The Movie Stoner Hall of Fame

Back in the days when marijuana was a mystery to most Americans, Reefer Madness was just another terribly acted educational film — all cheap titillation and stern lectures. Then, in the 1970s, some enterprising archivists dug the movie up and started running it on the midnight circuit, so that hip dopers could cackle at what folks in the 1930s thought “getting high” was like. When the deluded fools in this picture smoke up, they go nuts, driven to violence and insanity by their demand to have everything be “faster, faster.” (Because if there’s one thing pot-heads are known for, it’s being in a hurry.) But give thanks to the jitterbugging drug fiends in this movie, all of whom gave us the first representations of screen stoners and paved the way for all those cinematic hopheads that would follow. We owe them so much. NM

Tagging along on Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper’s cross-country drug odyssey, Jack Nicholson’s football-helmeted Hanson stands for all the squares who could easily be cool if they’d just turn on. A slick-talking southern lawyer with a thirst for booze, George tries grass for the first time while hanging out with his new hippie friends, and soon finds himself deeply relaxed, philosophizing about Venusians and bullfrogs. Though Nicholson’s part is small, Easy Rider helped make him a star. He’s the salt-of-the-earth guy-next-door who makes dope-smoking acceptable to the everyman, by turning it an exercise of our nation’s divinely bestowed freedoms. God bless America indeed. NM

Richard “Cheech Marin” and Tommy Chong already had a well-established stage act when they made the jump from hit albums to low-budget movies. Up in Smoke didn’t mess with a winning formula: Cheech stumbles into crazy schemes — like driving a van made of hardened hemp across the Mexican/U.S. border — while Chong’s unflappable airhead goes along for the ride. But it’s one thing to listen to the boys describe surreal drug-fueled adventures on vinyl, and another to actually see them smoke a giant joint filled with pot-laced dog-shit. This film and these characters established the standard for dope-crazy comedy. Just take a little deadpan patter, stir it into some broad slapstick, and bake it in a sweet marijuana haze. NM

A hero in his own mind and an idiot in everyone else’s, Carl may just be the assistant groundskeeper at Bushwood Country Club, but with a little luck he’s pretty sure he could be head groundskeeper in six years. Bill Murray lent Caddyshack’s marble-mouthed buffoon just enough acidity that he became this classic comedy’s coolest character. Powered by his own special strain of marijuana combining different types of golf-course grass, Carl may have vowed to kill every gopher in sight, but he’s really just a chill dude, gettin’ high and checkin’ out the grannies putting around the green. TG

Sean Penn’s performance is based as much on SoCal beach bums as high-school burnouts, but Spicoli’s lateness, spaciness, and in-class munchies still mark him as a connoisseur of the green. (Say it with us: “That was my skull! I’m so wasted!”) With Fast Times, director Amy Heckerling and writer Cameron Crowe (fresh from his Rolling Stone days) created a new kind of stoner stereotype for the 1980s. They moved away from the tie-dyed granola vibe, instead depicting bud-lovers as preternaturally chill dudes who stay centered even while their peers and teachers are stressed. That’s what makes Spicoli so funny and so weirdly admirable — accent on the weird. NM

Epitomizing the stoner as visionary philosopher, Slater is the sort of dude who’s real fun at a party — just be careful once he starts going into one of his riffs on the plight of the Native Americans or the unheralded American hero Martha Washington. Dazed and Confused practically reeks of sticky-icky, and Rory Cochrane turns the burnout into a lovable, thoughtful guy, showing how, for some people, pot’s not just a pastime but a conscientious objection to living life as a total square. Cochrane was once asked what frightened his high-school toker. “He’s probably most scared of, like, graduating,” he responded. Let’s just hope this starry-eyed kid didn’t grow up, get disillusioned and become a Donald Trump supporter. TG

Brad Pitt was a self-admitted pothead in his early years, and you can see him channeling his former stoned glory as True Romance’s bloodshot-eyed comic relief. Crashing on the couch and watching shitty movies on TV, Floyd is a hilariously out-of-it bum, nonchalantly offering angry, armed mobsters a hit from his handmade bong (made of a plastic honey bear) when they barge into his home. But Floyd’s no peace-and-love hippie: Telling off James Gandolfini’s tough guy with a muttered “I’ll fucking kill you, man,” Pitt gives the pothead a serrated edge. TG

We have no idea whether actor and philanthropist Chris Tucker has ever taken a toke of weed in his life. But we do know this: his broke-ass street-dealer Smokey comes across as believably baked — from his paranoia that gangsters are after him to his giddy delight at seeing a bully get “knocked the fuck out.” Smokey’s the kind of dude that casual puffers want to get high with. He’s funny, he’s loyal … and he knows his bud. NM

A beach bunny gone to seed, Melanie is a blonde beauty with long tan legs, a free-love attitude and a  way of smoking a bowl that’s undeniably intoxicating. As played by Bridget Fonda with sleepy eyes and a naughty smile, this Quentin Tarantino character is equal parts stoner and sassiness. When her boyfriend Ordell chastises Melanie that too much weed will sap her ambition, her response — “Not if your ambition is to get high and watch TV” — is punctuated with such a mischievous, knowing laugh that it makes her laidback lifestyle seem superior to any other. Especially if you can spend more time around her. TG

L.A.’s laidback culture makes it the ideal pot town, and the city’s cinematic patron saint is Jeff Lebowski, who uses copious amounts of weed as a daily supplement the way some locals pop vitamins. Our hero — who’s totally cool with you calling him the Dude or El Duderino — rambles his way through a kidnapping plot whose off-kilter vibe is partly sparked by his mellow buzz and profoundly whatever’s-clever worldview. Before Joel and Ethan Coen’s stoner-noir classic, Jeff Bridges was merely known as an excellent character actor. After Lebowski, his onscreen persona was indelibly tied to this iconic role — you can see a little bit of the Dude’s drugged-out bliss to everything from Tron: Legacy to his Oscar-winning turn in Crazy Heart. TG

A lot of pot-smokers are intelligent, productive members of society — and then there’s these knuckleheads. With Thurgood (Dave Chappelle) as the cool customer, Brian (Jim Breuer) as the possibly brain-damaged wingman, and Scarface (Guillermo Díaz) as the resident “tough guy,” the movie floats along on its gleeful lowbrow idiocy. Critics savaged Half Baked at the time for its lazy jokes, but that was sort of the point: These buddies’ moronic plan to sell a strain of super-weed to tokers in order to bail their friend out of jail is the sort of scheme you could only hatch while being stoned out of your gourd. Breuer and Díaz were pure bozos, but Chappelle demonstrated the laidback swagger that would soon make him a comedy icon with Chappelle’s Show. TG

For stoners convinced that weed makes them smarter, How High offers a reasonable explanation: It’s the fertilizer, man. Rappers Method Man and Redman reinvented Cheech & Chong’s schtick for this rowdy campus comedy, playing a pair of wake-and-bakers cruising through their freshman year at Harvard. Their characters — Silas and Jamal — smoke a strain of grass sprinkled with the ashes of a dead friend, who then appears to them as a friendly ghost. (They’re on a very different kind of “angel dust.”) The supernatural brain-boost makes these two into lovably lucky idiots, connected to the part of the universe that helps them cheat on tests. A truth serum and a university official named Dean Cain (!) also figure into the misadventures. Trust us, it all makes perfect sense if you’re baked. NM

Striking a blow for Hollywood inclusiveness, this stoner buddy-comedy was rare mainstream film to feature Asian-American protagonists — and in Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn), gave the big screen its best toker pals since Cheech and Chong. Theirs is a typical yin-yang friendship: Harold is the responsible investment banker, while Kumar is more of the temperamental screw-up. But unlike a lot of cinematic potheads, these buds are actually bright, articulate and sensitive dudes. Which doesn’t mean they can’t get some serious munchies — hunting down some grub is the whole point of White Castle — or experience crazy drug-fueled trips. (The Claymation sequence from 2011’s A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas is one of the trilogy’s giggly highlights.) TG

Anna Faris’ comedic type is a combination of wide-eyed gentility and chronic klutziness — which makes her the perfect person to play a heroine high as hell on cannabis cupcakes. Her spacey protogonist in writer-director Gregg Araki’s toked-up midnight movie spends one crazy day in L.A., trying to straighten up enough to complete an urgent to-do list (“Get to that hemp festival”; “Try to figure out a way to return the Communist Manifesto without getting arrested”). Faris understands how intoxicated folks strain to act “normal” in public; she also inherently gets how great O.J. and Tostitos taste when you’re stoned to the gills, even if it takes Roscoe Lee Browne’s voice in her head to remind her. NM

Dope creates strange bedfellows — in life and in the movies. Seth Rogen’s shaggy young professional Dale Denton doesn’t have a lot in common with James Franco’s spacey drug-dealer Saul Silver in David Gordon Green’s throwback caper comedy, but when their business relationship puts them into mutual mortal danger, they discover that they make a good team. (Rogen and Franco would later make a DIY “sequel” to this stoner-cinema classic in their 2013 Apatow-MVP team-up movie This Is the End — itself a postapocalyptic pot-smoking epic.) Saul’s happy-go-lucky nature gets under Dale’s gruff, loner skin. But sometimes just sharing just one common interest is enough to forge an unbreakable bond, and these guys are connected by something truly divine: a superbud that smells “like God’s vagina.” NM