Taboo Tokers, Blunted Bromances And Hashish Hellraisers: The Evolution Of The Stoner Comedy From 1936-2015

Hitting theaters today is American Ultra, the Jesse Eisenberg–Kristen Stewart starring, marijuana-induced action flick you’ve been hearing so much about. Directed by Nima Nourizadeh (Project X), the film follows Mike (Eisenberg), your high-on-life average Joe, who realizes he’s actually a super agent and is being targeted by the very monsters that created him: the U.S. government. In a hunt led by the evil Adrian Yates (Topher Grace), Mike is forced to protect himself, his beloved girlfriend, Phoebe (Stewart), and his precious stash.

The release of American Ultra marks another blockbuster installment of the stoner comedy that began long before Seth Rogen and James Franco inhaled the dopest dope they’d ever smoked in Pineapple Express. In fact, the evolution of the stoner comedy began way back in the 1930s thanks to the laughable propaganda of Reefer Madness. Originally compiled by a church group amidst America’s first mainstream anti-drug movement during the Great Depression, Reefer Madness follows a group of well-to-do teenagers who, in a weakened state, take a few hits of a joint and spiral into a pit of self-destruction, debauchery, attempted rape, and murder. Intended to scare American families into staying the hell away from “dangerous marijuana cigarettes,” Reefer Madness went on to become a cult classic and inadvertently gave birth to a satirical subgenre of stoner flicks that went from being taboo to box office gold.

Needless to say, American Ultra and the stoner comedy as we know it couldn’t have existed without the help of some groundbreaking, bong-smoking predecessors. To fully analyze how the stoner-action film came to fruition, however, we have to turn the clock back to 1978.

The Founding Fathers and Mainstream Recognition

Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong laid the groundwork for not only the modern day stoner comedy, but also the contemporary bromance. Up In Smoke — though responsible for reifying the stereotypical, aimless pothead — kicked off a different kind of us-against-the-world narrative that has spilled over into how we visualize the modern day stoner, not only in film, but also in television. Weeds, Workaholics, Broad City, and High Maintenance all share a subtle, but common thread of sticking to the man in addition to smoking for sheer enjoyment.

[Where to stream Up In Smoke]

High School Hazed Romps

Up In Smoke also helped birth how we conceive the archetypal burnout. Ensemble high school comedies of the eighties and early nineties all featured the token toker: Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High included the lovable, lazy Jeff Spicoli while Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure featured two dim-witted teens talking up the psychotropic effects of marijuana, but never actually got high amidst their time-traveling adventures. In 1993 Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused reveled in seventies nostalgia and took us back in time to the last day of high school in 1976 where Ron Slater (Rory Cochrane) famously took bong hits before noon.

[Where to stream Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Dazed and Confused]

The Stoned Social Satires

Up In Smoke‘s influence continued to spill over into the mid-nineties and early aughts with buddy-comedies in the form of sharp social satires from Ice Cube, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Smith, and more. While it’s easy to write off this group of films as stoner flicks that only reinforced the “whoa, man, I have the munchies,” stereotype; they actually achieved the exact opposite through witty writing and diverse characters. Friday, Half Baked, How High, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back put the “stoner” name to many different faces, and in the case of Half Baked, helped push the idea that, yes, as a matter of fact, women like to get high too — something that workplace comedies like Nine to Five tried to get across to the masses back in 1980. These films, though procured during staunch anti-drug crusades and D.A.R.E. movements, offered up the notion that not everyone smokes weed to escape responsibility: many smoke to clear their heads or focus, while others prefer smoking rather than having a drink at the end of a long work day.

[Where to stream Friday, Half Baked, How High, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back]

1998: The Year of the Thinking Stoner

Thanks to Terry Gilliam and the Coen Brothers, marijuana use was lumped in with other, harder psychotropic drugs to enhance the stories of Hunter S. Thompson and Jeff Bridges’ The Dude. Stoner culture on film was beginning to pay homage to the beatnik generation of writers whose drug use aided their most influential work. And though the protagonists of these films found intellectual refuge in LSD, it was pot that was a staple in their everyday routines. Both Fear and Loathing and The Big Lebowski also began the modern day transition into stoner-action romps that feature token bad guys hunting down innocent, clueless stoner protagonist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[Where to stream Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Big Lebowski]

Mary J’s Man-Children and the Blunt-Filled Bromance

In the early aughts, it seems that onscreen depictions of stoner culture regressed back to it’s “whoa” stage: lazy potheads smoking weed simply for the sake of smoking weed. Movies like Broken Lizard’s Super Troopers, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, and Grandma’s Boy didn’t necessarily do much for the contemporary marijuana movement other than offer audiences lines like, “The schnozberries taste like schnozberries.” These post-9/11 pothead antics, however, allowed a much-needed outlet of escapism and an inadvertent reminder that drugs — especially weed — isn’t the worst thing in the world.

[Where to stream Super Troopers, Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, and Grandma’s Boy]

Hashish Hellraisers

As the push for marijuana legalization and decriminalization has made its way to the forefront of politics, Hollywood has taken the lead in presenting potheads as your totally harmless, hilarious dudes next door; featuring government agencies as the enemy, not whatever strain you happen to be lighting up. Dale’s (Seth Rogen) and Saul’s (James Franco) comic misadventures in Pineapple Express even went so far as to categorize good pot smokers and evil pot smokers, or those who work closely with crooked cops. Paul Thomas Anderson’s hazy reimagining of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice also satirized the notion of police force paranoia; Josh Brolin’s straight-laced Lieutenant “Bigfoot” Bjornsen blaming doped up detectives like Joaquin’s “Doc” for the unravelling of society. This type of narrative continues to spill over, most notably in this weekend’s American Ultra: a harmless stoner whose forced to protect what he loves against the evil U.S. government whose notions about the greater good are like, all wrong, man.

[Where to stream Pineapple Express and Inherent Vice]

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Photos: Everett Collection