Jul. 30, 2008 - Issue #667: Unrest Fest

Pineapple Express

Salient Green - With Pineapple Express, can the outsider auteur find mainstream success?

If the conditions that were once sufficiently malleable for visionary American independents to thrive have all but vanished, does that make David Gordon Green our last hope? Having released five features in the last eight years, the skinny kid from Little Rock has proven more productive than Wes Anderson—who has stars, scope, narrative cohesion, pop sensibility and, well, Disney, on his side—and is now inching up on Richard Linklater, who’s benefited from a one-for-me, one-for-them strategy with regards to balancing personal and more commercial projects. And it now seems that Green is tearing a page from Linklater’s book, with Pineapple Express, the latest from the house of Superbad mastermind Judd Apatow, storming into theatres next week.

The question looming over Pineapple Express is whether or not Green’s distinctive sensibility can be reconciled with what promises to be a rousing “stoner action comedy.” It’s a sensibility that announces itself even in Green’s student films, especially “Physical Pinball” (1998), in which Penelope (Candace Evanofski) looks to her widower father (Eddie Rouse) for guidance after getting her first period. With its abundant tenderness, attention to atmosphere and playful use of Southern jive vernacular, the film feels like some miraculously inspired ABC Afterschool Special directed by Charles Burnett, with Evanofski and Rouse so authentic it feels as though they simply rose up from the rural North Carolina earth like a heat shimmer.

When we next see them, in Green’s feature debut George Washington (2000), that sense of milieu expands, unfurls and breathes deep. The film’s both meditative and rife with humour and warmth, drifting through the multiracial community of kids and adults who work and play, more or less harmoniously, within the intermingling scrap yards, fecund woods and train tracks. Evanofski’s Nasia, 13, spends the first scene breaking up with Buddy (Curtis Cotton), 12, because he’s too immature. “Did you think we were going to be together forever?” she asks. Green envelops the scene with stillness, and not a hint of condescension. Rouse’s Damascus is likewise immensely present before Green’s gaze, even while giving a trembling monologue worthy of an inaugural AA meeting about getting humped by a dog.

The sounds of labour echo, while a watery piano refrain permeates. A kid in a lizard mask delivers a soliloquy to an auditorium reclaimed by weeds. People ride motorbikes, and hug. A man and a boy stand around discussing the boy’s sick mom and the colour of healthy pee, and crucially, the camera, as coaxed by Green and his marvelous cinematographer Tim Orr, never breaks away or gets in tight, just letting the scene play out through body language. This is one of my favourite movies of our young century.

Though still gorgeous, even startlingly sweet, All the Real Girls (’03), Green’s love story, begins revealing limitations. The kids are suddenly adults. An air of youth growing up and going nowhere blankets the landscape as palpably as Green and Orr’s permanent magic hour, which kisses everything with honey, rust and autumnal glow. The particular sadness of this world is best embodied in Tip (Shea Wingham), whose nickname likely stems from his pompadour, a vestige of teen rebellion, while he sports that most telltale accoutrement of resignation and despair: the fannypack.

The story focuses on local pussyhound Paul (co-writer Paul Schneider) and Noel (Zooey Deschanel), back from private school and a sort of beguiling alien in this place. Their romance is meant to give some sweep, yet somehow the film feels more alive when listening in on diner conversation. The scene where Paul and Noel’s initial bliss is broken does indeed achieve moments of aching emotional truth, but the getting there feels like drama class improv, with Schneider really acting hard, while the ever-hushed musical score is so soothingly beautiful that it drains the urgency.

Undertow (’04) was a stab at something more marketable while reacquainting Green with his best collaborators: children. As a thriller, this “Deliverance, with kids” is unsurprisingly wobbly, with its deranged uncle on the heels of runaway nephews motor never reaching full throttle. But as homage to Night of the Hunter (1955) and an opportunity to soak up more Southern reverie, like watching a tyke eat paint, it’s aged surprisingly well. More problematic is Snow Angels (’07), a tale of divorced parents that has yet to open here. It starts wonderfully before sinking into a sort of hysterical murk as the story—from Stuart O’Nan’s novel—settles into the deep, deep darkness that lies at its heart.

Being a comedy populated with capable talent—Seth Rogen, James Franco—it seems perfectly likely that Pineapple Express may be just the bridge the still-green Green needs to imbue his adult characters with the same nuance he brings to kids. What is surely a well-structured script should also offer Green the sort of challenge he needs, one that asks him to use atmosphere as a means rather than an end. In any event, there’s every reason to look forward to this marriage of outsider art and multiplex chops. God knows we need something to actually pull their increasingly divided audiences together. V

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