What’s The New Mary Jane?
I want to add to and revise slightly my earlier comments about the Reefer Madness movie musical currently running on Showtime. I’ve watched it (in fits and starts) a few more times since thanks to the joy of On Demand.
First of all, I forgot to mention a couple of talented performers. Amy Spanger, a theater actress apparently making her film debut, is sexy, funny, and sings great as a seductive dope pusher.
Robert Torti gets one of the best songs in the show as a singing, dancing, and Vegas-jiving savior in “Listen To Jesus, Jimmy.” I knew I’d seen Torti before and recognized his name but I couldn’t place him at first. Then I remembered, he’d made regular appearances on the first season or so of The Drew Carey Show and was very funny. Had no idea he had such a fine singing voice.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice parody he sings in the show works so well because the writers know the secret of parody songwriting: They should be good songs in and of themselves, and this definitely is.
(“All the cherubim say you gotta/Trust the man with the stigmata…”).
In fact, the revision I want to make of my original comments is that I said I didn’t think the songs would linger in the mind; I was wrong, they have. So much so that I’m now hoping for a CD release (there is one of the original stage show, but I want the movie version).
I still don’t think the broader satiric point the filmmakers want to make quite comes off…but as it turns out, parodying the “drug war’s” focus on marijuana may itself be timelier than I thought.
Those of you who know me know that I’ve never done any illegal drugs. Not because they’re illegal, they’ve just never been a part of my life. Even drinking alcohol twice a year is frequent for me.
But even I know that marijuana being illegal while alcohol and tobacco aren’t makes no sense. And telling children all these lies about it backfires. As Digby writes in the post linked above:
“Seriously, this is one reason why kids do dangerous drugs. They find out quickly that this stuff about pot is nonsense and people who say it is as dangerous (or more dangerous by implication) than cocaine or methamphetamine, then lose all credibility. If they’re lying about this, they’re probably lying about everything.”
