Milestone Movie Moments

By Jasen T. Davis and James Lang

Nothing works like celluloid for capturing the zeitgeist of an era. Along with the stories they tell, films inform us of what people were thinking, wearing and, yes, even smoking at the time they were made. Here’s a quick list of flicks that managed reveal the evolution of Hollywood’s attitudes toward pot:

Reefer Madness (1936)

Just in time to support Washington’s big push to criminalize cannabis, this over-the-top diatribe on the hazards of devil weed told us that one puff was enough to make you kill your woman in a fit of jealous rage. Chances are, if you kill a woman in a fit of jealous rage you had problems before the joint. Here’s our pick for the worst—and somehow funniest—lines of dialogue in the whole, sorry mess:

Bureau Official: Here is an example: A 15-year-old lad apprehended in the act of staging a holdup—15 years old and a marijuana addict. Here is a most tragic case.

Dr. Carroll: Yes, I remember. Just a young boy . . . under the influence of drugs . . . who killed his entire family with an axe.

Hemp for Victory (1943)

Nothing refocuses attention away from the trivial and toward what really matters like a world war. Not seven years after Hollywood hit bottom with Reefer Madness, the Allies’ need for wartime materials suddenly made hemp socially acceptable again.

Narrator:  For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable. A 44-gun frigate like our cherished Old Ironsides took over 60 tons of hemp for rigging, including an anchor cable 25 inches in circumference. The Conestoga wagons and prairie schooners of pioneer days were covered with hemp canvas. Indeed the very word canvas comes from the Arabic word for hemp. In those days hemp was an important crop in Kentucky and Missouri.

The Terrible Truth (1951)

With the war over, Reefer Madness returned with a vengeance. This ‘50s propaganda film gives Uncle Sam’s seal of approval on every parent’s worst nightmare—that their children were smoking dope and instantly turning to heroin for their next big fix.

Narrator:  In the middle of the 20^th century in the United States of America, hundreds and hundreds of teenage boys and girls are becoming hopeless dope addicts every year. It’s fantastic, it’s unbelievable and it’s terrible, but . . . it’s true.

Easy Rider (1969)

The counterculture films of the ‘60s reflected the changing mores of the times. This exchange from Easy Rider gives you an idea of just far Hollywood had moved from the Terrible Truth.

Billy: [while smoking a joint] Oh wow! What? Who’s that man? What the hell was that, man?

Captain America: Huh?

Billy: [nervous] No, man, like hey, man. Wow. I was watching this object man, li-like the satellite that we saw the other night, right? And, like, it was going right across the sky, man, and then . . . I mean it just suddenly, uh, it just changed direction and went whizzin’ right off, man. It flashed . . .

Captain America: [interrupting him] You’re stoned out of your mind, man.

Animal House (1978)

After the hazy, heady days of the ‘60s came a period of deep disenchantment with all things Establishment. This moment from Animal House, in which students Boon and Pinto light up with their professor, reveals cannabis as the drug of choice for the professional and professionally disillusioned.

Jennings: Teaching is just a way to pay the bills until I finish my novel.

Boon: How long you been workin’ on it?

Jennings: Four and a half years.

Pinto: It must be very good.

Jennings: It’s a piece of shit. Would anyone like to smoke some pot?

History of the World Part I (1981)

Following the success of Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, Hollywood got the message—nothing broke up audiences more than watching two stoners try to puzzle out the great philosophical questions. In this moment, Gregory Hines makes the most epic blunt of all time to give pursuing Roman soldiers the slip. But the real funniness starts after the soldiers have partaken.

Stoned Roman Soldier No. 1:  Do you care if it falls?

Stoned Roman Soldier No. 2:  What?

Stoned Roman Soldier No. 1:  The Roman Empire?

Stoned Roman  Soldier No. 2:  [Laughs] Fuck it!

Half-Baked (1998)

By the ‘90s and following the cocaine wars of the previous decade, the film industry firmly understood what the federal government did not:  Cannabis was a much safer drug than other substances on the scene. This gem from comedian Dave Chappelle’s Half-Baked drives home the point.

Cocaine Addict: Marijuana is not a drug. I used to suck dick for coke. Now that’s an addiction. You ever suck some dick for marijuana?

Adventureland (2009)

Having begun its treatment of cannabis by demonizing it, Hollywood’s views gradually mellowed to where it largely views pot as a largely benign part of the cultural landscape. In Adventureland, the drug of choice wreaking the most havoc in the players’ lives isn’t cannabis, but alcohol. This bit of dialogue, while somewhat down on pot, reveals an attitude that most young people seem to have toward the leaf:  What’s the big deal?

Sue O’Malley: What are you majoring in?

Joel: Russian literature and Slavic languages.

Sue O’Malley: Oh wow, that’s pretty interesting. What career track is that?

Joel: Cabby, hot dog vendor, marijuana delivery guy. The world is my oyster.