There’s a very good chance that you never saw David Gordon Green’s Undertow – it’s one of the least-seen great films of the 21st century (I blame myself – I failed to put the movie on my 2004 Top Fifteen and I gave it a positive but mixed review at the time). I feel like Green is a director with a real vision, and he’s been waiting for a chance to finally break out into the mainstream cinematic consciousness.
Over the last couple of years there’s been a number of projects floating around with his name attached, and each time I wondered “Is this the one?” Some felt David Gordon Green-esque, including Goat, about a college kid whose life is shattered by hazing. But when it was announced that Green would be writing a raunchy comedy set in a camp based on an idea by Seann William Scott… well, I felt like there was something bizarrely perfect about the director going into broad comedy.
That film never happened, and thank God, since Scott seems to be poison. But another broad comedy has popped up for Green, and I think this one is going to happen, and it places him in company so good I’m jealous. Titled The Pineapple Express, it’s a Judd Apatow production, and it’ll star Seth Rogen and James Franco as stoners who get caught up in a drug gang.
"This project is an opportunity to plant an absurd buddy comedy in a rough-and-tumble action movie," Green said. "I’ve always been a sucker for the genre and hungry to fire up a comedy where characters don’t get lost in their own concept."
The Pineapple Express should start early next year, and I’m pretty excited about it. Green has another film recently wrapped, Snow Angels, starring Kate Beckinsale and the ever-great Sam Rockwell.