Red Eyes on Showtime Over 'Reefer Madness: The Musical"

[Khephra]

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Here's a prediction for 2005: Showtime is going to make some noise with its musical remake of an agitprop cinema classic, "Reefer Madness."

The Showtime movie is based on the "Reefer Madness" stage musical that was first mounted in Hollywood in 1999 and off-Broadway in 2001. The original team from the stage production -- director Andy Fickman, lyricist Kevin Murphy and composer Dan Studney -- have reprised their roles for the movie and serve as its executive producers.

The contemporary "Reefer Madness" is wonderfully satiric, beautifully shot and unabashedly silly -- as ridiculously over the top as the original 1936 flick was in attempting to warn parents that marijuana was more addictive than heroin or cocaine. The new-model "Reefer Madness" does not even take its mission as satire too seriously, yet there are subtle bits of social commentary circa 2004 sprinkled throughout.

"This is ultimately a movie about questioning authority," Fickman says. "You could take the word 'reefer' out and put a lot of other contemporary issues in there, and it would work. It works especially well for the times we live in."

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=filmNews&storyID=7139145