Behind The Seen: Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg

Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 05-Jun-08 @ 04:11 PM

In 2004, screenwriters JON HURWITZ and HAYDEN SCHLOSSBERG brought you the cult stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. This month, they take over as co-writer/directors for the sequel Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, in which the feckless doper duo are incarcerated for being suspected terrorists after smuggling a bong onto an Amsterdam-bound plane.

Originally your sequel was titled Harold & Kumar Go To Amsterdam. Was that just a working title, or was there a transition that happened?
SCHLOSSBERG: There was a transition and, really, it happened before the first film even came out. We originally ended that first movie with this promise of them going to Amsterdam, which we thought was a fun idea for a sequel. But in the years between the first movie and the second movie, the movie EuroTrip came out, which was a youth comedy about people running around Europe. It was very different than what we would have done, but similar enough that it kinda bummed us out. Plus, that movie didn't do very well, so the studio encouraged us to come up with something that wasn't about Europe.

There's a ton of political satire in the sequel--you address the Patriot Act, the War on Terrorism, and the death of habeas corpus. How did you find the balance between that and the raunchier humor?
HURWITZ: The last thing you wanna do is be preachy in a stoner comedy, a youth comedy, a buddy comedy--or frankly any comedy.
SCHLOSSBERG: But the first movie was received well not only because it was funny, but also because it broke certain stereotypes. People liked some of the racial commentary in that first movie. So when we were making the sequel, we obviously wanted it to be just as funny--if not funnier--than the first one, but we felt it should also have the same kind of social relevance. Otherwise, fans might be disappointed.

You can't cruise by on fart jokes.
SCHLOSSBERG: We love fart jokes, obviously, but the key is melding them together with satire. We're huge fans of South Park, and they do that all the time. In a lot of ways, Harold & Kumar is our South Park.
HURWITZ: The movie really comes from how we were feeling about the post-9/11 world. The time right after 9/11 was a very unifying time in this country, but as time went on, things got out of control. We lost focus, and it became an embarrassment.
SCHLOSSBERG: The majority of movies that deal with these issues are very serious films, and we don't wanna do anything that's too touchy, but there's a long tradition of making fun of government officials. We thought the Ron Fox character, played by Rob Corddry, was a good way to symbolize all the stupidity and fear-mongering that goes on in government.

What was the audition process for the "bottomless" pool party like? Or more to the point: How do you convince women to show you their vaginas while assuring them you're not making a porno?
SCHLOSSBERG: The problem is that when you need like 40 or 50 women to go bottomless, the types of women who are willing to do it are usually completely shaven. So it became an interesting process of trying to find women who had hair down there, but not a crazy jungle bush.
HURWITZ: It takes a lot of effort to find enough women for that, particularly when you're shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana. We didn't have the budget to fly women in from Los Angeles, so to find women willing to do it--and women of the caliber we wanted for a scene that's supposed to be this really cool Miami pool party--was a challenge. While I was shooting some other scenes with Harold and Kumar, Hayden and one of our producers were in a trailer with a long line of women outside.
SCHLOSSBERG: We had our female makeup artist there to add credibility to the operation. But it was an important process, you know, because who knows what's going on down there? -J. Bennett