In 1936, a church group financed a movie they meant to be a morality tale on the evils of marijuana that they called Tell You Children. After it was finished, a producer bought it and recut it, adding some sexy scenes and selling it to the “exploitation” market as Reefer Madness. It never went very far, or made much money, and faded from memory until the founder of NORML discovered it in the Library of Congress and made it a stoner favorite. It made the college circuit, and today is known as a cult film. If you’re interested, the reconstructed script is available at the Common Sense Drug Policy site, or you can actually watch the whole thing on YouTube.
Kevin and Dan Studney got the idea for Reefer Madness: The Musical on the road between Oakland to LA while listening to Frank Zappa; it played on the stage to packed houses for over a year and a half. It opened off Broadway, but timing was against them; 9/11 happened just four days before their opening night. It caught Showtime’s attention, and they got the chance to film it for the video channel; it was released on DVD in 2005. A friend loaned me a copy — and I discovered that my assumptions about the film were all wrong.
The director, Andy Fickman, puts it more succinctly than I could: “We decided to pull the camera back one step further from the original film and show why it was made in the first place. It was made to scare good citizens and to distort the truth in their presentation. Had Reefer Madness been a thoughtful examination of the trials and tribulations of hemp and marijuana, it would have been one thing, but they made the most explicit shock film that they could, all based on what can only be viewed as a lot of silliness.” (from the movie’s page on Showtime’s site)
So the focus of this movie is not the drug that was being demonized, but the propaganda used to demonize it. Alan Cummings does a masterful job as the presenter, using the standard tactics we’ve all seen before: when someone objects, he doesn’t dispute the objection but shames the person who stated it. The film within the movie is as overblown as you’d expect — the kids are right out of The Afternoon Special, the ‘bad guy’ came out of the funny papers, the lady of the Reefer Den out of of the soaps — and the consequences are too over-the-top to be believed; yet the presenter keeps them from questioning anything so they’re not seen as unpatriotic, and by the end of the movie they’re out building bonfires. (One hilarious moment in the film comes as the parents — joined by the cast of the film and others with torches — march down the street. A black family takes one look at the parade and then grabs their kids and runs for home. A tiny moment of realism.)
I could go on all day about this movie; I really think that it’s a great reminder of spin and the dangers of “authority” telling us how to think. (We need to be reminded occasionally, since we’ve learned to just accept it as part of the national atmosphere.) It’s also beautiful, and hilarious, and silly, and all too true. I was going to post lyric snippets to prove my point, but I’ve gone on too long, so let me just encourage you to go read for yourselves and hand you the link: Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical Lyrics
I’ll end with the last line the presenter sings as he drives away from the bonfire: “When danger’s near, exploit their fear — The end will justify the means!”
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