Last year, following the SXSW premiere of Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, I had an interesting chat with John Cho, Kal Penn and Neil Patrick Harris about the ethnic stereotype humor in that sequel, as well as their thoughts on movies focused on the discussion of race in general. In a way, I think the first two Harold & Kumar movies did as much as is needed in terms of making fun of racism — and, more broadly, any kind of stereotyping or racial profiling — so my first thought after learning that a third installment was in the works was that it should just be a simple stoner comedy with little or no concentration on the ethnicity of the two main characters.
However, now that this third film has a title, and that title is A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, I’ve changed my mind. Sort of. Instead of playing the race card, I hope that writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg go for religious satire. After all, it’s set during the holidays, and considering most ignorant Americans would assume that Harold and Kumar aren’t Christian (they may or may not be), the movie could tackle that sort of stereotyping. Then again, I would love it more if they actually went with the “Harold & Kumar Babies” idea that Cho proposed last summer.
Anyway, while I spent the day dreaming of my ideal White (Castle) Christmas movie, everyone else was wondering how Penn’s Obama administration job will affect the making of this sequel. Check out other bloggers’ thoughts on AVH&KC after the jump:
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Yesterday I attended a special Star Trek event at Paramount Studios where they showed us 20 minutes of footage from J.J. Abrams’ upcoming reboot of the classic sci fi series, much like Warner Bros. did with Watchmen recently. While the footage was already screened in London and New York, this was the first time I’ve had a chance to see it, and I didn’t read any of the other reports so I could go in fresh with my somewhat jaded fanboy eyes and ears.
While it looks fairly slick and high-tech (and yes, the bridge of the Enterprise does indeed look like the inside of an Apple Store), I was more interested with how they treated the development of characters that have been around since 1966. It’s hard to judge the film based on the four scenes we saw; it’s a bit like reading four random chapters of a book and being asked to write a report about it. But, with that in mind, I definitely have some thoughts about it. One thing is for sure: it looks a lot better than the scenes we saw from The Spirit at Comic-Con.
Check out the breakdown below of the scenes from a Star Trek movie that will probably draw a line right down the middle of hardcore Trek fans, but will draw a lot of people who have never seen the TV shows or the previous films into theaters. And just as a note, Abrams sides with the Trekkers in the “Trekkies vs. Trekkers” debate.
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Earlier this week a slew of images from J.J. Abrams‘ Star Trek reboot, reimagining, redo, do over, what have you hit the web, and today an accompanying article from Entertainment Weekly talks to the actors and reflects on the footage shown to the magazine. Since we weren’t able to see that same footage (why not show it to everyone, Paramount?) we’re basically left to conjecture on the images themselves, and pat our inner fanboy on the back in consolation.
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The Harold and Kumar panel opened with a disclaimer from moderator Adam Vary of Entertainment Weekly. “This is family day at Comic-Con, but in case you didn’t know, this is for an unrated DVD of a stoner movie.”
But what better way to sell a DVD to your teenage fan base, then to get your hooks into them when they’re in close proximity to parental wallets?
Cynicism aside, it looks like there are some pretty cool elements to the package for the fans. In addition to a “12-15 minute mini adventure of what would happen if Harold and Kumar had decided not to smoke weed on the plane, and made it to Amsterdam,” there’s an extensive interactive feature called “Dude, Change the Movie,” which allows the viewer to swap out scenes from the theatrical cut for other options. Remember the bottomless party? You can choose to watch it topless. “Most of the options,” said co-writer Hayden Schlossberg, “Are extremely unrated, and extremely…”
“Nude,” John Cho interrupted. “You’re welcome.”
Some vague details about Harold and Kumar 3, and disappointment for fans who want to believe that John Cho and Kal Penn are really Harold and Kumar in real life, after the jump.
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I was definitely a little hard on Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay in my review. But I’ll admit, though I kind of already did there, that it is a pretty funny movie. And as with any movie that I know will be popular despite anything I write negatively about it, I wanted to raise a discussion, here specifically of the racial issues the comedy deals with. Fortunately, I was able to do so with the filmmakers and actors, themselves, during a “roundtable” interview at Austin’s InterContinental Stephen F Austin Hotel on Saturday afternoon.
Of course, I realized by the end of the talks, which came in two parts — first with co-writer-directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, then with co-stars John Cho, Kal Penn and Neil Patrick Harris — that by simply bringing up the “issue”, I was encouraging and continuing a racist perspective of addressing ethnicity as an issue, which is certainly more a part of the problem than I mean it to be. Basically, I should have been more celebratory of the sequel, like I have always been with the original, because overall I should be thankful Cho and Penn were again allowed to star in their own movie. I just hope this isn’t the best Hollywood can do for them or other Asian-American actors trying to find non-typecast work in the movies.
My first indication that I was taking Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay too seriously was earlier in the day, during the SXSW panel actually titled “Race, Politics and Drugs: a Harold & Kumar Panel,” where Hurwitz and Schlossberg flat out said they have no bigger agenda with these movies than to be a showcase for vagina jokes. Yet ever the one to press matters, I later asked the pair about their decision to deal more with race in the sequel.
Check out the conversations with both groups after the jump.
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One of the things I love about Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is the way it treats its two stars, John Cho (as Harold, or “Rold”) and Kal Penn (as Kumar). The plot could have been played with any hot young dudes in Hollywood in the roles – you’d maybe expect two white guys, one with blonde hair, one with brown – but instead the characters are a Korean-American and an Indian-American. And it isn’t a big deal. Aside from a few derogatory, stereotypical comments made by unfavorable guys the duo meets on their adventure to find a White Castle, race isn’t an issue and doesn’t really come into play story wise.
However, the sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, turns the color of their skin into the impetus of the story, which revolves around them being mistaken for terrorists (“North Korea and Al-Qaeda working together”). Almost disguised as a smarter, more politically satirical follow-up, Guantanamo Bay, which was directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, who wrote this movie and the original, is basically just an adaptation of a Truly Tasteless Jokes book — if every other page of that book were annotated with updates, apologies, corrections and clarifications. It’s a movie that wants to have its offensively stereotypical cake and eat it, too – using a kind of utensil we’re not accustomed to seeing used for such a meal. What I mean is that each joke is a play on a socially recognized stereotype. Easily stereotyped characters are set up as clichés (dumb white-trash hick from Alabama) only to be revealed as the opposite (he has a classy home with refined interior decorating and accoutrements), yet ultimately they’re also exposed as being a part of that stereotype (he’s married to his sister and they have an inbred cyclops child in the basement).
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