The documentary Super High Me follows comedian Doug Benson as he spends one month indulging in neither marijuana nor alcohol. Then the camera stayed with him for a second month while he smoked and drank all day every day. Along the way, viewers get a look at the history of medical marijuana in California, and a taste of how the political battles surrounding the issue continue. To mark the film’s DVD release, director Michael Blieden sat down with AllMovie’s Perry Seibert to answer questions about the film, and to discuss some of his more obscure gigs, his other films, his plans for the future, and the advantages of being part of the L.A. comedy scene.

Perry Seibert: How much of Doug’s schedule for those two months was planned ahead of time? Would he have done the same number of gigs?

Michael Blieden: Well, originally we were going to do the stoned month first, and the sober month last with the idea that that will be the poignant month, where he’s not on pot, and that will make the movie more legitimate. It would have been all about having fun and getting high, and then after that it gets serious. I think Doug didn’t like that for a lot of reasons. Number one because he wanted it to be a comedy, and number two he had a couple of out-of-state gigs in the first month and he didn’t want to be traveling with weed. So he said why don’t we do the sober month first. It turned out to be, I think, the best way to do it because really even though I think the sober month is fun, I feel like storytelling wise it’s better because now you’re sort of hooked in and waiting for the stoned month. So I think structurally it actually worked out better, but it really started just as a logistical thing.

I didn’t really see it at first. He’s like, “Let’s do the stoned month last.” I’m like, “What? No.” You have to understand I had a lot of reservations about doing the movie to begin with because basically I have a friend who used to be a political consultant and he looks at everything through that lens. What he said to me was, “Don’t make this movie because if you do, 10 years from now or 15 years from now, someone from the conservative right will say ‘there’s Michael Blieden he made the movie that told my kids it’s OK to smoke pot’ and that really sobered me, not to make a bad pun. But that’s totally true, that will happen. No matter how hard I try to be fair and balanced, Fox News style like Doug says in the movie, I’m a fan of marijuana and so is everyone involved in the movie. No matter how hard we tried, we would make a pro-pot movie. I think we tried not to be dogmatic about it because I think a lot of marijuana movies fail in how pro-pot they are, and they lose the entertainment value. If something comes across as too strident then it’s just not fun. But my point is that I had lots of reservations, and I felt like I was looking for a cloak of seriousness to hide behind. Doing the sober month second was sort of like my way to say, “But really we’re taking it seriously. It’s about sobriety.” I think that Doug’s instinct to make the stoned month the focus, which is make it second, is much closer to the heart of the film.

PS: What were the parameters you had for filming? If you’re going to follow him around for two months straight you obviously can’t have a camera on him 24/7. How much access did he give you?

MB: Well it depended on who was filming him. Doug and I have a great relationship, so I could be with him every day all day and he didn’t really care. In fact, a lot of times it was just me and him, in his apartment, doing nothing. It was really odd, especially during the sober month, because I would just be in his apartment for hours filming it. I mean it was sort of an experiment in Dada art. That would have been another interesting way to cut the movie together, just the most boring moments – and I’m sure critics of the movie will say that’s what we did.

I’ve done a few of these documentaries with comedians and they don’t like having a camera on them all the time because a comedian feels the need to be interesting, and no one is interesting 24 hours a day. In fact most people aren’t interesting for more than like a minute. So I think they feel a lot of pressure, and I try with all the comics I work with to tell them, “First of all, don’t worry about it, just live your life and be boring and it’s my job to find the meaning in that.” I think Doug was able to get on board with that program, at least with me. So basically the movie was sort of split into two teams: There was the medical marijuana/California state’s rights story and producer Alex Campbell led a camera team with that story, then there was the Doug Benson team which was me and the DP Brandon Hickman and basically it was wake up, go to Doug’s apartment, start filming, film until you’re too tired, and do that for sixty days.

PS: You include a scene in the second month when he’s on stage and blows the joke that gives the film its title. I can understand your instinct to be serious about the topic and I’m assuming that was the point of including this scene. I was curious how out of place that was. Was it just really convenient that he blew that line during that month? How often does he fumble a line like that?

MB: He does not fumble it very often. He was super baked, constantly. I actually didn’t edit this movie. I edited a couple scenes I’m proud of, but really shaping the movie was up to the two Alexes - Alex Campbell and Alex Hanawalt. As a director what I really wanted to do was make a movie where if you like pot, which would be most of the audience, you would find a lot in this movie to enjoy. If you didn’t like pot, you should also be able to watch this movie and find evidence of why you don’t like pot. I think that if you’re a hater on pot you’re gonna see the movie and say, “Pot makes you a fucking idiot.” You should be able to find ammunition for your argument either way when you see the movie, and I think that’s why things like that were included.

PS: What is the difference in cost from buying pot on the street in California rather than at a legal dispensary?

MB: Totally comparable. The prices per weight are exactly the same, in fact even a little better in the dispensary, because they’ll have specials, but you have to factor in the doctor visit which costs anywhere from 150 to 250 per year.

PS: Can I ask what your medical situation is that allows you to have doctor approved pot?

MB: I do believe that, for most people, if they seek the drug out then they are seeking it out for a reason, and whether they are aware or not they are probably self-medicating. And that was a decision that I had come to really after maybe five or six years of pot use. I was like this is definitely me medicating myself, and you know exactly for or against what would be like an answer so long that you would have to be my therapist.

But really for me, I use it for anti-anxiety, anti-depression, and anti-loneliness. It has a different effect on everyone. For me, it has an anti-depressant effect. I’ve noticed that I’ll make unhealthy decisions for myself, like antisocial isolating decisions, and then I’ll have pot and suddenly I’ll make better decisions, like go to the gym or maybe see a friend - things that make me happier. I’ll be able to make that decision, and the only new stimulus added was the drug, so actually my pot use has made me believe in, I mean, I’m a big believer in talk therapy because my mom is a psychoanalyst, but I’m also a believer in chemical therapy just because I’ve seen how adding a chemical makes my quality of life better. Makes me better able to help myself.

PS: How much of the film came together in the editing, and how much of it, like the ESP testing, was thought out ahead of time?

MB: I think a lot of the movie came together because we shot about 700 hours so there was a lot of different movies that could have been made. A lot of footage that you don’t see is footage about the dispensaries. We had a couple of dispensary owners who took part in filming, and then as they saw rough cuts of the movie decided they didn’t want to be involved. We had some big story lines about actual people who run them who pulled out very close to the end, and we had to recut the movie and cut them out of it. So I think it was formed, really, in the editing.

One thing I did say very much from the beginning, that I think is borne out in the final cut, is that this movie needs to be marketed and needs to be looked at by everyone as if it’s a stand-up comedy movie with an added subplot. But I want people to go in expecting to see a Doug Benson stand-up comedy routine. That’s really what we need to have people expect, because we didn’t have the resources, and we aren’t the guys, to execute a true Morgan Spurlock style social commentary. That’s just not what we’re good at. It’s not what we delivered, and I feel like if people expect something that’s a little lighthearted and fun, then they’re going to enjoy it. So as it went on and on and on, we put in more stand-up, more comedy, and we took out some of the more trenchant social commentary and political issues that I think would have been served better in someone else’s documentary.

I wish we could have cut three movies out of it. I think the version we put together was the best one. If I had edited the movie it would have been a different movie, and I don’t know it would have been a better movie. I just know what my instincts are, and I don’t feel like this movie is by any means the final statement on my views of marijuana. I feel like it’s the best form this movie should be, but I feel like I need to do more with my own relationship with pot. I don’t feel like this movie really satisfied my appetite to have an intellectual discussion about the drug, and that’s a position I took willingly. This movie shouldn’t have taken itself seriously - it shouldn’t have been a really navel gazing look at why Michael Blieden smokes pot. That being said, I’m still looking for that outlet. If you want to laugh and get high and like Doug Benson watch this movie.

PS: What are you working on now?

MB: Well, I just finished a web series for Microsoft, which is halfway between a commercial and a web series. An ad agency called me and said, ”We’re doing this promotional thing for Microsoft where they want to do fifteen episodes about a guy who stays at home and sends instant messages all day.” So I took it as a chance to write a tiny comedy series and it was really fun.

I’ve written for networks and now I’ve written for an ad agency, and the ad agency was by far the most easygoing and cool about the writing process. They’re all like, “We want to protect your ideas, and we have a couple notes forgive us they’re just technical.” And they loved it, they loved writing a comedy series. I went to San Francisco and worked with this ad agency and they were like, “This is the most fun project we’ve ever had.” It was just great, it was really, really fun. So there’s this whole new realm of branded entertainment where it’s a web series, but it’s got a product behind it, and I’ve just done a couple of these now, and it’s kind of interesting. I don’t know if I’ll be doing it one more time, or four more times, or ten more times, but it’s kind of what I’m doing right now.

I think the main reason is I feel like every job is film school. I’m not a fan of film school. I don’t encourage people to go to film school, but for me, being on a job is where I learn. And these web shows with smaller budgets allow you to get in and make something. I can actually do some directing, and it’s like film school in that you have a set of obstacles, a limited budget, one location, and you have to make it interesting for 15 episodes. So you become creative and you learn a lot.

PS: What was it like doing the Blieden Video Review on the old old Daily Show?

MB: Oh yeah the old Daily Show, that was with Criag (Kilborn). That was a pretty important job. That was my first TV job ever. I had a meeting with Madeleine Smithberg in 1996, and I was in L.A. and I was only here for a couple of months. A friend of mine had directed a video for Kris Kross, like the first video after they had grown up. Even he has a great sense of humor about it he said, “You have to see it. “ I watched it kind of making fun of it, and then I was really late to my meeting because it was across town. They didn’t want to see me to begin with, so I just went in and I was honest. I was like, “I was watching a Kris Kross video and this is an older more mature Kris Kross.” They said, “Why don’t you come on the show and talk about music videos in a really serious way.”

PS: You’ve done beer commercials.

MB: Yeah. I did a couple beer ads. I did a Coors Light and a Miller.

PS: An avalanche of snow dumped on you. That was for Coors right?

MB: Yeah. It’s surreal when you hear yourself saying a tagline for beer. Like of all the things you never expect to do in your life, suddenly you’re saying, “It’s not cold it’s Coors Light,” and the ad agency is standing right there and it’s you saying that, and that’s what they’re going to use. It is surreal, you are part of Capitalism.

PS: If you could do anything, your dream project, what would it be?

MB: I would do a series, a series like The Wire or The West Wing. A long running serialized drama that was like comedy. I have a short film on my website called Turnover. It’s about a head hunting firm, the place where you go if you are looking for a new job. Basically, I made that as my way to sort of break into the drama business because nothing has been more important to me in terms of TV watching than West Wing and The Wire.

They are basically 50 hour movies, like the best 50 hour movie you could watch. That’s such an appealing pace at which to reveal character and tell stories, way more appealing to me than feature paced where you have to heighten it and pay it off and the expectations of that form are so high and you have so little time in a movie. So if I could do anything, I’d like to write and create a series. I think TV has gotten to be more vital in the last five years then it ever was.

PS: You’re very much a part of that alternative L.A. comedy scene and I’m curious at what point do you realize it’s a scene? At what point does everybody realize “Wow, there’s this really cool thing going on here, all these talented people are here and working?”

MB: Honestly, I think instantly. I think instantly people recognize it. Like I moved to New York in 1993, and people knew it was a scene there, and pretty much everybody from that scene has either moved to L.A. or works in L.A. There’s different strata, like Marc Maron and Janeane Garofalo and Greg Proops are like the seniors, and then there’s the Juniors and Sophomores who are like me and my friends.

I said it explicitly to friends, I wanted to be part of a scene. I wanted to be part of a school or a movement. How exciting to be part of that? So I sought it out, and I thought when I started directing I saw an opportunity to be part of the scene in a way that there was a need for. There was a need for people who understood that scene and could help those people translate their ideas to TV and film. So becoming a director was very much a part of my love for the scene, and wanting to help document where people were in that scene at a certain part of time. I feel like The Comedians of Comedy, for example, is just a great placeholder – this is where these people were, they’re going to go on and do other things, but this is what their comedy was. This is who they were in 2005.

Zach’s (Galifianakis) special at the Purple Onion, again Zack is such an evolving performer, but I really, really felt Zach’s going to go on and play huge venues and he’ll play for thousands of people. But at the time we made that, I felt it would be a snapshot of what kind of venues he was doing, and what his performance was like at that point in time. So I very much saw myself as contributing to the chronicling of this era of comedy

PS: The first time I saw Zach was when David Letterman had his heart attack and Janeane guest hosted and she had him on.

MB: He’s phenomenal in Comedians of Comedy

PS: I keep hoping someone will write him a really great part in a really great movie.

MB: When you’re around him you kind of are in awe and part of you feels jealous like, “How can someone be so good?” and you have a turning point where you can’t ever be jealous of him …he’s perfect. (Laughter) We were doing Comedians of Comedy the TV series and he told me he doesn’t wash his hair. And I was like, “God he doesn’t even get dirty!” (Laughter)