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.