On January 1, 2014, marijuana was legalized in Colorado—and this is where the narrative of Rolling Papers begins. The documentary — directed by Mitch Dickman and produced by Britta Erickson, Daniel Junge, Alison Greenberg-Millice, Karl Kister, and Katie Shapiro — does not try to answer the questions of whether or not marijuana should be legal. Rather it captures the newsroom of The Denver Post during Colorado’s first year of legal weed, and the ways in which the writers and editors report on the new law.
Longtime Denver Post music editor-turned-marijuana editor Ricardo Baca — the first editor of this kind at a major newspaper — serves as the doc’s main character. We watch as Baca investigates this new industry, breaking stories on one cannabis company’s THC scam, managing The Cannabist column and website, and reporting in Uruguay to see how their legalization policies compare. The doc also focuses attention on the paper’s first weed critics who bring encyclopedic knowledge of the plant for their reviews of various cannabis strains, and the ways other Post staff writers report on the matter.
But more than showing how legal weed affects Colorado, Rolling Papers reveals a great deal about the shifting landscape of newspapers and how they are to survive in the ever changing media world. I spoke with director Mitch Dickman and editor Baca about the making of the film, why people who don’t smoke should care, and how this doc unexpectedly reveals a narrative on journalism and the news industry.
Baca and The Denver Post
Ricardo Baca: I didn’t quite know how to react when my friend Britta [Erickson], who’s a producer on the film, told me she wanted me to be the primary character. One, because I didn’t know that people in documentaries were actually called characters, but also I had just taken on the weed beat. So I told her, straight up, “Well, if you want to make a movie about me then I’d hope you’d want to make a movie about my colleagues, the full-time journalists at The Denver Post, and also the freelancers writing for The Cannabist.” And once they assured me that they were very much interested in making a film that would be an ensemble picture about all of us, then I was very open to it. I don’t live a life with a lot of secrets so the idea of having cameras around my house and workplace didn’t freak me out that much.
Mitch Dickman: Initially there were a lot of people that were planning on doing documentaries around marijuana and around legalization and that wasn’t anywhere on my radar or my interest level, per se. But when we discovered the idea of The Denver Post being the framework in which to tell the story, it became very appealing to me because of the layers and approaching it from that standpoint. We communicated well with the newsroom and the newsroom was supportive of us being there. We wore them down over time, they didn’t always realize we were there. Then only a couple times were cameras not allowed specifically where they were going.
Double Meaning
Dickman: Colorado voters decided pretty overwhelmingly for it to be legal in November 2012, we just wanted to see what it was like afterwards.
Baca: Rolling Papers is certainly about journalism in a modern era and about cannabis legalization. And I will always remember the day, I think we were about halfway through filming and the director came up to me and said, “Hey, we need a name for the movie,” and he told me the name they were considering at the time and I was like, “Oh my God, I don’t like that name,” and I also felt weird because if I’m your subject I shouldn’t be giving you your name for the movie. But then, I think it was a couple days later that I was our advert floor and somebody has stuck a piece of paper on a wall that said, “The Denver Post and The Cannabist, we’ve been rolling papers since 19-whatever.”
Dickman: That poster was a lightbulb moment.
Baca: I just thought it was super smart and nuanced. All of the producers and director are big fans of newspapers and they subscribe and they’re voracious readers so that they could find a title that fit both industries was a very very happy moment.
Dickman: It cuts a lot of different ways. In a lot of ways it’s really smart to approach it from the [journalism] standpoint because they’re already doing the work, so we’re kind of cheating or piggy-backing on the coverage that they’re already doing, and they’re full time and dedicated to do that beat because of the choice Greg Moore and the team around him made.
Baca: I spent the majority of the last seven months reporting on the pesticides that are being used by the industry. In many cases they’re illegal applications and potentially dangerous pesticides for this product of use, where we’re smoking the product. We’re exposing the product to very high levels of heat to activate the THC, to extract the THC, and none of this looks good for the cannabis industry other than this is regulated, we’re paying attention, we’re watching. I know a lot of people are like, “Well this is bad for the industry, why would you write that?” We’re writing it because it’s news and its valid and its happening.
Mitch: I love Ricardo. He was a friend, not super close, but we became close throughout the process. I have the most respect for him as a journalist and as a person and as a human being. But it would kind of irritate me as a filmmaker because we’re used to characters that are volatile or emotional or dramatic, any of those things. He was so even-keeled, which are the people you want to hang out with, the people you want to be on your side. But we were worried for a while that that’s challenging from a filming stand point. Like, get mad, throw something, fire somebody, whatever. He did everything with such class.
Baca: In many ways the film crew knew the [freelancers] as humans better than I did. Granted I hired them, we would meet for coffee on occasion, but modern journalism, you know how this works, most of this is done on email, on the telephone. And I certainly wasn’t going into Brittany Driver’s home and smoking weed with her, so it was such a treat for the film to bring me there because that’s a vulnerable special moment, allowing a film crew into your life, into your workplace or your apartment. I really valued those moments and was thankful to have them.
Dickman: The last film I did was super interview heavy and that was a story that took 20 years to happen and I was interviewing people about what had happened. It was refreshing as a filmmaker to approach it so differently. And this being more observational, fly on the wall, and watching something unfold was risky because we had no idea of what was going to happen, we knew we had to keep our eyes on different characters and we knew that we had to be open to whatever was going to happen.
Not Just For Consumers
Baca: I think everybody should be interested in this, whether you ingest cannabis or not, ultimately this is changing our communities. This is changing the way our governments pack and regulate substances and it’s changing the health schematic of what’s happening. I think that affects everybody and I know that some of our most loyal readers, I know this from primarily social media conversation, are people who don’t ingest but maybe they find this fascinating because their uncle went to jail in the ’70s for possessing a couple grams of weed, and now look at how far we’ve come in one person’s lifetime.
Dickman: I had no idea what dabbing was before I started. Or shatter, it really blew my mind. The spiderweb you get into when you look at the marijuana culture is really rich and robust and lot of these people are really passionate about and super educated about the plant and what that means. What Ricardo has done has changed the stigma around it, at least to where we can start to talk about the jargon in a different kind of way, and I was honored to work with a lot of people who are highly educated on the subject matter.
Baca: We now know that Colorado shops sold more 996 million dollars in legal, regulated, licensed, taxed weed in 2015. That’s astounding when you think about it. And also when you look at the tax figures that they brought in too, well over $100 million in taxes in 2015, specifically from marijuana sales, 35 million of which is going towards schools construction projects. That’s when you start to see real change and we’re seeing those numbers continue to grow.
Dickman: [Documentaries] can give you insight to a subculture in a lot of ways. So I think from that standpoint it’s entertaining and that’s why we tried to stay away from the “should it be legal, should it not be legal?” debate, just as informed citizens. This is going to be on the ballot in California for 2016, it’s already legal in five states. As a filmmaker I hopefully don’t try to put an answer into a film as to what something should be but ideally it becomes a conversation starter and people can talk about it. My hope is always to not try to put any answers into a film but pose some questions about what people might think and then you can have a conversation with whoever you’re with or at least think about it.
Baca: You look at some of the resort communities in The Rockies, where the ski and snowboarder resorts are, they’re benefiting massively and their roads are in better shape then they’ve ever been. Another example that I just learned about, this small city in Southern Colorado named Pueblo, and I’m not sure how many people live there, probably 300,000 people. But I had one of their Pueblo county commissioners on my podcast the other day and he was talking about just the remarkable difference that these revenues have made. He started a college scholarship program entirely funded by marijuana tax revenues. He talked about the state of their parks, their infrastructure, their roads, it’s never been better and they are thriving because of these revenues. So it’s those small communities where you really see the money in action and paying off.
Dickman: I’ve had, I think as the way most Coloradans have had, a private relationship with the drug. Very different from what we have with alcohol, which is very out in the open and supported. I’ve consumed marijuana in the past and I really don’t think legalization changed that, it’s not like I started doing it every day or anything like that.
Baca: I think as we bring common sense to this conversation and also facts because, c’mon, we’re journalists, let’s not peddle the refer madness that we were taught in public school during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. Let’s talk about what the best information is that science has to offer. And not pretend that marijuana is harmless or it’s without its addiction because 9-10 percent of people who try marijuana generally become addicted to it, but let’s acknowledge that that rate is significantly less than alcohol or opioids or heroin addiction ratings. Let’s recognize too that people aren’t dying from this. This is a significantly safer substance than alcohol. And this is the line that activists have been saying for decades. It’s been fascinating to listen to them and now suddenly everyone agrees, because how can you disagree?
Rolling Papers is in limited theatrical release and available from on-demand services now.
