CULTURE

Harmony Korine Wants to Show His Matthew McConaughey Stoner Comedy The Beach Bum in Theaters Full of Marijuana Smoke

It will truly be an experience.


Harmony Korine
Photographer: Andreas Laszlo Konrath

Matthew McConaughey and Snoop Dogg‘s new stoner film The Beach Bum will truly be an experience. That’s because director Harmony Korine plans to show it with—bongo drum roll—puffs of marijuana smoke in the air in the theaters. Impressively, the trailblazing auteur has currently secured 30 rooms in which he’ll be able to do so. “I would very much like to see the film, when it’s released, be shown in rooms that spread curls of marijuana [smoke],” Korine told Telerama. It is possible in some states, such as California, that have legalized this drug for [medical use]. We already have about thirty rooms that have accepted.”

It’s likely though that none of those rooms are in Miami, Florida, where The Beach Bum is filming and where recreational marijuana use is not yet legal. Or in Key West, where “the action takes place” as Harmony Korine says, “in the extreme south of Florida.” “It’s a comedy with Matthew McConaughey and Snoop Dogg, about somewhat depressive marijuana smokers, in the spirit of Cheech and Chong,” Korine said. Other details that have surfaced about the film include the fact that McConaughey’s character will be named Moondog, “a rebellious charmer in this fast-paced, uplifiting and irreverent comedy” as Deadline reports.

No doubt McConaughey will have an easy time slipping into the mindset of that character as the actor famously lived through a somewhat public depressive marijuana smoking episode. Back in 1999, the actor was arrested by Austin police after his neighbors reported him “disturbing the peace,” a.k.a. playing the drums naked and dancing around his house. It was the marijuana, bong and pipe, however, that got him into trouble when the cops arrived, who later booked him on suspicion of possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and resisting transportation. Nearly two decades later, McConaughey opened up about the incident to Playboy, saying, “What’s wrong with beating on your drums in your birthday suit. I have no regrets about the way I got there.”

“But what’s the lesson?” he went on. “Shut the window that has the beautiful scent of jasmine blowing in because it’s two in the morning and you might wake a neighbor.”

Matthew McConaughey can’t stand the word “unbelievable”: