The movie that shaped Mac Miller’s childhood: “I love it so much”
Mac Miller was just a stoner kid before going on to achieve rap fame. Like many other teenagers during that time in life, the Pittsburgh rapper spent his adolescence getting high and watching movies he could relate to: the subject of weed.
Some of his earliest mixtapes depict his mindset back then, using How High and The High Life as the titles of his mixtapes and keeping up the marijuana theme with songs such as ‘Keep Floatin’ and ‘Ridin High’.
One movie shaped his childhood more than any other, citing Method Man and Redman’s 2001 stoner comedy How High as a representation of his childhood. So much so, he even told told the latter rapper about the impact it on had on him as a kid.
“How High shaped so much of my childhood, being a young stoner,” he told Complex. “And it’s not just a funny stoner movie – it’s actually a good movie with a good script and story. I love it so much, I DM’d Redman and said, ‘Thank you for shaping my childhood.’ He said, ‘Thanks.'”
Mac Miller didn’t just partake in smoking weed, he also sold it. During an interview with Pitchfork, he reflected on his time as a “shitty” weed dealer and how he tried to scam clients into thinking they were buying something three times the quality he had in his possession.
“I sold weed, but I was the worst guy to buy weed from because I would cop shitty ass weed for $200 and sell it as really good weed for $600,” he said. “I was a dickhead. I’d make up some wild name, like, ‘I got the honeycomb.’ And kids from the suburbs would be like, ‘Yo, you guys are the plug.'”
Mac put an end to certain drugs in 2014 but admitted he still smoked weed, refusing to stop getting high as long as he was able to carry out his daily tasks.
“I’m good on using drugs. But do I get high? Fuck yeah, I love to smoke weed, and I’m not going to stop getting high, fuck that,” he told Vibe. “But I’m just smart about it. I’m not going to let it get in the way of what I gotta do. I got stuck up in a society that says ‘alcohol is okay’. So I got drunk, society doesn’t care if you get drunk off alcohol, so I drink now.”
Later in life, Mac Miller found inspiration in eccentric directors like Wes Anderson, considering The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom as some of his favourite films.
“Wes Anderson is one of my favourite directors,” he said. “I love how he shoots everything, I love how he always has a returning cast. In particular, I love the scene [in The Royal Tenanbaums] where Luke Wilson’s character tries to kill himself, because I love Elliott Smith. I’ve been an Elliott Smith fan since I was young.”
He added, “I’ve already seen [Moonrise Kingdom] a million times; it’s my favorite movie to come out in 2012. It was huge inspiration for the upcoming album for the state of mind it put me in. This dark grown-up story told with these kids. And I love Bill Murray playing the pathetic dad.”
In fact, 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom was sampled for Mac Miller’s ‘The Star Room (OG Version)’, with Earl Sweatshirt producing the track and taking vocals from ‘Songs from Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: Cuckoo!’.