cannabisnews.com: Grass: Drug War's a Trip 





Grass: Drug War's a Trip 
Posted by FoM on June 30, 2000 at 13:49:23 PT
By Joe Baltake, Bee Movie Critic
Source: Sacramento Bee
It's the feds vs. the heads in Ron Mann's colorful pop-culture documentary "Grass." That's grass as in marijuana, weed, pot and reefer.Mann, who made a name for himself with such funky documentaries as "Comic Book Confidential" (1988) and "Twist" (1992), has the perfect sarcastic sensibility for material that doesn't take us on a trip through the various drug arcana over the years but rather on a tour of the U.S. government's relentless and near-deranged war on marijuana.
Mann, a master manipulator, has carefully planned the film so that it's the foes of grass who seem drugged.Narrated by hemp activist Woody Harrelson, "Grass" opens with vintage newsreel and educational-film footage warning that smoking marijuana can: 1) drive you insane; 2) turn you into a homicidal maniac; 3) unleash unpleasant sexual tendencies; 4) make you go blind; and 5) at one time, make you an easy target of communism. Gosh, you can say the same things about movies and TV shows if you watch enough of them.Anyway, Mann's point is that marijuana has been demonized over the years and that the source of this concern is anti-Mexican prejudice.The filmmaker traces the United States' overzealous "war on drugs" back nearly a century, to the era in which marijuana was first smuggled into the country by Mexican laborers.Tight and compact, "Grass" uses its archival material in a strictly partisan way, showing politicians exploiting the situation by doing the usual grandstanding. Chief among these is Harry J. Anslinger, the first head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who dreamed of becoming another J. Edgar Hoover. Anslinger vilified the 1944 La Guardia Committee Report, commissioned by then- New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, which concluded that "the sociological, psychological and medical ills commonly attributed to marijuana have been found to be exaggerated."Besides La Guardia, unlikely heroes in the film include actor Robert Mitchum, jazz drummer Gene Krupa and former President Jimmy Carter. At the other end of the spectrum are former President Richard Nixon, shown recruiting Elvis Presley for the war against narcotics; and former President Ronald Reagan, looking disoriented and suffering from memory loss during a speech -- something that Mann misleadingly juxtaposes with propaganda about grass. This is juvenile and blatantly unfair.Not juvenile are the statistics offered about the number of people imprisoned for marijuana possession (about 3 million) and the amount of taxpayers' money wasted ($214.7 billion) on anti-pot campaigns, and that's just between 1980 and 1998.As if in a drugged state itself, the film runs its opening credits twice, and Mann makes good use of fun graphics by Paul Mavrides and some playful original songs by composer Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo), as well as songs such as Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35," Cab Calloway's "That Funny Reefer Man," Sly and the Family Stone's "Want To Take You Higher" and Peter Tosh's "Legalize It."As George Carlin might put it, "G-a-roo-vy!"Published: June 30, 2000 © 2000 The Sacramento Bee Related Articles & Web Site:Grass The Movie - A Ron Mann Filmhttp://www.grassthemovie.com/Roger Ebert Says Legalize Ithttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6231.shtmlGrass - Salon Magazinehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6065.shtmlDan Mindus On Grass - National Reviewhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6005.shtmlCensors Give Grass Green Light on Appealhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread5966.shtml 
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