Benson is a dry, understated comedienne who likes to smoke pot a lot. At the behest of a young filmmaker named Michael Blieden, Benson decided to take one of his pot jokes, one based on Morgan Spurlocks’s documentary “Super Size Me” - about the impact of eating at McDonald’s three-meals-a-day for 30 days - and make a movie out of it.
Benson goes a month without smoking any marijuana and then takes the SAT and a few other tests. Then he goes a month straight smoking nothing but marijuana, and takes those same tests again. It’s intriguing.

But the most interesting thing about the documentary is how it shows first-hand the booming medical marijuana business in Los Angeles (aka Los Ganjales) and Oakland (aka Oaksterdam). Sometimes federal anti-drug agents show up and ruin the party, but overall the potheads seem to be settling down and rooting themselves in. To learn more about this doc, or buy a copy of it, visit www.superhighmemovie.com.

These Big Rig truckers reveal that “freedom” means different things to different people. But they all tell the same story of the independent trucker losing to corporations as rising diesel prices slash into their take-home pay.

This two-hour documentary shows the power of a determined independent filmmaker such as Pray (the man behind “Hype,” “Scratch” and now “Surfwise”) who traveled through 45 states and rode 25,000 miles to make this movie. He directed, shot and edited the film himself.

Since the shooting for the film was completed - likely sometime in 2006 - diesel prices have doubled to nearly $5 a gallon. Still American truckers keep rolling - though I did recently hear about Big Rig drivers circling downtown Washington D.C. in protest of the high fuel prices.

For more information about the film, or to buy a copy of it, visit www.bigrigmovie.com. Posted on the Web site is a list of truck stops across the country where the documentary will be shown this summer for free.

Didn’t he get shot and killed too? And didn’t his assassination - yes, hard to believe two brothers died the same gruesome way -  become shrouded in controversy just like the assassination of JFK? Yes, yes and yes.

“RFK Must Die,” showing on the Documentary Channel this Sunday, June 29th at 5 p.m. (Eastern time), does all the research you want to do - but never get around to doing - regarding this national tragedy.

Was it a solo act of terrorism by a Palestinian-American  named Sirhan Sirhan, a man angry with RFK, the Democratic presidential nominee, because he planned to buy 50 war planes for Israel?

Or did the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency play a role in Sen. Kennedy’s death? Maybe Sirhan Sirhan was just a brainwashed pawn in the game. Investigators say they found a notebook in which Sirhan had repeatedly written “RFK Must Die.” Watch the documentary and see for yourself.

Jonathan Demme, another great filmmaker, has agreed to direct a film about the life and music of Marley, the world famous reggae artist and songwriter. The untitled project is due for release Feb. 6, 2010, the 65th anniversary of Marley’s death, according to Variety.

Like Scorsese, Demme directs documentaries as well as narrative features. Demme’s most recent doc work includes “Jimmy Carter Man from the Plains” and “Neil Young: Heart of Gold,” and, of course, “Stop Making Sense” his well-known Talking Heads concert film.

“Fahrenheit 9/11,” released in 2004, is the highest grossing documentary of all-time. It earned $119 million at the U.S. box office and another $100 million worldwide.

By comparison, “SiCKO,” his most recent documentary about the abysmal state of healthcare in the U.S., earned a paltry $24 million at home and $11 million abroad, according boxofficemojo.com.

Overture Films and Paramount Vantage will co-finance and co-produce the new Moore film, which, according to Variety, “will pickup where ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ left off.”

There a man named Reverend Carroll Pickett ministered to an inmate on Death Row all day before he or she was executed that night. It took its toll on the Pickett, who after overseeing the execution of 95 people, finally gave up the job.

Now he is working to ban executions in Texas. And that’s really the film’s point. Executions don’t do anyone any good. Directors Steve James and Peter Gilbert, the same team that made “Hoop Dreams,” probably the most acclaimed documentary to date, attended the screening of the film and answered questions afterward.

James and Gilbert said they decided to make “At the Death House Door” after being contacted by two reporters from The Chicago Tribune, who thought the botched investigation that led to the execution of an innocent man, Carlos de Luna, would make a good documentary. The filmmakers were intrigued by the case, but they didn’t agree to the project until the reporters told them about a fascinating preacher named Pickett, who became the focus of their film.

Pickett, a solitary, hard-working man, sat down and recorded his thoughts on cassette after each execution. It was a form of therapy for him. Snippets of those recordings are used in the “At the Death House Door.” They are drawn from judiciously, mainly to enrich the story lines of this thorough and fine documentary.

I asked James and Gilbert whether Pickett, being a conservative from Texas, resisted becoming the subject of a documentary. They said he was a willing participant because had been treated fairly by the Chicago Tribune reporters, and because he viewed the whole process as a therapeutic one.

“(But) I think at one point he said we were on a 30-day trial period,” Gilbert recalled.

Quite an organized man, Pickett had done some checking into backgrounds of the filmmakers, too. When the three first met, Pickett had in hand a file full of information about “Hoop Dreams” and some of James and Gilbert’s other work.

For more information about “At the Death House Door” visit their production company’s Web site, Kartemquin Films, at www.kartemquin.com.