Clif Lord's Doobious Sources, a 4/20 Cinéma Vérité Comedy, Premieres in Denver

Filmmakers have to be more rigorous than you might think when they're making a stoner comedy – especially when the two leads are doing most of the shooting as they go along. Doobious Sources, director Clif Lord’s tale of spliff and grief that has its world premiere on Thursday, April 21, at the Sie FilmCenter, is a hybrid of buddy film and revenge comedy, garnished with big fats heap of nug.

“It’s written from those two guys’ perspectives,” says Lord. “Essentially, we were shooting a scene in full master all the time, so we had to choreograph the action very carefully. How do you do that without it becoming a distracting gimmick?” The duo, played by Jason Weissbrod and Jeff Lorch, are weed-loving freelance investigative video reporters who run afoul of a particularly sadistic person they have libeled.


Lord will be on hand for the screening, as will veteran tough-guy character-actor Joe Cortese, an instantly recognizable face in the film.  “His story is so amazing,” says Lord. “He was the lead in The Death Collector, a rare B movie. It was Joe Pesci’s first film, and he and Frank Vincent got picked up from that by Scorsese. Life’s been a struggle for Joe [Cortese]; he hasn’t gotten all the breaks, but he does great work.”

Another Doobious Sources draw for Denver fans is that one of the film’s two composers is E. Shepherd Stevenson, who was a singer and guitarist with local band the Aviators in the 1980s.

Lord, who's spent time in Denver, is mum as to whether he will take advantage of Colorado’s weed culture while he’s in town for the premiere. “It seems inconceivable that it’s become legalized there,” he says. “It’s hard to not still think of Colorado as, really, being part of the Midwest.”

Doobious Sources premieres at the Sie Film Center, 2510 East Colfax Avenue, on Thursday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m.  For tickets and complete information, visit denverfilm.org.