Can stoners make bank?

Can stoners make bank?
By Ben Flanagan
Ben Around
August 8, 2008

If a pack of lazy, blazing stoners can generate millions of dollars at the box office, what has four years of college actually done for me?

My third pick for a surefire summer bet, 'Pineapple Express,' opened nationwide Wednesday, and while it boasts recently established comedy megastar Seth Rogen and mogul-of-funny Judd Apatow's names on its poster, its chance at bringing in serious seasonal dough hinges on whether a mainstream audiences can accept pervasive drug use throughout a near two-hour running time.

Rogen and former Apatow crony James Franco (television's 'Freaks & Geeks') star as a pair of tokers on the run from a slew of ruthless killers.

While the Rogen/Apatow alliance has yet to falter, based on the success of last summer's pair of R-rated raunchy comedies 'Knocked Up' and 'Superbad,' the existence and evolution of the stoner comedy as a box-office champion has seen a flatline, neither going up or down and remaining almost painful ignored by audiences.

As a bit of a subgenre, stoner films tend to center around the fairly explicit use of marijuana, predominantly in comedies. In most cases, to fall into this subgenre, marijuana should act as the catalyst that sends the plot into motion, though sometimes it acts as a prevalent background artist.

Looking back at this classification's catalogue, several titles suggest that we as a collective audience tend to adore and even worship these films to the extent of leaving the DVDs in our players for weeks to months. But perhaps it's a generational thing.

Even within the realm of stoner comedies, an upper echelon for the headiest efforts exists while most sophomoric, self-evident releases teeter on the bar just above awful.

To suggest the stoner comedy can manifest itself as an art form isn't a joke. Even the most eclectic contemporary filmmakers dabble into the disoriented, hazy atmosphere in which dimwitted inhabitants wander aimlessly into misadventure. Joel and Ethan Coen's stoner odyssey 'The Big Lebowski' may arguably stand as the all-encompassing stoner masterpiece, chronicling the baked escapades of an unlikely hero, The Dude.

Fried fans of Richard Linklater's Austin-set thing of beauty 'Dazed and Confused' (1993) might beg to differ, pitching this '70s high school yarn as '‘American Graffiti' high on weed.' 'Dazed' and 'Lebowski' would sit atop my own list, were I to make one.

Locals shouldn't forget University of Alabama filmmakers' Chris Merritt and Matthew Stewart's 'Killer Weed,' a series about marijuana that turns smokers into zombies.

But real purists will reach back into the late '70s and early '80s, when Cheech and Chong reigned supreme among slackers who rolled massive joints their dogs digested (see 1978's 'Up in Smoke' if you feel the need to partake).

'Pineapple Express' marks what could be a first within the genre: a stoner action comedy. Car chases, shootouts, explosions, a Huey Lewis title song and inhalation will serve as the vehicles that send this movie from point A to point B.

But will the sum of its parts send 'Pineapple Express' to the top of the box office this weekend, possibly surmounting Warner Bros.' juggernaut 'The Dark Knight' as No. 1? Certainly, opening numbers will depend on its marketing campaign. So far, so good. A clever red-band trailer released last spring featured Rogen and Franco up to no good in a slow-mo mishmash of mayhem set to M.I.A.'s popping reggae/hip-hop track 'Paper Planes.'

With Rogen starring and co-writing with fellow 'Superbad' scribe Evan Goldberg, Apatow's Midas touch and strong early critical buzz, Columbia Pictures looks to have a hit on its hands. But why haven't stoner comedies fared all that well financially prior to this release?

Recent marijuana-driven yarns such as 'Super Troopers,' 'Grandma's Boy,' 'Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny' and the 'Harold and Kumar' pair haven't shot up into the $100M stratosphere, but sometimes these theatrical numbers can deceive us. Usually, these releases don't get monster, blockbuster budgets to begin with, therefore a profit never falls too far out of the line of sight. 'Super Troopers' and the 'Harold and Kumar' movies both fared well monetarily, doubling and sometimes tripling their budgets (not to mention their substantial performances when released on DVD).

Sometimes, the trick for studios is to find that built-in cult audience prior to theatrical release, well before it reaches video stores. What 'Pineapple Express' has going for it is that it looks like a solid movie that should draw heady word-of-mouth. Along with Rogen, Apatow and Franco (trust me, give him a chance) plenty of talent, including indie director David Gordon Green and funnyman Danny McBride (in a supporting role), has jumped on board to give this thing an extra hit of street cred.

But this movie either hopes parents won't catch on or will show a sense of humor this time around. After all, one message the movie has dished out in its marketing campaign is that where there's weed, there are bad guys with guns.

Myself, I'm banking on the promise I made earlier this summer. In between two other hard-R comedies ('Step Brothers' and 'Tropic Thunder'), 'Pineapple Express' should bring the funny stuff that'll keep people laughing and laughing — the kind of people who tend to laugh for no reason at all.

The Binary Blitzkrieg tonight at Mellow Mushroom: Rockers Model Citizen return to our town for the first night since I don't know when (this will be my first time seeing the longtime favorites, but don't tell anyone). The show will also feature last week's pick Squirrelhouse, a sneak peek at an upcoming performance from the Pink Box Burlesque and a live taping of 'Well That's Cool,' a video podcast to be posted on the hosts' Web site, wellthatscool.com.

KrautFest at the Mellow Mushroom Wednesday: Former WVUA 90.7-FM station manager and everyone's favorite German techno- enthusiast Tim Neunzig will bid farewell to Tuscaloosa in style, hosting an event that'll feature several rocking acts upstairs at the Mellow Mushroom (doing a few things right this week, it seems). Druid City Rockers, Mansfield, Me, THREE and one of the town's more entertaining bands, Skullduggery. Neunzig, known as DJ KrautDawg by many, will spin plenty of popping beats and rockin' tunes between acts. Things will get going as early as 8 p.m., with a $2 cover, where one of those bucks heads straight to non-profit organization Empower Alabama.