DEPICTION OF DRUG TRADE A RICH, COMPLEX MOVIE GENRE

"Hollywood High" is a tricky title. It sounds like a documentary about high
school high jinks as interpreted by generations of moviemakers -- who cast
generations of actors in their 20s and even 30s in study hall, the
cafeteria and hot rods.

But the AMC documentary is about something almost totally different -- the
depiction of the drug trade as interpreted by generations of moviemakers
from 1936's "Reefer Madness" to 2000's "Requiem for a Dream" and "Traffic."
In a compact hour -- 46 minutes without commercials -- director Bruce
Sinofsky gives an illuminating survey of films that deal with drugs in some
way. He reveals that it is as rich and complex a genre as Westerns, which
can range from "The Searchers" to "Support Your Local Sheriff."

Sinofsky shows that drug films can range from celebrating pot in "Easy
Rider" (1969) to showing the wide-ranging ravages of illegal drugs in
"Traffic," with a side trip to the two stooges comedy of Cheech and Chong
in at least three movies co-starring the stoners and marijuana.

Commentators include directors John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, Penelope Spheeris
and Oliver Stone. The film also offers insights by actors including Gary
Sinese, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto and Delroy Lindo. Writers sharing their
experiences include Hubert Selby Jr. (the novels "Requiem for a Dream" and
"Last Exit to Brooklyn") and Stephen Gaghan ("Traffic").

On one thing they all agree. About 90 percent of everyone in the film
industry -- in front of the cameras, behind the cameras, in offices far
from the cameras -- has some personal experience with drugs -- illegal
drugs, that is. He doesn't count caffeine, tobacco and alcohol. He does
count legal prescription drugs because, taken by experts, they can do just
about exactly what contraband can. Or, as in "Requiem for a Dream,"
prescription drugs can hook the innocent and unwary.

Some of "Hollywood High" is amusing. The cautionary film "Reefer Madness"
is not only hilarious, but it became a popular head movie. It confuses
marijuana, which slows the user down, with speed, which can make the user
manic and hyper. The film is funny in its melodramatic overstatement anyway
but, reportedly, is almost perilously merry to one consuming reefer.

For the modern and/or innocent, a head movie is one with special appeal to
stoned viewers. Some were designed as such, including 1967's "The Trip,"
and 1968's "Head" and "Psych-Out." Others found favor with stoned viewers
despite utter lack of effort on the part of the filmmakers, the most famous
of these being Walt Disney's "Fantasia" (1940) and Stanley Kubrick's "2001"
(1968).

Drug-related films evolved from banned to controversial to standard fare.
Like cigarette smoking, they are part of some films that aren't about drugs
or cigarettes.

Everyone in the documentary agrees that drugs are here to stay, like
coffee, cigarettes and alcohol. Controlled substances are controlled only
in the sense that their price is artificially inflated by the war on drugs.
The drug industry wants drugs legalized less than anyone. The stiffer the
penalty and the more efficient the cops, the higher the price.

Stone calls the war on drugs as futile as the war on poverty: "We'll never
win it. Let's call it off."

Gaghan notes the futility of warring against a basic element of human
nature; lust and ambition hurt families, too. He notes in "Traffic" and in
his interview here that drugs flow across the Mexican border as regularly
and inexorably as the tide. And the bureaucratized and institutionalized
"war" poses another peril, limiting dissent.

"If you have a perpetual war that you can't win with a perpetual enemy that
you can't find, you have an absolute system that forbids you to question
authority. The war on terrorism, the war on drugs, these are perpetual
wars. How dare you question the president in time of war. Well, we're going
to always be at war, so how dare you question the president."