Intelligencer

Sticks & Stoners Break Actors’ Bones

Pineapple pain.

By Jada Yuan
Published Aug 10, 2008

(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

Actors get respect for doing their own stunts, but they can also get injured, as the cast of Pineapple Express learned. Actors in the stoner comedy mostly did their own fight scenes, and they all got hurt, director David Gordon Green said at a screening of the movie on August 5. Seth Rogen fractured his finger. “It wasn’t that badass,” Rogen admitted. “I was just getting up. But I was getting up from doing something badass.” James Franco needed stitches in his head after running into a tree. “That’s why he wore a headband a lot of the movie, covering up the stitches,” Green said. Franco also mauled Rosie Perez—“James kicked me in the back of my leg,” she said, “and he bit me in the butt”—and split open the back of Danny McBride’s head with a bong. The bongs themselves fared better, with few destructions. “Only two,” Green said. “We were very protective of them.”