‘Pineapple Express’ the latest stoner hit – CNN.com
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Stoners are riding high nowadays. Fans are buzzing about the reunion of Cheech and Chong after a long feud, and a couple of tokers are lighting up the box office with “Pineapple Express.”

The movie casts Seth Rogen as a pot smoker hunted by druglords and crooked cops after he witnesses a murder. He leaves a smoking gun — or rather, a smoking roach — at the scene, a strain of pot called Pineapple Express that’s so potent and rare, the bad guys can track it back to its source: Rogen’s dealer, played by James Franco.

So the duo ends up as an odd couple on the run. Rogen’s pot-hound is a fairly responsible guy with a day job as a process server, while Franco’s peddler is so lovably fuzzy-headed from the weed that it’s a wonder he can tell a nickel bag from a potted fern.

“Pineapple Express” inhaled a healthy $40.5 million at the box office since opening Wednesday, no doubt securing Rogen and Franco a perpetual place among partiers’ pantheon of Hollywood bong buddies.

According to the website the-movie-times.com, which tracks box-office receipts, Pineapple Express‘s $40 million has grossed more than Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, which grossed about $38 million.  Of course, the sales of DVDs and the international box office may push both of these movies closer to $100 million between them, especially considering Pineapple Express is still in wide release.

Hollywood gets political with its stoner movies
Pot, stalk and smoking pipe barrels. Devil weed. Mary Jane. Playing twister. Reefer. No matter what you call it, cannabis continues to spark debate in popular culture. More than 70 years into the drug’s prohibition at the hands of U.S. lawmakers, it seems Hollywood is ready to blow smoke in the face of current policy.

The proof can be seen in a new crop of films that don’t just depict glassy-eyed potheads giggling at moronic gags in the tradition of Cheech and Chong, but go much further, suggesting pot as the symbolic cure for personal and cultural oppression.

Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke (1978) was the first film to show rampant pot use without exacting a moral price for all that fun, offering an emotional and cultural antidote to overt anti-drug films such as Reefer Madness.

Around the same time Cheech and Chong started their big screen puffing, the American government banned the word “hemp” from all school text books, insisting any mention of the once powerful hemp industry (predicted to be the No. 1 crop in the U.S. by Popular Mechanics in 1938) would only confuse youngsters who didn’t understand the difference between useful hemp fibre and the combustible of choice among teens.

Yet with Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay’s North American release, it’s clear the pot movie has shifted away from its stoner base to become more than blissfully empty nonsense. Now, it’s political, man.

The first example of this brand of pot movie is Sam Mendes’s 1999 classic American Beauty, in which Kevin Spacey plays ganja-smoking suburban dad named Lester Burnham.

Lester is your average white-collar Everyman. He’s white, affluent and married to a gorgeous real estate agent. He should be happy, but Lester lusts after his youthful neighbour, resents his employers and dislikes his wife almost as much as she hates him.

The only happiness Lester finds comes in the form of a $3,000-an-ounce bag of bud he buys from the boy next door. When Lester tokes, he feels free. Moreover, he feels good about himself and his increasingly meaningless life. In American Beauty, it’s the cannabis that helps Lester wake up from the American Dream and discover his inner truth.

Subversion has always been the thematic heart of the stoner movie, which explains why the genre was born when trust in government was at its nadir in the wake of Richard Nixon’s presidency.

Pot and politics had entered into an indirect but equal relationship that continues today.

The more American lawmakers try to ring the moral alarm, the more adamantly the creative community rallies around the latest social villain. This not only explains the recent rise in pot-friendly films, it also sheds light on the birth of the relatively recent sub-genre of pot movie, the hip-hop stoner film.

Where Cheech and Chong exposed devil weed to the world of white people on screen, the likes of Dave Chapelle and Chris Tucker brought Mary Jane home to the ‘hood 30 years later.

It seems wherever there’s oppression, there’s a good pot movie waiting to happen.

Whether this rising tide of marijuana-friendly movies results in a revision of current drug laws remains to be seen, but if it does, we don’t have to look far for the smoking gun.

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-04-22

Call your Congress at 202-224-3121 – they’ll ask your zip code and put you in touch with your elected officials. Tell them to support HR5842 and HR5843 to end DEA raids in medical marijuana states and legalize personal possession of pot. It still is a government of We the People, but you have to step up and do your part.

Tuesday is Government at Work day on the podcast, and coming up after the news, we’re going to speak with Minnesota State Senator Steve Murphy, the chief author of the medical marijuana legislation currently working through the Minnesota Legislature.

After that I’ve got an instrumental musical break for you. Cannabis Karri found us some jazz from Scott Neuman and Osage County. Blow some muggles and enjoy “Mayor of Smoke”, ya dig, hep cat?

And of course today is the DVD release of the new potumentary “Totally Baked”. I have some exclusive audio from the movie that combines stand-up and sketch comedy along with real interviews and marijuana prohibition facts. You need to get this video online at totallybakedmovie.com. And as a special treat for NORML supporters, you can enter the word HIGH as a promo code and get 25% off the cost of the DVD! Salient Media will be donating 10% of the proceeds to NORML, so you can laugh and learn and support marijuana law reform all at once.

Along with the bonus audio I’m replaying my interview with writer/producer/actor Craig Shoemaker, who never mentions it in the interview, but he does a wicked Don Knotts / Barney Fife impersonation. Craig plays a character you can only see if you’re high, and my friends and I all saw him immediately when we watched it at our 4/20 party.

So sit back and relax with your favorite strain – this is the Daily Audio Stash.

Who do you think is the Greatest Movie Stoner? Vote for your favorite out at MSNBC! (I think the answer is obviously Cheech & Chong – they were the first, after all.)

5Top: Duuuude … great movie stoners – 5Top- msnbc.com

• The Dude (Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski”)
• Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”)
• Ron Slater (Rory Cochrane in “Dazed and Confused”)
• Floyd (Brad Pitt in “True Romance”)
• Harold and Kumar (John Cho and Kal Penn in “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle”)
• Cheech and Chong (Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong in “Up In Smoke”)
• Thurgood Jenkins (Dave Chappelle in “Half Baked”)
• Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo (Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Torro in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”)
• Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith in “Clerks”)
• Smokey (Chris Tucker in “Friday”)
• Silas P. Silas and Jamal (Method Man and Redman in “How High”)
• Wyatt and Billy (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider”)

Agree or disagree? Let me know in the Comments below.