Unchained Reaction

Quentin Tarantino’s new hit . . . sounds very familiar

Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarantino smoked cannabis in France. At least that is what the famed director told Howard Stern during an interview in 2009. Apparently, Pitt even handed Tarantino a Coke can to use as a smoking device after giving him a chunk of hash. Fans of the Tarantino-penned True Romance would say that sounds familiar. In honor of Tarantino’s new hit Django Unchained, we compiled a list of the top cannabis scenes from his films, starting with Mr. Pitt’s sweet inhale:

• In True Romance, the perpetually stoned Floyd (Pitt) smokes cannabis out of a homemade bong crafted from a Honey Bear bottle. We’re not saying this helped Pitt’s career, but he did follow with the star-making Interview with a Vampire.
• “I’m carrying the weed in one of those little carry-on bags,” says Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) in a classic line from Reservoir Dogs. He was describing how he nearly got busted taking a marijuana brick into a train station.
• In the same Reservoir Dogs scene, Mr. Orange recalls the great cannabis drought of 1986 when “people were living on resin . . . smoking the wood in their pipes for months.”
• Pulp Fiction features a Bruce Willis/Ving Rhames scene in a pawnshop (think Deliverance) in which all the clocks are set to 4:20 p.m., a subtle reference to 420.
• “Tell me again about the hash bars?” asks Jules Winnfield (Samuel Jackson) in a classic Pulp Fiction scene with Vincent Vega (John Travolta), who had just returned from Amsterdam.
• Remember when George Clooney & Co. first entered the Titty Twister in the Tarantino-penned From Dust Till Dawn? The house band, Tito & Tarantula, is playing “Angry Cockroaches” with the oft-repeated charge to “fumando marijuana.”
• Texas Ranger Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) is a reoccurring character in Tarantino films who utters multiple cannabis references, including this From Dusk Till Dawn gem: “Them damn burritos ain’t good for nothing but a hippie, when he’s high on weed.”
• Ordell Robbie (Jackson) calls two characters “a couple of Cheech and Chongs” in Jackie Brown. Bridget Fonda and Robert DeNiro play these characters meaning that, yes, the Raging Bull hits a bong on screen.
• In that same scene, Robbie lectures Melanie Ralston (Fonda) that smoking too much will rob her of ambition, to which she responds, “Not if your ambition is to get high and watch TV.”
• Lastly, enjoy these words of wisdom from Ms. Ralston to Louis Gara (DeNiro): “Coughing’s good! It opens up the capillaries. You know, when you cough you’re pulling in air, or in this case, smoke, into parts of the lungs that don’t normally get used. So, coughing’s good, it gets you higher.”

Tarantino said he doesn’t smoke on the set, but in an interview for the December issue of Playboy, he offered up this creative tidbit: “Say you’re thinking about a musical sequence. You smoke a joint, you put on some music, you listen to it and you come up with some good ideas. Or maybe you’re chilling out at the end of the day and you smoke some pot, and all of a sudden you’re spinning a web about what you’ve just done. Maybe you come up with a good idea. Maybe it just seems like a good idea because you’re stoned, but you write it down and look at it the next day. Sometimes it’s f@#king awesome.”

Tarantino, who had recounted smoking cannabis at a rave on the Great Wall of China in an earlier Playboy interview, adds, “I don’t need pot to write, but it’s kind of cool.”