As they used to say in my hometown, Kal Penn knocked Clint Eastwood's dick in the dirt Tuesday night with a smart — and subtly smart-alecky — celebrity turn at the podium on the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC.
In contrast to 82-year-old Eastwood's aimless — and heartless — speech in support of Mitt Romney, Penn, 35, gave a focused, funny speech that, like the Harold & Kumar franchise, proved to be a lot smarter than it's stoner-targeted marketing campaign advertised. (Actually, I think there's an argument to be made that stoners are some of the sharpest cultural consumers on earth, but that's an argument for another day.) more »
It was a week for real talk 'round these parts at Movieline HQ, with everything from Halloween to Lindsay Lohan's latest legal woes bringing everyone to terms with the truth. Like the fact that no matter how many Halloweens you live through, you'll never match Heidi Klum's level of kookiness. Then the awful truth about the monster flop The Wolfman broke, and America's favorite sparkly vampire dropped some cineaste science all over the Twilight crowd. What's going on around here?
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The sweetest feel-good flick of the holiday season may well be the one about two ex-BFFs, who'd once gone in search of White Castle sliders and tangled with Homeland Security, who reunite on Christmas Eve to hunt down the perfect fir, crossing paths with drug-sniffing babies, Ukrainian gangsters, and a sweater-clad Danny Trejo along the way. Stoner heroes Harold and Kumar have come a long way since 2004 -- and so has co-star John Cho, who sat down with Movieline recently to talk H&K, career moves, and his encounters with the likes of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and President Obama.
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An unusual thing happened to Kal Penn on the way to stardom: in April 2009, after making two successful franchise-starting Harold & Kumar comedies, appearing in Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, and co-starring on TV's House, the rising actor opted to take a two-year sabbatical from Hollywood to work in the Obama administration. This week, he returns to screens as Kumar to John Cho's Harold in A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, which finds the former hamburger-seeking BFFs facing new, daunting life changes and, in the spirit of the holidays, renewing their friendship the old fashioned way: With giant spliffs, babies on drugs, and Claymation.
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"There was a selflessness about it. He was there for the right reasons. He believed in the candidate, he believed in the cause. He was approachable, he didn't put on any airs. And he loved to work hard.... We'd take him to five, six college campuses a day, and he'd never complain.... You could have asked him to do anything -- go lick some stamps, he would've done that." Spurred into public service during the Writer's Strike, Kal Penn (who's back on screens next week in A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas) took a mid-level outreach gig in the Obama administration that, at one point, caused his agent to freak out: "What are you doing? The guy is down 30 points in the polls. It's not cute anymore!" [L.A. Times]
