Ask '80s pop-rock superstar Huey Lewis how he wound up recording the title song for the highly anticipated stoner action-comedy Pineapple Express, due in theaters Aug. 6, and he'll basically shrug.
They e-mailed, 'Would I write a song for a Seth Rogen movie?' I said, 'Why not?' I don't consider career moves. I just answer the phone. I'm flattered at my ripe old age to even be considered. It was all about fun.
--Huey Lewis-on getting the news.
Ask Pineapple Express director David Gordon Green how the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling Lewis and the News wound up on the soundtrack, however, and you'll elicit a breathless, impassioned narrative of initial failure and eventual triumph -- one that takes into account Ray Parker Jr.'s “Ghostbusters" theme, plenty of what the director terms “organic thinking" and a healthy admiration for Lewis' physique, shown in its full-frontal glory in a certain Robert Altman drama.
Putting together the soundtrack, Green and music supervisor Jonathan Karp selected songs they deemed right for the film's plot, which sees Rogen's horny stoner and his shambling pot dealer (James Franco, right, with Rogen) running from mobsters after witnessing a murder. The score is packed with '80s skewing favorites from the likes of Robert Palmer ("Woke Up Laughing") and Peter Tosh ("Wanted Dread and Alive") as well as rap and R&B chestnuts from Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Public Enemy and Bell Biv DeVoe.
“I wanted things to be timeless, but with a nudge to the '80s," the director said, “but not an obvious stoner greatest hits."
