Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues R

Prospective Harvard law student Peter Harkness is learning about crime firsthand. He skips his entry exam to transport a suitcase full of pot from Berkeley to Boston, setting in motion a comic adventure that has him in love with a cool hippie chick and in deep with the mob, a crooked cop and a cigar case stuffed with heroin. Based on a flower-power novel by Michael Crichton (ER, Jurassic Park), Dealing boasts a 40-brick-load of talent: film-debuting John Lithgow as a most unusual campus dealer, Barbara Hershey as the hippie chick and Charles Durning as the narc who keeps a cut of the contraband for himself. Groovy, man!

Years before COMA, JURASSIC PARK, and TWISTER made him a household name, Michael Crichton co-wrote this amiable drug-oriented comedy, based on a novel Crichton co-authored with his brother Douglas under the pen name Michael Douglas. Peter (Robert F. Lyons) is a shaggy but straightlaced Harvard law student who feels the need for some rebellion in his life (and could use some extra money), so he takes up the offer of mid-level drug dealer John (John Lithgow) to ferry a load of marijuana from California back to Boston. En route, Peter meets Susan (Barbara Hershey), a comely hippie with whom he falls in love. Peter helps Susan avoid a drug bust and she decides to head back to Boston with him, but she finances the trip by arranging to bring back a stash of her own. At the airport, Susan runs afoul of Murphy (Charles Durning), a crooked narcotics cop who steals half the pot and attempts to blackmail her. DEALING featured the screen debut of John Lithgow; Demond Wilson (who later starred in SANFORD AND SON) and musician Buzzy Linhart also
appear.