Killer Buds

Predicting what will be the summer-defining comedy is not exactly regression analysis. There are no statistical models or postulates. Just last year, some Hollywood types actually thought Hot Rod would be the line-quoting summer hit, not Rogen's Superbad. Those Hollywood types are now working at the Beverly Center Chipotle.

Still, Pineapple Express seems to have all the components for multiple multiplex viewing. Franco and Rogen playing leapfrog while high and Franco driving a car with his foot through a Slushee-covered windshield will be re-enacted at a thousand freshman-orientation sessions. The supporting parts are expertly cast, particularly The Office's Craig Robinson as a sensitive killer who likes to soak his hands in food. And then there's a "Holy shit, who the hell is that guy?" performance by Danny McBride as Red, Franco and Rogen's oft-shot, oft-left-for-dead sidekick. Oh, yeah, and Rogen and Franco have a tender chemistry reminiscent of a short-bus Butch and Sundance.

That might be the movie's biggest surprise. While Rogen and Franco have known each other for a decade, their journey to Pineapple Express was not a direct flight. The two first met as members of the talented ensemble that Paul Feig and Judd Apatow assembled in 1999 for the television show Freaks and Geeks, an hour-long dramedy. Franco had become interested in acting his senior year in high school and had recently quit college to pursue acting full time. He was practicing his foreign accents on girls pulling up to his McDonald's drive-in window around the time he was cast as antihero Daniel Desario.

Apatow insists he didn't know what he had until after Franco was cast. "All the women on the show were whispering about how good-looking Franco was," Apatow recalls. "I didn't get it until [my wife] Leslie said, 'He's the hot guy you made out with at the gas station in high school.' "

Rogen was cast as Ken Miller, basically burnout comic relief. But his role got larger as the show's writers fell in love with his bemused line readings. Rogen and Franco were always friendly, but Franco was 21, four years older than Rogen. The two didn't exactly have the same worldview.