IN PRAISE OF THE HEMPEROR

Wanna know how important cannabis crusader Jack Herer is to the
pro-marijuana movement? There's actually a strain of pot which bears
his name. Forget the NORML (National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws) plaques, the High Times accolades, the international
notoriety - if you're in the decriminalization movement, there is
simply no greater honor than to have some kid in Arcata selling pot
and referring to it in your name.

You may not have ever heard of Herer (rhymes with terror), but in
underground culture, this bearded old man is an icon. Beginning with
the comic zine Grass, which he published in the '70s, on through to
his classic 1985 anti-drug war epic The Emperor Wears No Clothes,
Herer has transformed himself from a flag-waving veteran who
supported the Vietnam War to the single most important voice in the
fight to decriminalize marijuana and its non-intoxicating twin, hemp.

In the documentary Emperor of Hemp, director Jeff Jones seeks to
illustrate Herer's journey from Goldwater Republican to decrim
activist. And while Jones makes a good case for his stature in the
pro-marijuana community, this film is the equivalent of the glossy
job Moonlighting's production crew used to do on the aging Cybill
Shepherd. What, for instance, ever became of the family the straight
Jack had before he freaked out smoking dope to CSN&Y or whatever?

Still, for those uninitiated to the movement or sketchy on details of
Herer's early days (when NORML's leaders would refuse his calls and
generally thought of his hemp angle as flakey at best, dangerous at
worst), the film provides a decent, if somewhat sycophantic,
framework. Where it excels is in the moments where it gets under the
surface of Herer's experiences as an activist.

For instance, the film explains how Herer's 1983 stint at Terminal
Island (a federal prison generally reserved for non-violent offenders
- - John Delorean served his cocaine sentence there) led to his working
on the long-conceived Emperor. If he hadn't spent the time he did
there, he ikely would have never had the time and focus to put into
such a project. The irony that the government, through his
incarceration, helped bring about the most popular pro-decrim book in
the history of modern prohibition is thick, indeed.

Equally fascinating is Jones' exploration of the controversy behind
one of Herer's favorite weapons, a wartime Department of Agriculture
film called Victory With Hemp, which implores farmers to apply for
the usually unobtainable license to grow hemp. Herer would screen the
film with glee at personal appearances, taking delight in the
14-minute newsreel that showed the government's ease in backing off
the vilification of hemp it had advanced less than a decade before,
desperate to take advantage of the plant George Washington urged to
seed in every nook and cranny of America. You see, as Herer has
always maintained, hemp makes a rather handy fiber (as well as having
myriad other uses), as has been known for thousands of years. (The
U.S. is the only democratic nation to prevents its farmers from
growing hemp. If the case been made abudantly clear to you already,
Barry McCaffrey is a fascist, and, like all fascists, bombastically
moronic.)

Well, someone from inside the government "warned" Herer that the
newsreel was, in fact, a hoax. And once you see the bits of it shown
in Emperor of Hemp, you notice that it is so perfect in its hypocrisy
(and that classic government propoganda newsreel voiceover intoning,
"Victory With Hemp!") that it could very well have been a fake.
Luckily for Herer, some research at the Library of Congress
unearthed proof that it had, indeed, been filmed by the Deparment of
Agriculture. The excerpts shown in this documentary are priceless.

Spicing up the film are musical contributions by Bonnie Raitt, Joe
Walsh ('natch!) and Cheap Trick - these tracks lend a weight to
Emperor of Hemp that would be lacking if it relied on the usual
"hippie-esque" scores many documentaries use when addressing matters
generally deemed "hippie-esque" in nature. And while the film
sometimes plays as pure PR for Herer, at least it doesn't patronize
the assumedly, pro-decrim audience. I guess media coverage of the
pro-marijuana movement is usually so bad that that's about as much as
one can ask for.

Emperor of Hemp airs on Saturday, April 7, 11 pm on KCSM Ch. 60