Synopsis: Inspired by the notorious 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film, Showtime's first movie musical REEFER MADNESS is a tongue-in-cheek raucous musical comedy about clean-cut kids who fall into a twisted, hilarious downward spiral of reefer, sex and mayhem. One of the most complicated musicals filmed for television, the movie contains sixteen musical sequences and several complex large-scale dance numbers. And every member of the cast was proud to display their real singing voice. This screen version of the award-winning stage musical stars Kristen Bell ("Veronica Mars"), Christian Campbell, Neve Campbell ("Party of Five"), Tony Award-winner Alan Cumming ("Cabaret"), Ana Gasteyer ("Saturday Night Live"), John Kassir, Amy Spanger, Robert Torti and Steven Weber ("Wings"). Garnering strong critical acclaim for its off-Broadway run, the original Los Angeles production of REEFER MADNESS also took theatergoers by storm, sweeping the theatrical awards from the various L.A. critics groups and becoming one of the longest-running shows in Los Angeles history. The film REEFER MADNESS reunites the stage version's creative team. Directed by Andy Fickman from the screenplay by Kevin Murphy & Dan Studney based on their musical stage play, the three men also serve as the film's executive producers.
REEFER MADNESS will screen as part of the Sundance Film Festival's Premieres category. To showcase the diversity of contemporary cinema, this section of the festival includes a selection of the latest works from established U.S. and international directors as well as world premieres of highly anticipated films.
REEFER MADNESS will premiere on Showtime in April 2005.
How the Madness Began: The original 1936 Reefer Madness film was so exaggerated and horribly acted that it eventually became a kind of cult classic. Executive producer/writer/lyricist Kevin Murphy refers to it as "the Rosetta Stone, the standard by which all other silly midnight cult movies are judged, with the notable exception of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is the granddaddy of them all.
"Although the original film, which was called Tell Your Children, was made by a church group, it was later transformed by a guy named Dwain Esper, who at the time, was a very notorious maestro of exploitation films. He gave it a sexier title, cut in some salacious images of Mae rolling up her stockings very, very slowly, girls skinny-dipping and so on. By pretending that it was actually about something very high-minded and moralistic, it actually allowed people to get their kinky thrills.
"Of course, they had all their facts wrong, so it became sort of a hysterical and overblown piece. One puff in the film leads to manic energy, going insane, raping and killing with mad abandon. The reality is that you get a little sleepy, laugh a lot and maybe eat a great deal of food."
In 1997, writing partners Murphy and Dan Studney, who had met while studying at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, were driving from Oakland to Los Angeles and listening to Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage, when they heard a line about Catholic school girls smoking reefer behind the rectory.
"So I started picturing it in my head," Studney recalls. "Frank Zappa's concept of a musical and then it just hit me. I turned to Kevin and said 'What about doing Reefer Madness as a musical?'" By the time the creative duo reached Los Angeles, they had already written the first song.
Upon completion of the script, they approached award-winning director Andy Fickman who accepted the project with great enthusiasm. "I was a big fan of the original movie, it always made me laugh," Fickman explains. "Then I listened to Dan and Kevin warbling away on the demo track, which didn't made me laugh, it made me cry. But the music was great and I thought, 'God, if real singers were singing that.' And then when I read the script, I fell in love with it."
The play opened in a small equity waiver theatre in Los Angeles for what the producers thought might be a two-week run. Instead it played to packed houses for over a year and a half, captivating audiences and critics alike, winning 20 theater awards and breaking records. Many devoted fans came back time and again, dressed in costumes and shouting out the lines.
The popular production was optioned for off-Broadway by the New York-based Nederlander organization, but its long-awaited New York run turned out to be a brief one because it opened just four days after 9/11. However, the play had caught the attention of Robert Greenblatt, Showtime Networks' President of Entertainment, who later offered Studney and Murphy the opportunity to turn the musical into an original Showtime feature film. They were both astounded and delighted.
Fickman articulates the principal aim behind making the modern movie version of Reefer Madness, which is now structured as a film-within-a-film. "We decided to pull the camera back one step further from the original film and show why it was made in the first place. It was made to scare good citizens and to distort the truth in their presentation. Had Reefer Madness been a thoughtful examination of the trials and tribulations of hemp and marijuana, it would have been one thing, but they made the most explicit shock film that they could, all based on what can only be viewed as a lot of silliness."
Thankfully, it also makes for good satire, as Fickman points out. "This is where the comedy lies - in a heightened version of the truth. Social satire is always a fun way to go. Since Reefer Madness is set in the 1930's, we have a very stylized period of gangsters, dames, thugs and broads; a musical - each production number more fantastic than the last - and of course, a classic love story of boy meets girl, falls in love, then loses girl."
