Yahoo Movies 'Half Baked' turns 20: Director Tamra Davis on exactly how baked everyone was during filming
When you watch a stoner comedy like Half Baked, the Dave Chappelle potfest and cult classic that turned 20 Tuesday, one thought is bound to cross your mind: Was there actually weed being smoked on set? (There had to be, right? I mean, come on, just look at Jim Breuer.)
Director Tamra Davis dropped by Yahoo Studios on Tuesday to commemorate the film’s birthday on Facebook Live (watch highlight clip above, full interview below), and insisted that it had been an extremely professional, extremely sober film production.
“Those actors were never stoned [during] the whole thing,” Davis told us. “But in those days, Dave used to think like, ‘Wow, after I make this movie, I’ll be able to smoke weed everywhere. I’ll be able to do this walking into a restaurant.’ He thought this would give him carte blanche to smoke weed everywhere.”
That’s not to say there weren’t times when Davis (who also directed the popular comedies CB4 and Billy Madison before taking a sabbatical to raise her sons) suspected that Chappelle and co-stars Breuer and Guillermo Díaz could be going Method.
“The only time I think they were stoned was the day that we had to do the wires, where they had to fly,” she said, referring to an effects sequence in which the trio smoke themselves into a state of levitation. “I think that’s the day that I kind of looked at them like, ‘Hmm.’”
Davis will tell you which cast member was unabashed about lighting one up on set, and it should come to the surprise of absolutely no one: Snoop Dogg, who made one of several memorable cameos in the film (along with the likes of Willie Nelson, Jon Stewart, and Bob Saget) as the weed smoker archetype known as “the Scavenger.”
“We shot on the lot at Universal … on the stoops there,” Davis recalled. “And so Snoop literally pulls out a real joint — the whole movie we had been filming fake weed, no real weed — so he pulls out a real joint and he’s smoking a real joint on the steps there.
“I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’m going to get in trouble.’ I’m on the lot… And I start to see security coming, and I’m so scared. And all the cops started surrounding us. And I was like, ‘Oh no.’ And then as soon as we cut, they all surrounded him and wanted his autograph. They were so psyched to meet him.”
Watch our full Facebook Live interview:
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