You Can Thank Ryan Reynolds For This Classic Stoner Movie

By Andrew Sanford | Film | August 5, 2024 |

By Andrew Sanford | Film | August 5, 2024 |

Stoner movies are a subgenre all their own. They often contain high jinks (pun not intended). For that reason, they tend to lean toward being comedic. There is usually a reliance on tye dye. The portrayal of people consuming marijuana can range from 1960s stereotypes to “this person may have been legitimately high while filming.” There are, of course, stoner movies that are more fantastical or trippy. Still, comedies rule this film niche, and Ryan Reynolds helped to get one of the most successful ones made.

Reynolds is now more entrepreneur than man. His ventures are many, to the point where one may feel almost… suffocated by his perfectly square jaw. He started a cellphone company. There is some kind of flying gin that he owns? An Emmy-Award-winning documentary show focuses on him co-owning a football club. You’d almost forget that he is a lead in one of the biggest R-rated films ever released. Reynolds is no stranger to R-rated films. He once starred in one with Tara Reid.

National Lampoon’s Van Wilder was released in 2002. It told the story of an under-achieving college student, who has remained in college for seven years and now focuses on helping his lower classmen. It’s a college sex comedy, a different subgenre that has mostly died out. In addition to Reid, Reynolds appeared in the raunchy film with Kal Penn. According to Penn, Reynolds helped him get the job.

Penn sat down with Rolling Stone and ended up discussing his joining the film. “Ryan was incredibly supportive during the audition process for Van Wilder,” the former associate director for the Obama Administration said. “In the final callback, it was between me and a white dude in brownface for the part of an Indian exchange student. He said to me, ‘How do you feel about improv?’ So we improvised the scene, and he was obviously rooting for me to get the job. The entire production was awesome.”

The relationship between Penn and Reynolds grew from there. A lot of it stemmed from Reynolds’s support of Penn as an actor. Penn explained, “He told me once in passing, ‘When you get your first lead, let me know, and I’ll play the supporting guy.’ When Harold & Kumar happened and we were talking about cameos, I reached out to Ryan and he was immediately like, ‘Yes, absolutely.’” According to producer, Nathan Kahane, this was more than a cameo.

As Kahane explained, Reynolds joining the film helped get it into production. “When we got the call from New Line, they had one caveat: Because we were casting unknowns, they wanted us to get three cameos in the movie so it felt like a fuller theatrical experience,” explained Kahane. He continued, “calling Ryan’s agent and was like, ‘Is this happening?’ He told me Ryan was totally supportive because Ryan loves Kal. We paid him $10,000, and he was a beautiful man of his word. Ryan joining that cast got the movie greenlit.”

Do you love Harold And Kumar? Do you marvel at the munchy-seeking antics? Well, there are several products you can buy if you want to say thank you.