A lot of things are legal in Hollywood, but cocaine and heroin?
Yeah, still not so much.
And when it comes to selling onscreen substance abuse, you can only go so far with a CGI high.
Hollywood's prop masters still have to use ingenious practical effects to make fake drugs
look like the real thing — without hurting the actors who have to put the stuff in their
lungs, up their noses, or… uh, elsewhere.
Here's what was really on the set in these movies where drugs were on the menu.
Horrible Bosses
Colin Farrell is no stranger to doing fake cocaine in front of the camera, or real cocaine
in real life, for that matter, back when he was one of Hollywood's biggest party boys.
But for Horrible Bosses, prop master Mychael Bates had the actor snorting powdered lactose
— a milk product that's so harmless, actors can inhale it without hurting themselves.
That's good news for Farrell, who was reportedly so keen on staying in character that he would
snort the fake cocaine between takes.
Pineapple Express
Despite Seth Rogen's outspoken advocacy for marijuana offscreen, the cast in the stoner
flick Pineapple Express wasn't actually smoking the real thing — which just goes to show
what a talented actor Bill Hader really is.
"Is this normal?"
Prop master Jeff Butcher purchased the movie's fake weed in bulk from International Oddities,
a company that specializes in bud without any THC, the substance that gets you high
— so that actors can smoke it, a lot, without suffering any weird after-effects.
Trainspotting
You won't be surprised to learn that Ewan McGregor and his castmates weren't shooting
real heroin in Trainspotting— in fact, no human arms were punctured in the making of
this film.
Instead, the film's prop master Gordon Fitzgerald used a real syringe filled with dyed water,
which was injected into a prosthetic arm.
According to Fitzgerald, this method had a perk: "You can draw the plunger up and down
and it looks as if the blood is mixing with the liquid."
21 Jump Street
A fictional synthetic drug is central to the plot of 21 Jump Street, which stars Channing
Tatum and Jonah Hill as cops who go undercover to stop the threat.
"Goes by the street name HFS —
"Holy F------ S---."
But while HFS is a fabrication, Tatum and Hill still needed something to put in their
mouths when it came time to film this scene where they get high to avoid blowing their
cover.
The solution?
Communion-style dissolving wafers with a hint of yellow food covering, which melt on the
tongue the same way as drugs like acid.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Needless to say, cocaine was featured heavily in The Wolf of Wall Street, which is set in
the late 1980s.
So when it came time to do lines, actors were given vitamin D powder, which is harmless
to the body when ingested in small doses.
There's just one catch: these were not small doses.
"I never had more vitamin D in my entire life.
I could have lifted a car over my f------ head"
American Gangster
Powdered heroin was central to the plot of the 2007 film American Gangster, based on
the life of career criminal Frank Lucas played, who built his empire on a fortune made by
smuggling heroin into the U.S. on military planes returning from the Vietnam war.
It's also one of the most difficult drugs to fake onscreen — which is why American
Gangster's prop master used a substance called Mannitol.
Doctors use it to treat kidney conditions and reduce brain swelling — but it's also
used by real-life drug dealers to cut heroin, making it a convincing choice.
Scarface
Not all fake cocaine is created equal— especially when the fake cocaine is actually baby laxative.
That's right: in Scarface, prop masters used powdered baby laxative to stand in for the
massive amount of cocaine that's bought, sold, and ingested by drug lord Tony Montana, played
by Al Pacino.
And while the substance didn't get anyone high, it did have certain other effects on
the human body — "So much so that no one would want to put it up their nose," according
to actor Stephen Bauer, who played Manny Rivera.
What happens when you snort too much powdered baby laxative?
Nobody's saying, but it can't be good.
"What the f*** was that?"
The Breakfast Club
Before people figured out how to make THC-free weed, oregano was the preferred stand-in for
marijuana in movies like The Breakfast Club — so that's what they're smoking in this
scene from John Hughes' classic film about a crew of misfits sentenced to high school
detention on a Saturday.
There's just one problem: back in the day, people still had some pretty weird ideas about
the physical effects of smoking up.
"Marijuana!
The burning weed with its roots in HELL!"
Thanks to the movie's prop master, the joint they're passing around looks legit — but
nothing else about this scene is especially realistic.
Half Nelson
Ryan Gosling's Oscar-nominated performance as a drug-addicted teacher in New York City
would have been wasted if Half Nelson's on-screen crack looked wack.
But prop master Jeremy Balon found an ingenious solution: an off-white coffee mug that he
"broke up into about a million little pieces, then dyed in coffee."
A piece of broken, stained porcelain would be set in front of a small ball of tobacco
that smoked when lit, lending a realistic look to Gosling's fake crack pipe.
American Beauty
For all this talk of oregano and baby laxative, it's worth noting that Hollywood still does
occasionally do its drugs the old-fashioned way — like in this scene from American Beauty,
where Kevin Spacey's Lester Burnham gets stoned in a parking lot at a real estate convention.
American Beauty director Sam Mendes said, "There may or may not have been real pot available
on that particular movie, I couldn't possibly comment" — but Kevin Spacey's giggling fit
kind of says it all.
"Honey, this is…"
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