Interview: John Cho

John Cho visited the KPBS studios last month and took some time to talk seriously about being funny in "A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas" (opening November 4 throughout San Diego).

"Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle" (2004) was a quintessential pot comedy -- rude, crude, raunchy and yet ultimately sweet-natured as opposed to mean-spirited. It established John Cho's Harold and Kal Penn's Kumar as pop culture icons almost on par with Cheech and Chong. The film was an indie hit finding an adoring audience that embraced its goofy humor and irreverent sense of fun. It was followed by "Harold and Kumar Go to Guantanamo Bay," set one minute after "White Castle" ended and had the boys meeting up with President George Bush.

Now Harold and Kumar have aged a few years. Harold is married and has an intimidating father-in-law. But a higher power works to get the two back together for another comic misadventure and once again they cross paths with NPH.

This latest installment in the pot comedy franchise is not as good as "White Castle" but still provides enough laughs and raunchiness to keep fans happy. The film is not as sweet-natured as the first but the characters still are. New director Todd Strauss-Schulson (whose past credit includes the short "Sorority Pillow Fight," which seems apt) doesn't have the same charm as original director Danny Leiner and writer Jon Hurwitz but he keeps the pace fast and the jokes rolling in. He makes plenty of fun about making the film in 3D (the 3D pot smoke waifing out into the audience is the best) and riffs on other recent comedies like "The Hangover" with visual nods. There are also insider jokes about Cho having played Sulu and Penn having taken off time to work for Obama. And there is also a great claymation sequence.

The film delivers pretty much what you'd expect. Neil Patrick Harris returns as himself, literally resurrected after pissing off Jesus in heaven and calling the son of God a "cock blocker." Danny Trejo joins the family as Harold's intimidating father-in-law who looks twice as scary as usual because he's in a gaudy Christmas sweater. Thomas Lennon (of "Reno 911" fame), though, is pretty much wasted as Harold's new friend.

John Cho stopped by KPBS' studios last week to talk about his role and the film. Watch the video of the interview or read it below.

Beth Accomando: This is the third time you're playing Harold. So I'm wondering are you finding anything new or different in him?

John Cho: The second movie was set one minute after the first movie and I was glad when I heard that they were advancing the ages of the characters so it was fun with the family dynamic with Harold's married now and they're trying to have a baby and there's a really funny bit in the movie with his in-laws, very frightening in-laws that come and a lot of cultural misunderstanding jokes. I felt that that was some new stuff to play although Harold and Kumar remain the same guys essentially and to me the movies continue to be a romance movie about these two men you know finding one another.

BA: Can you imagine Harold and Kumar in a retirement home at some point?

JC: Yes. I can. Harold and Kumar get diabetes. Harold and Kumar sign up for Meals on Wheels. Harold and Kumar get hip dysplasia...

BA: Is there a line that Harold and Kumar will not cross? Because I mean in this movie there's a baby on crack crawling on the ceiling, is there a point at which there is a line that gets drawn?

JC: How dare you? It's not crack. It's just regular coke.

BA:: Okay, thank you. I'm sorry. I stand corrected.

JC: Thank you. I don't know. We haven't found it. No wait. We crossed it a long time ago. So apparently not but you know strangely enough I always feel like Harold and Kumar are allowed to do what they do in the cinematic universe because they're sweet. And the humor in the movie is strangely sweet. There are lots of pervy jokes, there's nudity in the movie but there's an attitude with which the jokes are told that I think it's in good fun and it doesn't seem raunchy for raunchy sake necessarily, no it is but ah, I'm digging myself into a hole. But I have always felt that they had a good natured attitude about it and that's what allows us to be so pervy.

BA:: The two of you seem to be kind of cast opposite to what your real personalities are like. And I'm wondering if that was that a deliberate choice on the first film to cast you so that you're playing a little against yourselves?

JC: I don't believe that was deliberate but it's really funny to me, it was funny when we discovered it on set. I mean I was like, "This guy is square. This Kal Penn guy is square as hell." And it's funny to switch personalities on action, I mean we would just become the opposite of each other on action, it was funny. Kal is intolerant of excessive goofiness on set.

BA: So how does that play out?

JC: You gotta let people work the way they work but I think he got mad at me once during the first one because I did have this habit of slapping his ass right before action, really hard. And I could see how it would get annoying. I found it amusing.

BA: We talked about crossing lines and stuff. One of the things you guys do in the film is you do bring up a lot of racial stereotypes...

JC:If you have a Korean and Indian guy as your leads you must address race at some point in the movie, you must because the audience is noting it really and the other thing is comedy at its best treads in taboo waters a little bit and it has to have a transgressive quality to it and race is the biggest taboo in America, I mean people are very reluctant to talk about race and yet when you do jokes about race that work the people are very happy to release tension and laugh about it. But it has been interesting and I'll make an observation, during the first tour for the first film, we were talking about race all the time with journalists. It was almost like a process, now looking back the first movie was more concerned with race but we talked about it so much I felt that it was in a way a way of justifying our presence in a motion picture. Like we had to talk it through, like it was a therapy session over the course of all these talks with all these journalists. It's interesting to note that during this third one it comes up occasionally but not very much. And I don't know if it's the fact that people are more accustomed to seeing us so that the movie isn't as concerned with it or maybe the country has changed but it's interesting that there's less talk of it.

BA:: John Cleese once said that some people just need to be offended. Do you think comedy has a role to do that?

JC:I need my comedy to offend. That's my personal views. And our audience seems to like it. So I would tend to agree with Mr. Cleese. Well let me put it this way, I would never dare disagree with John Cleese. That's stupid. That's just stupid.

BA: And one last thing, let me ask you about NPH?

BA: You resurrected him from the dead essentially.

JC: Yes, no he resurrected himself. He's pretty much a supernatural being. He's like a literal deus ex machina. He's our second act magic trick. And he's back and he's fantastic. And we were able to do a song and dance number with him in this movie which I really. really enjoyed. I didn't think that we'd get to do that, explore that skill set with him in our movies.

Beth Accomando: BA:

JC: Thank you. That was fun.