THROUGH A LENS, DARKLY

Award-Winning Filmmaker Lives To Tell His Story Of Crack Addiction And Recovery

When filmmaker Jeth Weinrich turned his lens on crack addicts four
years ago, he approached the project in the style that had served him
well so many times before: delve deep into the subculture, get to
know his subjects, understand them and then tell their stories
realistically and from the heart.

What he didn't bargain for was becoming one of them.

"I didn't even know what crack looked like," he says of the drug
known as crack cocaine. But that soon changed when one of his
contacts in that world pulled out a crack pipe and suggested he try it.

He quickly learned that crack is made by mixing and cooking cocaine
with baking soda and water until it forms hard rocks, cooled and then
smoked. He also learned why it has a reputation of being almost
instantly addictive.

"Unfortunately, it was a blast," says Jeth (who wants to be called
his his first name).

"Crack has to be the most mentally addictive drug in the history of mankind."

Taking that puff would set in motion a chain of events that neither
Jeth nor anyone close to him could have foreseen.

Up to that point, says the 46-year-old Calgarian, "my life exceeded
my dreams." He had won three Juno Awards, seven Much Music Video
Awards and a Clio (advertising's Oscar). Industry bible Adweek
magazine named him one of the top 10 up-and-coming directors in
America. Along with directing more than 170 commercials, he was the
creative genius behind Jann Arden's early music videos, along with
those of the Rankin Family, Chantal Kreviazuk, Van Halen and 54-40.

The creative accolades were accompanied by material success. His
daily directing and shooting rate was $17,000; in 1999, he made $3
million. It was a life that allowed him to pursue his love of travel,
pick and choose his projects and buy a 4,000-square-foot home in Mount Royal.

But as Jeth soon discovered, crack cocaine addiction turns dreams
into nightmares. After two years and what he estimates was about
$750,000 spent on the drug, in October 2005, he was escorted by
police out of the home some officers had nicknamed "Crack Mansion."

"It was a pretty low moment in my life, I was instantly homeless,"
says Jeth on a recent day as he sips from a glass of ice tea in a
southwest pub. "But it still wasn't enough to make me stop."

By Jan. 1, 2006, though, he made the toughest of all New Year's
resolutions. It was time to quit. After what he calls "a couple of
hiccups," he says he's now been clean for the past seven months.

It's a feat of which he is more than proud. "This is a drug that
makes mothers abandon their children," he says, "but every day that I
don't do crack, something good happens."

Currently living with a friend while he rebuilds his life, Jeth has
immersed himself in his work, on a book and documentary film about
the crack cocaine world, tentatively titled 1000 Days. Even while
addicted to the drug, he continued to chronicle on film the stories
of those he met.

"I have over 300 hours of film," he says of the project he is doing
through his long-established company Red Motel films and with partner
Raphael Mazzucco, a New York-based photographer who's shot for
publications like Vanity Fair and Sports Illustrated.

He hopes his work will inform the public on the harsh realities of
crack addiction and give hope to those trying to break free from the
drug, as well as humanizing the addicts.

"You have to cherish the struggle out as much as you cherished the
struggle in," he says of his life today.

Before crack cocaine made a crash landing into his life, struggle
wasn't part of Jeth's vocabulary. The Pittsburgh native arrived in
Calgary at age five, when the University of Calgary for its new
economics department recruited his late father John, a Harvard
University professor. His mother ran a popular inner-city clothing shop.

"Growing up, I rebelled by not doing drugs," he says of what he
describes as a liberal upbringing.

A natural athlete, the Viscount Bennett High School grad had his
sights set on becoming a professional football player, until a leg
fracture at age 20 crushed that dream. That's when he threw himself
into creative endeavours. After studying at New York's Parsons School
of Design, he wound up working as a visual assistant for director Oliver Stone.

Eventually returning to Calgary, Jeth began building up his film
credits, with projects like Heartland, a documentary on cystic
fibrosis patients at the Alberta Children's Hospital, which garnered
him an Alberta Motion Pictures Industry Association award; Moon of
the Desperados, which also won him an AMPIA; and Cowboy Stories, his
first feature film.

He even achieved a certain level of fame thanks to his dog, Bill, who
in 1998 took police on a five-day chase covering two states, after he
bolted from Jeth's Manhattan hotel room. The pair appeared on the
Rosie O'Donnell and Conan O'Brien talk shows and made the covers of
several U.S. newspapers.

But the crack world brought him a whole other way of life. The first
year, he says, "I continued to function, I had good finances." He
smoked crack, he says, with everyone from professional athletes to
visiting Hollywood celebrities, along with the more down-and-out
types usually associated with the drug.

"One guy I know spent $3 million in one year, on crack and
prostitutes," he says. Two young women who stayed with Jeth were
later charged with murdering another woman while on a crack binge;
one of his friends was shot to death last November outside the
McDonald's restaurant on 8th Street S.W., a well-known corner for
crack dealers.

The police were regular visitors, too. The first time they came to
his home for what would be numerous busts of his various guests, says
Jeth, "One said, 'A crackhead like you can afford to live in a place
like this?' "

He also remembers one yelling out his car window, "Hey Jeth, you used
to be someone."

As an addict with a large cash flow, Jeth found himself with no
shortage of friends and hangers-on. "Dealers should have PhDs in
extracting money from rich people on crack," he says.

The crack world, he says, has its own underworld economy, with its
own rules and punishments. "You get addicted to the danger, to the
adrenalin rush."

But as his world unravelled, so did many of his relationships. His
longtime girlfriend left him, and his family was torn apart by his addiction.

"If a person knew what the drug did to those around them, to the
people that loved them, I would like to think they'd never take that
first hit," says Jeth's sister (she asked that her name not be published).

Describing her older brother as the "sweetest, kindest person," she
says crack "makes people go against their character -- there is
nothing as important to them as the drug.

"Losing Jeth to crack was like a death . . . every time the phone
rang, I thought it might be someone calling to tell me he was dead,"
she says of the brother who once treated his body as a temple, eating
organic foods and doing yoga and tai chi. "I spent three years
wandering around with a terrible feeling in my gut, all the time."

Today, Jeth is putting that life behind him, hoping to use his
experiences to teach others about the perils of the drug and give
hope to those trying to kick it.

He's also working to rebuild ties with those close to him.

"To see now where Jeth is, and how he has come out the other side
fighting and with still so much pride, compassion, kindness, strength
and belief -- that to me is amazing," says his sister.

"To see him shine each day, for that I am truly grateful and proud of him."

Jeth knows better than anyone that his struggle is far from over,
that every day presents a challenge to go forward or slide back into the abyss.

"It doesn't cost me extra to believe I can beat this. But it costs me
everything to believe I can't."