Celebrating the Annual Global Marijuana March

This being the first Saturday in May, hence the day of the annual Global Marijuana March, I’m reviewing a few marijuana-related documentaries.

I’d wanted to review Super High Me for Alterati because I was fairly impressed with how they’ve been marketing the film. I found a copy online fairly easily and watched it. Holy fuck was it bad, but it left me realizing there was a lot more going on in the world of medical marijuana than I’d realized. A friend then recommended Waiting to Inhale, and another pointed me toward American Drug War: the Last White Hope. I honestly don’t think I could have ever come up with two better counterpoints to Super High Me on my own.

As I said, I watched Super High Me, mostly because the

viral marketing was a rather clever “roll your own movie” campaign which has insured that the film was pirated long before its June 17th official release date.

I found myself fast-forwarding through Doug Benson’s stand-up routine, which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for this documentary. I was somewhat surprised to see Sarah Silverman pop up in the film, and it was very fascinating to see the stuff outside the film’s alleged scope, such as the footage of angry crowds yelling at DEA agents (“Why don’t you go bust a meth lab, you pussies!”) as they raid a cannabis buyer’s club.

Super High Me is a very blurry, out of focus documentary with occasional points of interest–a solid C average, although it deserved to be better with the concept more properly sponsored. It’s obviously a shoestring production, and perhaps the answer would have been to put the documentary together about the political ramifications of the events with the DEA raiding the Cannabis Clubs, rather than their fumbling attempt to follow a formula.

For the first half of the movie, during which the comedian smokes no pot, drinks no alcohol, and then is tested physically by the docs and psychiatrists and what-not, I thought the film’s editor had been picking out lame jokes falling flat on the audience specifically for effect, i.e.: lab rat is unfunny without weed. I was willing to give the documentary that doubt, because otherwise this film is little more than an unfunny schtick overshadowed by the importance of social upheaval the camera crew happens to connect with, seemingly unexpectedly.

There’s a lot of interesting moments, and I found myself alternating between bored and captivated by the changing dynamic connected with California’s Proposition 215. Mark Emery’s rant was brilliant, and I am confounded that he was not given a longer segment.

Some clear results would have been useful: if you’re going to use Super Size Me as a model, go all out. Get in the hard facts, use graphics as footnotes. I was much more interested in the maze the lab rat was running, not what the lab rat had to say.

And looking at where we’re at now with
medical marijuana – we’ve reached a tipping point, the arguments are wearing thin:

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

– washingtonpost.com

In other words, this is not the time for a juvenile documentary, the stakes are too high (cough). Medical marijuana is shifting the debate around the tangled world director/writer/former Austinite Kevin Booth dives into with his documentary,
American Drug War: The Last White Hope, a serious analysis of current drug enforcement. A long, thorough treatment of drug policy in how it formed and how it impacts today that was refreshing after the plodding and senseless Super High Me.

With his documentary, Kevin Booth makes the very convincing case that the drug war
is a symptom of institutionalized racism and colonialist attitudes. He builds the argument by juxtaposing the rhetoric of the drug enforcement with the reality of government corruption, and while it takes a long time to build the case, it’s a solid rebuttal of official drug war propaganda.

Proposition 215 allows people who use marijuana for medicinal purposes to carry up to a half-pound on their person.
Or at least, that’s what Californians attempted to vote into the existing policy, and Waiting to Inhale is an excellent documentary that covers what Kevin Booth touches on and what Doug Benson could have covered but didn’t… Unlike Super High Me which felt as though it would never end, and American Drug War which piled case upon case until the
preponderance of fact creates its own argument, Waiting to Inhale is concise, emotionally engaging, scientifically
vetted, and filled with individuals from all sides of the debate without exhausting the viewer’s patience.

Anyway, headlines like Eureka Man Reports Gun, Marijuana Stolen To Police shows that until marijuana is legalized, those who need it will remain easily victimized. For those who want more biased, opinionated stoner wisdom start with pot-tv’s classic archives
and
listen to what stoners were saying in Febuary of 2001 on The Tommy Morgan Show and other classic pot-tv shows,

like The Sun Cell Growbox: Marijuana Man Grow Show #10

Actually, looking at youtube I realized If all it takes to have a film is showing people smoking,
I could more or less assemble my own marijuana documentry with youtube, so here you go:

The internet is very nearly over-run with facts and opinions about cannabis–I don’t need to belabour the issue.
Check out the documentaries, all three of them are interesting in their own ways, and two of them are significantly
better than the third.

Relevant Torrents: