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John Cusack’s ‘Shroom Publicity Tour

When John Cusack made the publicity rounds for Hot Tub Time Machine, everyone obviously wanted to know about the eighties. But did John Cusack want to talk about cute Say Anything or Sixteen Candles moments? No, John Cusack will not indulge your curiosity about how heavy that boom box was; he wanted to talk about doing drugs. And not just any drugs: mushrooms. And not in just any old mushroom-friendly place: the Bears versus Patriots Super Bowl game of 1986.

In last week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, he tested out the anecdote:

I remember the ‘85 Bears won the Super Bowl. And I was there, I think, on mushrooms. … I remember it being very ‘80s. Reagan coming up on the Jumbotron and Up with People at halftime.

He thinks? No, he knows. In the New York Times he cemented the memory:

I remember very clearly being at the 1985 Super Bowl half-time show, on mushrooms.

(That was the 1986 Super Bowl, but the lapse in memory is forgivable: The man was on mushrooms.)

And in Vanity Fair he got more specific:

I remember going to the Super Bowl in ‘86, when the Bears played the Patriots, and watching the “Up With People” halftime show and feeling completely schizophrenic by it. It was dark, crazy, weird shit. The fact that I was on mushrooms at the time probably didn’t help.

And when he couldn’t find a way to naturally work the story into an appearance on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, he slipped it in as an Easter egg to the die-hard John Cusack–on-mushrooms fans:

The eighties are not worth revisiting … unless you’re probably on psilocybin or some sort of drugs.

Psilocybin? It’s the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms! So, the takeaway: If you like football, William “the Refrigerator” Perry, “Up with People,” and tripping, you will surely love Hot Tub Time Machine.

John Cusack’s ‘Shroom Publicity Tour