Marijuana lights up the screen at SXSW Film Festival with 'Super High Me,' 'Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay,' 'Humboldt County'
SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST
AUSTIN, TEXAS — FOLLOWING its regional premiere last Sunday, the comic documentary "Super High Me" became one of the most buzzed-about movies in the South by Southwest Film Festival -- no pun intended.
Capturing two druggy, jokey months in the life of Angeleno stand-up comedian Doug Benson, the co-creator of the off-Broadway comedy show "The Marijuana-Logues" who, tellingly, was named stoner of the year in 2006 by High Times magazine, the movie openly rips off its central premise from another much-discussed agenda-driven documentary, one that premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. That is, director Morgan Spurlock's critical indictment of the fast-food industry.
"It started with me having a joke in my act," Benson explained over beer at an intimate party for his film, which opens April 20 -- the date relates to 4:20 p.m., the time of day when true-blue stoners blaze up, and is a little like the Fourth of July for potheads. "If there's a movie called 'Super Size Me' about a guy who ate McDonald's every day, why couldn't there be this movie called 'Super High Me,' where I smoke pot every day?"
"Super High Me" was one of three movies plotted around the conspicuous, copious consumption of marijuana to screen at this homegrown Texas film fest, which drew to a close Saturday. But with its famously laid-back vibe, progressive-minded audiences and shaggy, anything-goes charm, the event is probably the ideal place for the stoner comedy to stage a comeback.
"Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay," one of several studio pictures to be included at SXSW (as the festival is commonly called), premiered March 8, picking up where its precursor, the un-PC stoner comedy "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" left off. In the new film, due for release April 25, the title characters, including John Cho as Harold, are put in lockdown at the infamous U.S. compound in Cuba after Indian American Kumar (Kal Penn) is mistaken for a "bomb-carrying terrorist" while trying to torch up a bong (a marijuana water pipe to the uninitiated) onboard a flight bound for Amsterdam.
At the discussion "Race, Politics and Drugs -- a Harold and Kumar Panel" held in conjunction with the movie's debut, however, Penn made a shocking admission that's certain to imperil his future as a pothead icon: "I don't smoke in real life."
