Oscar Winner Jared Leto Thanks Pot-Smoking Mom

As expected, Jared Leto won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of a transsexual in the "Dallas Buyers Club" (pictured). He thanked his mother, his date for the night.

"Thank you for teaching me to dream," said Leto.

When asked recently what was his favorite smell, Leto replied, "The smell of bonfires. And of marijuana. My mom's friends always smoked that."

Matthew McConaughey—who broke out in the stoner flick "Dazed and Confused" and arrested in 1999 for smoking pot and playing bongos in the nude—won Best Actor, also for "Dallas Buyers Club." The Best Actress awards went to Cate Blanchett in "Blue Jasmine" and Lupita Nyong’o in "12 Years a Slave."

Spike Jonze, who directed "Being John Malkovich" and produced "Jackass" won best original screenplay for "Her," about a man's relationship with an  operating system "designed to meet his every need." Thus faux women took as many Oscars as did real ones.

The event was hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, who recently Tweeted about pot being available in The Ellen Shop and told a pot joke the last time she hosted the show (and this year delivered munchies).

Pink did a fantastic job singing "Over the Rainbow" in front of images of the poppy fields and the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz. In 2002, the singer-turned-mascara-model said, "I don't consider pot a drug. It's a plant. It comes from the earth. George Washington smoked pot." [Not necessarily true, but he did grow hemp and encourage others to "sow it everywhere."]

Female empowerment song "Let It Go," with the trippy lyric: "My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around" won best song. Bette Midler, who just played pot-loving Hollywood agent Sue Mengers in a one-woman play, sang "The Wind Beneath My Wings" for the yearly memorial tribute, which omitted screenwriter and drug war activist Mike Gray. 

Angelina Jolie was given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her "courageous, compassionate work" to aid women and children throughout the world. (She's smoked pot, but said she didn't like it.) "The Great Gatsby" won deserved Oscars for Best Costumes and Production Design; I think there was more to it than that.

Steve Martin, who "poked smot" with Meryl Streep and was "feelin' groovy" in 2010's "It's Complicated," received an honorary Oscar. He made no comment tonight like he did when he got the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in 2006, when he joked, ""If [Saturday Night Live producer] Lorne Michaels had told me I'd receive this award one year after him, I'd have said, 'Let me have a hit of that.'" When he appears with his Bluegrass band, the banjo-playing comedian jokes about the downside of touring without a drummer: "No pot!"

This was not the case for attendees, according to TMZ, which reported some LA cannabis delivery services had to hire more drivers to service the celebs during Oscar week. Portable vaporizers were particularly popular.

Leto said upon accepting his award, "This is for the 36 million people who have lost their battle with AIDS, and to those of you out there who have ever felt injustice because of who you are or who you love. I stand here in front of the world with you and for you."

Another Buyers Club connected with the AIDS crisis was Dennis Peron's Cannabis Buyers Club, which opened following San Francisco's passage of the first-ever medical marijuana law in 1992. We wouldn't have medical marijuana in California or the other 20 states where it's now legal if it weren't for AIDS activists who fought for their right to life-saving medicines of all kinds. A recent study found that, as with cancer, marijuana may not only help with the symptoms AIDS, it may cure it.

Ellen's Neat, Sweet Tweet

Ellen DeGeneres has tweeted the following to her 24 million followers: 

US marijuana sales might top $2.3 billion this year. I'm not saying I support it. I'm just saying it's now available in the Ellen Shop.
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) January 22, 2014

At last check, the little Tweet that Could had 31.5K retweets and was favorited 44,300 times.

I've never heard Ellen say she's smoked pot but she sure can dance. And some of her bits: about forgetting where she put her car keys, or losing track of time, or spending a morning petting her cat instead of working -- well, they sound like she's had experiences like many other Mark Twain award recipients have (including Twain himself). She even voiced a forgetful fish in "Finding Nemo."

DeGeneres slipped in a mention of buying rolling papers in her 2000 special The Beginning, and did a funny bit about rolling papers when she was the first woman to host the Oscars in 2007. She will be hosting again this year on Sunday, March 2.




In September 2013, she interviewed Norwegian brothers Vegard and Bård Ylvisåke on her talk show about their intentionally terrible song "What Does the Fox Say?"

"I don't know a lot about Norway, but I'm gonna assume marijuana is legal there," DeGeneres joked, before finding out that "fox" in Norwegian is slang for the weed. "It all makes sense now," she said.

UPDATE 10/17 - Ellen has responded on air to a video titled, "Does Ellen Smoke Weed?" She said that the Ellen depicted from 20 years ago might have smoked,  and that one of her writers smokes, but says she doesn't.

Of Shamans and Charlize: Pot at the Oscars

Once more the Oscar ceremonies seemed to be dominated by weed lovers, starting with host Seth MacFarlane. Noted for his "Family Guy" series with segments like "Bag o' Weed," MacFarlane did better with his musical numbers than he did with his jokes.

Charlize Theron shone in a dance number at the show's opening, nearly rescuing MacFarlane—as she did a security guard who had a seizure on the red carpet. Theron was caught on camera smoking pot out of an apple in 2002. [Update 2018: Theron now admits she was "a wake-and-baker for most of my life."]

Jane Fonda, who was spotted last year smoking pot at a post-Oscar party, wowed everyone at the age of 75 in her sleek Versace gown. She co-presented with Michael Douglas, who urged the U.S. to consider legalizing the use of marijuana in 2009.

Another bright spot was the surprise appearance of Barbra Streisand, singing "The Way We Were" in a tribute to the late Marvin Hamlich. According to David Crosby's book Stand and Be Counted, her role in that movie was dependent on her appearing at a 1972 McGovern rally planned by Warren Beatty, at which she appeared to take a toke from a joint onstage.

Anne Hathaway, who smoked pot onscreen in "Havoc" (2005), took home a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress trophy for Les Miserables.  As is now de rigueur, she thanked everyone including her publicist, but failed to recognize the story's author Victor Hugo, a member of Le Club des Hashishins.

Daniel Day Lewis did give a nod to Abraham Lincoln, who inspired his Oscar-winning performance. Depicted in that movie were Lincoln's secretary John Hay, who took cannabis while a student at Brown and went on to become Secretary of State; and Mary Todd Lincoln, the daughter of hemp farmers in Kentucky. (Reports remain unconfirmed that Abraham Lincoln smoked a hemp pipe, although he did play a harmonica.)

Ang Lee, who won Best Director for "The Life of Pi," said he'd tried marijuana while being interviewed in Cannes for his movie "Taking Woodstock" in 2009. Quentin Tarantino, who took Best Original Screenplay for "Django Unchained," recently compared the drug war to slavery. He's pictured on the Craig Ferguson show wearing a Lifted Research Group T-shirt with pot leaves. (See Lifted's Ladies T: Don't Do Drugs, Smoke Weed.)

Presenting the Best Picture prize of the night was the incomparable Jack Nicholson, who says he still smokes weed, and Michelle Obama, who's married to a former enthusiast. It went to "Argo," co-produced and directed by Ben Affleck, who graduated from stoner movies like "Dazed and Confused" and "Chasing Amy." George Clooney, also a producer, has said he liked acid and mushrooms in college.

"Every day through engagement in the arts, children learn to dream big," said our First Lady. "If a film crew is a tribe, the cinematographer is the shaman," said Robert Downey Jr. It seems like there are a whole lot of shamans in Hollywood, and we're all the tribe.

The entire ceremony is now online.