The authoritative voice known as Morgan Freeman is promoting a new romantic comedy, 5 Flights Up. Freeman stars in this lighthearted film across from Diane Keaton. They play a 40-years-married couple looking to ditch their Brooklyn apartment and relocate into Manhattan. Keaton and Freeman have been friends for years and always wanted to do a movie together, so it should be interesting to see their onscreen chemistry.
Freeman appears to be more interested (at the moment) with another type of chemistry. He has a new interview with the Daily Beast to discuss his love of weed. The article covers Freeman’s 1997 auto accident, in which his vehicle slipped off a highway and flipped several times. His entire left arm was shattered by the impact, and he never regained full use of his left hand (which is why he wears a compression glove). Freeman suffers from fibromyalgia in the affected arm. He smokes pot for medicinal purposes and also because he simply loves the stuff. Here’s Freeman, stumbling into a smoke cloud:
The many ways he enjoys weed: “They used to say, ‘You smoke that stuff, boy, you get hooked!’ My first wife got me into it many years ago. How do I take it? However it comes! I’ll eat it, drink it, smoke it, snort it! This movement is really a long time coming, and it’s getting legs–longer legs. Now, the thrust is understanding that alcohol has no real medicinal use. Maybe if you have one drink it’ll quiet you down, but two or three and you’re f***ed.”
He wants full legalization of weed: “Marijuana has many useful uses. I have fibromyalgia pain in this arm, and the only thing that offers any relief is marijuana. They’re talking about kids who have grand mal seizures, and they’ve discovered that marijuana eases that down to where these children can have a life. That right there, to me, says, ‘Legalize it across the board!’ Look at Woodstock 1969. They said, ‘We’re not going to bother them or say anything about smoking marijuana,’ and not one problem or fight. Then look at what happened in ’99.”
Movies about interracial couples: “I don’t think it’s taboo. Cinema is following the real world as closely as they can, and sometimes they’re out front. I don’t think it’s taboo, I just think nobody writes it. This wasn’t written as an interracial couple in the script at all, but that isn’t necessary. The point of open casting is to get the best people for the parts.”
[From Daily Beast]
Freeman goes on to discuss his decades of living in Manhattan and how he feels the city’s demographics were completely messed up by gentrification. After watching plenty of stuff go down on the Upper West Side in the 1980s, Freeman “just got on a boat and left. I went to the Caribbean … can’t beat the ocean.”
Does it surprise you to witness Morgan Freeman waxing rhapsodic over his love of marijuana? I wonder if he and Diane Keaton have ever smoked together. She was quite the convincing stoner girl in Annie Hall. Various sources are adding humorous addendums — including “weed, get in my belly!” — to Freeman’s weed quotes. He didn’t say those exact words, but he totally should have, man.
Photos courtesy of WENN
Hes not wrong about the weed but boy is he off on how Hollywood casts couples. Particularly where the female is black. It goes something like “black lesbian? sure ofcourse pair her with the white girl”. “Black straight girl? Give her a single mum situation or something but keep her away from white hero”. I really think Hollywood execs see black women as masculine entities and thats why you are far far more likely to see a black lesbian in an interracial relationship on TV/film than a black woman in a hetero interracial one. (Apologies for rant…..its been on my mind for awhile)
You’re absolutely right. It’s part of a long, long history of festishizing and caricaturing women of color… and it’s why intersectional feminism is SO important, and why people like Patricia Arquette piss me off so much.
Raven Symone played one half of a black lesbian couple on Blackish last week… and it was just a one-episode arc, but it’s such an anomaly on my TV screen that I soaked up every second and really liked them as a couple. Now I realize… I can’t remember another same-sex pairing of two women of color on TV. Ever. Even on the L Word.
And straight black women as a romantic partner for a white guy? Almost as rare. I guess one exception springs to mind: The Flash on CW. But they’re not even a couple, they just pine for each other from afar.
@Brittney B
Kerry Washington’s love interest on Scandal is a white man.
Kerry also did that crap movie where the neighbor was stalking her and no one believed her. White hubby.
Still, agree with the prevalence of these idiotic tropes.
And Viola Davis’ husband was white on How to Get Away with Murder. But both those shows are produced by Shonda Rhimes, who is black herself.
This is a particularly astute observation…thank you for sharing it. I am serious.
Totally agree, Hollywood does tend to stick with the same formula. Pretty sad in this day and age
That’s why he was nodding off during the interview for “Now you see me. “
So.. . Is he saying that he loves weed or nah? I couldn’t figure that out.. lol
I don’t get the love of weed. I’ve smoked it about 20 times in my life, and the only time it did anything but make me sleepy was when it was laced with something else. I feel so left out. Also, it’s so harsh on your throat and I hate the smell. No judgment at all. I wish it made me all giggly like it does other people.
“Also, it’s so harsh on your throat and I hate the smell.”
As Morgan said, there are other ways to consume it… edibles, for example, totally bypass both the throat burn and the smell.
If you suffered chronic pain and it was your only relief, you’d probably “get” the love a little more. I’m not attacking you… just reminding you that Morgan has legitimate medicinal uses for it, and when your pain just dissipates immediately, it feels like a magical miracle cure. You want to shout from the rooftops.
I tried weed probably fewer than 10 times in my life, and it honestly never did much for me. My friends said i was either immune to it or so naturally stoned all the time that I couldn’t tell the difference. However, I have pretty bad fibro, and have seriously been considering giving it another try (although it isn’t legal for me here)
I should have said for recreational use.
There’s a little device with a tube coming out of it, very portable. You put some weed in it and you inhale the weed as vapor. The harsh chemicals are filtered out of it.
I don’t either, at least not recreational use. It makes me incoherent, lethargic and messes with my memory even in small doses for about an hour or two and then I just doze off. There might be an apocalypse raging around me, nope, still sleeping off weed. And more often than not it makes me nauseous, though I painfully avoid overdoing it because of what a sleeping dust it is for me.
No thanks. Alcohol might be bad for me, but if I have to choose my poison, I’m gonna get hammered. At least I get to be uncharacteristically cheerful and active before I pass out.
Hi @goodnames! I always read ur comments not like a weirdo tho. Lol but I remember I was having withdrawals from one of many antidepressants I was taking at the time and the only way I could eat or feel normal was to smoke. It helped me through but now I’m in love with it but the job hasn’t come around. Lol
Lol, not a weirdo at all! My sister has fibromyalgia, so I might tell her to try it. Thanks for the input!
The smell makes me so nauseous. And in my country (Colombia) it is a real stigma to be known as a weed consumer. We have this notion that it is the gate to all the harder stuff that has our youth lost and in the streets. I do know alcohol is way worst and I’ve tried to share that with people trying to change mentalities, but the truth is, in our case, if you are a weed consumer it almost always means that you’ll end up doing way worse. It is what happens in the colombian society.
Yeah, totally. Colombia is like that but colombians are judgemental. Im colombian.
I smoke weed, & i stil take care of my child, work a full time job & go to the gym. . It works for a lot of people.. for some people it makes them sleepy. It really depends on whether you’re smoking sativa or indica. I prefer indica. Keeps me up.
Anyways, cant wait til Mad Max. Tommy is so damn sexy i want him to do whatever to me. 😛 i love him
Vape-Ing is the key to avoiding lung problems….
Haha, he’s a beautiful man and this makes me love him more.
Incidentally, my parents were always okay with my smoking (better than cigarettes, they’d say)… but never really tried it or had access to it. Now they’re both in their mid-50’s, and my stepdad has debilitating back pain and my mom has digestion issues, and I offered them a bowl. Worked better than the narcotics, physical therapy, diet, everything — it’s the only thing that gives them guaranteed relief. Now they understand why I’ve waxed poetic for years (it does the same for my anxiety).
When you get a real, life-changing benefit from this plant, it’s especially difficult to wrap your head around asinine legal restrictions… once you realize how wonderful and harmless it can be, it almost feels personal when people spread propaganda or block legalization efforts.
My state tried to pass medicinal marijuana last fall, and I voted for it, and it won the majority of votes… but we needed 60% to pass (a rule that DIDN’T need a 60% vote to get created, ironically), so there are older people (Florida’s full of them) and kids and people like my parents, still breaking the law or suffering in silence while convenience stores shill cigarettes and beer.
Also, his Woodstock comparison is actually a VERY accurate analogy about the whole godforsaken War on Drugs. Marijuana arrests and prison sentences are a huge, unnecessary, devastating burden on the whole country.
He had an affair with his second wife’s granddaughter that lasted over ten years. Disgusting man.
Yeah, ever since that story broke I have trouble looking at him. Plus I can’t think about Diane Keaton without thinking of woody Allen, so I’ll be skipping this movie.
ewww!!!! for real?!!! yuck
Whaaaaat? Ugh. That’s the downside of celebrity gossip. You like someone and than, nope, it’s ruined.
Pot makes me paranoid. Here in Washington it’s legal, so after all these years I tried again, with minimal thc but still, paranoid and anxious. But I don’t really like alcohol either. I’m stuck here in reality. 🙁
There are specific anti-paranoia strains. My younger brother is a legal grower here in Michigan. He is licensed and very responsible about meeting criteria and staying w/in the law. He has quite an elaborate grow room. He shows me what new strains he’s growing and what they’re for. It’s interesting.
My older brother is a Lutheran Pastor. I’m the Lutheran pot-smoking paralegal somewhere in the middle. Go figure.
Came here to point that out. He was the father figure in her life. He slept with her and she confessed it to her mother. I also think there were pictures sun-yi style. Really disgusting.
I lived in Seattle for 6 months last year working for a big .com company and weed being legal didn’t change anything in the daily lives of people other than water cooler occasional discussion being the new strain someone tried that weekend.
Its weird being back in a state where someone being arrested for possession of marijuana is still a thing.
Weed is fairly harmless to the moderation types. I’m on team Morgan Freeman
Me too. Pot got a bad name from the couch potatos. Most people I know who smoke weed are motivated, hard-working middle-class people…including me. There is a false perception that pot makes people under-acheivers and that’s just not true. It’s true that alot of under-acheivers smoke pot but they were already under-achievers. Pot didn’t make them that way. They turn to pot because they’re bored and have nothing better to do and because they’re immature. Everybody else who smokes pot is casual about it and it doesn’t impede their progress – puff puff, get to work in the yard kinda thing. Now do I smoke weed before I got to work? No! I can honestly say I never get high before my job. And neither do any other weed smokers I know. But I can rattle off a list a mile long of people at my work, my husband’s work, who drink alochol every chance they get – before work, lunch, after work, coming in wreaking Monday morning because it’s still oozing from their pores. I’m just saying, from what I’ve witnessed, alcohol is far more dangerous in it’s addictiveness than pot. I don’t know anybody whose livelihood was affected by pot.
While I do not smoke it or use it in any form, I wish it would be fully legalized for any use including recreational. I know my adult son smokes it and I’m ok with that- to me it is preferable to him drinking. Sometimes I do fear for him getting arrested for possession which seems so archaic. And also the video about the little boy with near constant seizures who’s dad gives him liquid Marijuana? Seriously, I can’t see how you would be against it if you watched it
There is a case here in Canada where a father gave his daughter marijuana oil to help control her seizures. His lawyer is planning to bring it to the Supreme Court about how the laws are unconstitutional because adults are able to access medical marijuana but prohibited for children.
There is an 80+ year old woman in Detroit who has been arrested numerous times and jailed for continuing to make medibles for herself as she has arthritius some other auto-immune issues and chronic pain. She refuses to stop, so every once in a while, she gets busted again making “butter.” She only does it for herself. Even though it’s still agaisnt the law in Michigan, I can’t help but question the cops persistance to bother her. It’s Detroit for crying out loud! Don’t they have bigger fish to fry than Granny making magic brownies so her hands uncrumple?
He’s not the only actor that smokes weed. They all do. I live in LA and I’ve seen a lot of actors at dispensary shops here and no one really cares. Woody harrelson has a strain named after him it’s called woody og and it’s pretty good stuff. Legalize it already.
Can´t help it, but he SO disappoints me. . . .
“Get stoned with Morgan Freeman” is going on a lot of bucket lists.
Love Morgan and weed! Lol! 😋
As a mother of a child with epilepsy, who has daily seizures despite being on 3 medications, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is that it’s still illegal in most states and the stigma that people still place on it. All I want is for my child to be able to have access to a medicine that won’t have tons of terrible side effects like the current pharmaceuticals that she is on. The strains that help with seizure control have little to no THC so she wouldn’t be getting high, although I can tell you she definitely gets “high” when she takes all of her prescribed pharmaceuticals, so that’s almost a moot point for us. Some kids have found success adding a little bit of THC to their CBD oil so I’m not totally against it but the majority is CBD. By the time every state has legalized it and it becomes fully accessible to anyone there will be a lot of children that have died waiting that it could’ve helped. I fully believe that all of the hoopla and hand ringing surrounding it even after so much evidence for it’s effectiveness has been documented is because people want to get there hands in the cookie jar, greed. They see that there is a lot of money to be made, whether it be the government or big pharma. In the meantime children suffer. Ok I’ve said my part.
I agree with you, but I think it’s more than just wanting their hand in the cookie jar so they get a cut too; I think it also involves a lack of willingness to let go of current income from pharmaceuticals as prescription drug use decreases as marijuana is legalized. They’re jockying for position to have new income replace lost income.
I love that he said what he said about alcohol. I’ve argued for a long time that if alcohol is legal, weed sure as heck should be legal. If weed isn’t legal, liquor should not be. I’d like to hear one instance where weed has been the cause or even a factor in domestic violence or impaired driving. Don’t even get me started on wet brain or alcohol related dimentia. Alcohol is not only non-medicinal, it is dangerous, highly addictive, and violence-inducing for many if not most. The liquor industry is going to take a serious hit if/when marijuana is legalized across the board and they know it. They will fight the legalization of pot tooth and nail. The idea that alcohol is okay because it’s legal is going to change over time. My family doctor and I had a very candid conversation about the legalization of marijuana. He said he fully support it’s being legalized, but he dreads how that will affect his clientelle. I had never thought of that before and I understand where he’s coming from. At present, he refers patients seeking medical pot to a colleague in town because he doesn’t want to spend his time dealing with would-be potheads. He’s right. As much as I defend the legitimacy of legalizing pot, I’m honest enough to admit that it will create a firestorm of people wanting it. However, I think that would be a phase that would level off at some point. I find the whole issue fascinating.
I totally agree on the alcohol thing. It’s ridiculous that my father in law thinks weed is from the devil but has no problem putting down a few every night or getting loaded on the weekends.
There are so many different dimensions to this issue and the legalization of it. I agree that big pharma what’s to get in on it so they can charge patients a ton of money for it when they don’t need their pharmaceuticals anymore. You would be floored by how expensive some of the medications my daughter has taken and currently takes are. Some companies only make one drug so they get permission from the govt to charge insane amounts, they’re called orphan drugs.
I think it’s really upsetting if/when it becomes legalized doctors have to think about how inconvenient it will be to have to deal with a bunch of people that want it and don’t really need when in the mean time there are lives of children at stake. That shouldn’t deter them from trying to help children but I understand that it’s a lot more complicated then that and in the end it just sucks. I have witnessed first had the quality of life of children get exponentially better from using it, you can’t deny it. I just want everyone to have that same opportunity. I pray everyday that my daughter will be able to have access and we may start to get to know her, the her that is beneath the cloud of pharmaceuticals that leaves her lathargic, out of it and just totally medicated.
@Mel M, I feel for you. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I know that many pediatricians are recommending parents move to Colorado.
I think people just need to keep voting, keep it on the ballot, the tide is turning.
In my opinion there is no need to go “that” public concerning you weed consumption and by the way, the man earings are soooo dated.
Why shouldn’t he ” go public” and help destigmatize his medication? It’s ridiculous that marijuana is illegal while alcohol and tobacco are legal. There is no excuse for it’s illegal status and it has legitimate medical uses that are being blocked by archaic and unnecessary laws. Do you understand how many people die every year from alcohol and tobacco? Compare that to the none associated with pot. And what about the social and medical costs from alcohol and tobacco? Again, compare that with pot. Seriously, pot smokers are not ruining society, and it’s time to stop the senseless discrimination.
I think it’s interesting how upset people STILL get about marijuana. I think big pharma is way more of a concern “for kid’s lives” and it’s a wonder how some of these prescription drugs are legal….and WAY more accessible.
I think it should be legal no question, but it does still have its risks. My cousin was a heavy pot smoker for many years and it has done a number on him. He didn’t do other drugs, just that and he has been hospitalised from it a few times with breathing issues etc. It should always be noted it can exacerbate some mental issues and you are still smoking in most cases so those risks are there as well.
5 flights up? Is this any reference to the Elizabeth Bishop poem?