Pubdate: Thu, 07 Aug 2008 Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB) Copyright: 2008 Winnipeg Free Press Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/info/letters/index.html Website: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502 Author: Randall King Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420 (Cannabis - Popular) COVER THIS BUD'S FOR YOU Sam: (Tim Meadows, caught in a smoky room with miscellaneous groupies): Get outta here, Dewey! Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly): What are y'all doin' in here? Sam: We're smoking reefer and you don't want no part of this sh--. Dewey: You know what, I don't want no hangover. I can't get no hangover. Sam: It doesn't give you a hangover! Dewey: Wha...? I get addicted to it or something? Sam: It's not habit-forming! Dewey: Oh, OK.. well, I don't know... I don't want to overdose on it. Sam: You can't OD on it! Dewey: It's not gonna make me wanna have sex, is it? Sam: It makes sex even better! Dewey: Sounds kind of expensive. Sam: It's the cheapest drug there is. Dewey: Hmm. - -- From Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, produced by Judd Apatow In the real world, being caught with marijuana can still get you in serious trouble in the U.S. and Canada. But in movies, marijuana is often consumed onscreen with no more fuss than you'd get watching James Bond down a vodka martini. This month in theatres, at least three new movies show characters imbibing of pot without implicit or explicit condemnation: Pineapple Express, Bottle Shock and The Wackness. It is said movies, like drugs, are an escape from reality. Yet movies about drugs are arguably closer in touch with reality than the lawmakers whose tired debates have been echoing, echoing, echoing in the corridors of power for decades. Indeed, movies may actually function as the voice of reason in the marijuana debate. Probably no mainstream filmmaker in the history of cinema has done more to forward the cause of marijuana legalization than writer-producer-director Judd Apatow. The above exchange in the Apatow-produced Walk Hard makes a more elegant case for the decriminalization of pot than the entire library of Cheech and Chong movies. And Apatow isn't letting up. Penned in tandem with Vancouver-spawned writer-actor Seth Rogen, Pineapple Express editorializes freely on the issue of marijuana use, with Rogen's character Dale Denton predicting legalization within five years, and advocating to a local radio talk show about how the drug's criminalization only profits criminals. wIn a way, the movie is carrying forward the dialogue from Rogen/Apatow's 2007 movie, Knocked Up, which likewise showed that the use of recreational drugs could be the subject of a sane conversation between a father-to-be and his father (played respectively by Rogen and Harold Ramis): Ben's dad: Remember what I told you when you were a teenager? Ben: What did you say? Ben's dad: I said, "No pills, no powders." Ben: That's right. That's right. Ben's dad: Right. If if grows in the ground, it's probably OK. Ben: You told me not to smoke pot all those years, and then I found out you were smoking pot that whole time. Ben's dad: Not the whole time. Just in the evenings and all day every weekend. Drive through Los Angeles, and you'll see the city is filled with posters and billboards for Pineapple Express depicting the clearly high faces of Rogen and co-star James Franco. (You'll also see posters for the pot-themed cable TV series Weeds.) Of course, if California has a relaxed attitude to the issue, it comes from the top. In a 1977 interview in Oui Magazine, Arnold Schwarzenegger (then a bodybuilder-actor) copped to smoking dope and enjoying it. (He can be seen toking in the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron.) But instead of spending the subsequent years lying on a couch in the basement, he became an action movie star, a hugely successful businessman and ultimately the governor of California. And instead of turning into a sanctimonious ex-party animal in the manner of President George W. Bush, Schwarzenegger defied the Republican dogma and championed the availability of medical marijuana in the state, even as, in 2005, Attorney-General John Ashcroft was sending federal agents to arrest users and suppliers of the drug, at one point arresting and handcuffing a 44-year-old post-polio sufferer who used the drug to ease her pain. Clearly, the government is no place to seek wisdom on the issue of marijuana. For a more realistic perspective, seek out these essential marijuana movies, all available on DVD. Reefer Madness The movies haven't always had such a benign view of pot. In the '30s, it was the subject of some horrific propaganda films. Reefer Madness (a.k.a Tell Your Children) was a 1936 exploitation movie that attempted to sell impressionable audiences on the addictive properties of the drug, and the psychopathic qualities of its users. In the early '70s, the movie was released on the midnight movie/college circuit where, in the spirit of karmic justice, potheads could be entertained by the film's fever-pitched hysteria and gross falsehood. But more sober viewers would find the film's bald-faced lies extremely disturbing. Up in Smoke The '70s comedy team of Cheech and Chong took marijuana mainstream with this 1978 comedy wherein the duo ... um ... got high a lot. In the U.S., the studio had to resort to advertising on bus benches to get the word out about the movie, but it became a huge cult hit anyway, implying the audience for the film was formidable. The movie even won repeat viewers, which must be considered a notable achievement in that it didn't have much of a plot and it wasn't all that funny. Smiley Face Anna Faris stars as Jane F., a would-be actress who is only dimly aware of the fact she is having a disastrous day, after scarfing pot-laced cupcakes in this unsung 2007 comedy by Greg Araki. Araki has no apparent skills as a comic filmmaker, and didn't know enough to shoot with short lenses (wide angle being ideal for expressing a stoned point of view). But Faris gets more and more hilarious as the movie proceeds, even as Jane F. gets deeper and deeper into trouble. In that regard, Smiley Face doesn't qualify as marijuana advocacy. In fact, the movie makes the point that pot, irresponsibly and excessively consumed, can mess up your life big-time. The Long Goodbye Not technically a pot movie, this 1973 film by Robert Altman is actually an out-of left field adaptation of Raymond Chandler's gumshoe novel of the same name. But Altman himself was a serious pothead, and it shows in this film's tokey ambience, as private eye Phillip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) attempts to discover the whereabouts of an alcoholic novelist (Sterling Hayden) while investigating the murder of the wife of a drinking buddy (Jim Bouton). With its dreamy, floating cinematography by the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond, this may be cinema's best evocation of a stoned person's point of view. Watch for future California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a muscly bodyguard who at one point strips naked at the behest of his crazed mobster boss, played by director Mark Rydell. Grass In this powerful, cumulative 1999 history, Canadian documentarian Ron Mann created the best cinematic argument for the legalization of pot, and against the insanely expensive, futile American War on Drugs, which has cost taxpayers half a trillion dollars in the past 50 years. Mann makes a compelling argument that marijuana was targeted by special interests (including millionaire William Randolph Hearst) looking for an excuse to make hemp illegal, an agenda that nicely dovetailed with an excuse to prosecute the visible minorities who were most likely to be users -- blacks and Mexicans -- at that time. Narrated by actor/hemp advocate and admitted pothead Woody Harrelson. Escape to Canada Another Canadian documentary, this 2005 film by Albert Nerenberg (Let's All Hate Toronto) centred on that heady period in 2003 when it looked as if the federal liberals were about to legalize casual marijuana consumption in Canada, at the same time they were successfully legalizing gay marriage. While flawed, the movie certainly makes a compelling argument that Canada had a better claim to the title "Land of the free" in regard to the marijuana issue. See former Canadian Tommy Chong take the rap for his bong-manufacturing son at the apparent instigation of former U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft, who's seeking a symbolic victory in the Drug War by busting a '70s drug icon. See Fox pit bull Bill O'Reilly browbeat Globe and Mail columnist Heather Malick with the dubious threats of America launching a trade war against Canada in the event Canada ceased its war-on-drugs lockstep with the U.S. (Get that man a doobie, stat.) Alas, it ends unhappily, as the legislation is killed upon the election of Stephen Harper's minority government, who ultimately bent to American pressure to close the door on legalization. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin