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Think of it as Chekhov\u2019s joint, just waiting there on a table to be smoked. It\u2019s the kind of thing that has been appearing lately as actors Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat and writer-director Dylan Meyer promote their new stoner comedy \u201cThe Wrong Girls.\u201d (There has, perhaps not surprisingly, also been a lot of eating.)<\/p>\n
The trio are gathered around a conference table in the offices of an event space in the Frogtown neighborhood of Los Angeles, having just completed a photo shoot. There is that joint, sitting in an ashtray, placed there by someone, just in case.<\/p>\n
To be clear, none of them are stoned right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not ashamed,\u201d says Stewart, 36, of smoking weed. \u201cI want be able to finish my sentences and then I\u2019ll smoke after.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how I feel,\u201d agrees Meyer, 38. \u201cSometimes you can really lose a thread.\u201d<\/p>\n
All three of them recall previous experiences with smoking pot in professional settings. \u201cI got too high,\u201d recalls Shawkat, 37, of a visit to the podcast \u201cGetting Doug with High\u201d in 2013. \u201cAnd it was not great.\u201d<\/p>\n
In theaters Friday, \u201cThe Wrong Girls\u201d is about two young women in Los Angeles who love to smoke weed and eat. Frankie (Stewart), who has never righted herself after dropping out of Stanford, is anxious that her best friend and roommate Molly (Shawkat), an aspiring chef, is pulling away from their deep friendship and toward her relationship with Josh (Zack Fox).<\/p>\n
Frankie and Molly spend most of their time getting high and hanging out until a case of mistaken identity and a briefcase full of a mysterious drug sets them on the run from a Danish pharmaceutical company, the U.S. government and maybe some very powerful squids. And they seem to have developed telekinetic powers and are now communicating with their cats.<\/p>\n
Though cannabis is legal in California for both medical and adult recreational use, there can still be an air of rebellion in talking about it so openly. Meyer notes that, in the process of getting her movie made, she learned that weed comedies don\u2019t travel well overseas, becoming something of an issue when it comes to international sales.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people don\u2019t get along with weed and so that\u2019s why it still has a bit of a subversive feeling,\u201d Meyer says. \u201cAnd first of all, it\u2019s not federally legal. There\u2019s still huge chunks of the country and the rest of the world \u2014 it\u2019s not legal most other places. So it\u2019s this weird disconnect being in California and having the relationship to it that we have, which is very casual, and then realizing that in other places \u2014 \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so not casual,\u201d Shawkat chimes in, helpfully.<\/p>\n
The movie is the debut as writer-director for Meyer, who is married to Stewart. The couple produced the film through their company Nevermind Pictures, which they founded with Meyer\u2019s best friend Maggie McLean, also a producer on the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Wrong Girls\u201d has a tactile and handmade feel to it, inspired by the punk-inflected lo-fi sci-fi of the 1984 cult classic \u201cRepo Man.\u201d Other sources of inspiration were the female friendships of \u201990s comedies \u201cDick\u201d and \u201cRomy and Michele\u2019s High School Reunion,\u201d the stoned logic of \u201cThe Big Lebowski\u201d and \u201cSmiley Face,\u201d the general spirit of misadventure in \u201cWayne\u2019s World\u201d and \u201cBeavis and Butthead Do America\u201d and the chaotic satire of V\u011bra Chytilov\u00e1\u2019s radical 1966 Czech film \u201cDaisies.\u201d<\/p>\n