Editor’s note: We originally published this interview with Oliver Tree in 2020, around the release of his debut album “Ugly Is Beautiful.” Oliver Tree Nickell passed away on June 14, 2026, at 32, one of six people killed when two helicopters collided over Rio de Janeiro. He was traveling on his World’s First World Tour. In the conversation below, which ran as he was breaking out, he talked about cannabis as the engine of his creative life, his years dealing and trimming flower in Santa Cruz and the persona he built to pull people toward his music. He called “Ugly Is Beautiful” his last album and said he was done as Oliver Tree. He wasn’t. He went on to release three more, including “Love You Madly Hate You Badly” this past April. We’re republishing the interview as we first ran it, in his own words, to remember him.

For Oliver Tree, having a hand in every aspect of his career is vital. He enjoys wearing the many hats required to maintain a successful career as a recording artist and budding filmmaker. When we connect by phone, he’s a week away from releasing his debut album, “Ugly is Beautiful,” a body of work that is introspective, reflective and intelligently fun. Behind the work is a creator who is not only extremely self-aware of his comedic persona and role as an entertainer, but a man who has built his career on entertaining himself first.

Before we dive in, I’d read that you made the music video for “Bury Me Alive” for six bucks. Is that true?

Oliver Tree: Truth is, I wasn’t even planning on shooting a video. I was actually shooting some promotional pieces for the album and had built prosthetics out of this play doh material. We’d spent a lot of time making them and thought they looked pretty crazy. We had the camera, the story cam gear, and were at a location that had incredible train tracks outside. I was like, “Fuck it, let’s just drop a camera on me and shoot a one-shot-take video,” and I just choreographed things as I went. It was purely spur of the moment and I just kept doing it until it became what you see in the final video.

The sirens at the end of the video – were those added or were they real?

Oliver Tree: There was no production, just me and my two friends filming illegally. It’s three in the morning and I’m just screaming the lyrics, trying to get what we needed as quickly as possible. Someone from the complex was yelling at me from inside the building and I’m pretty sure they called the cops because we ended up getting a pretty fat ticket. I guess the cost [of production] was a little more [than six dollars] if you consider the ticket, but that’s not really part of the budget because there was no budget.

Ultimately, you used what you had around you and crafted something pretty awesome.

Oliver Tree: That’s what quarantine teaches us to do. You have to get creative with what you have. [The experience] proved to me that with a good enough idea, you can execute a strong video. This video that cost me six dollars ended up being more successful than videos I’d spent one-hundred-grand on. And that’s the funny part. You can have all the money in the world, but that’s not going to make a better product sometimes.

I’m ultimately using [music videos] as opportunities as a director to make a scene from an action movie. I’m not really thinking about it like, “How do I make the best promotional piece for my album?” It’s more, “How do I make a crazy fucking scene from a movie that no one’s ever seen before?”

And it  just so happens there’s a music album behind the video.

Oliver Tree: Exactly. Truth is, I only signed a major label record deal so I could get the money to subsidize my vision as a filmmaker. I was signed to an indie label before and it didn’t end up working out. I wasn’t able to afford any of my visions. It was the kind of thing where signing with a major label was a necessity based on what I want to do as a visual artist. The beautiful thing is, I found a cheat code which allows me to use the key from one castle to open the door to another castle. Taking a piece of the music industry and using it to open doors in the film industry.

Is it accurate to say film has been your grand vision?

Oliver Tree: Neither [music nor film] are the main thing, but this is my last album. As Oliver Tree, I’m completely done. This project is over. It’s a fucking incredible album, I spent five years making it, and I don’t need to do anything else. It’s already the best it can be and I’m going to leave it at that. I’m planning to segue over to film now. I’ve been working on screenplays during this COVID period and I’ve been working on building out my own production company. I’m trying to do as much as I can to move myself out of the music industry and into film.

But how did you initially focus on music?

Oliver Tree: Let me first start by saying that my parents met in music class. They were both flute players, but the class got cancelled, so they would go up in the trees at school and play flute. That was the setup to me growing up in an incredibly musical household. 

Every type of instrument covered our walls. There was a piano to bang on. There were guitars. Everything. My parents forced me to play piano at the age of three and I fucking hated it. At the age of six, I was like, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” and stopped. They were like, “Okay, we’re glad you tried it, if you don’t like it, we respect that.” The next year, I’m seven and I go to this guitar shop – Starving Musician – in Santa Cruz where I grew up. I’m playing some of the guitars there and I find this mini Pignose guitar, which has a built-in amplifier that creates distortion within itself. It basically allowed me to play something that sounded like rock, which was my fucking dream. For some reason, distortion always spoke to me, and looking back now, I can see that’s the origin of me as a real rocker. I ended up saving every penny in my piggy bank and bought that fucking guitar, which was a pivotal turning point where I realized this was something I wanted. I wanted to play music for me.

Have you always been conscious to craft narratives within your work?

Oliver Tree: I’ve been filming stupid videos with my friends since I was a kid and I’ve been making music and songs the same way. The sole purpose was to entertain myself. Instead of playing video games, I was making videos and songs. It was just something I naturally gravitated toward, so I just continued to build my skill sets.

At a certain point, you start to have people reach out and offer job opportunities and things like that. In a lot of ways, you start to find that these paths choose you. I didn’t pick to be a musician. A record label reached out to me to sign me. Even though it didn’t go well, I couldn’t stop making music. Even if I wasn’t getting paid, I couldn’t stop making music. And that’s when you know that’s your role. You can’t help it. Eventually, I found the right support system to help me share my art and give positive messages to people to help them get through this fucked up world that we live in.

I am a storyteller first and foremost. I have stories to tell. Whatever means through which I tell those stories, whether it’s through music, film, performance art, through the way I present myself and conduct myself, through interviews and things like that – they’re all ways for me to tell my stories and ultimately set up a mirror in front of society to look at how ridiculous we are and how ridiculous things have become.

To that end, how did you end up crafting your look and persona?

Oliver Tree: It came out of necessity after failure. I’d spent ten-plus years making music and nobody gave a fuck. My first record career had failed and when I ran out of money, I started trimming weed to make a living. I was back to being a normal Joe, you know? Making as much art and crazy shit as I am now, just without any of the support or financing. My image was created to pull people to my music.

I started working with some of my other artist friends and ended up having this opportunity to shoot my first music video that would end up on MTV. It was my first chance of being seen by millions of people. I was like, “Okay. How am I going to separate myself on MTV? Am I going to try and look “hot” like everybody else and sell sex, or am I going to try and stick out like a sore thumb?” I basically pulled together all these parts of my life that were ridiculous, unique elements I thought were cool as a child and built an outfit around them. I went with the bowl cut, the jacket I took from my mom’s closet that my aunt gave her in the eighties, the pants that I always wanted, and sunglasses I would wear as a kid. It made me feel cool. All these things were authentic to myself and my life, but I turned it up a few notches.

Anyway, I showed up to the shoot as the feature on the song and everyone literally looked right through me. It was crazy. My friend from highschool couldn’t even recognize me. When he finally realized it was me he was like, “Bro, we gotta film some Vines.” This was my friend Getter, who was part of the “suh dude” movement with his roommate, Nick Colletti. He filmed these Vines of me in the outfit and they started getting millions of plays, so I started testing out all these different characters. Some of them were even more obnoxious and some were borderline offensive, so I had to learn what was appropriate and constantly reevaluate. I found that my current look specifically was the one that continuously would get millions of plays, even on my rinky-dink Vine account that only had twenty-thousand followers. I had found a look that had cut through the Internet. I had created a thumbnail that was clickbait. Even if he’s obnoxious and annoying, he’s still the most lovable of all these characters I’d made. The [current one] was the one that resonated the most on a cultural level.

So I said, “Fuck it. No one is listening to my music. This image can be a vehicle to pull people over to it and finally give them a chance to hear it.” It goes way beyond making art. Making art is the action of what you do as an artist, but promotion of art is probably eighty-percent of what you do. I just found a way to promote [my music] in a way that could make the promotion itself art. I was able to justify spending eighty-percent of my time promoting because the promotion was just as much art as the music itself. [The promotion] might not have had the same impact a song might have had, but it was a way to pull people to a song.

You discovered one hand could sort of feed the other in a way.

Oliver Tree: Ultimately, what I think I’m doing here is devising a blueprint that allows artists to do every single thing under the sun creatively as one project. The beauty of it is, I can wear one outfit, which allows me to be able be in a fucking random skit on a comedy video and be the same project and the same character in this world where I’m making super serious music that’s lightyears away from [the look]. Creatively speaking, I can do anything I want, and still have it fit under the banner of Oliver Tree.

What went into crafting your specific voice and style?

Oliver Tree: It’s taken almost twenty years to develop my vocal style. For people who think my voice sounds annoying right now, you should have heard it when I was recording at age seven. It’s one of the most awful sounds you can imagine. But that only proves that anyone can be a singer. Anyone with working vocal cords has the potential to be a voice for their generation. For the first five years I was making music, I couldn’t listen to myself. Five years. Can you imagine? I knew there was something unique and special about my voice, but [at the time] it sounded like shit. I kept refining it and refining it and learned how to find all of these different ranges. I was also able to discover these different characters that existed within myself, and I studied groups like Gorillaz – one of my biggest influences – who had all these different genres and voices. They’ve done a great job marrying different sounds together through genre fusion. Their early albums lay a blueprint for how you can mix all of these different styles and I just took that blueprint, expanded on it with modern techniques and applied it to my own stories.

If you look through my songs, sometimes it sounds like three different voices on there. When I was learning how to explore my voice and find other characters within myself, me and my piano player – Casey Mattson – would do these psychedelic sessions where we wouldn’t sleep for a week and would just stay up and make music nonstop. During this time, we’d drink pu erh tea and smoke an endless amount of joints. We’d put on different outfits and set up the lighting for different moods so that each time I went up on the mic, it would be a different experience. Sometimes I’d be channeling a forty-year-old emo man, or another time I’d be channeling a twelve-year-old girl. That was the way I learned to pull some of these voices out of myself and into the music. It’s about channeling. I don’t try to mimic based on things I hear, I channel a character and let them do the singing for me.

Ninety-percent of the music I write is improvised. It’s not actually written. I just go into the booth, improvise, and let the music write itself. I’m at a place now where I’ve found sixteen voices and characters within me. It’s a jazz approach that allows you to capture a moment instead of trying to create a moment. Every lyric, every single melody you hear from my voice is entirely by me. I don’t let anyone else get involved in that because I want it to be the one thing that’s pure about Oliver Tree. Otherwise, you start having all these other people’s stories being told. There’s only one feature on “Ugly is Beautiful,” and that’s Little Ricky ZR3. This guy is the fucking future and is my favorite artist. For some reason, his music really connects with me and I think he’s going to be the biggest artist on the planet in a few years.

Ultimately you have to tell a story that’s authentic and true. It helps to pull from your own experience, and after I’ve established enough of an idea that’s worth singing on, I go into the booth and just let it rip.

Does weed play a role in your creative process?

Oliver Tree: Weed is a huge part of my existence. It’s like my coffee. I don’t drink coffee but I smoke weed from when I start my day until when I go to sleep. I’m not advocating that lifestyle, but for me, because of my body chemistry, weed has the effect of a stimulant. It doesn’t make me sleepy, it actually makes it harder for my brain to shut off. But that’s a really nice advantage when you’re making art all day and need to have something to help you persevere. In some ways, weed has helped me reach my potential creatively. If I have these moments when I’m feeling low energy, smoking boosts me back up to keep creating. So for me, smoking weed is every step of the process. I’m smoking weed while I’m writing the music. I’m smoking weed while I’m recording the music. I smoke weed while I’m mixing the music and I smoke weed during the entire mastering process.

Weed helps me chill during chaos. When you’re traveling the world, never having stability, constantly staying up and functioning on only three hours of sleep, weed is something that can help you have those moments of down time during your day to breathe and just chill the fuck out so you can go back into the chaos with a level-headed mindset.

By the way, did you say earlier you used to trim weed?

Oliver Tree: Yeah, that was how I was able to stay alive financially. My good homie and bass player at the time let me trim for him. I ended up doing that to keep afloat while my recording career failed. But I’ve had huge connections to cannabis my entire life.

Growing up in Santa Cruz, I’d steal weed from my parents, and all through high school I was a really good weed dealer. My mom knew I sold, but I explained it to her this way: I said, “Mom, don’t think of me as a weed dealer, think of me as an entrepreneur.”

At a certain point, I was the only weed dealer at school. It was crazy. I would sell weed in the bathrooms, handing nugs beneath one stall to the other stall. One time, I slid the weed under a stall and the kid was just sitting on the toilet and didn’t take it. I was like, “Does it not look good to you? Is it not enough? What’s up?” Whoever it was, didn’t respond. I heard them leave the stall and then another person came in and they grabbed the weed. I realized I’d slid weed over to some random kid taking a shit.

[Dealing] was a big part of me learning how to run a business. Having a business background became extremely beneficial later on when it came to building companies, starting touring entities, starting recording and publishing companies, production companies – all which utilized skills I learned from my early days as a weed dealer in Santa Cruz.

It sounds like all of your experiences – both in art and business – happened  very organically.

Oliver Tree: It’s cool to be able to understand that the number one pitfall in both music and art is commerce. But the bigger pitfall is that artists are never really taught about business in art. I went to CalArts School for two years and they didn’t teach me a single business class. There wasn’t even one available. That’s fucking insane. People are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to a school that doesn’t even teach them the idea of business, when it’s business that allows you to survive as an artist. To not teach artists about commerce-in-art is extremely detrimental, not only to an artist’s survival, but to the execution of their creative endeavors. Making art on a commercial scale costs a lot of money, so earning how to find – and work with – investors and patrons plays a massive part in that process.

And it succeeds for you – in large part I imagine – because of the dichotomy between your more comical persona and the more serious subject matter of your content.

Oliver Tree: I never try to make the music funny. Paired with my character, it shows you the duality of people. It shows you to never judge a book by its cover. What you see on the outside isn’t usually the vulnerable person within. On a surface level, my album “Ugly is Beautiful” is about teaching people not to judge a book by its cover and to learn how to love themselves and the imperfections within themselves. By me presenting myself the way I do, I can show that message through my actions instead of by preaching to people. I can show people that you can be loved by being who you are and looking the way you look. But the album also goes much deeper, teaching how to accept who you are as a person and accepting where you’re at in life.

There’s so much hatred in this world because people hate themselves and hate their lives. They can’t look at themselves in the mirror, need to have something going on at all times, or constantly need other people around them. People are so sick with hatred that it manifests externally, which is why we’re living in such a fucked up society.

I’ve learned to love myself and how to accept who I am. I’ve learned my flaws are what made the DNA of the character of who I am today. “Ugly is Beautiful” is about coming to a place within yourself where you have finally arrived.

Follow @Olivertree and check out his debut album “Ugly is Beautiful” available everywhere

<p>The post Oliver Tree Deals Art: Remembering The Late Singer Through His 2020 High Times Interview first appeared on High Times.</p>

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This article was originally published in the September 2020 issue of High Times Magazine. Subscribe here!

Contemporary Storytelling

The arrival of film caused the world to change in drastic ways. It created a whole new way to tell stories, giving birth to a new type of fame and talent that has turned into one of the most popular ways to consume entertainment to this day. Film connected people to famous stories of the future with Metropolis, introduced horrific tales in Frankenstein and King Kong, and created fantasy in ground-breaking animation in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Film is the reason that man was able to witness astronauts walking on the moon (or a fake recording, if you’re one of those people). Human history is saved in vibrant technicolor, black and white, and 4,000K, thanks to the advances of technology. 

There have been so many unique advances in film that we would be remiss without focusing on the topic that is nearest and dearest to our hearts—marijuana. Just as the industry has evolved from its underground, black market roots, so too is that transition documented in the various films that focus on or mention Mary Jane. Here is the evolution of cannabis in film. 

The Devil’s Lettuce

The history of film is rich in facts. The earliest motion pictures first made their appearance around the conclusion of the 19th century. These films varied in length and experimentation, and the art of the silent film officially ended in 1927, when the first film to add sound received the title of “talkie.” Adding music and later, dialogue, to these films took the world by storm. It was only about one decade later that weed made its not-so-sparkling debut in the infamous film, Reefer Madness in 1936. “Drug-crazed abandon” and “Women cry for it—men die for it!” lined the film’s release posters—and the film became the poster child for over 70 years of stoner stereotypes. Featuring illegal underground market sales, underage consumption (and negatively impacted youth), rape, and murder, Reefer Madness created a fictional story that viewers saw as fact. 

It isn’t a secret that cannabis was once used in some early 20th century medicines, but by the time the 1930s hit, the plant was prohibited by over 30 states. By 1937, the United States began its prohibition on cannabis with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. With that regulation, which was written by well-known prohibitionist Harry Anslinger, all cannabis (including hemp) became illegal to possess and sell. Reefer Madness set the foundation of expectation for cannabis as a negative act, specifically when it comes to fostering fear in those who had never tried it, and demonizing those who had.

Nearly 20 years later, High School Confidential hits theaters. In 1958, the stoner stereotypes were as strong as ever. The film revolves around an undercover cop who infiltrates high school students to uncover the presence of narcotics. Films that include narcotics usually emphasized as heroin, cocaine, or other harmful Schedule I substances—but in High School Confidential, the main focus is on marijuana. This view of marijuana as a drug is naïve in and of itself, but it successfully perpetuates negative connotations that come with consumption.

It’s a Lifestyle, Man

In 1969, the view of marijuana and the portrayal of drugs matured. Easy Rider is one of the first films to portray a bevy of drug use, which includes but is not limited to cocaine and LSD, and alcohol abuse as well. It follows the story of two motorcyclists delivering cocaine across the border and enjoying the various substances at their disposal. Having been released in the midst of the Vietnam War (which didn’t conclude until 1975) and at the end of the “free love” decade of hippies and rise of cannabis advocates, Easy Rider still perpetuated the idea that only bad people do drugs, as well as highlighted the negative consequences of those actions.

Things begin to change once the 1970s hit. Cannabis became paired with satire and parody in film for the first time with the animated adult film, Fritz the Cat (and coincidentally received the first X rating by the Motion Picture Association of America). It featured Fritz, whose journey mimics the freethinking radical college students of the 1960s. Its mature content included profanity and sex, but most importantly, marijuana use. It was a trailblazer in its time, not just because it satirized the stereotypes of cannabis consumption, but it built the foundation for adult animated entertainment that we see today in the form of shows like The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy.

The year 1978 may begin to ring a bell for longtime readers. With the foundation of Fritz the Cat blazing the trail for comedy, up comes along Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong with their debut film, Cheech and Chong: Up In Smoke. The duo made history introducing its characters as banner men of the counterculture that was developing, having worked together for somewhere around 10 years before a movie was released. While it also preserved the stoner stigma (if not strengthening it), Cheech and Chong: Up In Smoke played out the adventure of the stoner buddies beautifully. It gave stoners an anthem to support recreational cannabis use, not to mention an identity they could finally get behind as a culture.

Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke and Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie, released in 1980 and 1981 respectively, helped the comedy counterculture identity thrive. Once the 1980s hit, and success was found in the stoner film, other films went into production as well. It was suddenly very popular to portray marijuana consumption as comedic antics. 

Fast Times at Ridgemont High followed closely after Cheech & Chong’s third film, released in 1982. It’s a typical coming-of-age tale of students in high school, one of which is described as both a stoner and a surfer (played by Sean Penn). The stereotypical “stoner” persona really took form in this movie, as well as many others that released in the ’80s. Usually male and still in their youth, the stoner has been notoriously categorized as lazy or a distraction to others—however, this never stops them from having fun and enjoying life in a stress-free and relaxed manner. By 1989, the stoner characters were well established, and were even represented in films without any direct cannabis references. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure plays off this approach to the stoner archetype. Dazed and Confused (1993) follows the same coming-of-age recipe as Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Broadening the Stereotype

Then in the mid-1990s, the most famous stoner films began to exhibit some diversity. With Friday (1995) and Half-Baked (1998), these films shifted the now-predictable narrative of the life of a stoner, which was typically presented only as white males. Friday featured famous Black actors and showed various types of cannabis consuming personalities. For example, Craig Jones, played by Ice Cube, was an intelligent, serious, relaxed, and yet jobless consumer, while his cousin Smoky, played by Chris Tucker, was a high-energy consumer who was holding down a real job. Later, stoner comedy How High (2001) continued to add Black representation with Method Man and Redman as the lead actors. Then the world was introduced to some Indian and Asian representation of weed humor in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004). This is a small but monumental shift in the stoner meta, which has continued to evolve. 

In 2007, one of the first stoner films to feature a female star (as played by Anna Faris) was seen in Smiley Face. This was just the beginning. Portraying marijuana consumers as anybody, rather than just white males, became a major statement in convincing skeptical non-consumers that medical and recreational cannabis is for everyone. 

But in the 2000s and onward, diversity in stoner comedies was still followed by movies whose main characters fit the traditional stoner that goes back decades in film. Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000), Clerk’s II (2006), Grandma’s Boy (2006) all portrayed an evolving version of the white stoner characters and adventures. In 2007, the film Knocked Up displayed the stereotyped stoner of a man who gets a woman pregnant, but in the end he realizes that having a family means ditching his “bad” habits (marijuana use, among other daily things). Stoner films were beginning to recognize their characters as real people making real decisions, rather than pure stoners having fun on adventures with few consequences. Again, it must be reiterated that the evolution of stoner films has changed at this point, but there is and always will be new renditions of stoner film adventure. 

The Tipping Point

Things began to change drastically following the states that began to legalize recreational cannabis. The first of these are apparent in Colorado and Washington in 2012, followed by Alaska and Oregon in 2014, and so forth. Cannabis was becoming a national topic in the US, and people’s opinion of the herb was changing at a rapid pace. Cannabis in film took a sharp turn, from the stoner film hero to real life heroes instead. One of the first notable cannabis documentaries, entitled Weed, came out in 2013. Featuring CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta, this documentary validated cannabis as medicine, as seen through the life of young Charlotte Figi who was experiencing near-miraculous improvements in her daily seizures by taking medical cannabis oil. Advocates had been crying out for easier access to medical cannabis for the sake of children and adults alike, but it took the recognition of a national health officer to spread the word—ditching the stereotypes completely and recognizing cannabis for its merits, which Gupta witnessed firsthand.

Cannabis has blossomed into being worthy of film festivals in recent years as well. Like all film festivals, it features the unique talents and vision of filmmakers that share cannabis as a common ground. This resulted in a number of short films and full-length films that explored what cannabis is and what it means to smoke cannabis and experience its unique effects. A cannabis film festival was featured in California for a few years. The SPLIFF Film Fest is still happening this year—stuck at home style! The New York City Cannabis Film Festival was active for many years, while the Colorado International Cannabis & Hemp Film Festival has been operating for four years, and the show continues. 

Stoner Comedies Live On

In the last decade, comedy stoner films are still easily recognized and will never cease being made, but the plots at least have been changed. Using a fill-in-the-blank description, comedic stoner films have turned into “What if we make a stoner film but…” Your Highness (2011) fits the bill perfectly, featuring a stoner comedy that takes place in a medieval setting. Want a stoner film with zombies? Enter Bong of the Dead (2011). How about a stoner film where the main character’s teddy bear comes to life, and—wait for it—is also a stoner. We’re looking at you, Ted (2012). 

Reboot films have also been very prevalent within the past two decades or so, and some of the most iconic stoner films aren’t exempt from that. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019) hilariously approaches the idea of characters Jay and Silent Bob losing the rights to their own characters. Just last month, Bill & Ted Face the Music released, completing a Bill & Ted film trilogy.

Beyond the Funny

While the use of cannabis still shows up in a lot of comedies, more recently we’ve seen marijuana films branch out into other genres. Star Leaf (2015) brought us a cannabis-centric horror/sci-fi/thriller movie. The plot involves a war veteran who finds extraterrestrial marijuana that can treat his PTSD. Another shining example of a cannabis film that doesn’t need comedy is The Marijuana Conspiracy (2020), which is categorized as a drama that is based on a true story. Based in 1972, this movie tells the story of women who were isolated for almost 100 days as part of an experiment studying the effects of marijuana.

More recently, we’ve also seen an increase in the variety of documentaries that broaden the stereotype of who the real-life cannabis consumer is. Rolling Papers (2015) is a documentary that delves into the world of pot journalism as it became mainstream with The Cannabist Editor Ricardo Baca as the main character.

Other non-typical consumers who served as main characters in recent documentaries include the nuns in Breaking Habits (2018). Additionally, Weed the People (2018) shares stories about young children who find miraculous healing through medical cannabis. Another film, A Life of Its Own: The Truth About Medical Marijuana (2017), focused on the compelling science and cutting-edge research behind the plant’s medicinal properties. It’s clear that nonfiction education on the plant through film has helped round out the portrayal of cannabis in society. 

Cannabis Cinema is Here to Stay

We’ve come a long way from the hysteric propaganda stoner movies that were born from the days of early film. Films today include cannabis consumers from all walks of life. What can we expect from the next generation of pot in film? Will cinema eventually evolve to portray cannabis consumers in even more favorable and positive ways? All we know is that once movie theaters reopen, we’ll be the first in line for any type of movie that involves weed. Until then, we’re ready to stream whatever is on the queue.

The post A Sign of the Times: The Evolution of Cannabis in Film first appeared on High Times.

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Cannabis advocate Les Crane was murdered nearly 20 years ago, and a newly announced documentary tells the story and analyzes who might have killed him.

On November 18, 2005, multiple gunshots were heard in Crane’s home in Laytonville, California. At first it was called a home invasion, but over the past two decades, Crane’s closest family and friends who remain believe it may have been law enforcement. “The documentary seeks to unravel the case by interviewing a number of people involved,” a press release published on Kym Kemp. “In addition, it will include footage of law enforcement and cannabis from the time to give the flavor of what was occurring.”

The promotional teaser for Who Killed Les Crane? NorCal Cannabis Murder Mystery includes brief clips from different people who knew Crane, such as Sean Dirlam (the “only surviving witness to the murder of Les Crane”), Tim Blake (local cannabis advocate and founder of The Emerald Cup), Jeremiah Crane (Les Crane’s son), and Jennifer Crane (Les’ widow).

According to Blake, the mid-2000s were a tumultuous time for the cannabis industry. “You had the DEA all over the place, they’re looking for everything, shutting down the indoors, coming after all of us, gauntlet on the road, it was intense,” Blake said. “And here comes this, you know, boisterous, loud guy from the east coast, [with] east coast accent, wanting to all these, you know, things. You know, they were going to take him out,” he said of Crane.

An unnamed speaker in the trailer described Crane as being responsible for growing thousands of pounds of cannabis every season.

Another interviewee, Patrick Duff, described Crane from his own point of view. “He was the one that tried to change the industry before anybody did,” Duff said in the trailer. “He was the one that tried to make the cops honest. His gonads were difficult to fit through a garage door.”

Ever since Crane died, there has been much uncertainty revolving around his murder. Dirlam was in the house when Crane was killed, and described a large individual who entered his room and assaulted Dirlam with a baseball ball while he was still in bed. A 2013 news report from The Willits News stated that Crane was “shot in the back of his head, in the arm and his abdomen,” and that “Dirlam suffered facial injuries.” 

However, both Jeremiah Crane and Jennifer Crane have their suspicions. “The whole thing of them even being alive was suspicious. You know, like, I’m sorry that’s just how it is,” said Jeremiah.

Everyone has their assumptions about the unsolved case. Kym Kemp conducted interviews in November 2022, which marked 17 years after Les was killed. Les’ sister, Laura Smith, claims that he had more than one million dollars on him when he was killed. “From the understanding I had,” she told Kym Kemp at the time. “There was $1.2 million in the safe.” However, Dirlam explained that he handled Les’ money, and that he only had approximately $7,000 in his possession.

Documentary producer Seth Ferranti posted on Instagram about the progress of Who Killed Les Crane? NorCal Cannabis Murder Mystery. “Who Killed Les Crane? will be out later this year from Outlaw Films and director Seth Ferranti. A harrowing trip into cannabis country, the Emerald Triangle, when the War on Drugs was raging, and bodies were dropping left and right. We investigate the murder of pot activist Les Crane, which remains unsolved to this day,” the post stated.

The film is presented by Gorilla Convict and Outlaw Films, which is produced by Ferranti, the same person who wrote and produced the Netflix film White Boy (2017). At the height of his crimes, Ferranti said that he was on the Top 15 U.S. Marshal most wanted fugitive list. Ferranti received a 25-year sentence for trafficking LSD, and took advantage of his prison time to create new purposes for himself. “But despite the unjust sentence, Seth decided to rise above his past and focus on his future. He began building a writing and journalism career from inside the belly of the beast,” Ferranti’s website explained. “With unlimited access to criminals and their stories Ferranti started crafting raw portrayals of prison life and crack era gangsters. Discovering a passion and talent for writing Ferranti also studied the trade earning an associates, bachelors, and masters degree while in prison.”

Ferranti wrote multiple books and published 500 blog entries before he was released from prison after serving his sentence for 21 years. Afterwards he took up freelancing for outlets such as Vice, Ozy, The Daily Beast, Dazed, Merry Jane, and many others, while also creating documentary films including Night Life (2023), Dope Men: America’s First Drug Cartel (2023), and more.

Recently in May, Ferranti also teased the first episode of a documentary called Tangled Roots: The True Story of Humboldt County, which is a four-part series that is slated to release on Amazon sometime this summer. “The legacy of the pioneers of cannabis culture of the past half century has been deeply rooted in the hills and valleys of Northern California, and particularly Humboldt County- America’s Cannabis Heartland. The Napa Valley of the weed game,” he described.

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Trim Season is a horror film with a setup out of a dream. Making a few extra buckets working a beautiful cannabis farm sounds like a sweet deal. For the ensemble in director Ariel Vida’s film, well, that dream becomes a nightmare once they learn their employer is a witch and interested in more than their trimming services. 

That’s all anyone should know about Trim Season before experiencing its horrific and lovely sights. 

The movie is quite a vision, often burning with green in the frame. There’s the beauty of the bud and the farm that gels well with the low-key blood and guts in the atmospheric horror picture. After a successful run at film festivals, Vida and her cast and crew have made a critical darling that’s perfect for those who enjoy bud and horror. 

Recently, Vida spoke with High Times about making her second film, visiting cannabis farms and speaking with trimmers, and going with a do-it-yourself approach. 

[Note: This interview has been condensed for clarity and length] 

I see you have a poster for Tarsem Singh’s The Fall (which all readers should watch). Was that at all an inspiration for Trim Season?

Definitely. It is one of my favorites. Actually, I saw Tarsem had done an interview and he said that he went bankrupt shooting The Fall, and that he would do it all again in a heartbeat. As I’m trying to get my next projects off the ground, I was happy reading that. For him to say he’d do it again, I was sending it to all my friends, and I was like, “When I bankrupt myself for my next film, I’m just doing what my heroes did.” 

[Laughs] Did any other movies influence you for the Trim Season? 

You have these unconscious throughlines and themes and symbols that you will sometimes realize in the moment, but a lot of times it’s not until the hindsight. All of a sudden it clicks where you’re like, “This was totally from a shot in Lord of the Rings.” If you watch something over a hundred times as a child, it’s just going to be baked into you. 

Trim Season is a beautifully shot horror movie, kind of a mix of arthouse and do-it-yourself filmmaking. I imagine the budget and time was limited, so how’d you and the team pull this vision off?

Thank you. That means so much because it was obviously just like any independent film, you’re setting out and there’s the known factors. I’ve designed hundreds of over 200 or something narrative things, usually genre and at night. I would never throw anyone else’s approach under the bus, and it’s always with the best intentions, but I’ve been on sets where it’s like, “Okay, we’ll try to have this one really elaborate VFX gag or something.” Just seeing how many times I’ll tell people like, “Oh no… I’m an optimistic pessimist, but I just thought of the 18 things that could go wrong.” 

We went with a much more DIY approach. [Cinematographer] Luka Bazeli is getting in there with the camera himself and being like, “Okay, it’s raining and there’s a moose we have to shut down, so we can’t use this rig.” We’re going to be really getting in there and pivoting in the moment and embracing these unexpected elements. 

The Sam Raimi-Evil Dead influence is there. Especially how you show people move under a spell. Those handmade elements are charming. 

So Sam Raimi started the MSC film club that I was part of. When I had my screenwriting class, the teacher Bill Vincent would point up and say, “There’s still blood on the ceiling still from one of Sam Raimi’s early films.” 

When the trimmers are moving under a spell, that’s especially very Raimi. 

Our trimmers being manipulated [by magic], that’s practical. 

When did you start talking to trimmers about their experiences? 

For the script, Sean E. DeMott, one of our producers, was working with some of his friends, Cullen [Poythress] and Megan [Sutherland], who had trimmed themselves. And so, the story concept had started with them. Then they had David Blair, an amazing screenwriter, do the first versions of the script. So when they came to me, I already had that amazing well of resources through Megan and Cullen.

Megan actually took myself and our production designer and one of my best friends, Kati [Simon], and walked us through every step to make sure we were accurate. Then Kati and I went up the coast and visited multiple farms. Also, even knowing that we’d be splicing elements from principal photography in Utah, I wanted to make sure the characters when they’re in the van will be seeing the B-roll in Humboldt County. 

What else did you visit? There’s definitely an inherent surrealness to some of these environments. 

That was going back to trying to use these surrealist elements in films like The Fall and Lord Rings. How do you lean into that beauty? Because we were visiting farms. You would stuff, like Netflix’s Murder Mountain, where the opening footage would be these dark, foggy, scary shots. But Kati and I rolled in, and it’s just the most beautiful place. People showed us around – and there were puppies and chickens around – and took us to the coast and showed us whales and lighthouses. I was like, okay, this is what I want to make sure we’re viewing as much as possible. 

How’d you want to get the sound on the farm right?

So Megan was talking about the sounds they would hear at night, and they would be smoking all day and hearing these sounds. They would still be horrifying sounds of other people and needing to go to the bathroom but not wanting to leave your tent all night long. 

I felt like that was also a very crucial way to take a witch script, to take a horror script and have the setting of the cannabis farm not be just this arbitrary dartboard of locations. Like, how can this be a specific thing, these specific witchy powers that actually can lean into slight time dilation when you’re high and you lose a little bit of time, whether things are a little slower, a little faster?

If it’s going to be on a cannabis farm, I want everything to be this slightly hyper-stylized version of what all these trimmers were telling me, like, “Well, we would hear a mountain lion or we would hear this.” I was like, okay, we’re just cranking that slightly into witch land. 

It’s always refreshing to see a horror movie set in a beautiful place. How’d you and your cinematographer really want to capture the beauty up there, especially the rich greens of bud and nature? 

We knew we wanted to lean into these shots of the actual buds and the plants. When Kati and I came back from those farms, I wanted this to be the pure element. It was so apparent from all my calls with Luka ahead of time that we wanted to make sure we were highlighting the beauty. 

Anything that feels like a beautiful featured close-up of bud was separate from the principal photography with the talent. I also am not going to take away from Beth Million’s beautiful performance, like, “You’re doing beautifully, but you can’t have another take because I really want an insert of the bud here.” We had planned to really DIY in my living room. We just had to make sure to move the cat off of my living room table where we’re shooting the inserts of the bud, scales, making sure we had the exact right trimming tools. 

Like you said, you wanted to play with time like you’re high. How’d you want to create that sense of high paranoia? 

Like you were saying, some much of it was these practical Sam Raimi effects, too. 

It wouldn’t work nearly as well without Luca approaching it like you would with specific lenses. I love diopter tricks. The team we had with [our supervising sound editor] Spencer Hall, he had a foley artist go up to Humboldt County just to record. We wanted the birds and everything to be the right sounds. Then from Australia, we had [actress] Jane Badler do witchy chanting sounds and just whispering. It just adds up to that overall unnerving feeling.

Like I was saying earlier, what Megan would tell me about trimming and what you would hear, it’s like you would even hear that even stone cold sober. Obviously, when Kati and I were driving around, we were hearing weird things just behind the wheel. But if you were actually sitting there at night and hearing something that sounds like a mountain lion, Spencers and his [sound team] would go the extra mile of like, “Okay, but it might not just be a mountain lion…” 

Let’s end with the beginning. Do you see yourself, like Tarsem Singh, spending everything you got on a film and never regretting it?

Oh, I think it’s happening this year. 

Okay, good for you. 

I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m in a place where my only dependent is my cat. No one knows what the future holds. It’s a lot easier said than done to just say, “Oh, we’ll just self-fund something.” Really, people will usually say that when they come from a lot more money than I come from. So, to be in this situation where I was developing a two person, one location, but still ambitious and stylized movie… It’s two people on a surrealist dystopian sailboat. 

I already did buy the really rundown sailboat, and they say that nothing’s more expensive than a free boat. They weren’t wrong. Still, I am encouraged by that Tarsem article. I’m just going to go all out. I met so many of these amazing people during Trim Season that I want to work with again. As I try to figure it all out, some people are like, “Well, wait to see as the industry recovers.” Maybe this will be a cautionary article in a few years about a filmmaker who bankrupted herself and got lost at Sea…

What happened to Ariel Vida: The Documentary?

Where’d she go? You never know what things hold. A lot of my other ideas I couldn’t possibly do; they’re weird westerns with lots of stunts. With this one, it’s a couple of people, a very strange world, but mainly a character piece on this stylized sailboat. I’m just going to do it. And if I meet Tarson someday, I’m going to say, “I read that piece where you said that’s what you did for The Fall.” And he’ll be like, “I had a lot more money than you. You just put it on credit cards.” 

Trim Season is now playing in theaters. 

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Blue Dream, Rocket Fuel, Spice, Gas Face, Fatso and more.

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South Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun, known for playing the wealthy father in Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 film Parasite, was found dead in his car on Wednesday morning. Inside the car, parked near Waryong Park in central Seoul, investigators found a charcoal briquette. The briquette, a compressed block of coal that can cause carbon monoxide poisoning, suggests he died by suicide. He was 48 years old.

Lee passed away at the pinnacle of his career. In addition to starring in the Oscar-winning thriller, which earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award alongside his fellow cast members, he also played a leading role in the internationally acclaimed sci-fi film Dr. Brain. His last two films, Sleep and Project Silence – horror and disaster films, respectively – both made it into the 76^th Cannes Film Festival.

News outlets speculate Lee’s suicide may be related to his criminal charges. In October, the actor was arrested by the Incheon Metropolitan Police for allegedly using marijuana and other illegal drugs at the home of a hostess in Seoul’s Gangnam district earlier in the year. Lee’s most recent police interrogation, which took place last Saturday, went on for a shocking total of 19 hours. 

According to an article from Korea Times, Lee said that he was “tricked by the hostess into taking the drugs and that he did not know what he was taking.” He had tested negative for a reagent test and a lab-based drug test from Korea’s National Forensic Service, and submitted a polygraph lie detector test at the insistence of his lawyer. 

The Korea Times article also states that, before his death, Lee filed a complaint against the hostess and one other, seemingly unknown person, “accusing them of blackmail and swindling him out of money.” When the actor was first taken in for questioning on October 28, he said he was “sorry for my family, who are enduring extreme pain at this moment.”

In an apparent suicide note addressed to his wife Jeon Hye Jin, which was published by the Korean channel TV Chosun the following day, Lee wrote he “cannot do anything else, there is no other way but this.” Relaying a message to his agents, he added that “the financial penalties for breaching advertising and movie contracts are overwhelming. I am sorry.” 

Although the motivations for Lee’s suicide remain the subject of debate, journalists link the event to the Korean government’s ongoing crackdown on recreational drug use. This crackdown began in April, when conservative president Yoon Suk Yeol announced a “war on drugs” and created an 840 person-strong department to help him wage it. 

New laws subjecting producers, distributors, and users to prison sentences of up to 10 years in prison have since led to the arrest of over 17,000 people – a number that not only includes other South Korean celebrities like actor Yoo Ah-in and K-pop singer Kwon Ji-yong, but also a group of American army officers accused of shipping in synthesized marijuana through the US postal service. 

The scale and scope of the crackdown is questionable. Included in the government’s list of illegal drugs are not just cocaine, opiates, and methamphetamines, but also soft drugs like marijuana. If South Korea once appeared willing to adopt more liberal drug policies, President Yoon is stirring the country in the direction of zero-tolerance regimes like Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. 

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On the anniversary of Brittney Griner’s release from a Russian prison, ESPN shared that Olympic athlete and WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner will be working with both ESPN Films and Disney to produce a documentary about her story. Griner was detained in Russia in March 2022 for being in possession of cannabis vape cartridges, but after many months of suffering in prison, was eventually released by December 2022.

“The last two years have been the most harrowing, transformative and illuminating period of my life, and I am grateful to be in a place now to share my story with the world,” Griner said. “I’m proud to partner with ESPN and Disney to share this very personal story because of its incredible potential to inspire hope around the world and their proven ability to do just that.”

Griner’s ongoing imprisonment was constantly in the headlines, with frequent updates about her case, including incomplete translations by her Russian/English translator, pleading and being found guilty in court, and being sent to a penal colony in an unknown location. Support came from many sources, such as LeBron James, Dennis Rodman, and President Joe Biden, but few were as prominent as Brittney’s wife, Cherelle. “Throughout BG’s detainment and in the time since, ESPN, ABC and Disney were supportive and caring in regards to the human side of this saga,” Cherelle Griner said. “Love and family were at the center of the fight to get BG home, and with that in mind, there is no better, more trusted partner to tell that story with us.”

ESPN described the story as a scripted series that will be developed by ABC Signature, and will also include an exclusive interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News. Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, and Jon Leibman, Chairman and CEO of Brillstein Entertainment Partners, are executive producers on the project. In a press release, the project was also described as using “exclusive footage and rare archival material” to tell the story.

“Brittney is an exceptional athlete whose hardship and resilience are nothing short of extraordinary,” said Burke Magnus, president, Content, ESPN. “We are thrilled to be working with her to tell the nuances of her story and feel confident that this documentary will captivate audiences everywhere.”

“BG is a hero—across sport, culture, and humanity. We are privileged to serve as a part of her life’s storytelling journey, and to partner with her and Cherelle to bring Brittney’s legacy to audiences worldwide. Through Disney, ABC, and ESPN’s, global wide-ranging TV and film platform, Brittney’s story can be realized and experienced both creatively and realistically.”

“We are honored that Brittney has entrusted us to share her story of hope, faith and determination across our platforms,” said Debra O’Connell, president, Networks and Television Business Operations, Disney Entertainment. “Her unwavering perseverance that helped shape her as an athlete has now influenced her leadership as a human rights advocate.”

There’s no release date for the project at this time, or how prevalent the topic of cannabis will be approached, but she is expected to talk about “her advocacy for the release of other wrongful detainees.”

Marc Fogel, now 62 years old, is another U.S. citizen currently detained in Russia for cannabis possession, having originally been arrested in August 2021. The most recent news reports of Fogel’s imprisonment are from this summer, where Sen. Steve Daines and Sen. Jon Tester petitioned Biden for Fogel’s release. “One of the key differences between Brittney Griner and Mark Fogle’s cases is that less than three months after Griner’s arrest, the State Department classified her as wrongfully detained. Fogle deserves the same justice. And we should be using every tool at our disposal to bring him home,” Daines said, according to the Billings Gazette. “I’ve had the privilege of getting to know some of Mark’s family, some of whom are Montanans. They have been fierce advocates here stateside. But they fear they will never see their brother’s face again, or hear their father’s voice, and we can’t let that happen.”

It’s incredibly important to emphasize that “wrongful detainees” exist both abroad but also here in our own country. There are numerous U.S. prisoners serving sentences for cannabis convictions, a fact that was recently covered by Last Prisoner Project in its State of Cannabis Justice Report. “Justice is not achieved through mere legalization alone but by undoing the harms caused by cannabis prohibition,” Last Prisoner Project announced in October. “Twenty-four states have enacted cannabis-specific record clearance laws, and ten states have enacted cannabis-specific resentencing laws. Our report allows the public to compare, contrast, and learn more about each state’s effort to ameliorate the consequences of cannabis conviction.”

The study covered a large amount of data about prohibition, and a breakdown of each U.S. state’s legalization policies, pardon policies, and an overall grade. Only two states, California and Minnesota, received an A grade, while New Mexico, Maryland, and New York, received a B+. The states that received an F grade included South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, and Wisconsin.

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In Ridley Scott’s historical epic Napoleon, the titular French conqueror, played by Joaquin Phoenix, marches into the deserts of Egypt and orders his soldiers to aim their cannons at the pyramids. The whole scene is a fabrication – one Scott, who directed the equally sensational Gladiator, also starring Phoenix, has already been called out by historians. But even if Napoleon Bonaparte did damage these world wonders, this wouldn’t have been the strangest thing to happen during his excursion into Asia Minor.

The imperial French army invaded Egypt in 1798 after capturing the Mediterranean port of Malta with two purposes: to break up trade routes between India and England, and to establish French rule in the Middle East. Ultimately, Napoleon’s biggest obstacle wasn’t the Egyptians themselves, but their love of hashish – a love that spread to his own soldiers, and which he eventually resolved to ban, thus laying the foundation for Western Europe’s approach to cannabis. 

Rather than forcing their own customs onto the Egyptians, Napoleon urged his administrators to embrace the local culture. French forces, including scholars and scientists, established libraries and research centers to nourish their genuine interest in the many traditions and inventions of the Islamic world. Lacking access to their French wines and liquors, they also learned about hashish, and soon began frequenting the cafés, markets, and lounges where the substance was typically found. 

Legend has it that Napoleon issued a ban on hashish because his soldiers were too stoned to fight, but this is as much of a misconception as Ridley’s film. In truth, hash did not become illegal until after the campaign had come to an end; the ban itself wasn’t implemented by Napoleon, but one of his generals; and its goal wasn’t to protect French citizens against the drug’s “corroding influence,” but exert control over Egypt and Syria by pitting its own citizens against each other.

As Ryan Stoa explains in his article A Brief Global History of the War on Cannabis, written for The MIT Press Reader, hashish in Egypt was “associated with Sufi mystics and looked down upon by the Sunni elite.” The general Napoleon left in charge of Egypt, Jacques-François Menou, saw the hashish ban as an opportunity to kill “two birds with one stone.” In addition to improving a perceived public health problem, the general, married to a Sunni elite, also hoped to earn the respect of his in-laws. 

Issued in 1800, Menou’s mandate is often considered the first drug prohibition law of the modern world. It’s also one of the most uncompromising, prohibiting the cultivation, sale, and consumption of cannabis in one fell swoop. Egyptians weren’t allowed to smoke cannabis itself, nor were they allowed to mix it into their liquor. “Those who are accustomed to drinking this liquor and smoking this seed,” the mandate read, “lose reason and fall into a violent delirium, which often leads them to commit excesses of all kinds.”

The ban, like many other idealistic goals pursued by Napoleon’s administration, didn’t work out. According to Stoa, hashish continued to be grown, traded, and used across Egypt – a practice that, if archeological finds can be believed, dates back as far as 3000 BC. Not only did French soldiers fail to prevent Egyptians from smoking hash, but they also ended up introducing the substance to Western Europe, not unlike some of the American veterans returning from Vietnam. 

The French were no more successful at banning cannabis at home than abroad. In Paris, the open-minded writers and painters that made up the Romantic movement, which rejected the cold-blooded rationality of the Enlightenment in favor of emotion and spirituality, tolerated and at times celebrated the drug that their government was trying to eradicate. They proudly referred to their intellectual circle as the Club des Hachichins, the “Hash-Eaters’ Club” in English. 

Despite pressure from their own government, the Egyptian city of Cairo blossomed into one of the biggest hash markets in the world. Rivaled only by Istanbul, in Turkey, Cairo’s cannabis industry survived well into the late 1800s, when a compounding list of prohibitions, penalties, and crackdowns caused its organizers to search for a new base of operation. Migrating along the coast of Northern Africa, they eventually settled in Morocco, where they remain to this day. 

Hash wasn’t the only cannabis product that played an unlikely role in the Napoleonic Wars, however. Even more important was the hemp plant itself, which could be transformed into bags, rope, cordage, sails, and other materials that are tantamount to waging a successful war. Flourishing trade between England and Russia, Europe’s top hemp producers, was a major concern for Napoleon as he marched his forces into the Russian heartland on their way to Moscow. 

Just as the French Emperor had sought to regulate the consumption of hash, so too did he attempt to gain control over the production of hemp. In the so-called Peace Treaty of Tilsit, signed in 1807, before France’s invasion of Russia, Napoleon actually demanded that Russia’s Czar, Alexander I, cease to do business with Great Britain. No business with Britain meant less hemp, less hemp meant a weaker army, a weaker army meant a greater chance at victory. 

Maybe, if the Czar had accepted these terms, Napoleon would have made it to Moscow after all. 

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With Army of Darkness, Jason X, and Us.

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The feature film American Pot Story: Oaksterdam will have its Hollywood premiere on Thursday, June 29 at the Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles, with festivities planned for the event including an appearance from weed icon Tommy Chong and a Q&A with the film’s directors, Dan Katzir and Ravit Markus. The premiere continues a successful string of screenings for the film about the cannabis legalization efforts of Oakland-based cannabis training school Oaksterdam University, including the world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in January that garnered the prestigious Audience Award for Unstoppable Feature.

American Pot Story: Oaksterdam follows two of the driving forces behind the institution, founder Richard Lee and executive chancellor Dale Sky Jones, over a pivotal decade for both the pioneering cannabis college and the marijuana legalization movement.

“In 2010, we read in the newspaper that a group of activists was saying they’re going to do a legalization ballot measure in California,” director Dan Katzir explains in a virtual interview. “To us, it seemed like the media was laughing at them in their faces treating them as stoners that think they can change a policy that will never be changed.”

Film Documents More Than 10 Years Of Activism

Katzir and Markus followed Jones and Lee’s campaign for Proposition 19, the 2010 ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana in California that captured nearly 47% of the vote. The effort led to the film Legalize It, but the proposition’s failure at the polls gave the film a “sad ending,” says Katzir.

“We didn’t want to end our journey into this world of cannabis activism with that sad defeat,” he continues. “We had a feeling that the story of marijuana policy reform is not over yet, so we decided to do a new film about Oaksterdam, America’s first cannabis school that transformed the entire downtown of Oakland into a hub of marijuana resistance.”

Jones says in a telephone interview that she found it “borderline excruciating” to watch herself on American Pot Story: Oaksterdam when she first viewed the film. But overall, she is quite pleased with the outcome.

“I’m so terribly proud of the story they managed to tell,” she says. “It really did capture the essence of what we were trying to get across.”

To gain support for Proposition 19, the campaign focused largely on how the prohibition of marijuana and the resulting War on Drugs has consumed resources that could be going to other needs including public education. 

“It’s my job to tie, whatever it is you care about to the drug war,” states Jones. “Because I promise, the drug war is only one degree of separation from stealing resources from something you care about, including maybe someone you care about.”

“Once you can start drawing lines of the cost of putting someone in prison versus the cost of putting someone in college or even more importantly, putting them in preschool, it really starts to hit home,” she adds. “And I think that’s what this movie does.”

The film also follows the evolution of Oaksterdam over more than 10 years, including a 2012 raid by the DEA that many blame on the efforts to pass Proposition 19. The film also follows the push to draft a new initiative that resulted in the legalization of cannabis in California in 2016.

Hollywood Premiere This Week

The Hollywood premiere for American Pot Story: Oaksterdam will take place on Thursday, June 29 at the TCL Chinese Theatres on Hollywood Boulevard as part of the Dances With Films festival. Running through July 2, Dances With Film is celebrating its 25th year in 2023, featuring screenings of more than 250 films.

The premiere will be followed by a Q&A with Katzir and Markus and film participants Dale Sky Jones, Jeffrey Jones and actor Tommy Chong. Later, an after-party will be held at Teddy’s nightclub at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel for ticket holders and special guests.

The directors of American Pot Story: Oaksterdam hope the film will be screened at additional events through the summer and have applied to several other film festivals for consideration. They also are vying to be selected by a streaming platform, a process that Katzir says fans can support by following the film on Instagram and Facebook.

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