Our series on the best stoner movies ever made (that you can stream right now) rolls up to class with Professor Grady Tripp
As I see it, any film in which a pro- or antagonist is committed to cannabis is as much a weed movie as any dumb buddy bong flick. So while the image of Ice Cube in Higher Learning (1995) sorting a tray full of grass with a pick in his puff is a classic, and Outside Providence (1999) is a personal fave that I think many would label as burnable media, my instinct to follow the character before the story leads me away from that pack and toward one estimable Grady Tripp.
The spliff-twisting prof played by Michael Douglas in director Curtis Hanson’s take on Michael Chabon’s novel of the same name, Wonder Boys, is the fictional author of the brilliantly titled The Arsonist’s Daughter, and flames Mary Jane throughout—typically while driving.
Douglas’s portrayal of a burnout scribe is spot on right down to the stained and disorderly corduroys. If you’re not familiar, just imagine Lester Burnham from American Beauty (1999), but rather than spurring from some kind of a midlife crisis, his philandering hot-boxing recklessness has been raging since grad school.
Onstage years ago at the Coolidge Corner Theatre following a special screening of Wonder Boys, Douglas said that it’s “one of [his] favorite movies,” notwithstanding it being “a bomb.” Thankfully, many critics and viewers in the years since have finally recognized not just its greatness, but also its green streak. That’s gotta count for something—if any group can push a film into the cult realm, it’s people who like getting stoned and streaming things.
Oh, and speaking of Michael Douglas, if there was ever a script that could have used a few joints, it’s Falling Down (1993). Fucking movie would have ended with the Whammy Burger scene.
Wonder Boys is streaming on MGM+, and up for rent on most VOD services.
