half-baked

Half Baked
Half Baked DVD cover
Directed by	Tamra Davis
Produced by	Robert Simonds Dave Chappelle (uncredited)
Written by	Dave Chappelle Neal Brennan
Starring	Dave Chappelle Guillermo Díaz Jim Breuer Harland Williams Clarence Williams III Rachel True
Music by	Alf Clausen
Cinematography	Steven Bernstein
Editing by	Don Zimmerman
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	January 16, 1998
Running time	82 min.
Language	English
Budget	$8 million (estimated)
IMDb profile

Half Baked is a 1998 comedy film starring Dave Chappelle, Jim Breuer, Harland Williams and Guillermo Díaz. The movie was directed by Tamra Davis, and co-written by star Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan (Brennan was later a writer on Chappelle's Comedy Central show Chappelle's Show). Cameo appearances include Steven Wright, Tommy Chong, Janeane Garofalo, Willie Nelson, Tracy Morgan, Snoop Dogg, Jon Stewart, Stephen Baldwin and Bob Saget. Jerry Garcia was portrayed by actor David Bluestein, as Garcia had died 3 years before the film's release.

The film became a cult classic, heralded by many as Dave Chappelle's first comic breakthrough. Chappelle's quote from the film ("I wanna talk to Samson!") has created a popular slang term for smoking marijuana with the term being used on J Dilla's track 'Crushin' (Yeeeeah!). Half Baked hit U.S. theaters on January 16, 1998, grossing $7,722,540 in its opening weekend (#6; #1 at that weekend was Titanic), and grossed in total over $17,000,000. Given the movie's $8,000,000 budget, it can be considered a commercial success as well as a cult favorite.

Plot

Thurgood (Chappelle) and his friends Brian (Breuer) and Scarface (Diaz) are forced into selling medical marijuana stolen from the lab where Thurgood works as a "custodian" (janitor) in order to bail their friend Kenny (Williams) out of jail, after he accidentally killed a diabetic police horse by feeding it junk food. Their business, named Mr. Nice Guy in honor of their good-natured incarcerated friend, becomes immensely popular, even attracting famous clientele. However, Thurgood's personal life is ruined once his adamantly anti-drug girlfriend, ironically named Mary Jane (Rachel True), discovers that he works for Mr. Nice Guy. Soon, all of their lives are in danger once Sampson simpson, a local drug dealer, learns that Mr. Nice Guy is costing him business, including his former client rapper Sir Smoka Lot.

Trivia

• On Inside the Actors Studio in 2006, Chappelle lamented that his original Half Baked script was actually much better than the film turned out to be, specifically that he had intended for the film to be more adult-oriented.

• The movie makes a joke out of the double meaning of the term pearl necklace, when Thurgood comes home to find his friends have spent some of the drug money, and Brian says, "What about that pearl necklace you said you gave to Mary Jane?" and Thurgood replies, "Obviously you missed the point of that story."

• Much of the movie was shot in Toronto, Ontario. Some shooting locations included the R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant and Yonge Street.

• This film is number 81 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

• Despite the movie's positive success at the American Box-Office, Half Baked was never shown in Australian cinemas, most likely because of the movie's indiscreet drug topic. The film however did make it to video, and then eventually to television.

• Jon Stewart's role as the enhancement smoker predated his success on The Daily Show.

• Likewise, Bob Saget has a cameo as a recovering cocaine addict where he shocked many fans of Full House with his infamous "I used to suck dick for coke" line. Most fans of his sitcom work were not aware that Saget's standup act was just as raunchy, if not more so.

• The soap gag is parodied in the television series The Boondocks.

• When Kenny goes to prison, the inmates chant "fish," parodying the scene in The Shawshank Redemption when Andy Dufresne first gets to prison.

• During the robbery scene, Scarface wears black clothing and paints his face in a fashion similar to that of the characters in the film Dead Presidents.

• When Brian is fired from his job, he "flips out" and asks "Who's comin' with me?" just as Tom Cruise does in the movie Jerry Maguire.

• Dave Chappelle parodied a scene from the movie on his own Chappelle's Show. The episode spoofs clips from several fictional movies by showing what would really happen in real life. The scene from the movie featured on the show is when Thurgood, Brian, and Scarface all find out that Kenny just got arrested and Thurgood mentions that they can steal medical marijuana from the lab that he works at to sell for Kenny's bail money. However, unlike in the movie—where the guys truly care about their friend Kenny and want to get him out of jail—Scarface says "Yo, Fuck Kenny, B!" and everybody then all laughs. The characters then suggest that Thurgood should steal some of the marijuana after all, albeit not to sell for Kenny's bail money but to smoke it themselves.

• In an alternate ending available on the "Fully Baked Edition" DVD release as a deleted scene, it is revealed that after Kenny returns home from jail, all of the roommates sit down to smoke from "Billy Bong Thorton", an act that was thwarted earlier in the movie ("No Scarface. No 'Billy Bong Thornton' without Kenny, that would not be right, man. Use 'Wesley Pipes'! Yeah.") due to Kenny still being in jail. This scene also implies that it is Thurgood's last time smoking. The next scene is an extended version of the theatrical ending, in which Thurgood meets Mary Jane on the bridge, and after a short talk with his "joint" he throws it over the side of the bridge, then walks off with Mary Jane. In this version, he has a longer talk with his "joint", throws it off the side of the bridge, and slowly walks away with Mary Jane until they almost disappear on the horizon, but then Thurgood comes running back yelling, "Hold on weed, I'm coming!" as he hops over the side of the bridge at the spot where he threw the joint over.

• In the same deleted scene "alternate ending" available on the "Fully Baked Edition" DVD, it is also revealed that Jan may not really be "a big dyke" as she is caught on the couch with Steven Wright's the "guy on the couch" character, when Kenny and the roommates return home from bailing Kenny out of jail.

Brian, Thurgood, Scarface

• There is a humorous feature on the "Fully Baked Edition" DVD called "Five Minutes With The Guy On The Couch". This feature allows you to literally smoke with the guy on the couch. The five minute clip depicts a stationary camera filming him as he sleeps on the couch, and as clouds of smoke waft in and out of the scene, the guy turns over several times, farts, scratches his head, removes his socks, and at the end of the scene, he rolls over and falls off of the couch. This feature is reminiscent of the old videos in which a stationary camera films a burning log in a fireplace, which is intended for people who do not have a fireplace, to put on their television sets, giving the impression that there is a fireplace in the room. The effect of this bonus feature is that as you smoke with your friends, you can look over and see the guy on the couch, as if he were really at your house.

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External links

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Half Baked

• Half Baked at the Internet Movie Database

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