One of the most beloved family Halloween movies of all-time is the Disney movie that’s weirdly obsessed with a teen boy’s sexual history and low-key vindicates the perpetrators of a horrific historical tragedy: Hocus Pocus.
But while the movie is fairly squeaky clean (except for all the “virgin” talk and child murder) behind the scenes, Hocus Pocus’ teen actors were secretly casting their own spells using the magical herb known as “marijuana,” aka “The Devil’s Lettuce.”
Back in 2022, one of the film’s stars, Omri Katz (who played Max), revealed that he was frequently high during the production. “That was at an age where I started experimenting with cannabis. Let’s just say, some of those scenes, I was having a good old time,” Katz told Entertainment Weekly.
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“I was misperforming and not hitting my keys or marks,” Katz continued. “(Director Kenny Ortega) comes up to me and practically grabs me by the shirt, and he was like, ‘Are you high?’ and I was like, ‘No,’ and of course, I was. We got it done, but that was kind of a wake-up call, like, Omri, you’ve got to be a little more professional and make sure you hit your cues!”
Incidentally, Katz may have enjoyed the off-screen weed-smoking more than the actual acting, seeing as how he now runs the cannabis company The Mary Danksters.
But like some sort of oddly specific ‘90s anti-drug PSA, not every teen actor had a great time getting stoned while making this Disney Halloween movie. Actor Tobias Jelinek, who played Jay the bully, recently told Entertainment Weekly that he got high with Katz before filming a key scene — and it didn’t work out too well.
“It was the pumpkin-smashing scene,” Jelinek explained. “Little Thora Birch was in there with us, probably wondering what’s going on with these teenagers.”
“I didn’t smoke weed that much. I took a few puffs, I went into that rehearsal, and I was a mess. We were supposed to be running this scene with Kenny. I really couldn’t hang,” Jelinek recalled. “He was smoking weed throughout that entire shoot, and he knew how to handle it. I remember saying, ‘Never again, Omri!’”
Jelinek also noted that the 16-year-old Katz “bought a Volkswagen bus during filming,” which he proceeded to drive to a Grateful Dead concert in San Francisco during a break from production, along with Ortega.
Presumably it didn’t take too much sleuthing for the director to figure out why the young actor kept missing his cues after that trip.
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