Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle takes place in New Jersey and was shot primarily in Toronto. I landed at Pearson International Airport and hopped in a car with someone from the show’s transportation team who took me to the Minto Yorkville—an under-construction long-term furnished rental building in a fancy part of the city. That evening, as I unpacked my suitcases while listening to a Dr. Dre playlist (I make playlists for all my characters), John Cho knocked on my door. “Hey. We’re supposed to be best friends. Let’s grab a drink.”
We headed over to an expensive-looking bar in our new expensive-looking neighborhood, where I ordered an expensive Amstel Light and John ordered some kind of scotch I had never heard of. We immediately hit it off.
“I’m really glad we’re making this movie,” he said to me. “I don’t know how you feel about it, but I’ve thought a lot about how there’s never been a film like this before. The script is so funny. And it’s got two Asian American leads. That’s two more than usual.”
“Dude, I know! I’m so glad you feel this way too! When I read the script, I told Jon and Hayden it wouldn’t get made unless someone financed it independently. But here we are.”
We ordered another round and continued talking. John told me about a litmus test he had imposed on himself: the Twelve-Year-Old Me Rule. “Basically, how would the twelve-year-old me feel about the job I’m about to take? We didn’t have anything like this movie when we were twelve. I think the twelve-year-old me is going to be pretty damn proud when it comes out.”
I knew exactly what he meant. I told him I had a similar metric to judge things. I called it “My Middle School Me Rule,” after those experiences getting called Apu and Johnny 5. How would middle school me feel today? Middle school me would have hated Van Wilder, but absolutely venerated Harold & Kumar.
“?‘My Middle School Me Rule’ has a better ring to it,” he conceded.
“But twelve-year-old me is more on point,” I shot back.
Our evening was going well. I started to order us a third round of drinks, when John stopped me. “Are you seriously getting a THIRD beer? You don’t like scotch?”
“I’ve never had scotch before.”
“You’ve never had scotch before?!”
He made it sound like I confessed to a very shocking crime.
John turned to the bartender and announced, “He’s never had scotch before! Forget his beer. We’ll have two more of these.”
When the scotches arrived, each poured into an ornate glass, I motioned to cheers John and do my shot. “NOOOOOOOOO! NO! NO!” he shouted, stopping me before the liquor touched my lips. “Jesus! This is not a shot! You drink it slowly.” He then proceeded to teach me to sip scotch. The eventual buzz was kind of nice. Light. I could see why gentlemen in magazines dressed in fancy clothing would properly consume scotches during flowing conversations.5
My first big movie and my first big scotch. I was all grown up.
* * *
Our instantaneous bromance also meant that John and I became more like siblings than work friends. We were together on set almost constantly for the entire two-and-a-half-month shoot. A lot of the movie takes place inside a car, and about half of that was filmed in front of a green screen in a windowless studio. The downside was that we’d often spend twelve hours a day sitting in a parked vehicle with no air circulation. The upside was that we could get out to stretch our legs every so often, since we weren’t actually on the open road.
Once, we were sitting in the car with our seat belts on while the camera guys adjusted something technical. “I’m cold,” John said. “Can I roll these windows up until you guys are ready to shoot?”
After a minute with the windows up, he said he started to feel stuffy. “I’m going to step out.” He opened his door and in sudden rapid succession: removed the keys from the ignition, loudly farted, jumped out, hit the power locks, and slammed the door, leaving me seat-belted inside his airtight fart machine, with no way out.
I fucking love that guy.
* * *
H&K was every bit the dream job I hoped it would be, and each day on the set felt like a gift. Unfortunately, not the type of gift that would pay the bills. Hold up, Kal. You’re telling me you didn’t make any money on Harold & Kumar? That’s not at all what I’m telling you. I made some money, sure, but I didn’t make “never have to work again” money.
My gross salary for Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was the equivalent of what the US Census Bureau called median household income.6 After deducting the standard expenses—agent, manager, and lawyer fees; paying publicist salaries and taxes—what I was left with was good enough to live off of for about five months. To be clear, that’s a huge victory. I had a roof over my head just from acting—I was supporting myself with my art, which meant that by my count, I was finally living the dream.
Having a publicist took some getting used to. I briefly had one after Van Wilder, and as a newcomer, I found her to be helpful in navigating things like those press junkets. Since I was now playing a title character in a movie, my manager, Dan Spilo, recommended I hire a way more established PR rep. The new publicist was sort of ridiculous. In the several months that I worked with him, I can’t remember ever seeing his eyes blink. He always carried around an extra-large cup of coffee and popped either an Adderall or Xanax at spaced intervals depending on the time of day. If you met or talked with him before Adderall #1 kicked in, you’d know it because his eyelids would stay half-closed. He’d hold the side of his head with one hand, nurse the cup of coffee with the other, and tilt his neck slightly back so he could see you with the open part of his eyes. “Ugh. I just… I don’t know what it is with me. The bottle of red wine I had last night must have been spoiled.”
Once the pill took effect, his eyelids would fully retract, and you wouldn’t ever see them again until it wore off a few hours later. During this time he’d talk very fast, about anything that came into his mind, from food trends to workout routines to serendipitous life events that he was sure had to do with either magic crystals or the position of Mercury.
On the plus side, he was always super nice to me and had a reputation for being a stellar publicist. The goal of hiring him wasn’t to get my name out there for the sake of fame or attention, it was to get specific types of press that could lead to more acting work—articles in magazines and interviews on television that would make me more bankable in the eyes of casting directors and producers.
There were some immediate missteps. I naively followed his advice when he instructed me to “just make stuff up that you think sounds funny as your character” before an interview with Playboy. Days later I was horrified to read the piece laid out as if my made-up, improvisational riff was a real interview about my sex life.7