Stoner Cinema (pt. IV)

Half Baked

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Hey, man, how’s it going? I’m personally not that chill ‘cuz I’m in the process of moving and scrambling around every inch of my 600 sq. ft. apt, but these days it’s pretty hard to mellow out in general. There’s been nothing but bad news lately, so I’d like to lighten things up a bit with another round of stoner films fit for the 420 holiday season. Of all of the overblown controversies and fearmongering I’ve grown up with, this particular illicit substance elicits the most polarizing opinions and viewpoints. Alcohol and cigarettes, with all of their harmful effects, have been legal and encouraged to be used for centuries. And now, newer, more experimental drugs like vaping and Ozempic have been seemingly distributed to every convenience store and doctor’s office in the country, despite our lack of knowledge of the long-term effects of these products. This is not to shame any users of these substances, but merely meant to underscore our society’s comfort with normalizing and accepting certain treatments, tools, and vices over others. Study after study after study has proven that THC and CBD can be immensely beneficial to one’s health, 24 out of 50 states have legalized the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana, and still there is a wildly unfair, typically right-wing stigma attached to this peaceful plant. I’m just as pro-weed as I am pro-choice: if you’re against either of these things, I suggest that you simply do not partake! What goes on with one’s body and what goes inside someone’s pipe is their business and their business only. But that’s just me! I’m just chill like that. I have indulged in stoner cinema many times now, and I truly never tire of these terrific tales of terpenes and too much stimulation. I’m from Austin, Texas, after all—the birthplace of the cosmic cowboy music genre, the iconic home of Dazed and Confused landmarks, an overall odd, blue oasis that loves the green even in our big, intolerant, red state—so I naturally have an appreciation for stoner cinema. I’m also an aficionado of bro cinema. The stoner film genre is largely male-dominated, as the filmmaking space is in general, so I give kudos to television shows like Broad City and High Maintenance for focusing so much on female stoners, in a way that goes beyond Bridget Fonda smoking weed but not having a personality in Jackie Brown. I often crave the nuanced, complex, but also fun perspective that Harold and Kumar brought to the stoner film canon, but I’ll settle for a laid back epic of losers-turned-heroes, which is precisely what tonight’s two stoner classics presented.

Up first is a pothead picture that I’ve been meaning to see for awhile now, but I was initially put off by the Dave Chappelle of it all, this is Tamra Davis’ 1998 film Half Baked. This movie, that predates the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor of the same name, is narrated by our protagonist, Thurgood (Dave Chappelle), as he transports us to the first time he and his crew ever smoked weed. He describes it as his last clear memory—how he doesn’t remember losing his virginity or any other core event, but he’ll never forget the fateful day where he lit up for the first time. We then see this group of tiny middle schoolers slo-mo-ing their way through a gas station snack aisle—all of the candy bars and bags of chips and sodas are rendered to a comically-large size and these young men hardly know how to act. Cut to several years later, these boys have grown up to be men with jobs, but they all live together in New York City and still continue their tradition of smoking weed together. There’s Scarface (Guillermo Diaz) who works at a fast food establishment, Brian (Jim Breuer) who works at a record store, Kenny (Harland Williams) who’s a kindergarten teacher, and Thurgood works as a janitor at a big pharmaceutical company—all fields that serve them and their lifestyles pretty well. Thurgood secures their weed from a bodega—a process that involves reminding the vendor that he’s been there before, and eschewing any other substance he’s offered, “Oh I don’t do drugs, just weed.” Inside their small, colorful, and shockingly-clean NYC apartment, we see their relaxing ritual of gathering around their favorite piece (named Billy Bong Thornton), taking off their shoes, assuming their positions, and inhaling. Kenny is on munchie duty this evening, so he heads to the store to gather an outrageously-lengthy list of food and beverages, but he is distracted by a policeman’s horse that is parked outside. He’s so excited by this majestic creature that he feeds it all of the munchies without thinking, which ends up killing the horse. The distracted cop whom this horse belongs to freaks out, places Kenny under arrest, and has his bail set at one million dollars for killing a “cop.” Though blitzed out of their minds, the rest of this crew begins to worry when Kenny never returns home, but the random, nameless man who sleeps on their couch (Steven Wright) wakes up to let them know that Kenny called from jail and needs their help. When the gang goes to the jail to talk to Kenny, they see how dire the situation is, and realize they have to make a plan to raise money. They also happen to bump into a gorgeous lady named Mary Jane (Rachel True), who is straight-edge and anti-weed on account of her father going to jail for dealing the stuff. Regardless of her opposing stance, Thurgood falls madly in love with Mary Jane, and desperately wants to know her better. Thurgood, Scarface, and Brian all brainstorm ideas for raising Kenny’s bail money, choosing not to gain inspiration from the Billy Bong Thornton without their friend, and opting to smoke out of the Wesley Pipes instead. When Thurgood discovers a plug for the dankest weed at his job, the crew decides to get into the dealing business, and once they really get the word out about their superior product, business is booming. “We’re not drug dealers, we’re fundraisers!” Thurgood insists, and he introduces the audience to the several different flavors of stoner who make up their clientele. There’s the enhancement stoner (Jon Stewart), the scavenger stoner (Snoop Dogg), the “remember when” stoner (Willie Nelson), the “I’m only creative when I smoke” stoner (Janeane Garofalo), the MacGuyver stoner (Stephen Baldwin), and the after school special stoner, the “I’m 40 but still cool” stoner, and the grandma stoner who all live under the same roof. As their success grows, so does the tension between stoner Thurgood and staunch-good-girl Mary Jane, and even more problems arise when NYC’s biggest dealer, Samson Simpson (Clarence Williams III), begins to lose customers. Half Baked is a colorfully-cartoonish, absurdly-funny, surprisingly-wholesome stoner film about helping your buds in a time of need and weed. As with a handful of other stoner films, I didn’t love how the resolution of Half Baked hinged upon Thurgood giving up weed for his love interest, but this film also comes from a pretty closeminded era in the culture, when the stoner archetype was rather unfairly one-dimensional.

We’ve come a long way in terms of stoner representation, though, and tonight’s next film is proof that stoners are capable of just about anything—from the weed-smoking titan of the indie film industry Kevin Smith, this is his 2001 film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I’m just as surprised as anyone that I enjoy the films of Kevin Smith, but after my viewing of Clerks and Dogma, I knew that I had to expand my knowledge of the Kevin Smith Cinematic Universe (also known as the View Askewniverse.) The mage of mumblecore and the patron saint of fanboys Kevin Smith has made a career out of centering the slacker, a clever move he adopted from Richard Linklater, and out of all of the characters Smith has dreamed up, no one encapsulates the plight of the slacker/stoner/lovable loser quite like Jay and Silent Bob. We are first introduced to Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) in Smith’s first film Clerks, as the charming but strange weed dealers who loiter outside of Quick Stop Groceries. Jay often raps and waxes poetic about smoking weed and sleeping with beautiful women, and Silent bob taciturnly supports and echoes Jay’s sentiments—both acting as memorable side characters in the majority of Smith’s films. But in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the focus is entirely upon these two goofballs—when they discover that the comic book their friends have based off of them (Bluntman and Chronic) is being made into a movie without their consent, and without consideration for their wallets. When they approach the creators of the comic, Banky and Holden (Jason Lee and Ben Affleck), they learn that the rights have been sold and it’s completely out of their hands. Even worse, they learn that Bluntman and Chronic have gotten nothing but hate on the internet. “What the fuck is the internet?” Jay asks, to which Holden responds, “It’s a place where people can bitch about movies and look at pornography.” This is the first of many self-aware, meta-conversations in this film, as they read rude review after rude review of the comic book, and how nearly everyone has disdain for the characters based off their likenesses, which enrages Jay and Silent Bob. Though Holden assures them that the hate is directed at fictional characters, that’s a little too close to home for these buds, and the two decide to embark on a journey to Hollywood to stop this movie from being made. Along their treacherous trek to Tinsel town, they run into several other Kevin Smith film alumna like Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Shannen Doherty, Joey Lauren Adams, Tricia Jones, and Alyssa Jones, as well as some newer but beloved faces like a hitchhiker played by George Carlin, a nun played by Carrie Fisher, a gang of hotgirls who are secretly international jewel thieves played by Shannon Elizabeth, Eliza Dushku, Ali Larter, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, with a nerdy Seann William Scott tagging along. They also encounter Chris Rock, Judd Nelson, Jon Stewart, Tracy Morgan, Jamie Kennedy, Mark Hamill, Wes Craven, Marc Blucas, Diedrich Bader, Paul Dini, and eventually James Van Der Beek and Jason Biggs, who have been cast as them in the Bluntman and Chronic movie. They even have a run in with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Gus Van Sant, when they accidentally stumble onto the set of their film, “Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season.” But it’s Will Ferrell who steals the show for me, as a Federal Wildlife Marshal who’s trying to catch Jay and Silent Bob after they steal a monkey. It’s a long story. This entire movie is a fever dream full of stoner shenanigans, even though weed is barely brought up. Every member of this ensemble was on their A-game, even Ben and Matt who joke about only making certain movies cuz they owe a friend a favor before looking at the camera, and I got whiplash from the amount of doubletakes I did with each A-to-Z-list star cameo. In both of tonight’s films, there were a fair amount of groan-inducing, slur-filled jokes that were emblematic of the times in which they were made, but they still managed to get some guilt-free laughs out of this stoned-faced critic. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is an over-the-top and outlandish spectacle of a road trip movie that features Jay and Silent Bob, the Scooby Gang, monkey business, drug paraphernalia, drama, romance, terror, Alanis Morissette as God, and a performance from Morris Day and The Time (from Purple Rain.) I wouldn’t expect anything less from the almighty geek god Kevin Smith, and I’m so glad he delivered. Well, both of tonight’s stoner cinema selections were just as dumb and dank as I thought they’d be, but they sure weren’t dull. Thank you for joining me for another joint-movie-celebration, my sweet readers, I hope you’re able to mellow out in these severely un-mellow times. Toke to you next week! ;)