I remember the first time I saw a representation of a blunt — or rather, a drawing of something I was later told was a blunt. I was at a Red Robin in Seattle, Washington, and the blunt in question was being held in the… wing, I guess, of Red himself.

Lil piece of red robin logo history @ the original Seattle location (smoke weed every day and pepper) @doughboyspod pic.twitter.com/TjRnXEKLwa — Cherry Feral 🌹🇺🇸 (@feral_cherry) September 1, 2016

Folks, Red Robin smokes weed. Tell your friends.

Now Seattle's dotted with bougie weed dispensaries run by mostly-white "entrepreneurs," but back when I saw Red's red eyes in grade school I didn't have the slightest idea what weed was. Maybe D.A.R.E.-style approaches had fallen out of favor at the time, but I don't recall ever sitting through a "not-even-once" presentation on weed in school. Red aside, my earliest hands-off experiences with weed weren't in cautionary tales — it was at the movies.

The history of stoner movies doesn't quite encapsulate all there is to the history of marijuana in culture or the history of cinema, but the best stoner movies capture broader trends by virtue of acknowledging something long suppressed by, ahem, freakin' narcs: that weed exists and plenty of folks smoke it. The very existence of weed-centric movies sort of contradicts the stereotype of lazy stoners. It takes a lot of work to make a movie, even a shitty one!

Stoner movies have at least helped a little towards normalizing the drug in the US. There's still a long, long way to go towards sensible weed legislation, and the continuing pop-culture battle for that progress is more likely to be fought on small screens than in theaters now. Still, what better day to look back at the trailblazers of stoner movie history than today?

Watch 'Em If You've Got 'Em

For this special installment of Fan Service, think of this list as less of a strict viewing order and more as a thesis statement. I've been through just about every list of "the best stoner movies" out there and I think a lot of them don't qualify. For a movie to be a stoner movie, it is not enough for it to have a bunch of space cadet bros. There's got to be weed in the film, preferably playing a prominent role in the actions/behavior of one or more major characters. It doesn't have to be pro-weed — hell, the first entry on this list is so comically anti-weed that it was retroactively embraced as a pot cinema touchstone.

If a film's on this list it, it falls in one of three buckets: (1), weed's so important to it that you'd mention it in a single-sentence plot summary, (2) it represents a first for weed representation on film, (3) at least one main character is a confirmed smoker. I've also left off all sequels here — sorry, fans of "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," but you don't need me to tell you that movie's for stoners.

1936 — "Reefer Madness"

1958 — "High School Confidential"

1969 — "Easy Rider"

1972 — "Fritz the Cat"

1978 — "Up in Smoke"

1980 — "9 to 5"

1982 — "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"

1993 — "Dazed and Confused"

1994 — "Clerks"

1995 — "Friday"

1996 — "Bio-Dome"

1998 — "Half Baked"

1998 — "Bongwater"

2000 — "Dude, Where's My Car?"

2000 — "Saving Grace"

2001 — "How High"

2001 — "Super Troopers"

2004 — "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle"

2007 — "Smiley Face"

2007 — "Super High Me"

2008 — "Pineapple Express"

From Marijuana To 'Madness'

The widespread criminalization of cannabis in the early 20th century was surely spurred by racism in many parts of the world, but a straight line can't be drawn between racial animus and beliefs about the drug's effects, just as pinning down how "marihuana" became the Mexican Spanish term for cannabis has proven difficult for historians and linguists. Long cultivated in the US for the production of hemp and marketed in the 1800s in cannabis or hashish products with questionable medicinal claims, purely recreational use of weed was spotlighted by a wave of Mexican immigration to the states around the 1910s. The demonization and criminalization of the drug, beginning with labeling under the Pure Food and Drug Act and culminating with criminalization via the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 , appears to have had its roots in sensationalized news stories about episodes of violence tied to weed use both in the Mexican and American press.

Reports of violence tied to weed had the effect of lumping the drug in with more serious observations of dangerous behaviors and symptoms tied cocaine and opiates. Crusaders against narcotics made little distinction between the drugs they targeted, and the culture followed suit.

The American motion picture industry, rocked by early scandals, collectively sought to self-regulate (or self-censor) "objectionable content" ranging from depictions of drug use to misgenenation. By 1930 the industry followed the Motion Picture Production Code, which prohibited depiction of drug trafficking and generally discouraged portrayal of drug use, even in instances where it was clearly shown as criminal and amoral.

The strict rules of the Production Code gave rise to the exploitation film circuit, home to salacious productions and the ultimate destination of director Louis Gasnier's "Reefer Madness," formerly known by the title "Tell Your Children." By all accounts, "Madness" was originally intended to be a strictly anti-weed propaganda film. When Dwain Esper, the exploitation filmmaker behind titles like "Sex Maniac" and the lesser-known "Marihuana" got hold of the rights to "Reefer Madness," he made small changes to the already-overwrought film to make it more appropriate for exploitation theaters. There weed was depicted as a drug capable of sending smokers into aggressive, sexual rages. The movie's opening crawl calls it "The Real Public Enemy Number One!"

On many lists of films about weed there's a largely empty void between "Reefer Madness" and the late '60s for two reasons. First, major studios closely followed the Motion Picture Production Code for over 20 years following its introduction, severely limiting all depictions of drug use on the silver screen. Second, at the time films could remain in circulation at theaters for years after their release — "Reefer Madness" was basically the weed film of the '30s, '40s and '50s, at least on the exploitation circuit. 1958's "High School Confidential," starring Russ Tamblyn (3 years before his immortal role as Riff in "West Side Story") also dealt with weed as a scourge on American schools, albeit in a less melodramatic fashion than "Reefer Madness." Not until the "Summer of Love" in 1967 would the doors be thrown open to different attitudes about weed on-screen.

"Easy Rider" came out in 1969, one year after the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) switched from the Production Code to today's film rating system and a year before Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act into law. When Jack Nicholson's character George — a straight-laced lawyer — is introduced to the drug by Wyatt (Peter Fonda), he hesitates. "I can't afford to get hooked," Nicholson murmurs. "It leads to harder stuff." To this day the gateway drug hypothesis is trotted out to justify weed's status as a Schedule 1 substance alongside heroin, LSD and cocaine. One could argue that '60s and '70s portrayals of weed use alongside use of other drugs helped strengthen the theory by association.

The Stoner Shorthand

"It doesn't work for me, I'm a failure as a pot smoker" announces a depressed, nude aardvark in Ralph Bakshi's "Fritz the Cat." The first animated feature to receive an "X" rating under the MPAA rating system, the movie was adapted from the overtly sexual and countercultural "Fritz" comics by Robert Crumb. Despite the hard rating, the film went on to be a huge financial success, establishing Bakshi's career as an animated feature director while drawing criticism from fans of Crumb's underground originals.

Appropriation and commercialization of '60s counterculture accelerated under Nixon. Stoner stereotypes generated in the '70s are as much a product of a shift to commodification in hippie culture as they are the result of straw men constructed by political conservatives. The myriad subcultures that flourished in the '60s, united by similar politics and a shared penchant for weed and hallucinogens but distinct in their aesthetics, ended up collapsed into the image of the dopey, tie-dye clad longhair — a simplified depiction someone could sympathetically laugh along with or self-satisfyingly turn their nose up at.



<img src="http://static.digg.com/images/7938ac763d224794a52e09b043ff5dbf_f05003d176db48f2ae6c485662ed76f4_1_post.jpeg" alt="" />



While "Fritz" came out of the underground comics scene, 1978's "Up In Smoke" starring Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong came after a string of commercially successful comedy albums from the duo. Though the albums and films by Cheech and Chong are not entirely devoid of nuance (Chong's character lightly lampoons stoners descended from wealth and privilege), they contributed to a further flattening of the drug's representation in culture. "Up In Smoke" turns 40 later this year and yet it is still the ur-"stoner comedy," pairing weed use with dick jokes and bits that could've been delivered by Abbott and Costello.

At around the same time, President Jimmy Carter argued earnestly for the decriminalization of weed.

"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use. We can, and should, continue to discourage the use of marijuana, but this can be done without defining the smoker as a criminal."

His successor did not share the same views, and in the decade to follow weed was effectively re-stigmatized in the media, sealing playful representations of stoners like Cheech and Chong's characters or Sean Penn's Spicoli from "Fast Times" in resin.

On Complex's list of the best stoner movies, "Fast Times" and "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie" (1980) are the only films from the '80s to make the list. Other lists will cite films like "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989), which don't feature weed at all. That speaks to the ubiquitous and, to be fair, totally earned association between spaced-out dudes with Cali accents to weed use, as well as to the chilling effect of the Reagan administration's ramp-up in the war on drugs. While PSAs, campaigns in schools and law enforcement practices continued to play up the gateway drug theory and brand weed as the habit of choice for losers and bums, the ubiquity of cocaine in film (on-screen and off, surely) skyrocketed in the '80s.

Be Kind, Rewind

Fast forward to 1993 and things look a little different. Just as critics were grappling with how the '70s nostalgia tingeing grunge music threatened to accelerate us towards a culture incapable of distinguishing real and imagined pasts, weed culture made a multifaceted comeback on-screen. Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" took the crown of "American Graffiti" for Gen-X — a fond, goofy take on what used to be — just a year before Kevin Smith's debut "Clerks" captured a far-more jaded stoner ethos particular to the '90s.



<img src="http://static.digg.com/images/87f4b6c94592464db47b65a897fa2c9a_f05003d176db48f2ae6c485662ed76f4_1_post.jpeg" alt="" />



Jay and Silent Bob, the respectively crass and stoic drug dealers who reappear throughout Smith's early films, are two sides of the same coin. Jay's about as far from an amiable surfer-bro stoner as can be while Silent Bob is self-styled as a wise, observant street philosopher. On the surface they're different, but really they function together as a rejection of earlier stoner stereotypes. Though the characters went on to feature in their own dumbed-down adventure flicks, these earlier appearances served to establish their dual identity as the anti-Cheech and Chong — prickly fuckups who prove to have a better handle on the world than the other aimless Gen-Xers in their orbit.

Most people who've seen Smith's early films found them through the home video market, which helped repopularize stoner movies. In the '70s fans of Cheech and Chong's comedy albums played them over and over again — now they could do the same with "Up In Smoke" or modern stoner movies like "Clerks." As had happened with horror movies in the '80s (i.e. how we ended up with so many "Friday the 13th" films), the second commercial life granted to films by home video releases made lower budget stoner-friendly movies a viable option for indie filmmakers and risk-averse studios alike. Though it had quietly receded a decade earlier, the genre's commercial potential was rejuvenated and ready for more shake-ups.

After Ice Cube's acting debut in "Boyz n the Hood," he continued his Hollywood career by writing and starring in the stoner comedy "Friday." On top of being financially successful enough in theaters and video to spawn two sequels, "Friday" launched the feature directing career of F. Gary Gray, who went on to direct "Straight Outta Compton" and "The Fate of the Furious." Spurred by the reception of "Friday," other production companies forged ahead with stoner movies starring black men. Universal Studios distributed both "Half Baked," Dave Chappelle's first starring film role, and "How High" starring Method Man and Redman.

The emergence of black-led stoner movies in '90s speaks to gradual progress in media representation, but this was still the era of sensationalist crime scares tied to racist dog whistling. Black citizens are arrested for possession of weed at four times the rate as whites despite equal usage to this day.

In 1996, California became the first state in the US to legalize marijuana for medicinal usage. Politically, that was the biggest leap stateside towards destigmatizing weed until Washington and Colorado voted to legalize recreational use in 2012, and in the interim between those two milestones stoner culture morphed yet again: The three US presidents spanning that time all admitted to having tried weed (well, Clinton sorta did). Stoner movies continued to move further away from the early stereotypes and limited representation of old. 2000's "Saving Grace" centered on a middle-aged white British woman who starts growing pot to settle her debts. 2004's "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle," starring John Cho and Kal Penn, two second-generation Americans. Somehow, even though the second film in the "Harold & Kumar" series riffs on Guantanamo Bay, Penn went on to serve in the White House Office of Public Engagement during the Obama administration. "Super High Me," a popular documentary by comedian Doug Benson that riffed on Morgan Spurlock's dubious fast-food obesity spotlight "Super Size Me," argued against the notion of negative long-term health effects related to weed.



<img src="http://static.digg.com/images/b3c6ecbc353142479cc4a5526da98a21_f05003d176db48f2ae6c485662ed76f4_1_post.jpeg" alt="" />



Eventually the pendulum swung back — the white dude weed movies of Seth Rogen and James Franco feel more like a throwback to the '70s than their '90s counterparts — but weed's political acceptance and permeance in pop culture marched forward without the help of movies. Not since 2008's "Pineapple Express" has there been a big studio feature about weed that isn't a sequel or follow-up from creators known for being stoners. The last "Harold & Kumar" came out in 2011, Snoop Dogg released a direct-to-DVD stoner movie in 2012… look around and you'll see the stoner movie has basically died out.

And Then Peak TV Happened

That brings us to the part of the article that's technically outside of its purview: stoner movies have been usurped by stoner TV. Both the changes in weed's cultural acceptance and the monumental shifts in studio filmmaking over the last decade mean the small screen is the place for contemporary depictions of weed on-screen.

Nowadays "stoner" is hardly an interesting trait to build entire characters around on its own. References to weed and high-person antics alone aren't enough to garner interest from audiences who (1) already have a library of old stoner movies to watch and (2) quite likely have legal or dead-simple access to weed. In all but the most conservative parts of the US, weed has lost its transgressive reputation. It's just a thing that some people do.

Films at the scope and budget of older stoner movies have either disappeared entirely or are now the domain of streaming services, and without the budget to attach a big name star or a loyal fanbase willing to crowdfund the feature, there's simply less interest going around in the studios. So sure, we might get a throwback movie like "Super Troopers 2" once in a while or a one-off like this year's "Gringo" (where a legal weed "pill" is little more than a MacGuffin), but it seems unlikely we'll see another wave of stoner movies without major changes in weed's place in culture and in the filmmaking business.

Hence the newfound prevalence of weed on the smaller screen, where budgets are tinier, characters are developed over the course of multiple seasons and weed's role in the show can shrink or expand as needed. There were years of wink-nod implicit references to weed on "That won't '70s Show." Next came Showtime's "Weeds," a dramedy that lasted for over 100 episodes. One of the earliest break-out clips from "Broad City's" run on Comedy Central concerns secreting away weed in "nature's pocket." Like, half of VICELAND's programming is about weed.

In the last few years we've been blessed to have both Donald Glover's "Atlanta" and "High Maintenance" from Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfield, which are less about weed culture than they are about modern life in two of the biggest cities of the US. While your average stoner film of old wouldn't dare to address weed in a manner that verges on serious, these shows have tackled mandated drug tests and desperate self-medication in ways that are both funny and socially thoughtful. Now that weed is more commonplace than ever, having nuanced cultural depictions of weed on television is far more valuable than, say, a "Pineapple Express 2."

So, if you don't have the time to kick back and enjoy a movie off the list above, pick an episode of "Atlanta," "High Maintenance" or "Broad City" and reflect on how much progress has been made towards normalizing and decriminalizing weed. After that, look up who's running for office in your area and what their position on weed is. Figure out where they stand on forgiving past offenses. Be informed. Vote.

Progress towards a better tomorrow isn't made by sitting around watching movies and TV. Isn't that what people have been telling weed smokers for years?​