Marijuana Movies: Riding High In Hollywood?

Image credit: Dale Robinette

It's hard to overstate the impact of Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke. Yes, 1969's Easy Rider helped take the stigma out of getting stoned by scoring two Oscar nominations, but in general, the celluloid depiction of pot smoking hadn't evolved much past the demon-weed scare tactics of Reefer Madness in 1936. (Now a camp classic, that movie has since been reinterpreted as both a stage and a movie musical.) In that context, Up in Smoke was revolutionary. Its tagline, ''Don't go straight to see this movie,'' was plastered on billboards everywhere, and it portrayed getting high as silly, not sinister. ''That movie was like a lightning bolt for me,'' says Chandrasekhar. ''It kind of reorders the world. Pot smoking...you [couldn't believe] someone was actually showing it.'' The studio couldn't quite believe it either. ''Paramount owned it, but they basically didn't want anything to do with it, so we took control,'' Tommy Chong says. ''That's the only way you can do a real stoner comedy.'' Up in Smoke grossed a staggering $44.4 million in 1978 — the equivalent of $135 million today.

Back in the '80s, directors snuck pot-smoking scenes into movies like 9 to 5 and The Breakfast Club — and some of those scenes have since become iconic. By the '90s, pot comedies were riding high. Dazed and Confused, Half-Baked, and Friday became instant genre classics.

After 2000, Hollywood's interest in stoner themes and characters only increased. White Castle, Grandma's Boy, and How High all made a mark on pot culture, and a formula for the modern weed comedy began to take shape: Combine bud, beer, and boobs, mix with a dream or masturbation sequence, and season with a fart or two. Most important, make sure that the characters' worlds revolve around weed — losing it, getting it, smoking it. Last year's box office smash Knocked Up proved a breakthrough for a mainstream comedy. It featured a stoner in a lead role and, consequently, turned star Seth Rogen into the new pot poster boy. ''There's really nothing bad about it,'' he cracks. ''People don't expect much from me.''

But while all these films owe a debt to Cheech and Chong, it's perhaps inevitable that this new generation of filmmakers is eager to distance itself from its forefathers. ''I've seen Cheech and Chong movies, and they serve their purpose, but they're not good by any stretch of the imagination,'' Rogen says. (Chong doesn't disagree. ''I liken it to a Grateful Dead concert,'' he says. ''The music's not that great, but there's a lot of love and camaraderie.'') And although Harold and Kumar's creators originally pitched their Korean-Indian comedy duo, actors John Cho and Kal Penn, as ''a new-generation Cheech and Chong,'' they like to think of White Castle and Guantanamo as ''buddy films'' and ''classic odd-couple'' comedies. They believe it's time the genre evolved. ''Stoner and slacker are usually used in the same sentence,'' says co-writer Hayden Schlossberg. ''We reject that stereotype. Harold has a great job; Kumar can be a top doctor in a second if he wants to. It's not marijuana that's holding them back.''

But it may be holding the genre back. The next hurdle for ''stoner comedies,'' ironically, is to transcend that very label. Until now, these films have been made for a fraction of what comparable buddy comedies cost, because pot movies traditionally have a limited take at the box office. Even coming off Knocked Up and Superbad, Rogen couldn't catch a break from Sony on Pineapple Express. ''A $40 million [budget] would've been nice,'' he says. ''But because it's a weed movie, you get $25 million.'' Pineapple may change that perception when it's released this summer. In the meantime, Guantanamo's Hurwitz knows he must solve an age-old mystery as his movie enters theaters: ''How do you get stoners to leave the house?''

More on stoner flicks:
Stoner-Movie Stars: A Roundtable
Stoner Flicks: 12 That Rate High