The Screengrab

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.

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In this week's Guardian film section, blogger/critic John Patterson reminds us that, amongst the other debts we owe to Judd Apatow, we can also thank him for helping shred one of the last remaining bougeois taboos in cinema:  the one that state that the human penis cannot be seen at any cost. 

Patterson reports that it took a string of comedies, from Superbad to Forgetting Sarah Marshall to the upcoming Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, to shatter the ironclad reluctance of American bluenoses to the merest suggestion of the national generative organ.  The penis is, after all, as Patterson notes, a comical thing -- "just ask any woman."   Prior to the recent proliferation of the dick as joke (not to be confused with the dick joke), big-screen appearances of the little man were confined to pornography, well-meaning art films, and any movie starring Harvey Keitel.  

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After the surprisingly good-natured and occasionally hilarious Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle became a huge cult hit on DVD, it was only a matter of time before we were treated to a sequel.  Writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg picked up the directorial reins as well, and brought back Kal Penn and John Cho as the leads.  This was an absolute necessity, as it was their insouciant stoner charm that gave the first movie its lasting appeal; the big surprise came when it was announced that the new film would feature the boys being arrested and incarcerated in the most famous prison in the world.  Would the Harold and Kumar franchise become a sounding bell for radicalism?  Would the bodily secretion jokes and dope references take a back seat to fiery condemnation of America's notorious prison camp on foreign soil?  Was this movie actually going to teach us something?

Come on, folks.  It's Harold and Kumar, not Vidal and Chomsky.  The boys spend all of five minutes of screen time in Guantanamo Bay and the rest of the movie is devoted to more of the low-comedy high-jinks that one would expect from the people who made America's favorite stoner road picture.   George W. Bush is brought in mostly to make a weed gag, the bits where people learn a valuable lesson about racial profiling are as subtle as a hailstorm (if occasionally quite funny, as when Harold and Kumar encounter gangs of rural whites and urban blacks, and a memorable scene where Klansmen refer to the duo as "Mexicans"), and the movie's main argument against terrorism is to bellow "Fuck you!  Donuts are awesome!"  No one should go into this thing expecting carefully crafted political arguments from any point on the political spectrum, nor should they go into it expecting subtle comedy, crafty worldplay or an absence of jokes involving pubic hair.

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Once again it’s that time of the week for us to acknowledge, however grudgingly, that there may occasionally be a reason or two to check out film blogs that aren’t the Screengrab. While our SXSW continues, we must admit we can’t be everywhere every day, so here are a few of our imaginary Internet friends who are picking up the slack:

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As longtime readers will know, I am a dirty stinking liberal. I complain about the depiction of Arab terrorists in movies about Arab terrorists. I make fun of right-wing cultural pest/William F. Buckley son-in-law Brent Bozell on a regular basis for his alleged resemblance to Ghostbusters bureaucrat/asshole Walter Peck. I infiltrate conservative polticial conferences in order to take pills and mock bogus documentaries featuring Ben Stein. I think one of the most irritating things about the modern-day Democratic Party is that they pretend to care about stuff like violence in video games and smut in movies. I would rather watch Ben-Hur ten times in a row than spend five minutes hearing Charlton Heston gas on about gun control, and I'm a gun owner who hates Ben-Hur.

But let it never be said that I don't play fair. I believe in a level playing field, and I've decided that it's about time, given all the posts I've made here linking to bastions of communism like the Guardian and the New York Times, that I give some props to my favorite right-wing movie blog: LIBERTAS!

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