In the heart of Europe, German rapper Antifuchs is blending beats with beliefs to champion the cause of cannabis wellness. Inspired by her personal journey and the transformative power of cannabis, Antifuchs has crafted an anthem for the movement: a song about her favorite cannabis brand, Munich-based Drapalin Pharmaceuticals, a beacon of innovation in Germany’s medical cannabis landscape.
Together, they recently visited Lagom Pharmatech s.r.o in the Czech Republic, a supplier to Drapalin Pharmaceuticals, to film a music video to go with the rapper’s newest hit, “Drapalin”. Amidst a sea of green, they filmed a music video that’s as much a visual feast as it is a manifesto – a call to arms for the cannabis-curious and the healthcare revolutionaries alike.
The song is a powerful fusion of Antifuchs’s gritty, honest lyrics and Drapalin’s groundbreaking work in medical cannabis. This artistic collaboration aims to shatter stigmas and open minds, creating a musical track that deliberately attempts to dismantle long standing stigmas and challenge societal perceptions. Together, Antifuchs and Drapalin are scripting the soundtrack of a revolution in medical science and social attitude, advocating for a world where cannabis’s potential is fully realized and integrated into the fabric of modern medicine.
The Soundtrack for a New Era of Cannabis in Germany
The release of this music video is particularly significant, coming just after Germany’s landmark decision to legalize recreational cannabis, effective April 1, 2024. Adults in Germany will soon enjoy the freedom to use cannabis recreationally, marking a major shift in national policy. Amidst these changes, Drapalin, already a leader in the medical cannabis industry, continues to pioneer advancements in cannabis use for health purposes. With a strong commitment to uncovering and promoting the therapeutic benefits of cannabis, Drapalin has emerged as a key player not only in the German market, but also on a global scale. Their dedication to quality, innovation, and the well-being of patients has garnered widespread recognition, cementing their position at the forefront of a movement towards integrating cannabis into a comprehensive health and wellness framework.
Together, Antifuchs and Drapalin are using art to share a story that challenges outdated notions about cannabis. Through the universal language of music, they’re engaging audiences, encouraging a dialogue that transcends cultural and generational divides, and painting a future where cannabis is recognized not just for its therapeutic potential but as a catalyst for change in healthcare.
Credit: Berliner Blende
Behind the Scenes: Crafting the “Drapalin” Music Video
Choosing the Czech Republic as the stage for their music video, Antifuchs and Drapalin tap into a rich vein of cannabis culture and legislative progress. The country, known for its pioneering stance on cannabis in Europe, becomes more than just an aesthetically pleasing setting. Instead, it’s a statement of intent, a declaration that their collaboration is not just about music or medicine, but about moving the needle on cannabis acceptance and innovation. This setting underscores the duo’s dedication to not just participating in the cannabis dialogue but leading it, leveraging the Czech Republic’s progressive environment as a symbol of what’s possible when societies embrace change and foster innovation in healthcare.
Set against the backdrop of Lagom’s indoor cannabis facility, the “Drapalin” music video promises to be a visually stunning and emotionally resonant portrayal of the healing power of cannabis. The video, rich in color and emotion, is much more than just a collection of visually impactful imagery. Through its blend of artful cinematography and poignant narrative, it seeks not just to entertain but to enlighten, offering a glimpse into the profound impact of cannabis on individuals and communities. This visual odyssey is designed to resonate on a deeply personal level, challenging perceptions, inspiring curiosity, and empowering viewers with a renewed sense of advocacy and hope for the future of cannabis as a cornerstone of healing and wellness.
Drapalin and Antifuchs have created the anthem of a new era of cannabis in Germany. As Germany’s cannabis laws evolve and the plant’s therapeutic potentials are increasingly recognized, this partnership amplifies a collective call for change. It’s a resounding echo through the halls of pop culture and policy-making, signifying not just acceptance but celebration. Every note and nuance crafted by Drapalin and Antifuchs resonates with the promise of a future where cannabis and culture coalesce, guiding Germany and beyond toward a more open, understanding, and inclusive society.
We’re in the midst of winter 2024, and these are dark days in many ways. I want these flowers to reach the world on the magnitude and scale of an upbeat Ed Sheeran song, to be so full of pop that dance is irresistible.
Granny Candy Bred by Humboldt Seed Company
Granny Candy, cultivated by Terp Mansion. Photo Erik Christiansen.
I first encountered Granny Candy on the first leg of the epic multi-day 2023 pheno hunt hosted by Humboldt Seed Company (HSC). The cannabis cultivation adventure took place in Humboldt County, the top of the trinity that makes up The Emerald Triangle—northern California’s famed cannabis-growing region. In a sort of dreamlike state cooked by the heat of the summer sun, many joints, and a few ice-cold beers, two fellow weed documentarians told me to hit a top row on the terraced hillside at Full Moon Farms. I’d know the particular plant they liked right away, they said, both smiling through the mannerisms of their entire body.
The cannabis plant was easy to find. The intensely sweet fresh fruit aroma wafting off the flowers on this pot growing under the sun was transcendent. Its smell embodied the inspiration for Granny Candy’s name, a throwback to childhood days of eating the hard candies wrapped to look like strawberries, biting down to get straight to the rush of sugar at the chewy center. A stunning specimen of stacked trichomes, the leaves on this plant were frosted over and folded inward in such a way that HSC’s Product Executive Halle Pennington called them “terp tacos.”
Initially discovered with Errl Hill, the proprietors of Fire Mountain Farms, as a part of HSC’s 2020 pheno hunt, Granny Candy is a cross of Mountaintop Mint with White Runtz Muffin (White Runtz mixed with HSC’s signature strain, Blueberry Muffin). To produce the Granny Candy seeds, one plant out of 600 samples was developed and refined, including two years spent exclusively with the growers at Terp Mansion.
“We were just sort of experimenting with all kinds of crosses of White Runtz because Jason [Gellman] of Ridgeline had just won The Emerald Cup with it,” HSC founder and CEO Nat Pennington explains. “We’ve been breeding with candy terpenes for a long time, and this one not only encompasses that genre but has unreal frost, unreal production.”
Today, I’m soaking up the pockets of sunshine between California’s winter rainstorms and traveling back to the heady days of summer with the dried and cured Granny Candy flowers. The buds look green with purple at the tips and smell like not-quite-ripe strawberries and cooked pineapple with herbaceous hints of mint and a bit of cream. When the flowers are ground, the aroma also has the tiniest hint of fuel.
She might be sweet, but don’t underestimate Granny! With a candy-floss taste, the potent stone of this strain is a creeper. Granny Candy doesn’t reek of the gas smell and flavor profile in weed but comes on strong and can reach up to 32% THC.
Neon Panther Bred and grown by Moon Valley Cannabis
Photo by Kandid Kush
Grown indoors in living soil, the strains from Moon Valley remind me of walking in the French Quarter in New Orleans with a go-cup in hand. Sweet and fruity, these flowers hit just about as hard as a bright red rum-spiked punch topped with a maraschino cherry and just might lead to mid-day bouts of dancing.
Scientific research shows that the microorganisms found in soil can play a role in boosting the aromas, flavors, and effects of cannabis. Very unscientific studies I’ve been conducting by ripping Neon Panther through a Jerome Baker bong have convinced me the research is accurate; Moon Valley’s weed is intensely flavorful and super stoney.
With a leap into California’s legal market in 2021, Moon Valley Cannabis has already been on a bit of a tear through the cannabis awards circuit—including a first-place flower win with Big Al Exotics’s Hawaiian Snowcone in Jimi Devine and Chronic Culture’s 2023 Transbay Challenge V.
Neon Panther is the first strain that Moon Valley has bred. It’s a generational cross of Blueberry Muffin, Sticky Papaya, Pink Runtz, and Super Boof. The dried and cured buds have the colors of American camouflage, replacing the black parts in camouflage with a dark purple. When the flowers are ground, purple expresses itself, making the buds look like dried lavender. Neon Panther has an intense citrus bouquet and tastes like a fruit punch. Pow!
Tiramisu Bred and Grown by Moon Gazer Farms
A Koffee x Razzleberry cross, Tiramisu from the regenerative cannabis cultivators behind Moon Gazer Farms smells like a summer picnic. The nose on these flowers is berries paired with a soft brie cheese. The buds are dense and green, and the hit tastes creamy and fruity, like a cream cheese danish with jam.
Tiramisu is a sungrown selection from the 2023 harvest grown in Mendocino County, California. It’s well-cured and smokes smoothly.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was the central German film director of the whole post-Hitler era. He was the greatest in terms of productivity (43 films in barely over a decade), range and impact on his own generation—both in Germany and abroad. The “New German Cinema” revival of the ’70s is unthinkable without him, and among his contemporaries, only Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre) rivals him in world prestige. In films like The Merchant of Four Seasons, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lili Marleen, and Lola—Fassbinder opened up a peculiar, teeming, madly fertile world: a world of bleak city streets; garish interiors rotting with an over-sumptuous hothouse glamour; middle-class eccentricities and madness; and an erotic, romantic frustration so intense that it seems to beat at the spectator in waves. There is something almost oppressive about his films—they repel as they fascinate. Taken together they present a full and often damning portrait of German society in the 20th century—its social realities and, perhaps more important, its cultural undertows, dreams and nightmares.
When I spoke to Dieter Schidor—a deceptively boyish-appearing actor and ex-academic, who produced Fassbinder’s last film (Querelle, taken from the Jean Genet novel) and directed The Wizard of Babylon (a documentary on the making of Querelle)—I expected an intimate glimpse of a driven artist. I didn’t expect the picture I got: an appalling portrait of a man who was, in many ways, self-destructive, cruel and even monstrous—a man who tyrannized his friends and coworkers mercilessly; who drove some of them (like actress Hanna Schygulla) literally into nervous breakdowns; who manipulated the system with consummate cynicism and cunning to finance his movies; whose appetites for sex, drugs, emotional violence or depravity were immense and uncontrollable; and whose personal life was a pathetic, even sordid, shambles (both his long-term homosexual lovers committed suicide).
Throughout the interview, Schidor—a lucid, extremely intelligent raconteur who obviously loved Fassbinder—would occasionally pull back, protest that I was “making” him reveal a catalog of horrors; but seconds later, with little prodding, he would recount some new atrocity, pry open some new festering wound. It seems obvious that Fassbinder’s friends and associates may feel almost compelled to strip the veils from his monument. And they perhaps do this, not out of any sense of revenge or account-settling, but, in some weird way, to bring this strong, volatile, “monstrous”—but very human—figure back to life.
Schidor was open and honest, eloquent beyond any interviewer’s dreams and his remarks and stories speak for themselves. They show Fassbinder, I think, for what he probably was: a great artist and a pitiable, amoral man. They show a person who could be, sometimes almost simultaneously, violent and gentle, revolutionary and bourgeois, passionate and calculating, vicious and humane, idealistic and corrupt; an artist who, perhaps like Richard Wagner, bares the soul of his countrymen by reflecting in his art and his life all the grossness and the beauty, the idealism and the horror of Germany itself.
And in a peculiar way, these sometimes shocking revelations might be, along with his film work (which, in Querelle, reached its apex), a true monument to Fassbinder—who, as Schidor makes clear, would have wanted, even insisted on, that truth.
HIGH TIMES: How did you first meet Fassbinder?
DIETER SCHIDOR: I got to know him in 1969: He had just done his first two films: Katzelmacher and Love Is Colder than Death. And then I acted in a couple of his films—and then, in 1975, we had a fight; for a couple of years we didn’t speak to each other anymore—
HIGH TIMES: An artistic fight?
SCHIDOR: No, it was a mixture… It was a personal fight. We had done a film, Satan’s Brew, and I couldn’t come back for the second shooting. And then it happened (through Querelle, actually) that we started talking again. In the course of working on Querelle, we got very close.
HIGH TIMES: What was he like?
SCHIDOR: That is a very, very difficult question. I’ll try and tell it to you from my point of view. It is a question that I get often asked, and I try to be as concrete as possible—because, for me, he’s the most important person that I’ve met in my life, and will meet. You probably know that he could be very cynical, that he could be very wicked, and that he could be very unjust to people.
Everything he did, he did it in excess. He smoked in excess, he drank in excess; he took drugs in excess; he took sleeping pills in excess; and he ate in excess.
To stay on the negative side for a moment, he… he destroyed people. He did that, he really did. Not that he was guilty in the suicide of his one lover, and the hanging of another, but he felt guilty, and it was certainly something to do with him, you know; because people changed when they were around him, totally. They fell totally under his spell. I also fell under his spell. And you let him do things to you that you wouldn’t let anybody else do. And people would ask, “Why, why, do you allow him to do that?” And there was never an answer; people who were not very close to him could never understand that. He had, in the beginning, girls that went into the street as prostitutes for him: actresses—
HIGH TIMES: To keep the theater group going?
SCHIDOR: Yeah, to get money, because he liked to drink cognac and champagne. There’s a very famous story— not a secret: He had a flat where he lived with two of his actresses, and he sent them out to fuck with pawnbrokers, with Turks and Greeks; and get twenty marks, thirty marks, for each fuck, and then bring it back to him.
And, at the same time—and this is the most important thing—to spend an evening with him was more fascinating than all the humiliations you could get. There was a hypnotical power that made him, for you, not only into an institution of artistic quality, but also— even though he was totally amoral— there could be moments when he would be of such tenderness, and you would feel he would be the only person in your life (more even than your mother) that would understand you, exactly, and you would trust him, completely. But then it would happen that, two weeks later, he would totally use that, you know—
HIGH TIMES: What was this fascination based on? The force of his personality?
SCHIDOR: Uh-huh. This power of his personality was there, before he ever became a director. He must have had this power when he was fifteen years old—
HIGH TIMES: What about the avant-garde theater troupe in Munich where he started out?
SCHIDOR: You see, there was nothing happening in Munich at the time, so the media caught up with them, and people started writing about them. Fassbinder had his first part as an actor there, and he had learned his lines, and he had forgotten them totally. So he was onstage, and he noticed that he couldn’t say the lines, so he just screamed; he changed it all, and made this fifteen-minute speech, and just kept screaming… He could react very quickly. And the media impact of the theater group—AntiTheater—got him the money for his first film.
See, what happened to him: when he’d done his first film, Love Is Colder than Death, and that went to the Berlin Film Festival, and it was smashed to pieces—the critics hated it; the people booed. Fassbinder wasn’t interested in that. He wasn’t interested in the booing, and he wasn’t interested in the person who came up and said he liked the film. He knew he was doing the right thing.
He had the ability to feel that there was an empty space in the German culture of that time, where he could totally place his feet. And he got money from the subsidies; government money, government grants. He was very good at using the whole system to his best advantage.
The industry was nonexistent; you can say that. German cinema, until he came, was really nonexistent.
HIGH TIMES: Was his success the catalyst for other people, like Wenders and Herzog?
SCHIDOR: Mmmm-hmmm. Oh, yeah—and they know that. He was the one who—always, up to his death—he was the one who just pushed up his elbows, and went, like a bulldozer. He didn’t care; and he broke it open, also, for all the others. As an example, when he did Third Generation, he was a very distinguished, famous film director already— and, because of the subject matter—terrorism—he didn’t get any money, he was rejected by all the government grants… The actors were already all in Berlin. He’d done already two days of shooting; and he realized there was no money whatsoever. He called the actors together and said, “That’s the situation. You can go home, now. But, if you stay, you won’t get paid.” And then some said yes; some said no—and he did the film. He sent people around to collect money—fifty marks here, a hundred marks there—and he did the film, the credits and finished it. He didn’t wait until he had the film totally financed— he just went ahead.
HIGH TIMES: What were his shooting schedules like?
SCHIDOR: Pietra Von Kant, nine days. Hardly any of the earlier films took more than two or three weeks.
HIGH TIMES: How was he able to do this?
SCHIDOR: For a long period of time he had the same people. So that was time-saving.
HIGH TIMES: When he started, was he working with crews that were all tyros?
SCHIDOR: Yeah, they were all starting out. Nobody knew anything. He was scared; he didn’t know anything, either. And he said he really knew a lot, finally, after the shooting of Berlin Alexanderplatz. So, that was certainly part of the reason why things worked so fast.
HIGH TIMES: What were the dynamics of his film group? Was he able to instill some sort of esprit de corps?
SCHIDOR: No. He was a tyrant. He was constantly playing with intrigues between the people. Mind games—all the time. If there would be relationships developing, he would destroy them; or he would start new ones. You know, there was a constant energy that was flowing. People would be humiliated. He would pick on somebody—
HIGH TIMES: Were many of them afraid of him?
SCHIDOR: Yes. Yes. And he would interfere totally with their private lives.
There was a group of actors that were very close privately, also. His “stock company”: Hanna Schygulla or Günther Kaufmann, Kurt Raab, Harry Baer.
Hanna was supposed to play “Lola.” She was at a party at the last day of shooting on Lili Marleen—she had started practicing the songs for Lola already. He told her, “You’re not going to play ‘Lola’.” And she had a nervous breakdown … She really broke up, you know.
HIGH TIMES: She was his biggest star! Did he feel she had to be taken down a peg?
SCHIDOR: No. After having done a film like Lili Marleen, his fantasy for her was a bit exhausted. He needed a break. That happened after Effi Brest also. He sent her away. He said, “I can’t see your face anymore.” Then, after Effi Brest, the first thing he did again with her was The Marriage of Maria Braun—which he really did because he had treated her so horribly in the meantime: didn’t answer phone calls, and never called her back.
HIGH TIMES: You’re depicting a very cruel individual. Why was he doing this? For the good of the project?
SCHIDOR: I don’t think there was any analysis in what he was doing. He loved playing these games. And he loved intrigues. And he was very childish. And it was very cruel. But then, all these people that he was cruel to, and he was humiliating—they loved him.
HIGH TIMES: He pulled them up?
SCHIDOR: He pulled them up, yeah. He really pulled them up. And… I would more than say we were friends; I would say that I—I loved him; which mostly I noticed after he was dead, because… Now there is something missing which… I know I will never meet somebody like that again who will open up things in my head, that nobody else has done before.
I realize I’m not being very precise. You see, it’s very, very difficult. Don’t pick on the… When I say all these negative things, you can create a character, and you can say, “Oh, he was horrible.” There was a lot of cynicism and dangerous game-playing. It’s all true, you know, and that was all there. And I’ve seen him do things that were really unbelievable—like hitting people; or, the cutter of Querelle—he came into the cutting room once, because she had made a remark; and he hit her with his leather jacket, and she had a big wound over her face. And then he didn’t speak to her for four weeks. And then he would come and bring her big presents, you know. Or, we would have a fight, and then he would suddenly call up in the middle of the night and say, “Can we go for a walk?” Very sweet and tender, and you would forgive everything.
HIGH TIMES: He sounds like a person who lets everything out.
SCHIDOR: Everything. Then, he was completely free.
HIGH TIMES: Isn’t that unusual for German society?
SCHIDOR: No, it’s very unusual. He was hated by many, many people—especially in Germany… In the media, he was always loved. He established his place very fast. But with the public— with his TV things, he irritated people a lot. Then there was his appearance: his leather jacket, and torn jeans, and unshaven—that was unusual. Or that he would sit in press conferences, and not be polite. He was never polite. And, at the same time—it’s very complex—with his scruffy dress; it was a false front. He knew that it was effective.
HIGH TIMES: Another interesting thing about his films is their immense catholicity of tastes and interests.
SCHIDOR: He could soak a lot of things up without being totally involved. It’s not that he knew a lot about the Third Reich, for example, but if there were certain aspects that interested him, then he would, very fast, learn what he wanted to know. It was not that he read a lot, you know—he read the books that he wanted to read. Alfred Döblin, a German philosopher—he’s one of our classics. And Querelle was one of his favorite books. And Schopenhauer…
So, in his bedroom, you would find—with the porno magazines—you would find all of Schopenhauer.
HIGH TIMES: He also had a real flair for cinematic mimicry—
SCHIDOR: He had a couple of directors that he knew every film—and one was Douglas Sirk. You can see his influence, especially in Lola and Fear Eats the Soul. Then there were the Michael Curtiz movies—Fassbinder was going to do a book on Curtiz.
HIGH TIMES: How did he work with actors?
SCHIDOR: He would never say, “You were good.” Only if something was bad; he would say, “Okay, you have to do that again.” His presence was such that, he made the actor feel—He was very tender; don’t forget that. During shooting, he created an atmosphere of incredible tenderness. Or; if he thought it was needed, he could create an atmosphere of total horror—of really beating, with words and cynicism, the shit out of an actor, to get the performance he wanted.
HIGH TIMES: Fassbinder seemed to have found his financial touch in the last four years.
SCHIDOR: But, see, what he did, if you look back, the first films that he’d done—including The Merchant of Four Seasons—were films really treating problems of lower-working-class people, films that the regular cinema audience were not interested in. He changed… He changed, and got his audience’s attention—wider public attention—when he brought in normal middle-class bourgeois subjects.
HIGH TIMES: Why was he working with working-class subjects in the beginning, if that wasn’t actually his background?
SCHIDOR: It was not his background, but… When he was living in Cologne, when he was sixteen, seventeen, and he could do what he wanted, he was running around areas where workers were: you know, gay bars. So he was always with that type of people a lot—he liked them. Also, during the shooting of a film, he wouldn’t sit with the staff; he would sit with the lighting people, the electricians. He felt more comfortable there. So that was part of his own personality: he felt very close to them.
HIGH TIMES: Could you talk about the circumstances surrounding the suicide of his lover and his own drug overdose and death? Unless it’s too private—
SCHIDOR: No, no. There’s no reason not to do it, because one thing that Fassbinder was always very, very strong about—he always felt that everything private can be made public. There’s no reason not to make anything public.
His lover [Armin Maier] was one of these boys that were created in the last year, 1945, in the Action Lebensborn—you know, where the Nazi party put blond men and blond German women together into places—
HIGH TIMES: Breeding grounds?
SCHIDOR: Yeah, breeding grounds… They were living together, I think, for five years. He grew up an orphan, and he was adopted by a butcher, in north Bavaria; then came to Munich, and he served as a waiter in a restaurant where we all used to go. And they became lovers, and they moved into one apartment. And then … Fassbinder had written him a letter—(it didn’t work out anymore. He told me that. He said, “The only time when we can understand each other is when we take LSD. That’s the only moment when we can communicate”). It was getting worse and worse between them. Fassbinder had written him a letter that it was all finished.
Then, you must know that the lover has acted in a couple of his films— Germany in Autumn and Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven. He introduced him like James Dean in that film: “For the first time on the screen—Armin Maier.” Armin was running around with that letter (Rainer was in Cannes at the time) and showing it to people—because he didn’t understand. It was a very intellectual letter—and then Armin took an overdose of sleeping pills and was found a couple of days later by Fassbinder’s mother, in their flat. Fassbinder got a real shock out of it; he felt very guilty. And many people blamed him for that—which I believe is wrong. What had happened, of course, the lover had changed a lot. You know, if you live with a very strong personality—he had started copying Fassbinder’s gestures, Fassbinder’s way of speech. And he had lost, sort of, his own identity…
And the other lover… You know Ali: Fear Eats the Soul? Remember the Arab guy in it? [El Hedi Ben Salem] He hanged himself in a prison in Marseilles. It was after Fear Eats the Soul, which Fassbinder gave to him as a sort of “goodbye” present. They had been living together a couple of years, also. They even brought up a son from Morocco, the son of Salem, because Fassbinder thought he wanted to start a family—
HIGH TIMES: Was Salem an actor to begin with?
SCHIDOR: No, he was somebody who was working in Paris, hustling in Paris, doing all sorts of things. He had a family with six children in Morocco; and then he met Fassbinder and they lived together in Munich. And then they went down to Morocco and found the family, and took one eight-year-old son up to Germany. And that became impossible, you know—because Fassbinder didn’t take care of the son. The father beat the shit out of the son whenever he got it from Fassbinder. And then the son was given to the girls, you know, to take care of him, and send him to school. And sometimes he was forgotten; forgotten in a flat, and couldn’t get out for three days.
Then, after Fear Eats the Soul, they were in Berlin, and they had a fight again, and Salem went out, and he was drunk—he drank a lot—and he stabbed somebody—
HIGH TIMES: And killed them?
SCHIDOR: No, he didn’t kill them—but he stabbed somebody in a bar. People got money together, and they sent him off to Paris. And that was the end, you know. He was running around in Paris and saying, “I’m the one. Me, fucking with Fassbinder. Me, star from Fear Eats the Soul.” In Paris he was invited to a couple of parties, and then, some months later, he was caught… I don’t know what he had done—stolen something. And he hanged himself in prison.
HIGH TIMES: Did Fassbinder express any inner torment over all of this?
SCHIDOR: Yeah, sure. He didn’t express it outwardly… There was one situation—it was after Querelle, I think —and he had these wonderful dinner parties, Fassbinder. He had this flat in Munich, and he absolutely adored caviar—he would spend thousands of marks on caviar every month; and invite people, and everybody would get a big piece of caviar. He would spend money like mad, buying presents. And then Kurt Raab (who played the lead in The Stationmaster’s Wife and Satan’s Brew, and was the art director on many of the films) finally took care of this son that Fassbinder and the Arab guy had brought over from Algeria—and the son’s in prison now, also, because he got into drugs and drug-dealing. Fassbinder made a remark at that dinner: “Oh, Kurt, when you want to see your friends, you have to visit them in prison.” And then Kurt, who was already a little bit drunk, said: “Oh, Rainer, when you want to visit your friends, you have to go to the cemetery.” And Fassbinder looked—and it really goes like a knife into him. He really… He really suffered from that. He would never speak about it.
To come back to your first question: around that time of Armin’s death, he was really depressed, always. But, and I’m damned quite sure about it, it has nothing to do with Fassbinder dying.
HIGH TIMES: The suggestion wasn’t suicide, but that his recurring depressions would drive him to excesses—
SCHIDOR: Yeah. Don’t forget: if you say that it was an overdose—certainly, medically, at that moment when he died, it was an overdose—but he didn’t die by accident, through an overdose. He was physically, totally—run down.
It was a horrible thing for the insurance companies to get him to a doctor. He had the idea that he would be stronger than nature. He would sit there with his fat stomach, eating, drinking; smoking dope the whole time; taking really large amounts of cocaine; and then say, “I’m going to prove it. The energy I have is so strong, I cannot die. What would happen to the energy I have?” He said that to me at Cannes… You know, we all knew it. We knew it was not possible, what he was doing. It is really impossible—and he has to die. Everybody knew that, for many years. The excesses were so strong. And then, at one point, you just said, “Well, maybe he is right, maybe this is a miracle. Maybe he’s so strong that he gets away with it… “
HIGH TIMES: If he’d lived through it, do you think he would have changed? Or would he just have gone on to the end?
SCHIDOR: Probably. He started his self-destruction many, many years ago.
HIGH TIMES: Why?
SCHIDOR: One thing was… When he did not film, he did not know what to do with himself. He went on these erratic trips for three days to the Dominican Republic, or two days to New York—you know, spending huge amounts of money on first-class air tickets; taking somebody along; hating it after three days.
The last time I was in New York with him, and we were really alone the whole time, he did not… He went to the sauna one time, but the sex was nothing very positive. That was his last year, you know, the year of Querelle.
HIGH TIMES: So that’s why he kept up this furious activity?
SCHIDOR: Yeah, that’s why. I really was so shocked… I didn’t believe—I knew he was really run down, already, in New York; and then we went to Cannes for the film festival. And he wouldn’t go to bed before six o’clock. All the arrangements for the cocaine: there was all sorts of people spending huge amounts of money. And then he would get up at maybe nine or ten. And one night he stayed at my hotel at Cannes because the next morning, at nine o’clock, there was a reception of the German Export Union.
So, it was six o’clock in the morning, and he sent his assistant up to the pension to get his white suit to be able to go there; and he slept in my room. And we were reading to each other. And he was taking this very strong sleeping pill called Mandrax, which is like a Quaalude. So he was taking three Quaaludes, three Valium 10, and he was having all these very strong Bloody Marys that he ordered by room service at the same time. Then he said to me: ”See, if that doesn’t work in about fifteen minutes, I’m going to take the same amount again.”… So, fifteen minutes later, he took three again, and three Valium 10 again. And in between, don’t forget, he always had lines of cocaine. So then he said—very proud, like a little child, very proud: “If you would take that, you would be dead already.” But proud, you know—
HIGH TIMES: Did he indulge in anything else?
SCHIDOR: LSD, but not so much. Once in a while—twice a month, three times a month.
HIGH TIMES: Would he use these on the set?
SCHIDOR: LSD, no. Cocaine… Fassbinder wouldn’t do hallucinogenic drugs on the set, but he would do lots of alcohol—Jim Beam always—full glasses, beer glasses full of Jim Beam. He would finish two bottles of Jim Beam a day, during shooting. He would never be drunk; I’ve never seen him drunk… And there would always be marijuana or hash that he would smoke on the set.
HIGH TIMES: Did anyone ever go to him and say, “Look, you’re killing yourself”?
SCHIDOR: Yeah, but then you have to know, to try and talk to him and say, “Listen, Rainer, you know what you’re doing to your body is… Come on, now; you have time now, four weeks—go to the Swiss clinic. It’s wonderful; we’ll come with you…” All this we talked about constantly, that we have to do that—And after his death, of course, there came this guilt thing. Ingrid Caven, who was his wife, was a very good friend of mine, told me that… Don’t forget, he was a real little bourgeois, also. When they were living in this house, and Ingrid Caven came in and he liked her, he asked her to sleep with him. And she said, “I like this guy. I didn’t find him especially attractive— he’s fat, and he has lots of pimples… But I went up to his flat. The weirdest thing was when I came down for breakfast … He had just moved in there, and there were about eight people sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen; and Fassbinder had put on a suit, and he was sitting at the top of the table—and they were all waiting for me to come down. When I came down he allowed them to start breakfast; now, I was his property.”
Then they got married and he didn’t want her to work anymore. He said, “My wife doesn’t have to work.” And she said, “I was going crazy. What is this? What have I got myself into?” He was like a real—like a husband.
HIGH TIMES: It seems he’s got this strong bourgeois character matrix; and then, when he doesn’t hold on to that, he just spins out of control.
SCHIDOR: Totally. So he punished her for it… She wanted a divorce.
HIGH TIMES: It’s almost as if he’s punishing himself for being a bad boy—
SCHIDOR: All the time, all the time.
HIGH TIMES: What was his family life like?
SCHIDOR: His father was a doctor, and he built apartment houses which he rented to foreign workers from Greece and Turkey, where he put eight people in one room, and got lots of them—really exploited them. And Fassbinder, as a boy, was sent around to the flats to collect the money. And his mother was always sick, and she was translating; and he was given money to go to the cinema. He saw… Since he was six (he didn’t go to school much), he saw five films a day for years. Then he left home—he didn’t do his high-school graduation—and he applied to go to the Berlin Film Institute. He made his application, he made his test—and he failed it. They didn’t accept him.
HIGH TIMES: How old was he?
SCHIDOR: Eighteen. Then he started acting classes, when he was very young. He never heard anything from his parents, and only after his name was in the papers, suddenly his mother called him. And since then, he casts his mother also—his mother is in his films. It remained a very strong relationship… She was in Lili Marleen (as Mel Ferrer’s wife).
That’s the type of family he came from. He always accused her of trying to kill him. That was his pleasure—he would accuse her of giving him sour apples when he was a child, so he would eat the sour apples and die. And she would start crying and say, “Maybe I gave you once a sour apple, but I didn’t want to—” “Yes! You wanted to kill me!”
You know, I’m telling you… You make me tell you all these things…
HIGH TIMES: Listen, I admire Fassbinder’s films so much that it doesn’t—
SCHIDOR: That’s what I hope! I hope you get that straight, you know—
HIGH TIMES: It’s also sort of a corrective, you know, because I was so shocked at his death. It seemed such an immense loss…
SCHIDOR: It is! It is!
HIGH TIMES: … to have this torrent of creativity cut off when he was at his greatest…
SCHIDOR: Yes. You will see it in Querelle! He was at his greatest…
HIGH TIMES: … So, you’re not blackening his name—
SCHIDOR: No. That it is the last thing I would want, because I think he’s the greatest—not only film—I think he’s one of the greatest artists that Germany has had after the war. And for me, personally, he was the most lovable and exciting and haunting and despicable and wonderful person I have ever known in my life.
HIGH TIMES: If you have someone who doesn’t repress anything, who lets everything out, you get the bad as well as the good. No one has a pure soul…
SCHIDOR: Mmm-hmmm. I think you feel that—you see that in The Wizard. You see both sides in The Wizard. You see this incredible tenderness, and the great artist. And you see also the cynicism. And in Querelle, it is a big-budget movie—and, at the same time, it is like… this very private film… He didn’t film the novel; he made his own subjective meditation on Genet’s novel. When you see Querelle, you see that there is really somebody who—after the ”woman” films—started something totally new—
HIGH TIMES: So you think he was going through a great new period?
SCHIDOR: Yes.
HIGH TIMES: What, for you, were the high points of his career?
SCHIDOR: My favorite films are The Merchant of Four Seasons, In a Year of 13 Moons. I do like Satan’s Brew a lot. And Querelle. Those four.
HIGH TIMES: Could you talk about Querelle?
SCHIDOR: Well, I tell you one thing which I think is incredible about the film which has provoked a lot of scandal and irritation and aggressiveness—in Italy it is still forbidden—They wanted to have twenty-five minutes cut out of the film. There are three specific scenes they want to cut out. There are two sex scenes, where you don’t see anything, really. The provocation, the pornography, happens in the mind of the viewer (if you want it, it’s there). But Fassbinder did something… He did two very, very erotic scenes in Querelle, although you don’t see a cock or an ass, but everything is there. And those scenes they wanted to cut out—
HIGH TIMES: It would seem that the censors are distressed more at the mixture of sexuality and politics than explicit sex—
SCHIDOR: Yes, Querelle is a very political film. Without being anything openly political; but it’s political in the sense that… What Fassbinder wanted was certainly not a film about homosexuality. After Fox and His Friends he wasn’t really that interested in homosexuality.
HIGH TIMES: Well, Fox and His Friends isn’t really about homosexuality—
SCHIDOR: No, it’s about exploitation and power relationships among men. Okay—and in Querelle there is a strong homosexual aspect in the film that did not interest him in the least. What interested him in the film was—and he says that in the interview, very clearly—what he wanted to show is that if you want to be free and be happy, you have to find your own identity. So, to find your own identity, he believed, with Genet, this fact: that you have to invent yourself once more. And how better can you invent yourself once more than in a brother or in somebody that you love? In Querelle, the brother and the person that Querelle thinks he loves (and then, when he realizes that, he murders) are played by the same actor (Hanno Pöschl).
HIGH TIMES: It’s likely that Querelle will eventually become a cult film in the States—in fact, you might even pray for a few violent denunciations—
SCHIDOR: Yeah, yeah! At first I was really disturbed; now I like it when people get really: “Aaagh! This is horrible!” And you know what? Many gays hate the film.
HIGH TIMES: What was your relationship with him like during the shooting?
SCHIDOR: I’ll tell you an example and you can see. He had insisted that he get paid every day in cash. He loved cash; he hated checks. He got paid in cash every morning before shooting. He started shooting the film at eight—
HIGH TIMES: Did he always do this?
SCHIDOR: No, not on his own films that he produced. (And he had lots of money trouble.) So I had to give him, every morning, between six and seven thousand dollars in cash. And then there was a morning when I didn’t have the money. (We had money problems because the financing, when we started, was not totally set; I had only part of the money, but we had to start.) Then he said, “You know, I can lend you the money. I can give you thirty or forty thousand marks.”
HIGH TIMES: He wanted the ritual?
SCHIDOR: He wanted the ritual, yeah. And I must say, without him, the film would have been impossible. The financial problems were really so horrible.
HIGH TIMES: Is that generally a problem with German films?
SCHIDOR: No, with this film it was especially tough. We had an oral promise from the Berlin government that they would give a grant of five hundred thousand dollars. And then the Christian Democratic Government—they thought they could make a profile in front of their Conservative-party base and say, “We are not going to support this dirty movie, even though it’s Fassbinder.” He had just gotten the Golden Bear in Berlin for Veronika Voss. And then it became a total political situation: the Liberal party then fought against the Christian Democrats. They were a coalition, and they threatened to break up the government.
HIGH TIMES: Over Querelle?
SCHIDOR: Over Querelle. It was a question that was raised in the Berlin senate. Fassbinder had to sign things that he would make the film so eighteen and sixteen-year-olds could go to see it—that he would not do any explicit sex. He signed everything, he didn’t give a shit. And then once they called him up and said, “We don’t believe that this is his signature.” And I was sitting in his room. I said, “Rainer, they don’t believe that you signed this thing: that you were going to do the film for sixteen-year-olds.” He took the receiver and he screamed at the director for Economic Relations at the senate: “I’m coming over there with my passport to prove to you that it’s my signature!”
You know, he did all these things to make the movie possible. We got rejected from most of government grants. It was privately financed and it had cost over two and a half million dollars—which, for a German film, is a lot of money… Nobody gets normal salaries: neither Brad Davis nor Jeanne Moureau nor Franco Nero… And also, for The Wizard, he helped me.
HIGH TIMES: Do you think there’s any chance that the same kind of unfortunate thing will happen that happened to Fitzcarraldo and Burden of Dreams: that critics will say the documentary is superior to its subject?
SCHIDOR: That happened with The Wizard also. People have called me and said, “I like the film much better than Querelle“—which is a stupid thing to say. These are people that can’t do anything with Querelle… You can’t compare the two things. What is nice about The Wizard is the Fassbinder interview; but I had a lot of problems with his mother. She wanted me to cut it.
HIGH TIMES: Why?
SCHIDOR: I don’t know, it was a combination of reasons. First of all, he had just died. He looks… In the last months of his life, he was not very attractive in the normal sense. I never thought Fassbinder was ugly, because he had these wonderful eyes, you know—these eyes that made up for everything. It was never… “ugliness” is the wrong word to describe it. But he was not attractive in the normal sense like a mother would like to see her son. Then the mother has had this horror, and she has decided that, now, after the death, “My son was never a homosexual.”
HIGH TIMES: She’s decided that it’s some huge lie?
SCHIDOR: Yeah—It’s a typical “mother” thing to try to put her son—to “rebourgeois” him. And I try to explain to her—I said, “You’re doing the wrong thing. You are trying to put Rainer on a pure pedestal. He doesn’t belong there. You make him smaller in doing that. Don’t you understand that if you don’t leave this big mountain that he was, you know—this big, powerful mountain—all the facets a personality can have… That is part of the greatness of him. And if you try to smooth him out into a bourgeois person that actually wanted nothing more than having a happy life with children, then you’re destroying your own son.”
HIGH TIMES: How did the rest of his “company” react to his death?
SCHIDOR: Total shock. Shock and… a mixture of shock and relief. Which might seem strange to you. When I say “relief,” I don’t mean they were not sad, but a burden was taken off their backs at the same time that there was a very, very big loss…
HIGH TIMES: What did he think of his German contemporaries?
SCHIDOR: Fassbinder? He didn’t have any contact with anyone. I asked him that in the interview, and he had a very good answer. He looks. And he smiles: “We’re all good friends. All friends.”
HIGH TIMES: It’s interesting—Herzog and Fassbinder are sort of the antithesis of each other.
SCHIDOR: Yeah, Fitzcarraldo and Querelle, both films about ships. You know, there’s a funny scene, when Fassbinder and I were at Cannes, and Fitzcarraldo was in official competition. And at the night of the film we were just walking on the street by the beach near the Hotel Carlton. We were going across by the hotel and we see maybe thirty, forty photographers walking backwards; and then Werner Herzog in a black suit, and Claudia Cardinale coming over to the screening. And Fassbinder and I were standing in the middle, by some palm trees… They were passing us, and he was out of his mind. He kept… The first thing he’d tell me, “You should have seen them in Venice! There were at least three times as many photographers! What a ridiculous thing, to go to a film about a ship. It’s enough to make you sick…” And really going on and on, really furious that Herzog got all this attention.
They hardly said “Hello” to each other, you know. Herzog would come—we were sitting in a bar—and Herzog would come in. They would sort of look, and look away: Herzog and Fassbinder. There was no relationship at all.
HIGH TIMES: It’s too bad—they’re both great directors.
SCHIDOR: Yes… Fassbinder thought so, too.
HIGH TIMES: I understand you know Leni Riefenstahl. What is she like?
SCHIDOR: For a year we have been in contact—through Querelle, by the way. Fassbinder and I wanted her to do the still photography on Querelle, and she wanted to do it, also. And then she couldn’t, because she had a contract to film sharks underwater. And then Fassbinder died; and she wrote a wonderful letter. She admired him a lot; she loved his films. And then about three weeks ago I went to see her for the first time. I came to the house on the south of Munich. I expected an old woman—she’s eighty. And there was this creature running down the stairs like a teenaged girl. Of course, she had the old face, but there was a vitality.
That Sunday afternoon that I was there… She’s very old; you know, old people—they lose barriers. Something happens, I think it’s a chemical reaction. They become… They talk freely about sex, and they talk freely about things they wouldn’t normally mention. And she said, “You know, what Susan Sontag writes about me—that I always portray the athletes as gods because I keep shooting from low angles? You know what the reason was? In the Olympic stadium, in 1936, the walls were covered with German cognac advertisements; and I didn’t want that on the picture—so I had to put the cameras into the ground and shoot up. That was the only way to avoid them!”
HIGH TIMES: How does Riefenstahl look on the Nazi period?
SCHIDOR: Well, I tell you one thing. She said, “Schidor, I tell you—I said this to Albert Speer after his book came out. You know, I like Albert, and I said, ‘How could you write these stupid things? How could you portray it so negative?’ … As for me, I was under his spell. In March 1945, I would have had my hands cut off to get a smile from Hitler.” And she says that out, totally openly—
HIGH TIMES: How does she feel about Hitler now?
SCHIDOR: Oh, I think she’s changed. Don’t forget that that was the greatest time in her life. And he was the most fascinating person to her.
The older I get and the more I know about it, the more I keep asking my relatives and my parents and everybody I can get ahold of—the less explicable it becomes to me: this whole era of those twelve years. The thing that really troubles me—also when I speak to my parents, who come from a little village in Eastern Prussia—when I say, “Well, what did you think when Herr and Frau Lubenstein were not there anymore?” They say, “We don’t know…” And I say, “Well, didn’t you think it was strange that Jews were not allowed to sit on benches anymore?” The same with Leni Riefenstahl, when she goes on about, “I didn’t know anything about concentration camps…” Bullshit! That’s not the point: What was going on was going on since 1933. If there’s a sign that JEWS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER THIS BUS and Jews go and go and go and don’t come back, you don’t have to know about concentration camps.
HIGH TIMES: What’s inexplicable is that the whole humanistic German tradition of art and philosophy and music seems to have somehow evaporated during this period. Where did it go? What happened?
El cine altera, provoca y deslumbra. Y, a veces, también, nos expone a las situaciones más absurdas: “¿¡qué es lo que acabo de ver!?” Ojo, ojito, ojazo: sin que eso sea, digamos, algo necesariamente malo ni precipitadamente bizarro, ni una cuestión snob, ni nada de eso. Hay películas creativas, historias exploratorias, guiones con más de un sentido y, al mismo tiempo, con varias capas de lectura.
Por fuera de la lógica algorítmica, todavía existe un cine que tiene un trazado, digamos, diferente. ¿Hay algo “para mí” por fuera de lo que las plataformas sugieren y jerarquizan? La respuesta es “sí”.
Para ahorrar tiempo y disgusto en esa búsqueda, aquí, entonces, El Planteo armó una guía con material prácticamente desconocido o –al menos- no tan obvio. Un mapa extraño, inquietante y excitante para ver películas “re locas” –o casi surrealistas, es cierto- para disfrutar en situaciones iguales de “locas”.
Las películas más ‘locas’ para ver fumando uno
A la recherche de l’Ultra Sex
(Nicolás Charlet & Bruno Lavaine, Francia, 2015)
A fuerza de verdades, Internet nos enseñó que todo es un remix. Por eso mismo, el documental Everything is a remix nos mostró desde la cualidad “destrabadora” de mundos de Quentin Tarantino hasta su capacidad de procesar y reinterpretar productos de la cultura pop del pasado en instantes del presente.
Y usando la técnica del mash up, una especie de collage bastardo de VHS sobre VHS, una suerte de puzle de archivos encontrados, A la recherche de l’Ultra Sex se configura como un ejercicio de montaje experimental.
Aquí, dos franceses agarraron pilas de porno de los ’70, ’80 y ‘90, mezclaron sus partes narrativas, les pusieron doblajes encima y armaron una historia de guerras estelares con aires tanto de Star Wars como de Star Trek. El resultado de este gesto estrafalario es una película cómica con perversos Power Rangers, investigadoras sexys, naves espaciales, astronautas cachondos y robots malignos tipo Daft Punk.
A todo esto, parece lejano, pero hubo un tiempo donde las películas pornográficas tenían argumento: lábil, extraño, algo inverosímil, a veces más sólidos que otros, pero con argumento al fin.
Mientras tanto, en el presente, anida una nueva posibilidad en el cerebro de las flamantes camadas de realizadores: hacer cine con el cine existente. Y con toda la pompa de vanguardia, el regodeo surrealista y el desparpajo fumón, A la recherche de l’Ultra Sex fluye como por un tubo bajo estados alterados.
What Did Jack Do?
(David Lynch, Estados Unidos, 2017)
Blanco y negro. Cafetería de un tren. Un detective y un sospechoso. Sirven un café negro, negro, negro. Y, allí, no queda otra: una conexión emocional que viaja directamente hacia el imaginario noir. La tensión es real, el clima es inquietante.
Y ahí anda David Lynch discutiendo con un mono. Alguien asesinó a una gallina y Lynch, que acá hace de investigador, tiene serias sospechas de que este monito capuchino tuvo algo que ver. En el pico de su pedo, donde nada en su cosmogonía parece exagerado ni fuera de lugar, esa tensión comprime también algo de comedia: sus frases aúnan todos los clichés del género policial.
La Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain de París le financió este corto y está disponible en Netflix. Igual, el sentimiento es que, si le pusieron dinero para este experimento insólito, podrían ponérselo para cualquier cosa. Imaginen nada más esa situación: “Voy a filmar un corto donde increpo a un mono”. ¿Quién, en su sano juicio, no apostaría por algo así?
Entonces, la sensación de estar inmerso en un trip de LSD se agiganta cada vez más. Y What Did Jack Do? oscila entre lo extraño y lo divertido. “Mírame, ¿mis pupilas están dilatadas?”, corre Jack, el mono, a Lynch, el genio.
Fuego Gris
(Pablo César, Argentina, 1994)
Podría ser snobismo, pero se trata de relajarse un poco: algunas veces el arte no tiene que entenderse para disfrutarse. Y desde esa base, los estímulos que regala Fuego Gris tienden a alucinar, a aportar surrealismo y a crear momentos oníricos, que pueden ser drogones o simplemente chiflados.
Autoproclamada por Pablo César, su director, como un “drama rock”, la película se erige como un viaje alegórico que podría encuadrarse en la lógica de Alicia en el País de las Maravillas. Y aquí no hay diálogos, pero está Luis Alberto Spinetta: curiosamente, el film no mete un bocado pero presenta una banda sonora en estado de flash.
A su vez, Spinetta baja línea sobre los espacios zen y el camino hacia el nirvana. Entretanto, en sus nervios, algo de horror, pero más de fantasía. Fuego Gris es una historia de aventuras, de demonios internos y de un sendero introspectivo. Un trip que refleja situaciones de violencia y muestra a una ciudad alienada.
En tanto, el autor se desentiende de la trama formal y apuesta por lo sensitivo, por el “mambo”, por regalarse a esta ruta tensa, densa y genial. Asimismo, asume el riesgo de plantarse diferente, con anclajes comiqueros y con la revolución de un agujero interior: el de uno, el de la mente.
Mandy
(Panos Cosmatos, Estados Unidos & Bélgica, 2018)
Miren, miren qué locura; miren, miren qué emoción: Nicolas Cage se tomó un respiro de los bodrios en los que participó últimamente (Between Worlds, Primal, Grand Isle, Jiu Jitsu y contando) y filmó Mandy para ser campeón.
Contemplativa, lisérgica, desfachatada, que se entiende, que no, que los villanos son monstruos, que los monstruos somos nosotros. Es imposible no ser elogioso con un film que se sale del cánon, que va a contramano y que, fundamentalmente, se ve increíble.
En algún lugar cerca de la Montaña de la Sombra, una pareja vive una vida apacible y, de pronto, esa tranquilidad, ese vínculo cósmico que llevan con su hábitat, se ve corrompido. Una logia secuestra y asesina a Mandy, la mujer. Y lo hace delante de los ojos de Red Miller, su novio, quien sale a la caza de estos dementes religiosos fanáticos del LSD adulterado.
Con algo de slasher, mucho de gore, planos generales para admirar y una banda sonora climática e interesante, Mandy se configura como un sueño dentro de un sueño. En suma, es una pesadilla que late. Panos Cosmatos dirige una película excitante y que, con su devenir retorcido, con su excentricidad autoconzciente, encarna una idea superadora: la belleza también puede ser oscura.
Hay que verla con paciencia y sin ansiedad. Todos los seguidores del cine fantástico la recibieron con los brazos abiertos y es muy posible que Netflix no tenga ni idea que la tiene en su catálogo.
Antibirth
(Danny Pérez, Estados Unidos & Canadá, 2016)
Después de una noche de fiesta, en una árida y desolada comunidad llena de yonquis, Lou (Natasha Lyonne), una fumona salvaje, despierta con síntomas de una extraña enfermedad. Mientras lucha por mantener la cordura, comienza a tener visiones alucinatorias y su panza crece de forma alarmante. ¿Por qué? ¿Quedó embarazada? Vaya uno a saber.
Y en medio, profundiza su abuso de píldoras, alcohol y sustancias tóxicas. Fuera del horror formulaico, de las convenciones gastadas y de las secuelas infinitas, Antibirth se presenta como un film críptico y original: tensa su existencia entre El Gran Lebowski y The Brood.
Acá, Natasha Lyonne, en el papel más oscuro de su carrera, se mete en la piel de una “mujer infectada”: hay pus y abandono, hay locura y algo más. ¿Ir al médico y ver qué onda? No, eso no es opción para Lou, que segundo a segundo va desdoblando y ensombreciendo su propia realidad. Por ahí anda Chloë Sevigny, en el rol de su mejor amiga, subrayando que estamos ante una película de corte independiente pero, también, un poco “cool”.
Así, Danny Pérez, en su debut, se despacha con algunas escenas de surrealismo inquietante (ese final… ¡ufff!) y con un puñado de planos jugados que jamás veremos en el mainstream. Por eso, resulta ideal para manijas de David Cronenberg y paladares entrenados en el sublime arte del cine de género.
There’s a scene in Ice Cube’s cult classic film Friday (1995) when Smokey—played by Chris Tucker—says to Cube, “I’m gonna get you high today because it’s Friday. You ain’t got no job, and you ain’t got shit to do,” a line forever burned into pop culture’s ’90s lexicon. Although Cube had previously appeared in movies like Boyz N The Hood and CB4, the stoner flick launched Cube into another orbit and spawned two popular sequels, Next Friday and Friday After Next, and an animated series. It was the brilliant start to another colorful chapter. By the time he shot the film’s first installment, Cube was already a bona fide rap star, but after Friday, he was also a movie star.
Beginning with N.W.A’s seminal album, 1988’s Straight Outta Compton, Cube asserted himself as a tour de force early on. With his signature snarl and brutally honest lyrical gut punches, he helped put gangsta rap firmly on the map. After departing the group under somewhat contentious circumstances, he embarked on a fruitful solo career, releasing AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted in 1990, Death Certificate in 1991, The Predator in 1992, and Lethal Injection in 1993.
Over the last 30 years, Cube has evolved into a one-man army. He established his own three-on-three basketball league, Big3, starred in several more blockbuster films, released multiple albums, and formed a supergroup with Too $hort, Snoop Dogg, and E-40 called Mount Westmore. To say he’s kept himself busy would be a gross understatement. At this point in his career, he’s accomplished so much (including being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame), that it’s difficult to fathom what he could possibly do next. But as Cube would put it, there “ain’t no stoppin’ a G.”
“It’s really just about getting better at the things that I am doing,” he said. “I don’t look at it as conquering new ground. I look at it more like filling a void. I like doing shit that I think is cool and being able to present it to the world but not being scared to present it to the world. Because sometimes people hold they self back because they don’t have trust in ability to deliver. It’s just about getting better.
High Times Magazine, February 2024
“I can always do better records. I can do better movies. I can promote my league better, so it’s just really not looking for more ground to conquer unless it make sense. But doing what you could creatively deliver at a high level is really the goal.”
Cube is well-versed in breaking down barriers. Aside from his history with N.W.A, the proud Los Angeles native took a gamble when he recruited The Bomb Squad of Public Enemy fame for co-production on AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. West Coast artists typically didn’t mesh with East Coast artists back then, so it was almost taboo to take the risk. In Cube’s case, the gamble paid off, and the album was certified platinum within four months of its arrival and inspired others to follow suit. It’s all part of Cube’s ethos, which involves copious amounts of anti-establishment thinking.
“Everybody’s a revolutionary if you just don’t accept what came before you just because,” he said. “If it don’t work for you, don’t accept it and do something different. Just because they’ve been doing this the same way for 1,000 years, who gives a fuck? Yeah, I haven’t been here 1,000 years, and I’m not gonna be here for a 1,000, so I’m here to change the game and do it my way that works for me as long as I’m here. And then, if people don’t like it, they could change it back when I’m gone.”
It’s an admirable way to live. Too often, people’s self-worth is based on what others think of them, but Cube has always bucked the system.
“People that don’t love you ain’t no use to listen to them, really,” he said. “They don’t have your best interest at heart. They have their own best interest at heart.”
He learned it from his father, Hosea Jackson, who used to be a groundskeeper for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also credits his older brother, Clyde Jackson, for giving him the confidence to be his own man.
“It come from my pops, my brother—just my household,” he explained. “My pops is not part of any group, gang, or societal club. No man outside of his job could ever tell him what to do, so he was always his own man. He didn’t stand behind nobody but his brothers. That’s it. No other situation was gonna make him do something that he didn’t want to do. And I’m not part of nothing where somebody can tell me what to do. Anything that was like that other than maybe football or basketball—coaches tell you what to do all the time—but outside of that, I don’t want to be a part of nothing like that. I want to be my own man and stand on my own two feet and deal with my own situations and not have to adhere to anybody.”
Ice Cube has smashed that goal and is in a place where he can navigate his career like the captain of his own ship. He’ll perform at the Cali Vibes Festival in mid-February before heading to Canada for a quick, eight-stop tour with Xzibit later that month. His Big3 league returns to CBS in 2024, and his partnership with Weedmaps is thriving (he has his own strain, Good Day Kush, named after his 1992 single “It Was a Good Day”). Like Frank Sinatra, he did it his way.
“It’s a blessing, really,” he said of his career. “For one, I made a promise to myself when I got in this business that I wouldn’t let it change who I am as a person, so I was always willing to let the chips fall where they may and not worry about ‘I can’t do this.’ You know like, ‘Will my career be over if I do this or that?’ When you broke when you started off, going back to being broke is not an issue. That’s not motivation, like, ‘I’m going to be broke again, let me bow down to this bullshit.’”
Ice Cube is currently wrapping up his 11th studio album, Man Down, a testament to his unwavering commitment to the craft. After all, he could have hung up the mic years ago and rested on his laurels, but he credits everything to hip-hop. When asked what he wanted to say to a culture that’s given him so much, he replied, “Thank you for being raw and real. And thank you for helping us create industries where we can feed our families.”
This article was originally published in the February 2024 issue of High Times Magazine.
Can we bring back the magic? Can cannabis be “the plant that will save the world” again? I know that the scientists will tell you that cannabis isn’t “magic”. They will say something like, “actually, it’s the CBD in combination with the Limonene and the Delta 9 THC and yadda yadda that create the ‘magic’ you ascribe to this plant.” To that I say: Phooey. The cannabis plant will always be relevant and should be held sacred and treated with reverence and respect. For serious. I almost got in a fight (okay, that’s an exaggeration; I had a really heated debate) with a scientist that told a room full of people that “one day we won’t even need the plant. We will be able to synthesize the relevant compounds and the plant will be inconsequential.” What the fuck. Pardon my French, but ain’t no way you can tell me that the plant that has served as good medicine for thousands of years, the plant that makes better paper than trees and better fabrics than cotton, the plant that replenishes the soil as it grows, the plant that has inspired creativity from Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby to Willie Nelson, Cypress Hill, Rihanna, and countless others, is inconsefuckingquential? Have you lost your mind? Cannabis is magical. It brings people together. You stand in a circle when you smoke it, making everyone in the circle equal for at least as long as it takes to smoke a joint. I’m friends with people that I would have never thought to talk to if it weren’t for weed. That’s magic. Weed loves it when people work together to make things better for Everyone. So please, remember the plant and keep it holy. Reread Jack Herer’s book and get re-inspired. HEMP CAN SAVE THE WORLD.
PART II
Have y’all figured it out yet? If you haven’t, please allow me to break it down for you: CANNABIS HATES CAPITALISM. There. I said it. And you need to listen. If you haven’t been paying attention, cannabis stocks are in a freefall. Medmen stocks are worth zero cents each. Tilray can’t make any money. And there are more multi-state operators swirling the drain as we speak. Why? The answer is simple: CANNABIS LOVES FREEDOM, SOCIAL JUSTICE, AND DECENTRALIZATION! I know, it probably sounds weird to all the stock-slinging, block-chain-loving, Artificial-Intelligence-embracing, NFT-chasing people reading this, but weed doesn’t care about your market share. Pot doesn’t give a shit about your EBTIDA. Trust me. I talked to Cannabis last night (and this morning) and she told me that people in the cannabis business need to stop being such greedy capitalist hogs (remember: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered), and get back into the more hippified way of doing well by doing good. And before you get all upset, understand this: Cannabis likes money. Cannabis has been in the money game longer than money has been around. Cannabis doesn’t like greedy people. And that’s not science, it’s magic.
Some of you are very young, so you weren’t around in the early days of the cannabis legalization movement. Some of you didn’t get into the cannabis business space until after legalization, so you think of cannabis as just another commodity, like seed corn or sugar beets. Some of you may have forgotten, or you weren’t around for the glory days of one of the best decentralized business models the world had ever seen. There used to be more than enough money to go around. Growers made good money. Sellers made good money. Hell, even the trimmers made good money. Now, mom and pop farms are floundering, and trimmers get paid by the hour. And that’s because we have allowed the single-minded pursuit of profit to keep us from our goals. Here’s a quick refresher on The Goals: legalize weed, help the sick and infirm with medical cannabis, and make a little cash to be comfortable while we’re at it. I’m old enough to remember when people weren’t trying to corner the market. In fact, if your operation got too big, the feds would show up and take you to prison. Most of the early cannabis dispensary owners operated in defiance of federal law, risking their freedom every time they opened their doors. Ask Luke Scarmazzo. Ask Virgil Grant. Activists gave up their freedoms and sometimes their lives for this plant, and now folks that had nothing to do with legalization want to own every dispensary in every state, siphoning all the money away from local communities. “Sure we grow average weed and sell it at inflated prices, but hey, the stock price went up by two cents, so we only lost 100 million dollars this year!” You don’t have to be a scientist to realize that this business model isn’t good for anyone involved. And once again, there are plenty of ways to make good money in the cannabis industry without making things worse for everyone in a desperate attempt to control the entire space. You can figure it out. So please, make money. But make good money. Make money unselfishly. Can you do it? I bet you can. Good luck.
Due to a shortage in stimulant-based drugs for ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), the U.K.’s limited medical cannabis industry is seeing a spike in patients using cannabis for relief as an alternative. The exodus of patients resorting to medical cannabis shows its growing need.
It’s been compared to the Adderall (amphetamine/dextroamphetamine salts) shortage impacting the U.S. U.S. brand-name drug makers behind Adderall, Vyvanse and Concerta are able to keep up with the shortage, but the generic versions of all three drugs are struggling to keep up. Is it time to panic? Even with these shortages in medication, doctors still say ADHD is under-diagnosed and patients are under-prescribed.
Some of them are turning to cannabis. BBCreports that a medical cannabis clinic said the U.K.’s medical cannabis industry had seen an 86% increase in ADHD patients nationally over the last year.
Some people believe cannabis can alleviate many of the symptoms associated with ADHD as research advances.
Medical Cannabis Is Better Than No Medicine
Medical cannabis, when prescribed by a registered specialist doctor, was legalized in the U.K., mostly in the form of oils and flower, in November 2018. Since then, treatments, including medical cannabis, that meet “appropriate standards” have been reclassified under Schedule 2, meaning that they have medical value. And while the U.K. has very limited availability for medical use, exports are another story: the U.K. was the world’s largest exporter of legal cannabis in 2016.
Research director Dr. Simon Erridge, who also works at Curaleaf Clinic, said it was “natural for people to explore other options” amid the shortage.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) told the BBC that while there were no cannabis-based medicines licensed for the treatment of ADHD on the NHS, specialist clinicians “can prescribe cannabis-based products where clinically appropriate and in the best interests of patients.”
“Other ADHD products remain available but cannot meet excessive increases in demand,” the DHSC alert states. “At present, the supply disruptions are expected to resolve at various dates between October and December 2023.”
Suddenly losing access to a stimulant-based drug that patients rely on leaves them with few options.
“A lot of people with ADHD may try a number of different medications to find the one that works best for them, if that is suddenly taken away by shortages it’s only natural for people to explore other options and there’s no reason why that might not include medical cannabis,” Erridge said.
Cannabis for ADHD
Depending on the person, cannabis can both help and distract people from focusing.
A January 2020 study called “Cannabinoid and Terpenoid Doses are Associated with Adult ADHD Status of Medical Cannabis Patients” arrived at mixed results, finding that whole-plant cannabis seemed to be more effective.
“The use of purified THC:CBD in a 1:1 ratio (nabiximols) showed no effect on ADHD symptom severity; however, in a qualitative study, 25% of responses indicated that whole-plant cannabis was therapeutic for ADHD,” researchers wrote. “Here, we demonstrated an association between higher CBN and lower ADHD symptoms frequency. It has been previously demonstrated that the combination of CBN and THC is associated with increased psycho-activity of THC in humans. This indicates a more complex story than simply stratifying treatment based on THC and CBD alone.”
Researchers acknowledged that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to tackling ADHD when it comes to cannabis.
“There is no ‘simplistic’ method for tracking only the dominant constituents of cannabis to better understand the medical potential of a cannabis cultivar,” researchers continued. “Thus, the novel perspective of our study is extremely valuable for the [medical cannabis] research field.”
Medical professionals who spoke to High Times for an October 2019 article agreed that ADHD treatments are not one-size-fits-all. Brooke Alpert is a licensed cannabis practitioner and founder of Daily Habit. Alpert touched on the correlation between CBD and ADHD. “The studies that focus on ADHD and CBD have shown some conflicting evidence.”
She added, “I think more research needs to look at what relief people are finding with cannabis so we can have a better picture of how to further recommend CBD and cannabis for those with ADHD.”
Energizing strains like Sour Diesel, Jack Herer, Green Crack have been reported to actually have calming effects on people living with ADHD, even if they make others jittery.
