Hulu’s new anthology 4X20: Quick Hits arrives April 20 with four documentary shorts, including one focused on High Times, Tom Forcade and the magazine’s role in pushing cannabis culture into the mainstream.

Jimmy Kimmel is getting into weed history.

Hulu has released the first trailer for 4X20: Quick Hits, a new anthology series executive-produced by Kimmel that will premiere April 20 with four 20-minute documentary shorts, each focused on a different corner of cannabis culture. The lineup ranges from stoner cinema to pipe culture to one very on-brand piece of this magazine’s own history.

The most relevant entry for readers here is High Times, directed by Kyle Thrash. The short tells the story of High Times magazine and founder Tom Forcade, framing the publication as part outlaw print project, part cultural accelerant and part free-speech provocation. The film follows how Forcade, driven by the Free Press movement, used cannabis smuggling to fund a magazine that would leave a lasting mark on marijuana culture.

That alone is enough to make this more than just another 4/20 content play.

The series as a whole looks designed to map a few of the strange, funny and politically charged roads that helped bring weed culture into the American mainstream. One short, Highly Unlikely, revisits Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and how an unlikely studio comedy became permanently fused with stoner mythology. Another, Bong Voyage, looks at hand-blown glass artist Jason Harris and the federal crackdown on paraphernalia during Operation Pipe Dreams. Then there’s The Legend of Ganjasaurus Rex, which goes deep on a low-budget Humboldt County cult film made as a protest against the War on Drugs.

This is not a series about sleek dispensary branding or legal-market optimism. 4X20: Quick Hits seems more interested in the weirder architecture underneath cannabis culture: the movies, magazines, folk heroes, underground businesses and acts of creative defiance that helped shape the thing before it became a licensing category and a corporate pitch deck.

Kimmel put it this way: “Christmas has a whole cable channel dedicated to holiday programming. For 4/20, we made four 20-minute-long documentaries for those who celebrate with trees of a different kind.”

That line tells you pretty clearly what kind of package this is. It knows the holiday, knows the audience and knows not to overcomplicate the premise. Still, the High Times segment may end up carrying a little more historical weight than the average 4/20 programming drop. Any serious look at cannabis culture in America eventually runs into this magazine, and into Forcade, whose contradictions were big enough to power several lifetimes of media mythology on their own.

4X20: Quick Hits premieres April 20 on Hulu, with all four shorts dropping at once. A conversation with director Kyle Thrash is in the works.

<p>The post Jimmy Kimmel Made a Weed Doc for Hulu. Of Course High Times Is In It first appeared on High Times.</p>

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The old stoner-comedy blueprint is still here in Pizza Movie. It just gets pushed through panic, psychedelia and Gen Z chaos until it starts to feel new again.

There was a time when the drug comedy had a pretty reliable shape. Someone gets high, something small becomes catastrophic, and the whole movie lives in the gap between how clean the plan was and how spectacularly it all came apart. A burger run. A road trip. A night that should have stayed contained.

The formula still works. It always will. Anyone who’s ever watched a simple errand spiral at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday knows exactly what it feels like from the inside. But Pizza Movie pushes it into something that feels a little less Gen X and a little more Gen Z.

That’s what Pizza Movie understands, and what its writer-directors Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher seem to have built the whole film around. The canon didn’t fail, it just aged. The formula stayed the same while the audiences changed, the pacing changed and the altered states people actually wanted to see on screen changed with them.

Pizza Movie, now streaming on Hulu, follows Jack and Montgomery, played by Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone, two freshmen still trying to figure out who they are, which makes them exactly the wrong, or perhaps the best, people to stumble onto a stash of experimental drugs and decide, against all available evidence, that they should take them.

That setup is stoner-comedy DNA in its purest form: simple objective, bad decision, escalating disaster. What McElhaney and Kocher do with it is something stranger.

Same Setup, Stranger Wavelength

For a long time, stoner comedies had a pretty clear lane, and everyone knew where the guardrails were.

McElhaney and Kocher knew exactly where that lane ran out.

“I’ve always found that at least my experience being high on weed, I’m not seeing anything crazy,” Kocher said. “I’m definitely thinking weird thoughts, but it’s more like I get anxiety from the weed more than anything else.” He went on to say that when they first started developing the idea, weed and cocaine didn’t really offer the same comic possibilities as the shrooms or acid material. “We had a lot of fun with the characters being really high,” he said of older weed comedies, “but I feel like a lot of those jokes have been done.”

It feels less like a rejection of the stoner comedy canon, and more like a reckoning with its limits.

The classic stoner comedy was always lying a little. Weed got depicted as visually chaotic, full of hallucinations and distortions, when the real experience is much more interior, more paranoid, less cinematic. Kocher even joked that when he first did shrooms, his immediate thought was: “This is how weed has been depicted in movies.”

That’s part of what makes Pizza Movie feel interesting. It takes the exaggeration the genre always smuggled in, removes the pretense and just commits to it completely.

Do I Take the Dorm Room Mystery Drugs? Probably Yes.

Rather than anchor the movie to any one real substance, McElhaney and Kocher invented their own.

“When we started talking about this film,” McElhaney said, “the things we wanted to do are things that really aren’t indicative of any drug. They’re just wild things.”

The trip unfolds in phases, each one mutating the genre it’s currently inhabiting. Absurd one moment, edging toward horror the next, then snapping back into comedy, into something almost tender, before you’ve decided how to feel.

Kocher puts it plainly: “If we can make you feel something emotional in the middle of a fart joke, that’s a massive win for us.”

It sounds chaotic on paper, but it mirrors something true about psychedelics: that particular swing between terror and laughter, between the profound and the ridiculous, is part of the texture of a real trip. One minute, everything means everything. The next minute, your brain is trying to digest itself. Then suddenly you’re laughing-crying on the kitchen floor at the absurdity of being a person.

The tonal whiplash is part of both the joke and the design. For a younger audience raised on faster cuts, harder pivots and a more elastic relationship to genre, that rhythm likely feels more natural than the slower burn of older stoner comedies.

Kocher described the pace simply: “We wanted it to feel like a freight train.” It does. Ninety minutes evaporate, but the movie never loses you.

A Cast That Gets the Assignment

The cast helps keep all of this from flying completely off the rails.

Matarazzo gives Jack a sweet, slightly panicked core that keeps the film emotionally legible even when the world around him is actively dissolving. Giambrone’s Montgomery is awkward, overeager and brittle enough to make each new horror feel like it might actually break him. Together, they sell the friendship and the anxiety underneath it: two young guys still in the process of becoming.

McElhaney and Kocher said both characters pull from different pieces of who they were at that age, which, if you were ever nineteen, you recognize. “Trying to find your group,” McElhaney said. “Trying to find comfort in the things you like to do and feel that they’re cool even if you think they’re not.” That uncertainty gives the film a real emotional floor, something it can return to after it detonates its own ceiling.

Lulu Wilson, Peyton Elizabeth Lee and Marcus Scribner fill out the college ecosystem without making it feel like a stock campus comedy. Sarah Sherman adds just the right touch of comic frequency she’s known for as a cast member on Saturday Night Live. And then there’s Daniel Radcliffe, voicing an aggressively unhinged butterfly with the kind of total, unconditional commitment this movie requires from everyone in it.

Kocher recalled that when they reached out through mutual friends, Radcliffe came back with “an immediate and enthusiastic, hell yes, I will play the butterfly in your movie.” McElhaney added that Radcliffe was willing to try the voice every possible way and kept worrying he wasn’t doing enough, which is pretty remarkable given that simply being Daniel Radcliffe and voicing a foul-mouthed butterfly named Lysander already feels like more than enough.

The commitment is the joke, and also the craft, and you can’t separate them. That’s what makes Pizza Movie sing.

The Come-Up Looks Good From Here

That kind of commitment doesn’t come out of nowhere. McElhaney and Kocher have spent the last two decades building toward it. As the sketch duo BriTANicK, they developed a style that runs on escalation, genre-hopping, and absolute commitment to the absurd. Instincts that landed them in writers’ rooms for SNL and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and now fuel their jump into features.

They met at NYU, came up through live shows and internet comedy, and spent years refining the muscle memory this movie flexes. Much of that time, Kocher said, felt like “making secret art.”

You can feel those years in every scene. The movie bends the bit without ever breaking it.

It’s also landing at the right moment. Alongside Pizza Movie, the duo has Over Your Dead Body arriving this same month, two projects dropping simultaneously after years of building toward something bigger. Kocher called it “exciting and overwhelming but mostly just great.” Nothing about this film feels tentative. It feels like two comedy lifers finally getting the runway to go as far as they want.

That’s what makes Pizza Movie land as more than a string of gags. The old blueprint is still there. This one just lets it hallucinate a little harder.

“Pizza Movie”

Synopsis: A shy college student and his reckless roommate set out on a simple mission to grab pizza, but after a strange dose of a mind-bending experimental drug, they’re thrust into a chaotic night of absurd encounters, wild hallucinations and unexpected revelations that could change their lives forever.

Cast: Gaten Matarazzo, Sean Giambrone, Lulu Wilson, Jack Martin, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Marcus Scribner, Caleb Hearon, Sarah Sherman, Justin Cooley, Kevin Matthew Reyes, Adam Herschman and Lucas Zelnick.

Credits: The film is produced by American High’s Jeremy Garelick and Will Phelps and All Things Comedy’s Billy Rosenberg. Jason Zaro, Molle DeBartolo and Max Butler are also producers. Gaten Matarazzo is an executive producer. The film is written and directed by Brian McElhaney & Nick Kocher.

<p>The post Pizza Movie Takes the Old Stoner Comedy Blueprint and Lets It Hallucinate first appeared on High Times.</p>

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When renowned US film director Paul Thomas Anderson and production designer Florencia Martin visited the Sisters of the Valley farm in California’s Central Valley, they were stunned. They were scouting locations and finding inspiration for their new film, and that work, the lush greenery, those open landscapes, those distant mountains… all that timeless mystique remained etched into their retinas.

“The connection was very organic,” Sister Karina readily acknowledges, amid the renewed attention surrounding One Battle After Another, the Leonardo DiCaprio-starring film that just won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Sister Karina was formerly with the Sisters of the Valley and is now with Sisters of New York, a separate organization with no affiliation or direct relation to Sisters of the Valley.

So who are the Sisters of the Valley? Essentially, an international community of women (and allies) united by a common purpose: to defend women’s sovereignty, honor spirituality, and protect the cannabis plant as sacred medicine. They say it’s not a traditional religious order, but an independent spiritual movement with its own lineage that, they claim, “predates conventional religious structures.”

PTA was already familiar with the work of the Sisters of the Valley and respected the cultural impact surrounding their movement. However, both Anderson and the Sisters of the Valley knew that the farm wasn’t suitable for filming such a production, but they continued the conversation and stayed in contact. There was “something” that drew him to the Sisters… Finally, they were invited to participate in the filming, to bring their ritual elements, and to be part of the ensemble that appears in the scenes filmed at La Purísima Mission State Historic Park in Santa Barbara County.

“It’s a historic site with colonial architecture and expansive grounds, which allowed us to create a larger-scale film set without losing that earthy and spiritual feeling that characterizes our spaces. Although they are different places, they share a similar energy,” explains Sister Karina, who at the time was involved in strategic communication, creative direction, brand expansion, and cultural vision around the Sisters of the Valley.

“From the very beginning, there was a dialogue of admiration and respect for our work and for a living culture that has been developing for ten years since our founding. And that is now reflected, albeit fictionally, on the big screen,” Sister Karina proudly states regarding her contribution to the film. In fact, the presence of the “Sisters of the Brave Beaver,” who are part of the film’s plot, is directly inspired by the Sisters of the Valley. “We were physically on set, acting and becoming part of the living environment that surrounds the story.”

In that sense, the art and production team was extremely careful and meticulous in constructing the space. “Many details and scenes that didn’t make the final cut aren’t directly visible on screen, but they feel palpable in the world built with such detail, so much so that we feel like we’re in such a familiar environment. The way the elements were arranged helped the place evoke the same energy we experience on our farm, only amplified for the screen,” Sister Karina acknowledges.

In One Battle After Another, a fable in which a fallen revolutionary lives in a state of paranoia and must confront his nemesis while searching for his missing daughter, cannabis emerges not only as a visual element, but stands as a living presence. Here, rebellious nature and activism begin to break down barriers. It is there, then, that the Sisters of the Valley truly feel at home. “What we appreciate most is how Paul Thomas Anderson weaves the presence of cannabis into the story organically. Not as a gimmick, but with the same reverence with which we relate to it, as part of a living ecosystem and community,” the activist emphasizes.

Of course, for the Sisters of the Valley, spirituality and the plant are deeply intertwined. Their use of it (including ointments, drops, and capsules) is “an offering of connection, healing, and grounding.” They firmly assert: “It is a sacred plant that has accompanied humanity for centuries as a tool for connection, healing, and expanding consciousness.”

Every step, from seed to harvest, is infused with their prayers, chants, and healing intentions. The reverence with which they cultivate and prepare their medicine is not a symbolic gesture: it is a deep and real commitment that they take very seriously. “Our spiritual practice is not an aesthetic or a trend: it is the heart of our community. Every ceremony, every planting, every harvest, and every preparation of our medicine is guided by the natural lunar cycles and by a deep respect for Mother Earth.”

For all these reasons, seeing themselves portrayed in Anderson’s feature became “a profoundly important experience.” Sister Karina notes that Anderson placed them in the spotlight “with great love and grace,” especially in the scene where Colonel Lockjaw, played by Oscar winner Sean Penn, arrives at the Chupa Cabra Mountains searching for Willa, DiCaprio’s daughter, and while questioning a worker, the man tells him that behind those mountains there is a “group of nuns who grow weed.” Don’t worry, it’s not a spoiler, just a hint. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}

“We couldn’t have been in better hands. This nod in the film feels almost like a symbolic reward for having survived ten years in an environment that is constantly changing and that, many times, has tried to wipe us out. For us, it is an honor that our existence has inspired a cinematic universe that opens up conversations. Seeing it reflected in some way in a work of this caliber was a very significant moment.”

Regarding their relationship with PTA — now the Oscar-winning director of One Battle After Another, alongside a superb filmography that includes Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Licorice Pizza — the Sisters of the Valley are deeply grateful and hope their bond continues to flourish. “For us, this gesture means much more than an on-screen appearance: it’s a symbolic recognition of a history of resistance, autonomy, and faith in what we do,” says Sister Karina. :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}

Meanwhile, this is the activists’ first appearance in a Hollywood-caliber film. They had participated in several documentaries, including Breaking Habits, directed by British filmmaker Rob Ryan, which portrays the genesis of their movement through the story of Sister Kate, its founder, and the path that led her to create it.

Now, they hope to capitalize on all the momentum generated by One Battle After Another, since their visibility “is” their activism. “We’re not your typical nuns. Boom! We’re not worried about media attention, since it’s a tool we use specifically to defend and amplify the voice of the plant, reminding everyone of the sacred connection we share as living beings.”

And, amidst all the lights, ads, and media attention, they hope the audience leaves the theater entertained and, in doing so, that this whole experience becomes a gateway for more people to learn about their work and, specifically, the reason for their existence. “We want people to understand that this fight isn’t just for the plant, but for a shift in consciousness. We want it to be known that our voice is collective, ancestral, and profoundly human,” Sister Karina concludes.

<p>The post How Weed Nuns Helped Shape Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-Winning DiCaprio Epic first appeared on High Times.</p>

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In High Times’ new documentary on Rove, one of cannabis culture’s most enduring rituals gets rebuilt through craft, consistency and modern product design.

In a new film centered on Rove’s latest product, High Times looks past the hype and into a bigger question: what happens when one of cannabis culture’s most enduring rituals gets reworked through precision, consistency and modern design?

The blunt has never needed a rescue story.

It was never some forgotten artifact waiting for the legal market to rediscover it. It never disappeared from the culture, never stopped moving through sessions, songs, smoke circles and long afternoons that turn into evenings without anyone noticing. If anything, the blunt outlasted wave after wave of cannabis reinvention by doing what it has always done best: slowing things down, bringing people together and making the act of smoking feel a little more intentional.

What has changed is the industry around it.

That is the real subject of High Times’ new documentary, which uses Rove’s latest blunt release as a window into a broader shift. On the surface, the film follows a product launch: a thick, glass-tipped, triple-infused blunt built with premium flower, THCA, hash and a premium wrap meant to prolong the smoke and sharpen the experience. But underneath that is a more interesting story, one that has less to do with branding and more to do with what legal cannabis is trying to do to a format that was already iconic long before anyone started talking about consumer packaged goods.

The blunt, in other words, is entering its precision era.

That does not mean it is losing its soul. At least, not necessarily.

In the documentary, that tension comes through early. There is a clear respect for the blunt as a cultural object, not just a delivery system. One speaker describes it in the simplest possible terms: something meant to share, something meant to keep people together longer than a joint might. Another recalls first smoking blunts with family, remembering a room full of smiling, giggling people and the kind of loose, suspended time that tends to follow good weed and good company. There is even a love story in there, one built on meeting before school to smoke blunts together.

That part matters.

Because if you strip the blunt down to potency alone, you miss the whole point. A blunt is not just weed wrapped in something slower-burning. It carries its own rhythm. Its own social logic. It asks more of the moment and gives more back. It is one of the few cannabis formats that still feels naturally communal, even in an industry increasingly obsessed with optimization, discretion and speed.

And yet optimization is exactly where the documentary goes next.

What makes the film worth watching is that it does not just romanticize the blunt. It gets into the mechanics of trying to make one well, and at scale. There is talk of dense, resinous flower. Of high-potency THCA. Of water-extracted hash and live rosin. Of testing wraps to find one thick enough to slow the burn, clean enough to avoid harshness and sturdy enough not to run. Of atomizing rosin across flower for even distribution. Of packing consistency. Of airflow. Of quality control.

At one point, the process gets compared to baking. If the material is too loose, too chunky or too fine, it is not going to perform right. So the team tweaks variables the way a baker might adjust sugar, butter or resting time. More diamonds. Less diamonds. Cure overnight or pack immediately. It is a surprisingly revealing analogy, because it gets at something the cannabis industry does not always admit: making a truly good product is rarely about loading in more. It is about balance.

That is especially true with blunts.

Anyone who has spent enough time with infused products knows that potency and pleasure do not always move together. A lot of products hit hard and smoke badly. A lot of them are built to look impressive in a dispensary menu and feel punishing in real life. Too much concentrate, not enough structure. Too much flash, not enough flow. In that sense, the challenge the documentary captures is not just how to make a stronger blunt. It is how to make one that still feels like a blunt.

That means preserving the social pace of it. The smoothness. The sense that this thing was made to be passed around, not just survived.

And that may be the most interesting thing legal cannabis is doing right now. Not inventing new rituals, but trying to understand old ones well enough to build around them.

Rove happens to be a useful lens for that conversation because, in my experience, its products tend to deliver on something cannabis brands often promise and often miss: the thing in the package usually feels like the thing on the label. If it says a strain will taste a certain way, it tends to. If it promises a heavy experience, it usually gets there. That does not mean every product is for everyone, or that branding should be taken at face value. It means there is at least some credibility behind the obsession with inputs, texture and performance shown in the film.

And that obsession is ultimately what gives the documentary its editorial weight.

This is not really a story about one new blunt. It is a story about what happens when the legal market finally takes a culturally important format seriously enough to stop treating it like a novelty. It is about what gets gained when craftsmanship, consistency and better materials enter the picture. It is also about what could get lost if that process goes too far, if the blunt becomes too polished, too engineered, too disconnected from the messy humanity that made it matter in the first place.

The good news is that the film seems aware of that risk.

The people in it do not talk about the blunt like a sterile innovation platform. They talk about it like smokers. Like people who understand that a blunt is not just about how hard it hits. It is about how it burns, how it draws, how long it lasts, how it sits in a hand, how it changes the pace of a room. Those details are not secondary. They are the whole experience.

That is why the blunt keeps surviving every trend that is supposed to replace it.

Not because it is nostalgic. Not because it is fashionable. Because it still offers something newer formats often do not: presence. A little ceremony. A reason to stay put.

High Times’ new documentary makes that point well, even when it is talking about hardware, wraps and infusion ratios. Beneath the product talk is a simpler truth. The blunt never needed a comeback. It just needed people to keep respecting what made it great in the first place.

And maybe that is the next chapter.

Not a reinvention. Not a resurrection.

Just the culture catching up to the craft.

<p>The post New High Times Documentary Explores the Blunt’s Next Chapter first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Long before his fifth Oscar nomination, Ethan Hawke’s first acting award came in the form of a bong.

Not a plaque. Not a medal. A glass bong from High Times.

While promoting Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s new film in which Hawke plays Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, the actor paused to thank his longtime collaborator and dropped a memory that says more about his career than any awards-season talking point.

“My first acting award I ever won was a bong from High Times Magazine,” Hawke told The Hollywood Reporter, recalling his performance in Tape, which was recognized as the “best stoned performance of the year.” Then he added something even more telling: “Somehow having it be a Stony validates my whole youth.”

That was not a throwaway joke. It was a time capsule.

The Stonys Were Not a Gag

In the early 2000s, High Times ran its own parallel awards universe: the Stony Awards. It was a night where cannabis culture, independent film and music collided without asking permission from the Academy.

Steve Bloom’s 2002 coverage of the third annual Stonys reads like a dispatch from a different Hollywood. Snoop Dogg lit up the room and told the crowd, “HIGH TIMES—y’all real for making this awards show.” George Clinton was there. Ice-T was in the building. The Cannabis Cup Band played past midnight.

And in the middle of that, Hawke won Best Actor for Tape.

When he took the stage, Bloom reported, Hawke said, “This is the first award I ever won in my life.” Then he looked around the room and acknowledged what it meant. A Stony, he said, somehow validated his youth.

It is hard to imagine a more High Times moment. An indie actor, in a cowboy shirt, accepting a bong as a trophy in a packed music club in Times Square.

That was not parody. That was culture.

From Stoner Performance to Oscar Nominee

Fast forward more than two decades and Hawke is now nominated for portraying Lorenz Hart, one half of Rodgers and Hart, in Blue Moon. The role required a physical transformation, vocal work and years of patience. He has described it as one of the hardest parts of his career.

Yet when asked to reflect on his journey with Linklater, he did not reach for Sundance, Berlin or the Academy. He remembered the bong.

That says something.

Hawke has built his career on long relationships and difficult roles. He and Linklater met in the early 1990s and have been talking ever since. Films have grown out of that friendship, slowly and deliberately. The Stony for Tape was part of that early era, when independent film felt scrappy and personal, and when High Times was one of the few publications willing to celebrate performances that mainstream outlets would not touch.

The award itself may have been irreverent. The recognition was not.

High Times in the Middle of It

What Hawke’s comment reveals, quietly, is how embedded cannabis culture has always been in serious art. Not as a punchline, but as a layer. Directors, actors, crews and writers have moved through that world, whether they admitted it publicly or not.

Snoop Dogg said it bluntly at that same 2002 show: “We need more award shows like this, because every movie that’s made involves drugs.” It was part provocation, part truth. The Stonys were built on that tension. They acknowledged what the industry pretended not to see.

Hawke did not frame his High Times award as embarrassing or ironic. He framed it as meaningful. As something that affirmed who he was at the time. That kind of recognition tends to stick longer than the shiny hardware.

The Long Arc

There is something poetic about the trajectory.

An actor wins a High Times bong for “best stoned performance” in a claustrophobic indie. Two decades later, he is nominated for embodying a legendary Broadway composer in a tightly constructed period drama. The throughline is not cannabis. It is commitment to the work. The willingness to take risks. The loyalty to creative partnerships.

The bong sits at the beginning of that arc like a wink from the culture that first claimed him.

The Oscars may be the establishment scoreboard. The Stonys were something else entirely. A room where the rules were looser and the trophies could double as functional art.

Hawke has not forgotten that.

And neither has High Times.

<p>The post Ethan Hawke’s First Acting Award Was a Bong From High Times. He Has Not Forgotten It. first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Now 71, Chicago-born Jim Belushi is having a moment with roles in two current films – Kristen Stewart’s The Chronology of Water, in which he plays counterculture legend Ken Kesey, and the pop musical, Song Sung Blue, co-starring Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman.

Before Belushi moved to Oregon and launched his cannabis company Belushi’s Farm in 2015, he was best known for being the younger brother of John, an early ‘80s Saturday Night Live cast member, playing Brother Zee Blues in the Blues Brothers, more than 30 roles in movies like About Last Night, K-9, Curly Sue and Wonder Wheel, and 182 episodes of According to Jim.

The Chronology of Water is Lidia Yuknavitch’s harrowing story, as portrayed by Imogene Poots. Set in the ‘80s, she enrolls in Kesey’s writing class at the University of Oregon and he mentors her. Kesey had a major role in the ‘60s counterculture as an early proselytizer of LSD, Merry Pranksters founder and Grateful Dead associate. The adaptation of his book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976.

This interview focuses on Belushi’s movies, channeling Kesey, hanging with Bob Weir (he died on Jan. 10), LSD history, the marijuana business, rescheduling and the hemp ban. Belushi’s a funny guy, enjoy his humor.

In your book Real Men Don’t Apologize, you said your peaks were About Last Night, The Principal, Salvador, Taking Care of Business and According to Jim.

About Last Night put me on the map. Then I got a lot of work right after that. I did Real Men, Red Heat, Curly Sue and The Principal. I did a lot of movies then. K-9 was a big one.

A lot of dogs in your movies.

They say never work with dogs and kids and then I did K-9 and Curly Sue – what the fuck?

I was starring in movies from 1987 to 1992. I did quite a run. Then it kind of went down a little bit. Then I did some Broadway, some films here and there. Then I did According to Jim for eight years. Then I did a lot of Blues Brothers shows and toured with an improvisational group.

The industry changed. The digital world really changed moviemaking. The industry is still suffering. There’s not a lot of work out there, believe it or not.

In the book, you said your valleys were “the ’90s.”

Things go up and things come down. You’ve got to wait for the wave, you know?

Well, the wave has come back to you, Jim.

Studying Ken Kesey

By the way, I made four movies last year. Two of them were very independent movies (Karate Ghost and Guttermuckers). And The Chronology of Water and Song Sung Blue. I got lucky; these two movies came out of left field. I did a pilot with Song Sung Blue director Craig Brewer in 2016. He called me for this role. And Kristen Stewart, I have no idea why that happened. Out of the blue I got a call. I was like, “I don’t need to read the script, just book it.”

What was your immediate response to being asked to play Ken Kesey?

Absolutely! I told the agent, “I don’t need to read it, but send me the script.” I had the book, I read the script. I mean, I love this man. He was responsible for the transition from Bohemian to our hippie culture. He changed the culture. Even in the movie, there’s a line when he says, “I want you to change the culture.” He was one of the men who changed the culture. The same as Saturday Night Live, those men and women changed the culture of America. He wanted the writers to write something that would change the culture like he did.

How did you learn the character?

I saw everything. I watched on YouTube and saw every lecture he gave, every time he spoke, every interview. I just watched them over and over. I studied him as a human being. I did it all on my own. I didn’t have to rewatch Cuckoo’s Nest. I was more interested in him as a man, as a father, as a husband and as a cultural leader. He said some beautiful things in his talks. I memorized them, but I didn’t memorize them. They kind of laid in me and when I was doing the role, it came out of me. There are a few things I made up in the movie that came directly from one of his talks or one of his interviews.

Jamming with Bob Weir

Were you in touch with the Kesey family?

No. I asked Bob Weir a little bit. I just saw him last year.

What did Weir tell you?

“What do you want to know? What do you want to know?” He was very excited about me playing the part.

Did you ever play music with Weir?

We’re members of the Bohemian Grove [a summer retreat in the Redwoods]. I sat in with him there a couple of times. I knew him from the Grove. I also went to the concerts. I was backstage and stuff.

Are you a Deadhead?

No, not a Deadhead, but I certainly love the Dead. I saw them in high school when I was 16 at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago.

Kesey was a key figure in Grateful Dead and counterculture history.

He worked as an orderly in a hospital to make some money when he was going to college and they put him in the psychiatric ward. That’s where he came up with Cuckoo’s Nest. But also they had a lot of experimental drugs there. Guess what drugs he found there?

LSD?

Right. A little liquid LSD. Well, he took that and he’d have these little parties on the weekend and he put it in the punch. Electric Kool-Aid, right? And those parties would grow. And he had a little band that would play on the farm, the Grateful Dead. It was the start of the Grateful Dead. Then it blew up to San Francisco and Los Angeles and the whole acid thing traveled across the country and changed the culture of our generation.

Have you taken LSD?

Yes. It changed my perspective completely about my relationship with everything.

Where was the movie shot and what was it like working with first-time director Stewart?

Latvia. I asked why she didn’t shoot in Oregon and she said, “The money.” The French helped with the money. Latvia gave great credits. When I was there in Latvia, it looked like Oregon. They doubled Oregon very well. She really believed in this movie. She’d been working on it for eight or 10 years. She knew every breath, every beat of that movie. I think it’s very unique. She shot on 16 mm, because she didn’t want that clear, 4k look. Much of this is about memory, so she wanted that kind of dirty look.

Stewart’s known to be a stoner. Did you smoke with her?

No, I didn’t smoke with her. I said, “I have a farm,” and she said, “I’d like to try that.”

Working with Kate Hudson

What’s your role in Song Sung Blue?

I’m Tom, the booker and manager of Lightning & Thunder. It’s a real character, a real story that was taken from a 2008 documentary about this couple who had a Neil Diamond tribute band.

Are you a Neil Diamond fan?

I am now!

What was it like to work with Kate Hudson, who plays Thunder, and has received a Best Actress Oscar nomination?

She’s a thoroughbred. She’s like Kate Winslet, who I acted with in Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel, and Kristen Stewart. These actors are studied, ready and generous. When you are really studied, you can be generous. She was very generous. I only had a few moments with Kate. The look in her eyes when you’re in that scene is the same thing as Kate Winslet. You are transformed into another realm. When they say, “Cut,” you’re like, “Wow, where was I?” It’s because of that high focus they have in their eyes. Kate always had a little glimmer when she was looking at me. The actor in her was looking at you and saying, “C’mon, Jimmy, give me what you got.”

Belushi on His Business, Rescheduling and the Hemp Ban

How are things going at Belushi’s Farm?

We’re not cultivating anymore. Oregon is such a terrible state. Five million people, maybe 400,000 smoke. Tourism has dropped since the fires. People are scared to come to Oregon because of the radicalism. Portland has turned into an eyesore rather than the gem it was five years ago.

Plus, prices went to the bottom.

To the bottom! It just didn’t pay to grow anymore. I do use the farm for my mothers and proprietary strains. I’m licensed in 20 states now. All my proprietary strains go to those states. It’s doing very well. I’ve doubled my business in a year.

They do the growing and you provide the genetics?

Right.

You have Belushi’s Farm and Blues Brothers brands. Where are they doing best?

Maryland, Missouri. Pennsylvania has gone through the roof. And Mississippi came on strong. Ohio. Blues Brothers was stronger at the beginning but Belushi’s Farm strains like Big Sur Holy Weed have been doing better and better every month. It’s a little more of a higher end. Our new strain, The Sage, is a true sativa right out of the ’60s and ’70s. It’s an old-school high. It’s so good that they’re doubling the grow in these states because it sold so fast.

I know you favor rescheduling.

It’s enough right now, man. It’s one of the dominoes.

Rescheduling appears to be a big favor to the CBD industry.

That’s my understanding too. That it’s more about the CBD. Larry Kessler’s the one who pushed it over. Rescheduling is more helpful for research, for veterans, for NFL players and sports figures.

Also for businesses taking tax deductions.

Yeah, taxes too. Those poor people running dispensaries, how do they make a margin? How do they make it? The tax is so overburdensome. On top of that is the state tax, which is just terrible. In Illinois last year they made $472 million in cannabis taxes. They made $272 million in liquor taxes. And there are a lot more bars and liquor stores than there are dispensaries. Like, what’s going on here?

The weed’s more expensive.

Michigan used to be one of my best states licensing-wise and it’s gone to the bottom. It’s ridiculous what’s going on in Michigan.

How do you deal with price compression?

I’m a perfect example: I had to stop growing. It’s crushing people.

Are you still selling the Highbridge hemp-derived beverages?

Yes. We’re staying in it until we see what happens.

I’m not a fan of hemp-derived products.

I’m not either, to be honest with you. But there’s a lot of money in it. I don’t like it exposed at gas stations and convenience stores where kids can get it. I don’t mind liquor stores and places where there are some laws around it.

Isn’t there enough THC out there that they don’t have to convert CBD to THC?

[Laughs] I think so.

Steve Bloom is a former editor of High Times.

<p>The post Jim Belushi on Weed, His Latest Movies and the Mess We’re in Right Now first appeared on High Times.</p>

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On February 12, HERbal Woodstock will host a free public screening of Cannabis + Creativity at the historic Bearsville Theater, bringing together cannabis culture, artistic expression and local community under one roof.

Directed and produced by Elana Frankel, the award-winning documentary explores how cannabis intersects with creative practice across disciplines. The film follows six artists, including a chef, musician, poet, jazz singer, creative director and scientist, offering an intimate look at how the plant shapes imagination, process and perspective.

Following the screening, attendees are invited to stay for a live panel discussion moderated by HERbal Woodstock co-owner Melissa Gibson, featuring Frankel and special guests. The conversation is designed to dig deeper into cannabis as a cultural tool rather than a commodity, especially in a town long associated with counterculture, music and art.

The event is free and open to the public for guests 21 and over, with advance RSVPs encouraged. Sponsored by several New York cannabis cultivators and producers, the night reflects a broader trend in legal cannabis toward education, dialogue and community-rooted programming rather than traditional retail marketing.

For Woodstock, where cannabis and creativity have long been intertwined, the screening feels less like a special event and more like a continuation of a story still being written.

<p>The post Woodstock to Screen Documentary Exploring Cannabis and Creativity first appeared on High Times.</p>

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For Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie’s ping-pong movie starring Timothée Chalamet, a number of unusual casting choices were made, including several blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos.

Gwyneth Paltrow, whose character, actress Kay Stone, has an affair with Chalamet’s rambunctious Marty Mauser, makes her first appearance in a film in 10 years. Tyler, the Creator (née Tyler Okonma) plays Marty’s best bud, Wally. Fran Drescher is his mother, Rebecca, and Odessa A’zion plays his pregnant girlfriend, Rachel. Basketball Hall of Famer George Gervin, Sandra Bernhard and Penn Jillette also appear.

Also read: Timothée Chalamet Raps About Smoking “4 RAWs” with EsDeeKid and Breaks the Internet

Then there’s Larry “Ratso” Sloman, who plays Marty’s Uncle Murray, the owner of a busy shoe store where Marty and Rachel both work.

Sloman’s appearance is also a small moment of High Times history on screen. He served as editor in chief of High Times from 1983 to 1984, after joining the magazine in 1977. In the years following founder Tom Forçade’s death in 1978, Forçade’s wife, Gabrielle Schang, took over as editor in chief in 1979 for one year. She was followed by publisher Andy Kowl, then Sloman, who had served as executive editor under both Schang and Kowl before stepping into the top editorial role.

These were lean years for High Times, shaped by the early drug war and the rise of Ronald Reagan’s “Just Say No” movement. Among Sloman’s better-known contributors during that era were William S. Burroughs and Charles Bukowski.

“He valiantly saved the magazine’s editorial standards after Tom died,” says former associate publisher Rick Cusick, who is currently working on a history of High Times. “They were lucky to have Ratso to take over the editorial reins. It was miraculous.”

In Marty Supreme, Sloman’s first scene comes early in the film: Marty fits shoes on a customer, then slips into the back room for a quick encounter with Rachel, setting up her pregnancy. Sloman, who is 75, is made up to look roughly 10 years older. In his only other scene, Murray and a cop threaten Marty with arrest after Marty steals $700 from the till to fly to Japan and compete in a major tournament.

Vanity Fair’s “Guide to All the Cameos in Marty Supreme” includes a section on Sloman, with Safdie noting that Sloman “has written so many books,” including Reefer Madness: The History of Marijuana in America, Private Parts (Howard Stern’s biography) and Scar Tissue (Anthony Kiedis’ biography).

After his tenure at High Times, Sloman became known as a biographer. His entertainment books include Private Parts, Scar Tissue, Make Up to Break Up: My Life In and Out of KISS, Undisputed Truth and The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero.

Sloman’s nickname dates back to 1975, when he covered Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour for Rolling Stone. Joan Baez reportedly dubbed him “Ratso,” saying he resembled Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso Rizzo character in Midnight Cowboy.

He also appeared in Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue and had a cameo in the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, both in 2019.

“[I try to] cast someone who you can impersonate, which I think is essential to casting, because it’s what makes them iconic,” Safdie said in the Vanity Fair interview. “On-screen, the writer in him, the personality in him, the individualist in him just brought the character to a different level.”

Despite efforts to reach distributor A24, Sloman was not made available for an interview.

Steve Bloom is a former editor of High Times.

David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

<p>The post You Probably Missed This High Times Connection In ‘Marty Supreme’ first appeared on High Times.</p>

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High Times just dropped “Don’t Be A Clown,” a lean cannabis satire written, directed and produced by Dan Levy Dagerman (High Concept Entertainment), in partnership with High Times Magazine and Official Cannabis Seed Company. It stars Luke Jones, Eric Ochoa, Gata, Lynette Shaw, Charley Rossman and Brooke Burgstahler.

It cold-opens like a preview: Arty under an interrogation light, the pressure rising, a bucket nearby, and the refrain that haunts the film—“Where’d you get it?”—already in play. Smash to the title run.

Chapter One: Tears of a Clown. Arty is spiraling because he’s running out of weed. He calls the plug again and again. He picks through roaches, scrapes a pipe, eyes a dab rig that’s gone dry, shakes a grinder for leftovers, mixes with tobacco to stretch it.

Chapter Two: Intervention. Mom lays down the house rules: “Only smoke the zaza… Percy rosin only.” She packs a lunchbox. Dad adds, “Roll your own from now on.” Girlfriend draws a line: “If I ever hear the words Blue Dream again, I’m leaving you.” It lands absurd and deadpan at once, puncturing status games while it pushes Arty toward a new lane.

Chapter Three: New Arty. He steadies up, lands a job, starts getting his head stash online. The streets don’t let go. Suited guys roll up and snatch him. No one steps in. Two bystanders clock it, shrug, and wander off chasing Sour Diesel.

Chapter Four: Reservoir Clowns. We return to the room from the opener. The questioner smokes and smiles. “Where’d you get it?” Arty won’t name a dealer because he doesn’t have one. The running gag resolves clean: he points to a legit source through his mom, and the film tags the answer inside its world. The DJ’s voice circles back, tying the loop.

Watch the full short and drop your take in the comments.

Credits

• Writer/Director/Producer: Dan Levy Dagerman
• Production: High Concept Entertainment
• Partners: High Times Magazine, Official Cannabis Seed Company
• Cast: Luke Jones, Eric Ochoa, Gata, Lynette Shaw, Charley Rossman, Brooke Burgstahler

<p>The post It’s 4:20. Watch ‘Don’t Be A Clown,’ High Times’ Weed-Themed Short Film first appeared on High Times.</p>

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Cinema and cannabis meet under the stars in West Hollywood.

On Saturday, November 15, 2025, High Times will co-host Cinema Sessions at The Woods, an immersive evening of film, art, and community. The event runs 7–10 PM at 8271 Santa Monica Blvd and is free and open to the public.

Presented in collaboration with High Concept Entertainment, Fundgible, Two Hands, and 420 Films, the night will showcase a sneak peek of their slate of films and documentaries from across the cannabis world, including the premiere of the upcoming the short film Don’t Be A Clown, by filmmaker Dan Levy Dagerman and an exlusive sneak peek at Emerald Giants: The Legend of Eddy and Linda, the upcoming documentary on Eddy Lepp by Jason Dunlap.

Set among The Woods’ lush gardens and open-air lounge, Cinema Sessions brings together the cannabis and film communities for an evening of storytelling, connection, and conversation. After the screenings, connect with creators and brands in the Giggle Garden cabanas for a relaxed reception and breakout sessions. Expect smoke, screens, and plenty of creative energy.

Sponsored by 710Labs, Chronic Candy, Focus-V, Sluggers and Official Cannabis Seed Co., this first edition aims to highlight filmmakers redefining cannabis culture; voices turning lived experience into art, humor, and perspective.

Cinema Sessions is part showcase, part hangout, and all about expanding what cannabis cinema can be.

Details

• The Woods, 8271 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood, CA
• Saturday, November 15, 2025
• 7 to 10 PM
• SHOWTIMES: 7 pm & 8:45 pm
• RSVP at www.highconceptentertainment.com

<p>The post High Times and Hollywood Roll One Up: Join Our Cinema Sessions at The Woods Cannabis Lounge first appeared on High Times.</p>

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