John Cho & Kal Penn Interview For ’A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas’

After years of growing apart, Harold Lee (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) have replaced each other with new friends and are preparing for their respective Yuletide celebrations. But when a mysterious package mistakenly arrives at Kumar’s door on Christmas Eve, his attempt to redirect it to Harold’s house ends with the “high grade” contents — and Harold’s father-in-law’s prize Christmas tree — going up in smoke. With his in-laws out of the house for the day, Harold decides to cover his tracks, rather than come clean. Reluctantly embarking on another ill-advised journey with Kumar through New York City, their search for the perfect replacement tree takes them through party heaven — and almost blows Christmas Eve sky high. Alongside John Cho and Kal Penn, ’A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas’ stars Paula Garces, Eddie Kaye Thomas, David Krumholtz, Danneel Harris, Amir Blumenfeld, David Burtka, Fred Melamed, Patton Oswalt, Richard Riehle, Danny Trejo, Neil Patrick Harris, Bobby Lee, and Thomas Lennon. The film is out now in the US, and is set for release December 9th in the UK.

The movies have that fun element of going too far sometimes, but I really feel it’s the friendship and likability of the two characters that holds the stories together….

John Cho: I really think that’s how we get away with it.

Kal Penn: I don’t think when we were going through either of these three movies, I don’t think that we thought, especially early on, that it was stoner movie. I always viewed it as a buddy comedy.

John Cho: I thought those were cigarettes.

Kal Penn: You’re really dumb (laughs)… But the first one came out and it didn’t do well at the box office, it did really well on DVD after that, and you could see that stoners said, ‘This is a stoner movie. We’re going to go out and buy it and support it.’ The Asian American community said, ‘We think this is an Asian American movie.’ Frat guys thought that it was a great frat house movie. You have all these people that took ownership of it in their own way, which was so cool to see.

John Cho: I’ve had people be like, ‘Dude, I’m an investment banker and I appreciate the character of Harold so much.’ People approach it from different ways – it’s weird!

Do you like how your characters have evolved over the three movies?

Kal Penn: I do now. I was a little trepidatious when we got the first draft of this script, I thought, ‘Kumar is known for being gregarious, and he’s a little bit of a slacker, but at this point he’s down in the dumps, depressed. He hasn’t left his house for four weeks and he’s a bigger stoner than we’d ever seen. Why?’ Talking to Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg about that, I mean, realizing that six years has past and much like a lot of people who saw our first movies when they were 22, as were the characters, and now they’re 28…

John Cho: They’re not immortal. They age as well.

Kal Penn: Yes, but just to play with what happens in life, that being where it starts out and then they come back together was cool. I think they’ve always been the underdogs as well, you want to root for them, you don’t really see guys like this on film. But they’re the type of guys who are your best friend growing up, it’s an interesting dynamic because they’re relatable, they don’t look like models or they don’t have perfect bodies……well I do of course.

John Cho: He does (laughs).

Kal Penn: Also they’re not really smart or they’re not really stupid, the writing doesn’t talk down to the audience.

I really enjoyed how the film pokes fun at 3D, do you have a favourite 3D moment in the film?

Kal Penn: Yes, and I thought that it was…actually I have two. I think the opening sequence was just awesome. We spent a lot of time, and this is going to sound silly, but we spent a lot of time on the smoke when Patton Oswalt’s character, the fake Santa, and Kumar are smoking in the mall parking lot. It took a long time to get that right. He describes it very well. What do you say?

John Cho: The smoke is very elegant.

Kal Penn: Yeah, and it is. The graphics guys really enhanced it.

John Cho: It’s almost erotic (laughs).

Kal Penn: Then it turns into the logo, and then just Santa Claus. Anything and everything with Santa Claus in 3D, him flying through New York City. In the 3D glasses the audience feels that they’re over New York City with Harold, Santa and Kumar.

John Cho: We tried to do a bit which would’ve been funny in 3D which was the reindeer pooping into Harold’s face.

Kal Penn: Did that not make it?

John Cho: It did not make it. Todd, our director, loves to throw things in people’s faces. That’s his thing.

Kal Penn: When we got the script we actually asked, ‘Why is going to be in 3D?’ But then when we read through it we realised it’s poking fun at 3D. You’ve got things you don’t see in big budget 3D movies, you have the smoke coming out into the audience, it feels like you’re on the couch with Harold and Kumar watching it. I think you get something really unique out of it.

John Cho: It’s only logical in a sense that it’s so illogical that we had to do it (laughs). It doesn’t make any sense for a Harold and Kumar movie to be in 3D, because it’s reserved for “big” movies. I think that’s what is so good about it.