DRUG USE GETS BLOWN UP ON BIG SCREEN

Hollywood Taps Into Dramatic Power Of Danger, Moral Dilemmas

Johnny Depp's portrayal of an infamous 1970s cocaine dealer in ``Blow'' is
just the latest in a long line of Hollywood movies about drugs.

From 1938's campy ``Reefer Madness'' to the current Oscar-winning
``Traffic,'' filmmakers have long been addicted to stories about drugs.

And it's easy to see why:

Drugs are dangerous, volatile, exciting. They cause extreme behavior and
put characters in life-or-death circumstances. Those are some of the same
reasons moviegoers have liked war movies, westerns and police thrillers.

Drugs corrupt and degrade. They allow filmgoers a glimpse into the darker,
more disturbing and admittedly fascinating corners of the human psyche.

Drugs are valuable. Their financial worth alone is the impetus for powerful
drama.

That's why Billy risks life in a Turkish prison to cross the border with
drugs in ``Midnight Express,'' why ``Superfly'' keeps selling even though
``Freddie's dead,'' and why a slimy Alan Arkin was willing to kill a
charming, blind Audrey Hepburn because of the value of heroin stuck inside
a doll in ``Wait Until Dark.''

To enter or not enter the lucrative drug business is the argument that
almost destroys ``The Godfather's'' family. Drugs have also given San Diego
housewife Catherine Zeta-Jones too rich a lifestyle to forgo when her
husband goes to jail in ``Traffic.''

Drugs reflect our culture and serve as signposts for various ages. Thus the
frequent references to pot smoking in the hippie-era movies of the '60s,
for example, and the lines of cocaine sniffed in movies about the '70s and
'80s.

In the '60s' flick ``Easy Rider,'' Wyatt and Billy sell dope to finance
their cycle ride across America, teach an innocent fellow-traveler (Jack
Nicholson) how to smoke pot and use LSD to turn a New Orleans cemetery into
a dream factory.

Drugs fuel a misguided myth of artistic inspiration. For example, writers
find warped inspiration from drugs in ``Naked Lunch'' and ``Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas.''

Cocaine supposedly helps Sherlock Holmes solve crimes in ``The
Seven-Percent Solution.'' (The title refers, in fact, to Holmes' cocaine
recipe.)

Legends' addictions

Meanwhile, the greatest saxophonist of his generation destroys his life
with heroin in ``Bird.'' So do a great young doo-wop singer (Frankie Lymon)
in ``Why Do Fools Fall in Love?'' and a great comedian (John Belushi) in
``Wired.''

Movie characters have been spurred to action -- or inaction -- by an
amazing range of addictions.

The 19th-century Western prostitute played by Julie Christie in ``McCabe
and Mrs. Miller'' escapes into a swirl of opium smoke. The kids in ``Kids''
sniff glue, the evil Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) inhales a mysterious
narcotic gas in ``Blue Velvet,'' the ``Wizard of Oz'' adventurers are
drugged by a field of poppies, and Woody Allen sneezes into a pile of
cocaine in ``Play It Again, Sam.''

The hoodlums at the center of ``GoodFellas'' and ``Scarface'' fall victim
to too much use of their own product -- cocaine.

In ``Trainspotting,'' Ewan McGregor so values his heroin, he dives headlong
into ``the dirtiest toilet in Scotland'' to retrieve it.

In ``The French Connection,'' the pursuit of heroin triggers the greatest
car chase in movie history; in the sequel, heroin becomes an instrument of
torture as Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) is forced to suffer through withdrawal.

Wretched withdrawal

Movies often depict withdrawal as the most horrific of all human
experiences. Besides Hackman, check out a quaking and shaking Frank Sinatra
in ``The Man With the Golden Arm,'' a volatile Al Pacino in his film debut
in ``Panic in Needle Park,'' a delusional Ellen Burstyn in last year's
``Requiem for a Dream,'' and Michael Douglas' crack-addled daughter (Erika
Christensen) in ``Traffic.''

And a fast-rising, status-seeking Manhattan yuppie turns to coke, only to
crash and burn in ``Bright Lights, Big City.''

In ``Less than Zero'' a Beverly Hills Wunderkind also careens out of
control thanks to a cocaine addiction.

And, in that film, Hollywood got mighty close to its own back yard. After
all, Robert Downey Jr. powerfully portrayed the addicted character -- and
now we know why he was so darn good.

The oft-arrested young man, whose real-life drug problems have become
legendary, may be Hollywood's ultimate method actor.