Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
I’m enjoying Taoist Drunk talking about her appreciation for rural New Jersey, partly because it mirrors something I really like about my home city of Dublin, or specifically the southern suburbs, which butt up against the comparatively gentle ‘Dublin Mountains’ and the neighbouring county of Wicklow, also known as the Garden of Ireland; but also because it reminds me of a post I had planned for my old blogspot about this Harold and Kumar movie, using the screencaps above, and one of my favourite albums ever, DC post-hardcore band Hoover’s Lurid Traversal of Route 7 [1], the instrumental title song of which relies heavily on the sound of crickets and creating an atmosphere of tense emptiness, something both comically and dramatically reflected in the aesthetics of White Castle, emerging in the idyllic dawn shot of the burger joint itself [2]. Or, okay, that’s about as far as I got.
[1] As it happens, the titular Route 7 is actually in Virginia, as guitarist Joseph P. McRedmond explained to me in an email:
“Alex [Dunham] gave it the name as the song was based on his guitar part, and it’s kind of hard to get around Northern Virginia where we lived at the time without traversing Route 7. We did a lot of late night drives after rehearsing along Route 7 to go to this old Tasty Diner to drink coffee and eat grilled cheese and fries.”
[2] Whereas, as IMDB helpfully explains, the plot of the film is in reality a ludicrously unnecessary journey - a traversal, even - of the whole state of Jersey, passing through its dark centre above:
“”While the geography of New Jersey in the movie is very accurate during Harold and Kumar’s journey from north Jersey to south Jersey, there is simply no need for them to have driven so far to find a White Castle. The trip from Hoboken to Cherry Hill is 85 miles and takes about 2 hours (without traffic), and there about 20 White Castles along the way. In fact, Harold and Kumar didn’t even have to get on a highway to find one; there is a White Castle on Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City, which is adjacent to Hoboken.”
