t there before, but there’s really this distance between then. It seems like a slightly more serious tone, at least in the beginning.
JC: I wonder if it’s Christmas too, that it heightens the emotions and obviously we bring in family, and as they're getting older what they are talking about is a little heavier. There’s the pregnancy--the multiple pregnancies--and so I think the stakes are a little higher as they tend to get as one gets older. It’s a more mature Harold and Kumar.
Capone: “Emotionally gripping…”
JC: That’s why we expect to sweep the Oscars.
[Everyone Laughs]
Capone: And you’ve got Neil back in this as well. Would you ever dream of doing one of these without him?
JC: No.
KP: No, no…
Capone: Do these exist without him?
KP: No. The plot doesn’t advance without Neil Patrick Harris in any of the three movies.
JC: No, at this point he is a third member of the duo.
KP: They wouldn’t have gotten out of that ditch that they were in when the cheetah got to them if Neil hadn’t come by in the first one.
JC: Well he’s a convenient, how do you pronounce this, deus ex machina…
KP: You are so smart!
JC: He’s supernatural and can come out of thin air and make anything happen. That is the character “Neil Patrick Harris.” He can make anything happen. He’s a magician, so it’s a great way to resolve any plot turn.
KP: Right. [Laughs] It can be grounded in reality no matter how ridiculous it is.
JC: “So they're hanging off a cliff in the middle of nowhere, but Neil Patrick Harris sweeps in and saves them? Okay, great.”
Capone: Was there a particular scene in this film that you thought, “Yeah, that’s the essence of what these guys are about today”?
JC: For me, the scene in this picture is the dancing in the Christmas spectacular, because it’s so absurd. If you watch the first two movies, it’s just ridiculous that we're dancing on stage in a Christmas musical. And instead of getting more vulgar, it’s more unexpected to go more innocent, and I think that’s what is so clever about these movies and about this one in particular.
KP: I would agree with that. One of my kind of favorite moments here was working with Santa Claus. [Laughs] Richard [Riehle] really is a fantastic actor, and he [points to John] is about to go off on a tangent that I will support and agree with.
Capone: I love Richard. I think he’s great.
KP: He’s phenomenal, and there’s a moment that Harold and Kumar have where they are above New York City, and they're on Santa’s sleigh going through the air. Maybe that’s just me being selfish, because I love working with Santa Claus.
JC: I’m making fun of him, because Kal takes childish glee in seeing mythical characters come to life. In the first movie, he was obsessed with the raccoon in the car. The puppeteer was sitting in the back seat and doing this with his hand with a raccoon on his arm, and Kal would talk to the hand/
KP: Between takes… [giggling uncontrollably]
JC: Between takes, as if the raccoon were real.
KP: The raccoon was real.
JC: Then in the second movie, it was cornering the actor who played George Bush, asking George Bush questions. And in this third one, he was obsessed with Santa Claus.
KP: [Laughing hysterically] He was awesome, and Jason Segel and I were talking about something related to the movies… Oh, because he did THE MUPPETS.
JC: I get it, you know Jason Segel.
KP: Shut up, hold on. I’m so psyched that he did THE MUPPETS and I said to him, “The closest I’ve ever come is the first HAROLD & KUMAR movie, we had a raccoon, and the raccoon was awesome, it would sit in the backseat, and puppeteer would get out of the car in between takes, and the puppet and I would usually just sit there, and I would talk to the raccoon. I would be like 'Hey raccoon, how’s it going man?' But then once the raccoon talked back, because the guy didn’t get out of the car, and I didn’t realize that. Isn’t that crazy?"
Now I have told that story at least a hundred times, but Jason was the first one to look at me, not laugh, and say, “I think the most incredible thing about that story is that you didn’t think the puppeteer was there, and you were talking to the raccoon.” That had never dawned on me that I was actually telling a story that showed how ridiculous that is. I really have a dissociative problem when it comes to our fictional characters.
Capone: But you got to work with two different Santa Clauses in this.
KP: Oh, Patton Oswalt, sure.
Capone: Let's talk about the parade of famous faces that come through this film, starting with Patton.He’s actually going to be here in town in a couple of days.
JC: For what?
KP: Doing a show?
Capone: I don’t think I can say actually. There’s a movie that he's in that they are screening secretly here.
KP: Oh cool. He’s hilarious and that was the first day, I think. Yeah, that was my first day back playing Kumar. I love his stand up and he’s a great author, a big foodie, and really just a fascinating guy to talk to. I was really curious what it would be like working with him also, because his sense of humor is really biting, and at that particular point in the movie Kumar is also really down in the dumps, so there’s a cynicism that you never see in HAROLD & KUMAR movies that you see at that very beginning that really defines who Kumar is, and Patton just brought that. Especially since I hadn’t acted in like a year and a half, Patton really helped draw that out in Kumar.
JC: That does explain why you were so awful in the movie.
KP: I was terrible. Yeah, I know. But he was great.
Capone: Yeah and I never get tired of watching Danny Trejo do anything, and you got to do all of those great scenes with him.
JC: He was a sweetheart, but he does look menacing, and it’s partially due to the fact that he walks around shirtless all of the time showing his menacing body.
KP: And tattoos.
JC: Well that’s what is menacing about it. [Laughs]
KP: He’s quite scary for such a sweet man, yeah.
Capone: Talk really quick just about what you’ve got coming up. Kal, you're doing "How I Met Your Mother" right now.
KP: Yeah, I’m doing about eight episodes of that kind of scattered between now and the end of the year. That’s been a lot of fun. I love those guys. Then I’m developing a show for an NBC pilot; that'll go through different iterations. I would love to have it on the air if that’s in the cards.
Capone: Right, with you in it.
KP: Yes, I’m producing it and then also in it.
Capone: John, I think we know what you’ve got coming up next. Actually Anton [Yelchin] was just here like a week ago or so for the film festival.
JC: Yeah, I hear his movie is beautiful.
Capone: It’s great. You’re going to cry. To your understanding, where is the next STAR TREK film right now? Do you know when you are going to start shooting?
JC: I dooooooooo not, and I’m not supposed to talk about it, so I apologize.
Capone: Did you get in trouble last time?
JC: Ignorance was my ally. Man, that’s a secretive camp over there, and they’ve got great reasons for doing it, but yeah we'll be making a second one is my understanding. I’ve also got TOTAL RECALL coming out.
Capone: That’s right. You're playing McClane.
KP: Awesome.
Capone: That’s a pretty big character, right?
JC: Yeah.
Capone: Is that a secret, too?
JC: No, no it’s not a secret. It was terrific. I had to go blonde for the role.
KP: Really?
JC: White hair, actually.
KP: That’s cool.
JC: And AMERICAN REUNION!
Capone: The trailer for which just came out. All right, thanks guys.
