The Screengrab : doug benson

Take Five: Weed

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:00:00 GMT

We were going to call this Take Five "Buddha", and then, like, totally blow your mind by not including Kundun, but frankly, we're just too, you know, we're too, uh...what were we talking about? Oh, right! That weed! The chronic! Sweet Mary Jane! A favorite in Hollywood for so many years that it doesn't even seem like a vice to some people (remember Tom Hagen warning the movie producer in The Godfather that one of his stars was about to 'graduate' from marijuana to cocaine), it was a while before social pressures eased up enough to portray herb in anything but the most hysterical terms. How far we've come, bros! Today, only a few scant days after 4/20 (the national stoner's holiday), we can each of us get nicely toasted and ditch work early for a matinee of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, which posits that even our Commander-in-Chief enjoys a good bong hit now and again. The noir classic The Sweet Smell of Success contained a plot point that expected us to believe that a jazz musician -- and a white one, at that! -- might see his career ruined by the mere possession of the devil weed, while the new Kal Penn/John Cho vehicle implies that toking up on a regular basis is the best career move you can make. Here's five more films that deal with the sweet leaf in all its hazy glory.

REEFER MADNESS (1936)

This absurd scare-flick is typical of the anti-drug hysteria of the 1920s and 1930s; it's only exceptional in that it's exceptionally over-the-top in its woozy narrative, lurid dialogue, and bizarrely sensationalistic vision of what marijuana will do to you. (Apparently, it turns you into a murderer or a sex fiend instead of a lazy Xbox-addicted dolt.) Directed by French-born Louis Gasnier (whose other major claim to fame was the Perils of Pauline serial), it's unintentionally hilarious to the degree that it's been reissued endlessly in every format imaginable for new generations of potheads to giggle at. In fact, for a film that did poor business, featured no stars, and is incompetently made at every level, it very well may be that Reefer Madness is the most-watched film of the 1930s. Ah, irony.

CHEECH & CHONG'S UP IN SMOKE (1978)

You simply can't talk about dope movies without mentioning Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, the guys who turned them from a taboo into a franchise. Although it's easy to condemn the boys for how quickly their on-screen efforts turned into dogshit (I'm still reeling from The Corsican Brothers), those only familiar with how bad things eventually got might want to go back and give their motion picture debut another look. It's not great art or anything, and Lou Adler's direction is strictly syndicated sitcom level, but it's got a number of genuinely funny moments, some hilarious dialogue, some swell celebrity cameos from Tom Skerritt and Stacy Keach, and all in all, it's exactly what a stoner comedy shoud be: a good-natured, consequence-free thumb in the nose to petty authority. Good afternoon viewing for a baked summer day.

THE BIG LEBOWKSI (1998)

It's downright shocking that such a successful dopehead comedy was made by the Coen Brothers. While I certainly can't speak to their own habits of indulgence or not, their filmmaking is incredibly tight and unbelievably disciplined, exactly the opposite of most art created by the Cheeba-American community. And yet along comes The Big Lebowski: a movie that, aside from being an unbelievably funny comedy and an eerily precise if cleverly disguised Raymond Chandler detective story, is probably the most perfect stoner flick ever made. The Dude is the ultimate slacker hero, lighting a J when he gets bored listening to the title character rattle on about hard work and responsibility, as well as the roach-butt of many a joke, as he smashes up his much-abused car after dropping a maggot on his pants while driving.

HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE (2004)

Of course, we can't praise the sometimes subtle, sometimes anvil-heavy stoner comedy of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay without mentioning its predecessor, a hugely successful cult flick that came out of nowhere and captured the public imagination in just the right way with its combination of gregarious dope jokes and over-the-top grossout comedy. It launched the careers of appealing leads Kal Penn and John Cho; it proved that you can make a successful buddy picture without a white guy; and best of all, it was funny as hell and forced beloved/reviled mini-hamburger chain White Castle to acknowledge its existence with an extreme line-toeing ad campaign that tried to capitalize on the movie's success without explicitly avowing the truth: that White Castle is the preferred 3AM nosh joint for the seriously blunted.

SUPER HIGH ME (2007)

Explicitly lifted from Morgan Spurlock's anti-McDonald's stunt documentary Super Size Me, and based on little more than a two-minute comedy routine by star Doug Benson, Super High Me -- which combines a fairly legitimate section on drug law reform, straight-up concert footage of Benson's act, and extended segments of his attempt to get high every day for a month -- isn't the most coherent or well-presented film you'll ever see. Which, given the topic, is pretty understandable. But it's got its funny moments, and if nothing else, it allows you to see that Benson is none the worse for wear after his 'experiment' (which, let's be honest, would represent cutting back for a lot of people), and the movie is stocked with successful actors and comedians who are successful and yet get stoned quite regularly. It's a good thing Benson's not black, though, or this movie would probably be used as evidence at his trial.

Your 4:20 Stoner Movie Symposium

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:20:00 GMT

In honor of Sunday’s national stoner holiday (4/20, dontcha know – see also the time of this post), Entertainment Weekly presents a roundtable discussion of the weedsploitation genre, with such luminaries as Seth Rogen (Pineapple Express), John Cho (the Harold and Kumar movies) and Tommy Chong (You know! CHONG!) pontificating on pot cinema. For those of you who have already sparked up and thus don’t have the attention span to get through the whole thing, we present a few selected highlights.

Everyone has their favorite stoner movie, of course. Rogen is a Friday proponent and Chong goes old school with Easy Rider, but we’ve got to side with Super High Me star Doug Benson on this matter. “I'd say for the sheer quality and vibe of it, Dazed and Confused. Whether you watch it stoned or not, it really delivers. I saw it in the theater and it appealed on a Freaks and Geeks kind of level, where it was really funny and realistic, but also reminded you of the s---tier aspects of being a kid. The only thing that takes away from the stoniness of it is the hazing element, but it does sort of represent the way that stoners are treated in general.”

Rogen knows what doesn’t work in stoner cinema, and that’s the obligatory anti-drug message Hollywood studios often insist upon. “That was something we did not want [for Pineapple Express]. Half Baked, I liked that movie, but the ending drove me crazy! The whole movie is for potheads, clearly, then at the end he stops smoking weed — so what the f--- am I doing? A lot of these weed movies shoot their core audience in the foot when they do that. We wanted to acknowledge that it's not a great idea to be stoned 24 hours a day, especially when there's guys trying to kill you, but we didn't want the ‘We should stop smoking weed’ moment.”

And then there’s...uh...hey, man, what was I writing about?

The Five Most Intriguing SXSW Trailers: Documentaries

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:30:00 GMT

The 2008 SXSW Film Festival kicks off a week from tomorrow, and naturally the Screengrab will be your go-to source for wall-to-wall coverage. We're whetting our appetites by browsing through the trailers for the official selections and making a checklist of can't-miss screenings. Tune in tomorrow for the five most intriguing narrative films; for now, here are the documentaries that have our attention.

Crawford

In 2005, I went to Crawford, Texas for a wedding. This was at the height of "Camp Casey," the makeshift protest community that grew up around Cindy Sheehan and spent the summer heckling the vacationing president. Looking around at the nondescript one-traffic-light town in the ass-end of nowhere, I wondered why Bush would move there on purpose, when he could be spending his considerable leisure time kicking back in Kennebunkport, Maine. Apparently the townspeople of Crawford have wondered the same thing:

Super High Me

They drug test us once a week here at the Screengrab, so I wouldn't know anything about the marijuana or "pot grass" as I believe you kids call it. But apparently comedian Doug Benson knows quite a bit about it; he was named High Times magazine's Stoner of the Year in 2006, and now he's following in the footsteps of Morgan Spurlock by smoking "medical marijuana" for 30 straight days. Sounds like more fun than eating a month's worth of Egg McMuffins. Not that we'd know, of course!

Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Here at the Screengrab, you don't have to tell us that Harlan Ellison still has his edge; we found out firsthand. So we're very much looking forward to this portrait of the world-renowned author, and we're not just saying that to get on his good side! Although we are sort of wondering what Robin Williams is doing in this thing.

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

Bigfoot is back, baby! The star of countless cheapo creature features and pseudo-documentaries of the 70s has been spotted in such recent fare as Strange Wilderness, The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang and The Wild Man of Navidad. This documentary from first-time director Jay Delaney follows a pair of amateur Bigfoot hunters whose cryptozoological quest provides "a source of hope and meaning that transcend the harsh realities of life in a dying steel town."

Shine a Light

Next to organized crime, rock and roll is Martin Scorsese's favorite subject – and who's to say there's no overlap between the two? An editor on Woodstock, Scorsese made one of the great rock movies of the 70s in The Last Waltz, and presided over the definitive Bob Dylan bio with No Direction Home. Now he shines his light on the Rolling Stones – although if this trailer is any indication, Marty himself is at least a co-star. Ironically enough, early word indicates this is one Scorsese movie that doesn't feature "Gimme Shelter" on the soundtrack.