I first met Michael Blieden five years ago when he came to SXSW 2003 with a wonderful film he wrote that Bob Odenkirk directed called Melvin Goes to Dinner. He returned a couple years later to SXSW 2005 with his own directorial debut, a doc called The Comedians of Comedy that followed Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford, and Zach Galifianakis on a different kind of comedy tour than the plethora of other docs that end with "of Comedy". Both projects involved a select number of people talking about things that are important to them, why they're important, and why it matters in the grand scheme of things.
The moment I became aware of Super High Me's existence, my first thought was "I remember some kid making a joke about how he should do Super Size Me but for pot and he'd get paid to get high" coming out of the Super Size Me screening at SXSW 2004. Then I found out Doug Benson was the subject of the movie.
Then I found out Blieden directed it and I decided I had to see it, completely blind.
As I prefaced a review of an Obama documentary last week, I have to add a disclaimer here too: I don't smoke pot and think it should be decriminalized, but at the same time, I don't want people lighting a joint in public. Of course, I don't think we should have people just strolling the streets blowing tobacco smoke around either.
Economically speaking, legalizing and regulating the sale of marijuana would do wonders for the flagging US economy, as well as transform the paper industry, since non-"drug" hemp is a lot faster to renew than the wood pulp used for most paper these days. If people want the US to really "go green" it must start with how and what resources we use. Where the US goes, the world will follow.
People should be free to do whatever they please with their lungs and mental state, but it's my air just as much as it is yours. If you want to complain about where you can and can't smoke your dried leaf product of choice and enjoy another activity, like drink or watch a movie or eat dinner, that's the beauty of a market economy: somebody will build a business model around it.
The other thing I can't always get behind pot docs about is to some extent promoting the idea that getting stoned all the time isn't a major detriment to leading a productive life. The great thing to teach people is an ok way of living life just like any perpetual, anti-productive behavior...notice I said nothing about addiction.
Liking Blieden's previous work got me interested in seeing it past my personal barrier of it being "another pot doc" that says the same stuff, but...like, different, you know?
The bet pays off in spades, because Blieden and Benson do more with the material than just Super Size Me with marijuana, really digging in to some of the capitalist hypocrisy of ongoing US domestic policy with regard to pot. Highly recommended, no pun intended.