[420 Girl]

This month has definitely been one of ups and downs for the true Eric Roberts aficionado. I’ve personally been hooked on his acting since “Star 80,” in which Roberts was alternately funny, creepy and downright evil. That he followed up that triumph with a brilliant turn alongside the God-like Mickey Rourke in the classic “The Pope of Greenwich Village” was the icing on the cake.

Even when he was battling a monstrous ******* habit and churning out cheapie action flicks in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Roberts was still utterly compelling. And that face! It started off as weirdly beautiful and -– much like Rourke -– it turned into something else altogether. Sure, you can’t call him pretty any more, but his face is still mesmerizing. I remember seeing Roberts’ blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Dito Montiel’s “A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints” and nearly choking on my popcorn. He looked INSANE. But in a really, really fantastic way.

Of course, I am chomping at the bit at the prospect of seeing Roberts reunited with Rourke in “The Expendables,” which opened this weekend and will be the first action movie to compel me into a cinema since I saw “Die Hard” at age 10.

And then, the inevitable come down: the news that Roberts will be checking in to Dr. Drew’s three-ring “Celebrity Rehab” circus for its new season. And for what? “Marijuana addiction.” Oh, man.

A quick Google search reveals that celebrities who appear on the show are supposedly paid $10,000, which isn’t a bad incentive I suppose. I’m sure it’s also temping for Roberts to get his face back in the public eye after so many years hiding out in the Mount Rushmore-like shadow of his less talented but inexplicably more famous younger sister, Julia.

But marijuana addiction? Really? This really reeks of some “Reefer Madness”-style hyperbole. Sure, there are some people who claim to be psychologically addicted to marijuana, but do they need a stint in rehab? No they don’t. They just need to lay off the weed. And if they can’t, then obviously they really don’t want to stop, so what’s the problem? Roberts has a prescription, so it’s not like he’s risking his freedom to use marijuana.

Did Roberts REALLY have to set the anti-prohibition movement back 50 years to get back in the public eye? Now when I Google his name, the first 200 or so hits all contain the phrase “marijuana addiction,” and you know what the general public can be like. Roberts is providing one more excuse for them to vote against sensible measures like medical marijuana or decriminalization because they remember nothing but the lurid headlines.

I’ll still go see “The Expendables.” And I’ll still watch and love the hell out of Roberts’ old movies. But thanks to this latest unexpected turn of his career, I will now always associate Eric Roberts with the likes of Harry J Anslinger, or Dr. Drew Pinsky: people who have made careers out of perpetuating half-truths and outright distortions about the addictive properties of marijuana.


NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: Speakeasy
Author: Tony O'Neill
Contact: The Wall Street Journal
Copyright: 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Website: Eric Roberts Makes a Comeback with ‘The Expendables’ and…Marijuana Addiction?


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