Chapter Two
Bill and Harold and Cheech and Ted and Kumar and Chong
By Brett Ballard-Beach
November 10, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Introduction: A few drug thoughts from the experts:
“The hard drugs are for the bartenders, the kitchen workers, and the bartenders’ friends.” --from “Certain Songs” by The Hold Steady
“What does cocaine make you feel like? It makes you feel like doing more cocaine.”
--George Carlin
Wooderson: Say man, you got a joint?
Mitch: No, not on me man.
Wooderson: It’d be a lot cooler if you did.
--Dialogue from Dazed and Confused
(I do acknowledge that it would be better if the above were an audio file as the written word can not do justice to Matthew McConaughey’s beatific smile as he utters the second line. Hell, his voice and mustache take on beatitude in that context. More accurately, his entire being seems to resolve into a haze of bliss when he utters those words. If it’s been a while since you had a hit of Dazed and Confused, for God’s sake, this column can wait for 102 minutes. Go watch it.)
Pot smoking and comedy seem to go hand in hand. (And the notion of self-serious “educational” films like Reefer Madness that pocket a puff of a single joint as the heralding of a violent, frenzied manic state that will quickly lead to murder and/or suicide carries that maxim to its logical conclusion.) But how well does a stoner protagonist actually play? Brad Pitt’s exquisite take on Floyd, the perpetually high roommate in True Romance is a perfect example of a sublime supporting performance. But what if he had been the lead? (The body count might have been significantly smaller).
It’s been a while since I have watched Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye so I can’t say for certain if Phillip Marlowe (as perfectly embodied by Elliott Gould) ever comes in contact with a joint himself, but there are those free-spirited nude-yoga hippie ladies across the way in his apartment complex, and the feel of the film is certainly one of a druggie lull hopped up with a burnout’s sense of paranoia.
Pot smoking and buddy comedies seem to go hand in hand, because if there is one thing that someone who is high can use, it’s another person off of whom to riff. Perhaps this is why I wasn’t the biggest fan of Gregg Araki’s acclaimed stoner comedy Smiley Face - I can never even keep the name in my head for long without resorting to IMDb - which does feature a perfectly modulated Anna Faris performance as a struggling actress/accidental pot brownie ingest-ee struggling to make it to an audition on time. It’s dramatically inert and nowhere near as engaging as it should be. None of the people she encounters, not even the omniscient voice of Roscoe Lee Browne inside her head, bounces that well off of her.
There are some interesting parallels among the three Chapter Twos - Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - chosen for this week’s column. All three were reasonably successful, grossing around $40 million in their respective day. In the first two instances this was slightly less than the first film did; in the latter case, this was twice as much as the first film made. All three had different directors than the first film in the series (as they will be mentioned again, they were Lou Adler, Danny Leiner, and Stephen Herek) and in a striking coincidence those four individuals stepping into the director’s chair - Tommy Chong, the Harold & Kumar writing team of Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg, and Peter Hewitt - were all making their feature film directing debut. The first two of those are writer/directors (who also penned the first films, Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, and Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle), but the screenwriters for Bogus Journey, Chris Matheson & Ed Solomon, were also returnees from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
I make this point because I think it shows the possibility for a continuity of vision from one film to the next that will be my driving focus in looking at the films this week. Continuity of vision? In a drug comedy sequel? Precisely. As “low-class” genres such as horror and sci-fi demonstrate on a recurring basis, it is precisely such an outsider status that can allow for both (expected) grossness and unexpected satire, pathos, social commentary, a willingness and ability to get away with a lot, because hey, it’s not expensive to make, and it’s just a horror/sci-fi/pot flick. Maybe it is and maybe it’s . . .
Case Study #1: Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie (1980)
Tagline: Just what we all need . . . a really good hit!
Author’s Note/Extended Digression
On a personal level, there are several inherent ironies in my choice of topics this week. The first and foremost: I was fairly straight edge as far as drug and alcohol intake went during my adolescence. At age 16, I siphoned away a single unlit cigarette left behind by a guest at our lodges and smoked about half, certain my parents would smell it on me. I did not drink until I was 21, didn’t drink to excess until a wickedly awesome night in a lesbian dance club when I was 22, and did not drink to the vomitorium point until the early hours of July 4th, 2002 when approximately 15 drinks of ridiculously mixed strengths and flavors caught up with me. I can say I have puked into a street corner New York City trashcan. I can also say I have held my breath for 40 minutes on a subway ride from the East Side up to Astoria, Queens praying that the sorts of smells one would expect to encounter on a subway car at two in the morning did not wend their way into my nose, which had a direct line to my stomach (why yes, I’ll accept the collect charges!) and wasn’t about to hang up.
I had several opportunities growing up to try pot and turned them down in turn. (Truth be told, I was a Sanctimonious Prick about such things, the kind of righteous asshole who would make sure to let the cute college freshman getting drunk and puking on the weekends in the co-ed bathrooms know that I was looking down on her. Hopefully, I am a little less smug nowadays, maybe lower-case instead of upper-case?)
At my college graduation in 1997, I was in the section whose soon-to-be graduates was passing around a 40 oz of malt liquor and an honest-to-god fattie. My parents, uncles, and grandparents were in attendance at said event. The contraband items passed in front of me. Dear reader, I… did not partake. I finally tried pot when I was 26, at the behest of a friend and co-worker, but it was admittedly the bare bones of his stash, I believe we used a soda can as a makeshift pipe, and it did nothing acknowledgeable for me.
My sole encounter with actual pot-induced highness came courtesy of a girlfriend’s pot brownies, given to her as a present by an ex. I took one, 45 minutes passed and, nothing. I took the other, 45 minutes passed, and to quote myself, “I am unfit to drive.” A trip to the local Audubon society and a screening of the just-released Let the Right One In at Cinema 21 ensued. That may have been the best possible film for me as I could feel the icy chillness of the environs and enshrouding darkness (as captured by Hoyte Van Hoytema’s masterful camera work) soak into my bones. I also got really tired and nodded off several times. And so it goes. Nowadays, the closest thing to getting high in my life are the second-hand fumes of sweet and acrid smoke that sometimes emanate from the occupants of the benches of Portland’s downtown Park blocks as I cart Finn from daycare over to our bus stop.
Second irony: I was not allowed to watch Cheech & Chong’s movies growing up. As I have oft referred to, pretty much everything that I brought home from the video store I was willing to watch with my parents - thank god Spanking the Monkey came out after I had headed off to college - and vice/versa. When I got to be a certain age, I was able to rent slasher films on my own but the Porky’s-esque sex comedies and filmography of the comedy duo were off-limits. As an adult, I can safely admit to myself that it was okay to do without them.
Up in Smoke, helmed by Adler (a music industry veteran also responsible for executive producing and/or directing fellow cult musicals The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shock Treatment, and Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains) is an amiable lark built on a pleasing spirit and kinship with the punk movement, patched together with DIY gusto, and populated by characters and scenarios strung together from a fair sampling of Cheech and Chong’s comedy routines. It’s entertaining and cheerful and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Next Movie, by contrast, is one of the more slapdash efforts to ever get a wide release that I have had the displeasure of viewing. This is a film for which the phrase “you need to be stoned in order to appreciate it” could have been coined. The duo seem to be making it up as they go along, which would be fine if the improvisation built towards something (instead, it always seems to be pulling away from everything) and indulging in far more misogynistic and mean-spirited humor than their debut film.
The extended opening gag, involving convoluted efforts to siphon gas from a truck and transport it back to the tank of Cheech’s ride, spilling of said gasoline over the gentleman and the car during the transfer, and the subsequent (ill-advised) lighting up of a jay in the car find a balance between free-wheeledness and building to a payoff that the rest of the feature tries and tries again to aim for, but never finds the mark. (The timing and shot of the explosion of the car may be the most perfect thing in the film.)
There is no real plot, just a progression of digressions marked by entirely too much humor aimed at the pair’s snooty next door neighbor in the first half and not enough Cheech and Chong in the second half (Cheech is there but playing his Texas-twanged cousin Red instead, involved in an endless night of would-be debauchery with Chong). There are glimmers of what I think Chong wanted to achieve, in moments that are simultaneously teeth-grinding and unsettling - but not funny, to the sober eye - like a unsatisfying brew of Werner Herzog, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Harmony Korine, but with the visual poetry those three are capable of achieving replaced with a televisual flatness.
In one endless sequence, the pair go to a welfare office to pick up their checks, and set off some mild anarchy up front, before heading to the back where Cheech gets busy with his girlfriend on the floor (unseen by us) while Chong sits in a chair surrounded on one side by a jovial but un-communicative wino, and on the other by a pre-Police Academy Michael Winslow, spewing sound effects and all. The scene continues past all point of purpose or reason to become oddly transfixing, if never enjoyable.
The credits list a fair number of Groundlings in the cast, which would explain the improvised structure and feel. Phil Hartman, Paul Reubens (and Pee-Wee Herman), Cassandra “Elvira” Peterson, Edie McClurg, and Rita Wilson all show up in minor supporting roles, and McClurg comes off the best, primarily because she is given the most to do. As affirming (and slight) as Up in Smoke is, Next Movie feels endless (at 95 minutes, it is the longest of Cheech & Chong’s features) and fairly unsavory, trying too hard to aim for the underground, when staying above ground might have yielded more.
Case Study #2: Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
Tagline: Once, they made history. Now, they are history.
By now, you’ve probably made the not inaccurate observation that, strictly speaking, neither of the Bill & Ted movies is a stoner comedy. As the only PG-rated entries in this week’s vehemently R-rated universe, Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey are anomalies. They manage to be raucous without being crude, zany yet not filthy, and capture the eternal stoner’s laid-back zonkhood with barely a covert passing reference to recreational drugs/activities (the mere presence of George Carlin as the pair’s historical savior/guide aptly fills this role as does the “It’s a trip” secondary tagline for Bogus Journey.)
Excellent Adventure is fun, in an enduring “1980s American stupid comedy” kind of way (which is meant as a compliment, to distinguish from the non-enduring stupid comedies of that era). I position it up there with National Lampoon’s Vacation as a comedy that my inner 12-year-old self of now enjoys as much as my actual one did back in the day. (And believe me, there aren’t many of those. I think Weekend at Bernie’s may still qualify but I haven’t seen that in the last decade.) To point out an embarrassing truth, it was just this time that I realized Ted’s full appellation is Ted “Theodore” Logan. That’s a joke so slow-burning it took over 20 years to sink in! (In my defense, I always tended to briefly tune out after the “Esq.” of Bill S. Preston). I forget when I first saw it (it wasn’t in the theaters, though) but I do recall it popping up in high school choir class on a few “babysitting” occasions. Showing the same sci-fi high-concept attitude that Solomon later brought to his Men in Black comic and screenplay, the first Bill & Ted may not aspire to match but director Stephen Herek milks the scenario for all its worth and nails most of the laughs.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is a trip, and then some. I enjoy it, if not more than the first film, then equally and for completely separate reasons. Rather than simply repeat the duo’s trek-through-history-inside-a-phone-booth time-machine antics, it finds room for: evil killer Bill & Ted lookalike robots from the future, excursions to Heaven, Hell, and a Home Depot-type store, brilliant scientist creatures from Mars, a battle of the bands (which, if anyone is keeping track, Primus loses), and a supporting role for Death, who, far from the imposing figure he cuts in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, is actually a grumpy sore loser easily prone to suffering humiliating wedgies.
Matheson & Solomon’s screenplay is a model for transforming an archetypal unnecessary sequel into a wealth of invention and comic riches. If anything, it’s even smarter about its stupidity, allowing for Bill & Ted to remain, unapologetically, defiantly themselves (“We got totally lied to by our album covers” Bill observes after he and Ted wind up in Hell) even while waxing philosophical and engaging God on a metaphysical level in an attempt to let them go to back to earth and get revenge on the “evil metal dickweeds” who killed them. If it bogs down towards the climax, when wrongs must be righted, evil revolutionaries from 700 years in the future must be foiled, and the duo’s music - which seems to be ZZ Top meets Dogstar - must be unleashed on the world, it takes its sweet time getting to the predictable payoff.
Hewitt, as visually stylish as befits a former music video director, makes good use of the film’s modest budget, staging laughs simply from the design of certain sequences (Heaven seems inspired by late 1980s Prince music videos and album covers, Bill & Ted’s plummeting to Hell is an ingenious use of no background) and pulls deliciously self-mocking performances from stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, who must have relished the opportunity to play heroic dumb and evil dumb, sometimes in the same shot. Veteran character actor William Sadler is a hoot as Death, playing him as a hapless Germanic putz, an acting decision bold and giggle-inducing enough to carry one past the realization that once the film puts Death on the same side as our heroes, it never quite finds anything as novel for him to do as the moment when he is forced to concede board game victory - “You haff sunk my Battlesheep.”
Case Study #3: Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (2007)
Tagline: This time, they’re running from the joint.
I probably wouldn’t have checked out Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle if not for Stephanie Zacharek’s glowing review on Salon when it came out. Another dude comedy about dimwits from the director of Dude, Where’s My Car? With the former Doogie Howser M.D. cameoing as “himself”? Thanks, but no thanks. Even with high praise from someone whose opinion I respected, I still took my sweet time getting to it, opting for rental about seven months after the fact. Since I am one who has no trouble with issuing changes of opinion, let me make the same pitch:
If you are holding out on seeing it, stop. It is one of the brighter spots in American comedy in the last decade, a portrait of a cheerfully vulgar and scatological sub-universe (i.e. suburban New Jersey, where I was born once upon a time): a place in which one discovers that those really hot chicks you’re about to bang enjoy playing a rousing game of “Battleshits” on the crapper, where extreme sports douchebags who travel around in their over-compensating behemoth truck apparently have a soft spot for classic Wilson Phillips tunes, where getting an escaped cheetah stoned out of its feline mind may be the smartest (and dumbest) way out of a tight situation, and where it is not out of the realm of possibility to encounter Neil Patrick Harris commandeering a stolen vehicle and snorting blow off a hooker’s ass.
If Harold & Kumar was Leiner’s apology for Dude, Where’s My Car? it was an acceptable one. Hurwitz and Schlossberg’s smart screenplay acknowledges time and again that Harold Lee and Kumar Patel are not your average protagonists for a stoner/buddy comedy (apparent from the great opening bait and switch, where one assumes the film will be about J.D. and Billy, Harold’s co-workers). Harold & Kumar are smarter than the average leads in a pot comedy but no less driven by munchies after getting high. Their trek to get to the nearest White Castle is quickly sidelined by mayhem, theft, creepy tow-truck drivers, and racist police officers. Satisfaction is obtained by night’s end, but the film ends with a ridiculously blatant setup for a sequel: Harold’s stunning neighbor, who he longs for from afar is off to Amsterdam for 10 days. Kumar convinces him they should follow suit. Harold and Kumar in Amsterdam? The mind boggles.
Only, that setup is a fast one in its own right. Picking up seconds after the first film ends, the pair are on their way out of the country when, thanks to racial profiling and an unfortunately bomb-shaped bong, they are arrested, branded terrorists and sent straight to, well, look at the title again. After managing an unlikely escape, they take it on the run, hoping to clear their names and if they’re lucky, live to smoke the demon weed another day. Guantanamo is more extreme than its predecessor (especially in the unrated edition) in almost all respects with more full-frontal nudity - of both sexes - than even Judd Apatow might dare to dream of. It is also underneath it all, quite an angry film.
Guantanamo Bay takes a lot of its motivation from a pair of racially charged and Kafka-esque scenes in the first film. At one point, a frustrated Harold attempts to jaywalk in the middle of the night across a street utterly devoid of traffic, and is immediately set upon by a cop. It works as both “why is this happening to me” absurdist humor and a second, smarter level (it is probably the town’s version of a speed trap). While in the jail cell, he encounters an eloquent and pacifist African-American professor, who politely and calmly explains how he is always being arrested, while never doing anything to warrant arrest. This is exemplified when, during Harold’s jailbreak, it is the professor that is hog piled on by the deputies, his copy of Civil Disobedience viewed with slack-jawed yokel suspicion before being tossed aside.
Guantanamo Bay is an equal opportunity offender in the Blazing Saddles tradition. It parades a litany of stereotypes, behaviors, attitudes, and assumptions across the screen to first shock us, then debunk and ridicule them. An extended sequence featuring Jon Heep and Missi Pyle as an Alabama backwoods husband and wife illustrates the movie’s philosophy concisely. He is a hunter who inadvertently sends a cute little deer’s brains in a projectile all over Harold’s face. Making amends, he takes them back to his decrepit cabin in the woods. The duo fear for the worst, but the inside is straight out of IKEA or Crate & Barrel. The hunter and his woman talk like hicks but are evidently smart. Harold & Kumar joke about the perception that since they live in the woods in the South, they must be a pair of in-breeders with a bastard child. The husband and wife are offended. Apologies are offered, good weed is smoked, but the kicker is - they really are brother and sister with a one-eyed freak chained up in the basement.
I can’t do the eight-to-ten minute sequence justice with the description, but hopefully that summary conveys the film’s strategy of embracing crude stereotypes only to upend and subvert them, then find a way back to outrage with a comic kicker. It might be considered hypocritical, except the hypocrisy is the set-up and the punchline. However, the film’s true impact lies in its near novelty status as one of the only American works of art in the post 9/11 era to express any kind of despair over the freedoms we gave up and the insanity we as a nation plunged into in the name of protecting us from those who would harm us. Hayden and Schlossberg find just the right visual metaphor to sum this up when they have a blithely racist and stupid Homeland Security agent (played by Rob Corddry) wipe his ass with the Bill of Rights and then toss it, skidmarks and all, at a suspect he is interrogating.
For most of its running time (quite epic for the genre at 108 minutes, and nearly 20 minutes longer than either the first or third film), Guantanamo Bay finds a way to balance the political with the personal and keep the laughs up front. The momentum lags in the final third but this is compensated for with the film’s version of a deus ex machina (a deus ex toking-a, if you will), one with access to the finest weed available and the ability to issue a presidential pardon. In a world gone mad, the film argues, sometimes your only recourse against insanity is to settle down on the couch, kick your feet up, and puff, puff, give, even if it is with the Commander-in-Chief.
Next time: the first of three year-end Chapter Two extravaganzas kicks off as wizards take on wookiees. It’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets vs. The Empire Strike Back .