Chris Vognar

AUSTIN – Comedian Doug Benson stood before a packed Paramount Theatre at the opening night of the South by Southwest Film Festival on Friday to introduce his documentary Super High Me. "It's something everyone will enjoy, whether you last smoked a joint in college or on the way to work this morning," he offered. Then he thanked the audience for braving rush-hour traffic to make the 6 p.m. screening: "Congratulations. You're the most amazing potheads in existence."

No, Dorothy, you're not in Dallas anymore. You'll find onscreen puffing and passing everywhere you look at SXSW, nestled in the city that prides itself on keeping weird.

Look, over there. It's Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay , in which our heroes' Amsterdam trip gets thwarted when that wacky Kumar (Kal Penn) whips out his smokeless bong on the plane, igniting a terrorism panic (no, it's a bong, not a bomb).

Or over there, in Humboldt County, where a medical student (Jeremy Strong) finds his life turned upside down in California's pot capital.

Films that aren't even in the festival are getting in on the action. Sony Pictures Classic presented a promo screening of its Sundance Audience Award-winner The Wackness, about a teen pot dealer (Josh Peck) who sells to his drug-addled therapist (Ben Kingsley) and the doc's stepdaughter (Olivia Thirlby, who played Juno's best bud). The Alamo Draft House got into the mood by rolling a vintage anti-drug educational film, Narcotics: Pit of Despair, before the special Saturday midnight screening. So we got to see a wholesome preppy kid seduced by a goateed beatnik weed pusher. Enter the pit of despair.

Jaimie Trueblood/New Line Cinema

John Cho, left, and Kal Penn live to smoke in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

Sadly, the feature attraction started a half hour late, because, like, the sound didn't work.

Dude. Let's get some burgers.

What in the name of Cheech and Chong is going on here? Those two, surprisingly, aren't here. So let's ask their descendants, Harold and Kumar.

"It didn't really occur to me that it was a pot movie until much later," says John Cho, who plays Harold, apparently forgetting the climactic scene in which the boys smoke out with President Bush.

"If anything it shows you the harm that comes from drug use," says Mr. Penn (Kumar). "Every time these two characters get drugs, or use drugs, something goes horribly wrong. It doesn't glorify drugs. I see it as more of a buddy film or a road-trip film than about pot."

This from an actor whose character has a fantasy ménage à trois with a lovely lady and a big bag of green.

Such caution may be genuine; after all, few actors wants to carry the "stoner dude" tag. Or it might reflect the irony of a mainstream marijuana movie in the 21st century. Harold and Kumar live to smoke. But it's not particularly politic for the young actors who play them to talk up an illegal and demonized substance. After all, H & K will be rolling out in theaters across the country, most of them far from the haven of Austin. Success demands playing up other parts of the movie, like the romantic subplots (which, it must be said, involve smoking pot).

Mr. Benson, the man behind Super High Me, has no such qualms. He spends his film smoking all day, every day, for a month (after abstaining for the previous month). An admitted rip-off of Super Size Me, for which filmmaker Morgan Spurlock went on a 30-day McDonald's binge and charted his physical decline, Super High is also an unflagging defense of medical marijuana, and, for that matter, all marijuana. It will be distributed by the Netflix distribution arm Red Envelope Entertainment, which keeps a lower profile than New Line, the Harold & Kumar distributor recently folded into parent company Time Warner.

At the end of the day it's no surprise that SXSW is a smoky affair. Known for its laid-back vibe and passion for genre film, Austin is no suit-and-tie town. It is still Texas' slice of bohemia. And it still likes standing up for progressive causes, including the demystification of the devil weed. That's good news for Mr. Benson, who enjoyed a warm reception from a receptive crowd.

If he enjoyed anything else afterward, he did so away from the theater. He may be stoned. But he's not stupid.