SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Daily Orange participated in a conference call with Kal Penn and John Cho, stars of the new film “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.” The sequel to 2004’s hit “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” hits theaters next Friday.
How did the idea for the plot for “Guantanamo Bay” come about? Admittedly, it is a little bit of a departure from the first movie.
Cho: I think the idea for the plot, well, I’ll preface it by saying that if they had written the sequel after the first one, if the first movie had been a box office hit they would’ve probably written the sequel soon after the first one, and the plot wouldn’t have been what we have now. And I think because we didn’t get the green light for a few years really, they had time to sit on it and also time to kind of clock what people were appreciating about the first one and kind of the political, racial and social humor became such an identifying mark of the first movie that the audience kind of forced the hand. And they felt that they had to inject some of that subversive, political humor into the second one as well. And they needed something bigger and better, and at the time the Guantanamo stuff was really in the news, as it continues to be. So they felt that that would be a fun way to get that going.
It sounds like you’re touching on a bit of discrimination, human rights, social and political injustices in the new film, will this movie be more political and less silly than the first one?
Penn: I don’t think it’s a political film in terms of taking a stance on anything, but it inherently deals with some of the pop culture that surrounds the political sphere right now. I mean, we’ve got a caricature of President Bush in the movie, so you can’t deny that you’re playing with the idea of politics, but I don’t think it’s a departure.
Cho: And I think the political premise is a way to make fart and poo jokes funnier.
Penn: Probably true, actually, yeah.
Do you guys take personal credit for the resurrection of Neil Patrick Harris’ career?
Cho: Do we take credit, did she say?
Penn: Yeah, I wanna take credit for it right now. No, I think Neil has talked about how (writers) Jon (Hurwitz) and Hayden’s (Schlossberg) script and playing the part has opened up some other opportunities for him. What do you think, Cho?
Cho: Yeah, I think he’s been open about that. I think that Harold & Kumar, the first movie, allowed people to see him in a different light, and I believe he has said, “I don’t think I’d be on ‘How I Met Your Mother’ without Harold & Kumar.”
Will we see any future Harold & Kumar spin-offs or sequels, or is that unknown at this point?
Cho: Unknown, I think, and I think it would depend on how people react to this one. Really it just depends on whether people vote with their dollars for this movie, just like the first one.
Penn: Yeah, I would second that. The reason we have a sequel now is because of the support from fans on the DVD. But we’re also four years older, so if you want to see a third movie would you please go see it opening weekend, then we can make it next year instead of four years from now when we will be considerably older.
Cho: My body is declining at an incredible rate.