47 Fun Facts About Stoner Movie

Which 1978 film, Cheech & Chong's big-screen debut, is credited with establishing the stoner comedy genre?

Up in Smoke outraged some commentators in 1978 yet became a surprise smash, and in 2024 the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry as the film that arguably founded the stoner genre.

In Cheech & Chong's first film, the duo's burning marijuana van helps them win what?

A battle of the bands: smugglers had built the van's body from "fiberweed", and when it catches fire outside the rock club the smoke pours in and gets the whole crowd high.

In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, what does stoner surfer Spicoli have delivered to Mr. Hand's history class?

A pizza: Spicoli argues that class is "our time", so Mr. Hand agrees, takes the box away and invites the other students up to help themselves to the slices.

Cheech Marin left California to dodge the Vietnam draft and met Tommy Chong in which Canadian city?

Vancouver: Chong hired Marin in 1969 for an improv troupe that played the Shanghai Junk, a strip club owned by Chong's family.

In Nice Dreams (1981), Cheech & Chong get rich selling marijuana out of what kind of vehicle?

An ice cream truck: the pair pose as ice cream sellers, but the strain, grown by a friend, slowly turns smokers into lizards, among them the narcotics sergeant on their trail.

By what title is the 1930s anti-drug film, later an ironic midnight-movie comedy, best known?

Reefer Madness came back in the 1970s as a campus comedy: legalization campaigners screened it to raise money, and New Line's founder, spotting a faulty copyright notice, released it himself on the college circuit.

Which magazine began handing out the Stony Awards for stoner films and TV in 2000?

High Times gave its winners a trophy in the shape of a bong; the first ceremony, held in New York in 2000, was hosted by the Upright Citizens Brigade, with a young Amy Poehler in the troupe.

Which actor plays Jeff Spicoli, the perpetually stoned surfer, in Fast Times at Ridgemont High?

Sean Penn's stoner surfer rescued the film: a nervous Universal opened it small with almost no advertising, and word of mouth about Spicoli pushed the studio into widening the release.

Dazed and Confused follows Texas teenagers through which day of school in 1976?

The last day of school, 28 May 1976: once classes end, the new seniors drive to the junior high and hunt down the incoming freshmen for a ritual spanking with homemade wooden paddles.

Who replaced Chris Tucker as Ice Cube's sidekick in Next Friday (2000)?

Mike Epps came in as Craig's cousin Day-Day; Ice Cube has said Tucker was offered $10 to 12 million to return but no longer wanted to swear or smoke marijuana on camera.

In Half Baked, kind-hearted Kenny lands in jail for feeding junk food to which diabetic animal, killing it?

A police horse called Buttercup: the kindergarten teacher pities the tired-looking animal during a munchie run, and his friends start dealing marijuana stolen from a research lab to raise his bail.

Which comedian co-wrote Half Baked with Dave Chappelle and later co-created Chappelle's Show?

Neal Brennan was a teenage doorman at a Greenwich Village comedy club when he met Chappelle, a regular on its stage, and began pitching him jokes.

In Half Baked's cameo montage of smoker types, who plays the nostalgic old-timer?

Willie Nelson plays the smoker forever telling you that you should have been there in the old days; Tommy Chong is in the film too, but as a prison inmate known as the Squirrel Master.

What cocktail does the Dude drink throughout The Big Lebowski?

White Russian: the Coens modelled the Dude largely on Jeff Dowd, a producer they got to know around their first film, Blood Simple, who drank the cocktail himself and really was called the Dude.

The Big Lebowski's tangled kidnapping plot is the Coen brothers' homage to which author of The Big Sleep?

Raymond Chandler: Joel Coen wanted "a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant", and Ethan liked having a pothead, not a private eye, feel his way through the intrigue.

How High (2001) stars which two rappers as stoners who get into Harvard with help from a friend's ghost?

Method Man and Redman ace their entrance exams thanks to weed grown in the ashes of a dead friend: smoking it summons his ghost, who feeds them every answer.

In Dude, Where's My Car?, what extraterrestrial device did Jesse and Chester unknowingly acquire?

The Continuum Transfunctioner was hiding in plain sight: when Chester finally solves his Rubik's Cube, it changes shape into the device, which is powerful enough to destroy the universe.

In Dude, Where's My Car?, Jesse and Chester wake up with which two words tattooed on their backs?

Dude and Sweet: each asks what his tattoo says and takes the other's honest one-word answer for an exclamation, so the exchange loops; the screenwriter says some fans now wear the pair as matching tattoos.

Which actor plays a debauched, fictionalized version of himself in the Harold & Kumar films?

Neil Patrick Harris was written into the first draft without being asked: he found out from a friend who was auditioning, had his agents track the script down and warily agreed to meet the writers.

Under what alternate title was the first Harold & Kumar film released in some international markets?

Get the Munchies is how British audiences know it; the quest was a fiction at home too, since Cherry Hill, the pair's New Jersey destination, had no White Castle and the film's one was a set built in Toronto.

In the 2008 sequel, Harold and Kumar are wrongly imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay en route to which city?

Amsterdam has to wait: on the flight, passengers mistake Kumar's smokeless bong for a bomb, and the pair are branded terrorists and sent to the prison camp.

Kal Penn left what job in 2010 to film A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas?

A White House post: Penn had quit the TV drama House in 2009 to join the Obama administration's Office of Public Engagement, left in mid-2010 to play Kumar again, and was back at his desk that November.

In Pineapple Express, Seth Rogen's Dale Denton works in what job when he witnesses a murder?

Process server: Dale is parked outside a drug lord's house, about to hand him a summons, when he sees the killing; the joint he throws away is a strain so rare that it leads the killers to his dealer.

Who earned a Golden Globe nomination for playing the gentle, couch-bound weed dealer in Pineapple Express?

James Franco was best known for scowling through the Spider-Man films in expensive suits; a grungy wig and baggy clothes made him, in his co-star's words, a whole different guy.

Which director made Pineapple Express and then the medieval stoner fantasy Your Highness?

David Gordon Green had made his name with quiet independent dramas such as George Washington; the producers knew that work and, he says, thought hiring him for a stoner action comedy so weird it might work.

This Is the End (2013) was the directorial debut of which duo?

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, long-time writing partners, stretched their 2007 short Jay and Seth Versus the Apocalypse into a feature in which every star plays a warped version of their real self.

In Ted, the talking teddy bear and his best friend John live in which US city?

Boston: Seth MacFarlane voices the bear in a thick local accent, and the finale is a chase through Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox.

John and Ted's favorite movie, whose star Sam J. Jones shows up to party with them, is what?

Flash Gordon: Sam J. Jones plays himself in an extended cameo, and says the comedy's success brought his 1980 film a new generation of fans, with fathers, sons and grandchildren asking for autographs.

Super Troopers follows bored, syrup-chugging state troopers in a fictional town in which state?

Vermont: with budget cuts about to close their station, the troopers, who pass traffic stops betting on how often they can say "meow", have to crack a marijuana-smuggling ring to save their jobs.

What is the job of Allen Covert's character, Alex, in Grandma's Boy?

Video game tester: when his roommate blows the rent money, Alex has to move in with his grandmother and her two friends, and the game he has been designing in secret ends up outshining the company prodigy's.

What are Jay and Silent Bob's comic-book alter egos, whose movie they try to sabotage in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?

Bluntman and Chronic star in a comic book based on the pair; when a studio starts filming it without paying them royalties, and strangers begin insulting them online, they set off from New Jersey for Hollywood to shut it down.

Who plays Jane, the struggling actress who eats her roommate's cannabis cupcakes, in the 2007 comedy Smiley Face?

Anna Faris's Jane is already stoned at breakfast when she finishes the plate, and she must still get to an audition and pay off her dealer, a day that winds up on a seaside Ferris wheel.

The pot-growing widow comedy Saving Grace (2000) spun off the TV series Doc Martin; in which English county are both set?

Cornwall: the film's backers decided that Martin Clunes's village doctor, a supporting part, "had legs", so he got two TV films of his own before ITV reworked him into the grumpy GP of Doc Martin.

Which comedian smokes cannabis every day for 30 days in the 2007 documentary Super High Me?

Doug Benson spun the film out of a joke in his stand-up act about Super Size Me: he went 30 days sober, then 30 days stoned all day, sitting tests that ran from the SAT to a sperm count.

Which rappers play the title roles in the 2012 film Mac & Devin Go to High School?

Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa saw the film go straight to DVD, but its soundtrack single with Bruno Mars, Young, Wild & Free, had already entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 10.

In We're the Millers, the fake family smuggles marijuana into the US from where?

Mexico: sent to collect a "smidge" of marijuana for his supplier, small-time dealer David hires a stripper and two teenagers to pose as his wife and kids, betting that customs will wave a family in an RV straight through.

In Idle Hands (1999), what becomes of Anton's two stoner friends after his possessed hand kills them?

They return as zombies: called toward the light, the pair decide it is too far to bother with and turn back, one with a beer bottle still stuck in his forehead and the other with his head cut off.

Which director filmed Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice in 2014, casting Joaquin Phoenix as stoner private eye Doc Sportello?

Paul Thomas Anderson says he tried to "rip off" the sight gags of the Zucker brothers' spoof series Police Squad! so that the film would feel as crammed with jokes as the novel.

In The Beach Bum (2019), Matthew McConaughey plays a stoner poet named what?

Moondog lives off his rich wife's money in Florida; when she dies in a car crash, her will cuts him off until he finally publishes the book he has been putting off for years.

Kid Cannabis (2014) is based on the true story of an Idaho teen who smuggled weed across which border?

US–Canada: Nate Norman, a high-school dropout from Coeur d'Alene, had friends in camouflage suits walk the marijuana south through the woods, a multimillion-dollar run that ended in a 12-year prison sentence.

In The Wackness (2008), teenage dealer Luke Shapiro trades marijuana for what?

Therapy sessions with his psychiatrist: Ben Kingsley's Dr. Squires, as much a customer as a doctor, urges Luke to go and sow his wild oats, never meaning with the doctor's own stepdaughter, the girl Luke falls for.

Which 1969 counterculture road movie, shot for about $400,000, helped launch the New Hollywood era?

Easy Rider, whose two bikers ride stoned across America, was shot independently, and Columbia signed on only once it was finished; after it became a hit, studios went looking for young directors who could make them another one.

Which Brad Pitt character did Judd Apatow cite as the inspiration for Pineapple Express?

Floyd in True Romance is a walk-on part, a glassy-eyed stoner on a sofa; Apatow thought it would be funny to follow that character out of his apartment and watch him get chased by bad guys.

Which role was Seth Rogen first set to play in Pineapple Express before a swap?

Saul Silver, the dealer, was written as Rogen's part, with his co-star as Dale; at a script reading each side found it wanted the other arrangement, and the two traded roles.

Which singer, whose band gave Back to the Future its theme song, performed the Pineapple Express title track?

Huey Lewis wrote the song at Seth Rogen's request, two decades after The Power of Love; Rogen says that Lewis, having seen the film, kept going on about how he hadn't expected a full-blown action movie.

Which Led Zeppelin member refused to let 'Rock and Roll' play over Dazed and Confused's ending?

Robert Plant said no, so a film named after a Led Zeppelin song has none of the band's music in it; the closing drive for Aerosmith tickets plays out to Foghat's Slow Ride instead.

Which 2016 Linklater film did he describe as a 'spiritual sequel' to Dazed and Confused?

Everybody Wants Some!! follows a Texas college baseball team through the weekend before classes start in 1980; Linklater says no character returns, and that he chose the label because one film is high school and the other is college.