Reefer, man: a brief history of marijuana in the movies, from demon weed to sight gag and beyond

CHICAGO - Now that cannabis and Illinois have made it legal, time has gone a little ... haywire. It seems so long ago since Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong gave us the "Dave's not here" routine. Forty-nine years later, it's still 83 seconds of stupidly perfect stoner comedy, and without it, just about every commercially successful 21st century pothead odyssey, with side orders of violence and snacking - "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," "Pineapple Express," dozens more - is unthinkable.

All that belongs to a distant epoch. Not the one our popular culture is figuring out what to do with now.

Does legalizing the forbidden take the funny out of it?

"It's going to take some of it out," argues Columbia College Chicago associate