Our series on the best stoner movies ever made (that you can stream right now) goes out for a drink with Nick and Nora Charles
There are countless films, cartoons, and even whole subgenres that, although not directly related to cannabis, are still accepted as stoner movies. Probably the most widely-accepted example is 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), considered the ultimate head film despite every character being a total square—and proving that whether something’s a stoner movie is simply a matter of taste.
For that reason I’ll suggest the screwball comedy subgenre, an old Hollywood formula melding the dialogue style of early 20th century Broadway with the slapstick of early 20th century silent films, as prime stoner viewing material, even if they’re not quite stoner films by definition. And to prove the case, I’d put forth The Thin Man (1934), a mystery film loosely based on the last novel by the great American author Dashiell Hammett, changed up in the movie adaptation to make things even more screwy, not to mention booze-soaked.
One might still ask, what’s a mystery film made in the 1930s about a married couple (Nick and Norah Charles, played by William Powell* and Myrna Loy) solving a mystery have to do with stoner movies? The main link is that Norah and especially Nick spend the movie a lot more focused on catching their next drink than in catching their missing target, allowing The Thin Man to downplay its own mystery, and escalate all the intoxicated hijinks instead (especially during a raucous New Year’s Eve party that plays like a best-of showcase for boozy character actors). And in that lackadaisical narrative rhythm, The Thin Man feels like an inadvertent model for nearly all the stoner mystery films that came out later on—like for one example, this movie’s definitely part of the strain lineage making up the genetic background of The Big Lebowski (1997).
So The Thin Man, much like 2001, serves as solid evidence that anything can be a stoner movie… although it certainly helps when the characters are blitzed on something, whether they’re tripping on their way to the next dimension, or tripping down the stairs half-drunk after their night at the bar.
*William Powell also stars in a lesser-known film called Jewel Robbery (1932), where a gang of crooks loosen up their hostages by slipping them joints—in what may be the first scene of characters smoking rolled cannabis onscreen. More on that in a future entry of Streaming for Stoners…
