Happy 4/20

Former Penn State linebacker Navorro Bowman wishes everyone a happy 4/20.

Shit! I thought I was done writing tonight. I had just turned on Adult Swim for a little mindless entertainment when I remembered I planned to pay tribute to 4/20 with a little post.

It’s the bong master’s favorite day, and I wish I had shared in the festivities. My time in California is running out, and I have yet to take advantage of its medicinal bounty. Officials in Los Angeles have started clamping down on the rash of marijuana dispensaries spreading throughout its hipper districts (it’s a good kind of rash), though I probably still have time to visit one of the “doctor’s offices” on the boardwalk in Venice to be examined and proscribed remedial herb within an hour. Sounds like a plan.

Until then, I’ll have to watch my favorite stoner movies sober as a bird — a real bummer. But they’re good movies, nonetheless. So, without further ado, here is the list of my favorite stoner movies in no particular order.

~

Super Troopers (2001)


After wanting one forever, I finally bought myself a copy of ST back in February. When I gave it to the cashier she said, “Best. Movie. Ever.”

I don’t think it’s the best movie ever — it’s far from realistic — but it’s still damn good. So good, in fact, it made me consider a career in police work…for maybe a couple days. (“If being a cop can be like that…shit. Sign me up!” I thought.)

ST put the Broken Lizard crew on the map, and paved the way for two more movies. (I never saw Club Dread, but Beerfest is, of course, a new favorite of mine.) It came out during my freshman year of college, but I didn’t see it until February or March 2003. One night, a couple friends and I bought weed with the help of a middleman, so we went back to his place to share a little out of gratitude. We sat around his living room, enjoying our bounty, and the middleman said, “Ever seen Super Troopers?” Two hours later, my face ached from smiling and my voice was horse from laughing.

For the next month or two, we watched ST every time we smoked. It was a ritual, but it was too much of a good thing; after a while it ruined the movie for me, and I couldn’t watch it for a long time. However, when I recently bought the DVD, it made me laugh again, though not as hard as I did the first time. I’m sure it could again, but I’d need to be in the right mindset.

For me, ST is a perfect comedy. It’s clever, fun, original, and doesn’t rely on lowbrow raunch for laughs. Even the “bear fucker” scene is classy and well done. I hear a sequel is in the works, which really annoys me. A sequel, I think, will only cheapen ST and ruin its legacy. If Broken Lizard wants to do a sequel, they should deliver on the Potfest tease they did at the end of Beerfest.

~

Half Baked (1998)


Of course. I’m an Echo Boomer, so just as my dad, a Baby Boomer, would pick Up in Smoke as one of his favorite stoner movies, I pick Half Baked.

Once, while watching HB stoned, I realized only a stoner could have written it. Perhaps it was just the ganja, but I always felt HB’s humor works on a higher level that can only be understood when under the influence. Certain scenes and effects are no coincidence (as if anything in a movie was); they were calculated. One of my favorite moments from the movie is when Thurgood comes home with the weed he got from work and asks Scarface and Brian if they want to smoke. They say they don’t feel like it (“Maybe later”), and Thurgood says he doesn’t feel like it either. He sits down, silent. After five seconds asks, “So ya’ll wanna smoke?” and Scarface says, “I’ll get Billy Bong Thornton.” Priceless, and pitch perfect. I have no doubt co-writers Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan smoked a couple bowls as they worked on the script.

(I just realized Half Baked has the exact same abbreviation as Huntington Beach, which gives a whole new context to the city’s popular “HB” stickers.)

HB came out when I was a freshman in high school, and I remember going to a movie at the Campus 3 Theater when HB was playing there. After the movie, my friends and I stood outside the entrance, and I noticed a large group of people dressed in tie-dyed shirts and ratty jeans, many with dreads or Bob Marley beanies, walking up the long alternate exit hallway next to Aladdin’s Castle. HB had just ended, too.

~

Dazed and Confused (1993)


As far as I can tell, D&C doesn’t have a plot. It has a number of loose storylines, but, for the most part, it’s the tale of a group of high school kids on the last day of school in 1976. That’s why I love it.

I don’t think I’ve ever watched D&C while stoned, but it fits snuggly into the canon based on the subject and all the tokin’. (It would, I think, make for good stoned entertainment.) Though released in 1993, D&C also fits in my cult obsession of the 1970s, tickling my fascination with ringer shirts, sharp collars, and tons of hair.

The retro feel of the movie is great, but it is dwarfed by the nostalgia D&C gives me for the carefree spring days when I was in high school. It’s Friday, the weather is perfect, the girls are wearing shorts and tops with spaghetti string straps so you can see their bare shoulders and legs. Everyone is happy, lustful, and adventurous. There are things to do, people to see. Of course, paddles and spanking were never part of my high school experience, but I knew that feeling of age superiority.