HOLLYWOOD'S NEW LINE ON DRUGS

It may seem at odds with a town famed the world over for its senseless
indulgences and bacchanalian excesses, but in Hollywood nothing is going
out of style faster than drugs.

From gritty-realist dramas such as Traffic and Requiem for a Dream, to the
darkly-comedic Almost Famous and Wonder Boys, some of the biggest
box-office returns these past few months have been generated by films
presenting a none-too-positive view of substance abuse and the trade which
feeds it.

The overall message is neatly summed up in Almost Famous by Frances
McDormand, who plays an over-anxious mother determined to keep her rock 'n'
roll-reporting teenage son clean.

"Don't take drugs!" she shouts as she drops him off at a Black Sabbath gig;
and a whole chorus of concert-going pot-heads collapses in giggles,
echoing: "Don't take drugs! Don't take drugs!"

The pay-off, however, comes later in the story when the boy desperately
tries to rouse Kate Hudson from a drug-induced coma in a New York hotel
room. The scene is decidedly unfunny.

McDormand may represent the shrill voice of parental caution, but it's a
hell of a lot cooler than Nancy Reagan's plaintive "Just Say No". What's
more, it seems to be hitting the mark with audiences and critics alike;
last week Kate Hudson walked off with a Golden Globe for her performance in
the film.

Film industry analysts agree that the mood in Hollywood now is distinctly
moralistic - a far cry from the climate that welcomed a trippy
Trainspotting with open arms, not to mention every pill-popping, gun-toting
fable to emerge from the Tarantino stable. Robert Bucksbaum, of Reel Source
Inc, a company that tracks the box office, says that things are so severe
"there's even a crackdown on showing actors smoking on screen".

Bucksbaum thinks that Hollywood is reacting against its own drug-taking
past. "In the Eighties and Nineties almost everyone in this business was
into drugs. Since then, they've gone out of style. A number of high-profile
deaths, such as Chris Farley's, struck too close to home and that message
is now coming through." (Farley, an actor and comedian considered by many
to be the natural successor to John Belushi, was found dead of opiate and
cocaine intoxication three years ago.)

The anti-drugs message, in fact, could hardly be coming through any louder.
Traffic, Wonder Boys, Almost Famous and Requiem, are all mainstream,
big-budget movies. All flaunt big-name stars and big-time directors and
have been doused with enough critical praise to create an Oscar buzz that
would dilate the pupils of any Academy Award junkie.

The latest addition to the genre, due out this spring, is Ted Demme's Blow
starring Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz and Ray Liotta. Based on a true story,
Blow follows the ups and downs (chemical and occupational) of
coke-trafficker George Jung, a man famed for claiming that he
single-handedly delivered the US market into the hands of Colombia's drug
barons. He bragged that there was a time in the late Seventies when, "if
you used cocaine, there was an 85 per cent chance it came from me".

Jung, the subject of a cautionary win-it-all-lose-it-all biography by Bruce
Porter, was for years a high-flying smug-gler for Pablo Escobar's Medellin
cartel, a one-man, $35 billion-a-year conduit. But he got caught and ended
up doing hard time for his crimes.

However, if the name of the game is realism then Steven Soderbergh's
Traffic wins hands down. The film has a jerky documentary quality to it -
the result, no doubt, of Soderbergh filming much of it by following his
actors around with a camera perched on his shoulder. It also contains some
of the most true-to-life performances to have come out of Hollywood in
years; Benicio Del Toro, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman and Catherine Zeta-Jones
are all exceptional.

The team behind Traffic was so hungry for veracity it even enticed cameo
appearances from senators Orin Hatch and Barbara Boxer and brought in the
Drug Enforcement Agency as consultants. DEA spokesman Terry Parham says
that Hollywood doesn't have a great track record when it comes to drugs.

"For too long a Miami Vice mentality dominated things, glamorising drugs,
showing narcotics officials as incompetent and confusing the public." But
working with Soderbergh and with Traffic writer Stephen Gaghan was a
completely different experience. "We sat down at the table together and
went over the script almost line by line," says Parham. "We tried to show
them what DEA officers are like on a surveillance mission, as well as the
politics involved in the upper-level activities of the drug effort."

Interestingly enough, considering the movie's DEA approval rating, critics
have complained that Traffic ultimately is too bleak. Although the film
offers the small consolation that some headway might be made on a personal
level, one-to-one on the front line of addiction, it suggests that you
can't win the drug war at a political level. Because the drug trade has
insinuated itself so deeply into global economics, it is now virtually
immune to legislation.

But perhaps that's where Hollywood comes in. As Robert Bucksbaum observes:
"When it comes to determining what's hip and what isn't, Hollywood is
always one step ahead. The fact that we're seeing a lot of anti-drugs
messages now means that it will probably kick into real life soon and
hopefully we can do something about the drug problem."

Stars have always been role models but now, says Bucksbaum, "powerful
studios are taking responsibility for saying that not taking drugs is a
cool thing to do".

Thankfully, Hollywood taking its ability to fight drugs more seriously has
not translated into film-makers clobbering us over the head with agitprop.
Instead of lecturing or hectoring, the new anti-drug films have opted for a
show-and-tell approach. None of them pulls any punches when it comes to
portraying the brutal realities of addiction; in Wonder Boys, Michael
Douglas's potsmoking university lecturer is an unequivocal failure, and
Cameron Crowe's motley cast of drug-addled rock 'n' rollers in Almost
Famous are all lost souls.

Still, the balance between informing and entertaining can sometimes be
precarious. Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream presents such an
unrelentingly grim portrait of four junkies that at times it is hard to
endure, even if it does contain the snazziest cinematic short-hand for
getting high.

Requiem is also the only film to portray drug addiction as a problem that
is not just confined to the young. Ellen Burstyn is amazingly frazzled and
twitchy as an ageing diet-pill-addicted housewife. Through her dope-widened
eyes the American Dream turns sour; avatars of slick TV presenters stalk
around her house and her jumbo-sized refrigerator develops a life of its
own, driving her, literally, out of her mind.

Although Requiem's message is deadly serious, I can't help feeling that
Aronofsky has had the last laugh. For he must know that his film works like
aversion therapy: see it, and you'll be wary of taking so much as an
aspirin. Which makes me wonder, has anyone told Robert Downey Jr about it?