According to Shirley Halperin, co-author of "Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language and Life," American attitudes toward marijuana are dramatically different than they were a generation ago, with growing acceptance aided by the popularity of pro-ganja TV shows such as "Weeds" and "That '70s Show."
"The 'Just Say No' era is finally over," Halperin said. "The whole genre has normalized it. It's more accepted. People are coming around to the idea that pot and heroin are not the same thing."
Halperin felt it was no coincidence that Austin -- home to hemp aficionado Willie Nelson and the shooting locale of the stoner movie classic "Dazed and Confused" -- should be the staging ground for so much reefer movie madness. "This is like stoner heaven here," she said. "Keep Austin weird! That's more the reason you see it down here."
In writer-directors Danny Jacobs and Darren Grodsky's feature debut, "Humboldt County," a disillusioned, emotionally reticent medical student (Jeremy Strong) wakes up to the world around him after taking up with a family of marijuana farmers in Humboldt, a California county sometimes referred to as the "Lost Coast." The film's small-time weed purveyors are hardly the granola-munching, patchouli-burning tree huggers of popular imagination, however. These hot-tempered herb horticulturists (played by Brad Dourif, Frances Conroy and Chris Messina) demonstrate love with gut punches and cutting remarks. But more often than not, they shoot their shotguns first and ask questions later.
"There are certain cliches about pot films, and we thought a lot about the role that marijuana plays," Grodsky said, seated at a small table in the Austin Convention Center. "So we did a lot of research. And we hadn't seen a film that handles it in this way."
Added Jacobs: "We were trying to work within the genre and subvert what we had seen before."
Festival producer Matt Dentler insisted there was no institutional effort to brand SXSW as a "420-friendly" film fest. But he pointed out that it's unlikely that most other festivals would hold a panel discussion titled "Instant Buzz: Drugs in Film," that traces the evolutionary continuum of doobie-smoking duos from Cheech and Chong to Harold and Kumar.
"It's not like we were out soliciting for marijuana movies. It just so happens that three of the movies we liked happened to incorporate weed in them," Dentler said. "But part of that speaks to the laid-back environment of the festival. South by Southwest's audience is not necessarily all pot smokers, but there's also a more liberal, embracing community here."
"Super High Me" producer Alex Campbell framed SXSW's merits in a different way:
"They would never let us smoke pot in the theater in Sundance," he said.
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chris.lee@latimes.com
