a rambling muse on drug films.

so i was turning over 2008's comedies, particularly summer. i found the one that made me laugh the most was kung fu panda, however the one i consider the highest quality, most well crafted humor was pineapple express. (disclaimer: i missed step brothers and have yet to catch role models.) 

i was somewhat surprised at myself because i generally feel less positive about drug comedies and drug films in general and pineapple express certainly had more than its fair share of marijuana humor. so i mused a bit and now i will muse a bit more on the internet.

COMEDY:

these are dominated almost entirely by marijuana. though i am always made to laugh by gramma's boy, 40 yr. old virgin, etc. it seems like anyone could write it, and has no lasting effect. also there are the ones that people think are good like how high and cheech and chong films that i find mediocre and overrated. pineapple really hit me right because it succeeded on many more levels than "dude-i-was-soo-high-" n junk. 

almost forgot dazed and confused. great movie, the dialogue was fantastic for non-drug reasons as well.

also the appeal these films have to the strongly anti-drug types has me baffled beyond belief.

my only guess is for some reason they end up going "cool drugs!" and that doesn't make any sense to me. i've seen anti-drug people laugh outloud at the mere mentioning of any drugs, not in a well crafted joke at all. this is understandable on some levels, as george carlin once said that anything can be made funny as long as the joke is well structured. but i see "pot-""BAHAHAHAHAH" from stupid annoying people every single day (well, pfa people have a better sense of humor than most public school people, so not anymore...) and no context or well-structured joke is necassary. this of course, lowers the bar, so mediocre "funny" people can get on tv and waste my time, but thats another blog post altogether.

NON-COMEDY:

heres where it gets tricky. requiem for a dream, bad lieutenant, killing zoe, pulp fiction, american gangster, goodfellas, boogie nights, and of course fear and loathing.

the 2 major sections here are dramas who use drugs to take a character farther or deeper, or to dictate every event for the character. these are requiem and boogie nights(secondhalf) among others. magnolia also has an expertly crafted drug use scene where P.T. anderson showed just enough to tell us what we needed to know about the character and nothing more. no attempts to fill time or make soft-livin viewers go "cool drugs!". magnolia was a character drama and where, in my opinion, drugs take the most important and most substantial role.

then theres the ones that are only small for supporting characters or had a minor influence on main characters. these are the ones of the most examples i think. pulp fiction, american gangster, and goodfellas, clockwork orange(i believe it was lacking in the film but its been a while...)

bad lieutenant, if you've heard of it, godforbid if you've seen it, is something entirely different alltogether. 

another paragraph should be made for clockwork orange, the 2 paragraphs in the whole book that dealt with drugs were handled so perfectly by Burgess that alex's drug use is very petty and not a big deal to him. he wasn't a raging addict, he was a kid who had lots of problems in general and enjoyed a bit of the ole ultra-violence and-oh-almost-forgot he did some hard drugs every once in a while.

and not many but a few also throw a trip sequence in to fill 90 minutes like killing zoe, which is overall a fine film in my opinion.

but also there is fear and loathing, very unique i would say. gilliam and the screenwriters and the author of the book hunter s. thompson clearly were influenced by their plot devices, and wanted to share there 'good' times with their viewers. i have not read the book nor over-analyzed in anyway the novel or film but i would say the magic there was about technical craft and the enhanced imagination. if the purpose was to give the soft-livin audience a druggin good time then they only achieved so visually. nowadays i expect such could be made quite easily in the digital age, as i have achieved half the film effortlessly on apple photobooth.

skadoosh