The Culture High: Telling the true story of cannabis through the passion of advocates

Cannabis has made major headway in news over
the past few years, and its unique influence has created an entirely new form
of art and acceptance as well. Documentaries in the past told the story of
cannabis from the stereotypical “reefer madness” image, tales from a negative
point of view. It isn’t until recently that these cannabis-centric
documentaries have changed the face of the herb, such as Director Brett
Harvey’s documentaries The Union
(2007) and more recently, The Culture
High (2014). After winning two film festival awards for The Union, Harvey decided to delve
deeper into the everyday life of those who work and live in the cannabis
industry, thus creating the highly acclaimed and film festival-nominated The Culture High which interviews over
41 unique proponents for cannabis. Harvey took some time out of his schedule to
chat with CULTURE about his journey
to creating such an influential documentary about cannabis culture.

 Both The Culture High and The Union touch on the cannabis
community and what is happening. What is the difference between the two
projects?

It’s interesting, when we did The Union it was based more around what
the hell is actually going on as far as the irony of the marijuana laws, and
then in The Culture High, we go way
deeper to actually look at all the sectors of society that are popping up and
facilitating and perpetuating what is very obviously a failed war on marijuana,
and an unjust one as well.

 Both
films were produced on what would be considered a pretty low budget and both
have been very successful, which is awesome, can you explain a little bit about
production?

If it wasn’t for the grassroots movement, and
a lot of colleges and universities picking up the film (The Union) to teach in courses, that second film (The Culture High) wouldn’t have gotten
made.  The crowd-funding came from word
of mouth and did not come from any mainstream exposure, that’s for sure, so I
have to thank everyone.  We were really
inexperienced and that was my first film (The
Union) that I had actually directed and took on; Adam was this guy from New
York who was just trying to figure out what he wanted to do and he decided he
wanted to invest into making a documentary on marijuana prohibition. At first,
it was just going to be an expose on the underground market, because we had
access to people who were growers.  This
time around, we had an alright budget, that being said; if you want to get
rich, don’t produce a documentary.

 Who
were some of the more interesting people to work with in filming The Culture High?

That’s the reason there are 41 interviews in
the film, because every single one of the people we interviewed were freaking
amazing!

Joe Rogan is always awesome.

I would say that probably the most emotional
one, by far, was Jason David the father of Jayden, the boy with Dravet
Syndrome.  That interview hit home with
me and I don’t even have kids; The raw emotion that he had, that he was telling
us his story and what he went through and how their lives have been basically
destroyed by the current system and the only thing that gave them a glimpse of
hope was when he took the chance of getting his son some CBD oil—the cloud
parted for them basically.  His interview
was one where there wasn’t one person on the set who didn’t have a tear in
their eye. 

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Probably the most intense and illuminating one
was Ed Burns. His take on it and what he was willing to reveal along with is
delivery was just stunning so I would say he was probably the most eye-opening.