An historical essay and short film script by Malcolm J. Brenner
You don’t understand, how can you possibly understand? Society has changed so much, and everything is different! Now, weed is widely accepted as a medicinal herb, it’s in everything from blunts to unguents to smoothies! Let me use a recent experience to try to explain to you what SMOKING WEED was like, ‘way back in 1970, and why your GRANDPARENTS still want to draw the curtains and light a stick of incense when they spark:
SARASOTA, FL. — My brother Hugh, 17, his friend Gary and two girls, all seniors in high school, decided to drive out to Myakka State Park in Gary’s beater car and spend a day communing with Mother Nature — the green, flammable kind, in addition to the trees, birds, squirrels and alligators. Because Gary had a prior for possession, my brother stuck the couple of joints they’d rolled in his sock. They were going to smoke them when they got good and ready!
They got to park, found an open field and began to just run around, play, turn cartwheels, do somersaults — an unusual, but typical, outburst of teenage energy and enthusiasm, and an entirely natural one, because they hadn’t yet set flame to Zig-Zag. Their behavior, however, caught the attention of a State Park Ranger, who monitored them through binoculars from the nearby woods and decided they must all be tripping on that LySolic acid Dramatic-us, or whatever it was young people did back then. You know, Commie stuff! They were probably draft dodgers, at least the boys, and the girls — well, the girls were obviously the kind of young ladies who would sleep with draft dodgers! So he did the natural thing, pulled out his shotgun, stepped out of the shadows of the cabbage palms and yelled “FREEZE! YOU’RE UNDER ARREST, HIPPIE SCUM!”
Or words to that effect.
Long story short, it was my brother who ended up staying in the Sarasota Juvenile Detention Center at the county taxpayers’ expense that night. Our mother was attending a adult degree program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, so I went to the JDC and give Hugh a big hug, which startled him almost as much as the park ranger had! I think he’d been more expecting a punch in the jaw from me — but not for using pot, hell no! The one thing I am not is a hypocrite, and I smoked at least as much as he did!
FOR GETTING CAUGHT, THE STUPID LITTLE SEWER-SNOID!
I mean, they could have appointed a lookout! Or Hugh could have eaten the joints (I note that it’s much more difficult to dispose of a metal or glass pipe this way, although silicon would be okay, if somewhat rubbery), or even wrapped them in plastic wrap beforehand and stuck them up his ass! (An early member of environmental organization Greenpeace once saved an irreplaceable roll of 35mm film documenting French police brutality by hiding it in her vagina. True story!) There were JUST ALL KINDS OF WAYS OF HANDLING THAT SITUATION that my brother and his fellow-travelers did not employ, probably because they, like most people, believed the oldest lie in the world:
IT CAN’T HAPPEN TO ME!
Why is this statement a lie?
Simple: BECAUSE IT ALWAYS HAPPENS TO US! ALL OF US, NO EXCEPTIONS. WE FUCK-UP, AND WE DIE. TWO ABSOLUTE TRUTHS OF EXISTENCE! WE’RE ALL HUMAN, ALL MORTAL. PERIOD, CASE CLOSED.
Quit worrying about Hugh! Other than that one night in jail, he never served any time. Because he was 17 and a minor, the judge just sentenced him to 6 months’ probation, and the arrest was expunged from his record when he turned 18. As our mother often said of him, “He could fall in a barrel of shit, and come up golden!” She had a very colorful vocabulary, did me Yorkshire mum!
TIME PASSES… 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020…
FADE IN: RECENT PAST, APRIL, 2023, INTERIOR MALCOLM’S HOUSE, PORT CHARLOTTE.
Pre-dawn lighting. MALCOLM’S living room is dark, and a black dog, EPIC, unseen at first, is barking. MALCOLM, naked, cursing at the dog, ENTERS from the BEDROOM and crosses to the window. Parting the blinds, he squints outside.
CUTAWAY: A silver truck is parked on the grass in front of Malcolm’s house. The engine isn’t running, and the cab is empty.
MALCOLM (to dog): “You bitch, you woke me up for THAT? Fuuuuucccckk…” He stumbles back to the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
DISSOLVE TO: The same door, later that morning, better lit. MALCOLM steps out, wrapping a tattered gingham bathrobe around himself and tying the frayed sash. He moves to the window and begins opening the blinds.
REACTION SHOT: EXT. LOOKING IN THROUGH WINDOW at MALCOLM. We see the truck, still on his lawn, reflected in the glass.
MALCOLM: “Fuck! Is that fucking thing still here? Fuck it…” He rubs his chin thoughtfully, looks up at the truck.
CAMERA PANS EXT. TRUCK, showing it’s in nice shape! Clean, no dents, looks like it’s owned by somebody who values it.
INT. MALCOLM at the WINDOW. He drops his hand from his chin, turns from window.
MALCOLM: “Ahh, I won’t call the cops, not yet! That truck’s not abandoned, it’s too nice! I’m sure somebody will be here with a tow truck soon, in the meantime… (YELLS) HEY EPIC! DO YOU WANT TO GO FOR A WALK?”
INT. CLOSE UP: EPIC emerges from the bedroom, carrying her leash folded-up in her mouth, wagging her tail in eager anticipation.
DISSOLVE TO: EPIC and MALCOLM, now dressed in camo shorts and T-shirt, walking on the sidewalk.
DISSOLVE TO: MALCOLM and EPIC return to his front door. CAMERA PANS to show truck still there. CAMERA PANS BACK to Malcolm.
MALCOLM: “Damn, still there! Well, time for our morning smoke, Epic. (He unlocks the front door.) Care to join me?”
EPIC: (Eagerly) “WOOF!” (They both step inside. Door closes.)
JUMP CUT TO: Door opens again and Malcolm steps out with a tray in his hand. On it are some tasty looking buds, rolling papers, a grinder and other accessories. CAMERA PANS to the silver truck just as a tow truck pulls up alongside it. The TOW TRUCK DRIVER gets out and begins to prep the silver truck to be towed.
EXT. DAY MALCOLM, still at the door, watching the tow truck driver at work. DOG NOISES from inside.
MALCOLM: (Turns back inside, yells to dog, offscreen ) “If I’ve told you once, Epic, I’ve told you a thousand times, don’t be greedy! Take small tokes, not big ones! You can hold it better that way!”
DOG HOWLS. MALCOLM shakes head, CAMERA FOLLOWS him as he closes the door and sits in a chair at a patio table, puts the tray of weed down on the table, begins to load the grinder.
REVERSE ANGLE on MALCOLM’S face, intent on his work. He looks up at a noise of a truck door opening. CAMERA ZOOMS BACK to show a passenger get out of the tow truck’s side door, dressed all in black with a lizard-skin belt. He is a 20-something HIPSTER with a scraggly beard and hair pulled back in a bun. He walks around to the front of the truck and bends down.
CLOSE UP: The tire HIPSTER is looking at is flat. Very, very flat. As flat as your sister when she was 11.
MALCOLM looks up from rolling a joint.
REVERSE ANGLE over MALCOLM’S shoulder showing the HIPSTER sighing over the flat tire.
Holding the freshly rolled reefer in one hand, MALCOLM gets up and begins to walk toward the HIPSTER.
HIPSTER looks up, notices MALCOLM approaching.
MALCOLM (Stopping beside HIPSTER): “Truck troubles?”
HIPSTER: “Yeah, I got troubles all right! I took the truck out last night, ran over a bottle or something, it ripped the tire all to shreds! So then I go to put the spare on, and guess what?”
MALCOLM: (Pensively) “It was flat too?”
HIPSTER: (Somewhat derisively) “No shit, Sherlock! So now we gotta take it into the shop, two new tires and probably a rim to boot! It’s going to cost a bundle!”
THE TOW TRUCK DRIVER begins to winch the HIPSTER’S truck up the ramp.
MALCOLM: “I feel sorry for you!” (Raises joint to lips, lights it, puffs a couple of times.) “Seems like Murphy’s Law in action! Well, here, maybe this will make you feel better…” (MALCOLM proffers the joint to the HIPSTER, who hesitates, for some reason. MALCOLM looks him up and down. NOISES from tow truck. Yeah, he’s a hipster, all right!)
MALCOLM: “You do indulge, don’t you?”
HIPSTER: “Uhhhh… yeah.”
MALCOLM: “Go on, I’ve got a cannabis card! I just bought this yesterday from my favorite pot shop, it’s fine sensi, brother!”
HIPSTER: “Is that Sativa or Indica?”
MALCOLM’S lower jaw falls open. He cannot believe what he’s just heard!
MALCOLM: (Angrily) “What do you care, buddy? It’s good dope, do you want a hit or not?”
HIPSTER: “You don’t know?”
MALCOLM: “It’s a hybrid… just take a damn hit, will you?” (Nervously, the HIPSTER takes the joint and tries to hit it, but it’s out. MALCOLM re-lights it for him, and the HIPSTER takes a quick, shallow hit, a real Bill Clinton hit, and passes the muggles back to Malcolm.
MALCOLM: “You know, back in my day, we didn’t ask what kind of dope it was, we were just so glad to…”
TOW TRUCK DRIVER (interrupting) “That does it, hey, you ready to go? Let’s roll!”
HIPSTER turns away from MALCOLM without a word and gets into the passenger side of the tow truck.
REFLECTION SHOT: MALCOLM framed by the tow truck’s outside mirror. It drives away, and the camera pans to MALCOLM’S face, the joint hanging from his lips. He squints after the truck, a Clint Eastwood scowl twisting his face.
MALCOLM: “I’ll be damned, he didn’t even say ‘Thank you!’ What a total turd!” (He inhales deeply and holds it, pondering humanity’s fate in a cold and uncaring cosmos. He slowly lets the smoke out his nostrils and looks up, glassy eyed, into the CAMERA, blinks a couple of times before speaking.
MALCOLM: “I ask you, Kids of Today, you who have grown up with so much privilege, what is this world coming to when you can can’t offer someone a hit of weed, without them demanding to know its’ lineage?”
MALCOLM looks down, takes another hit, turns around and begins to walk back toward his house. EPIC, off camera, HOWLS again.
MALCOLM (going toward front door): “Shut up, you damn dog, or I’ll fix your wagon!” He goes inside as the CAMERA ZOOMS BACK, revealing the tire tracks in MALCOLM’S front yard.
FADE OUT, end credits roll.
Above comic strip property of Universal Press Syndicate, ©1977 G. B. Trudeau, used without paying the insane $35 fee they demanded just to stick this in a blog post! So sue me, Gary, I want to see the snickering headlines on the New York Times when you try! My daughter owns everything I have, so nyah-nyah! Love your work, but take your $35 licensing fee and stick it where the moon don’t shine, baby! FAIR USE, FAIR USE!
Malcolm J. Brenner 