HBO FILM DRAWS CALAVERAS' NOTICE

It's not exactly a local-boy-makes-good film, but when an HBO
documentary called "Small Town Ecstasy" comes on television at 10
p.m. Sunday, the viewing and taping audience will include a lot of
people from Calaveras County.

Like the sheriff and the district attorney.

According to HBO, the film focuses on a man named Scott who didn't do
drugs or alcohol until he was divorced at age 40 and hooked up with
ecstasy -- also known as E, X or XTC -- a synthetic mind bender
popular in some teen-age crowds.

In the documentary, Scott becomes enamored with it. At raves and
drug- fueled house parties, he revels with younger people, including
three of his own teen-age children.

He takes ecstasy. So do his children. The ex-wife, who is part of the
documentary and not part of the parties, is appalled. But despite
facing criminal charges and losing the right to see the underage
children, Scott keeps getting loaded. Once ecstasy gets a grip on
him, he refuses to let go.

This is not a documentary glorifying ecstasy or any other illegal
substance, according to executive producer Arnold Shapiro, but
instead "one of the strongest anti-drug films you'll ever see."

Sheriff Dennis Downum hopes that besides providing a message it also
will deliver leads for further prosecution of the protagonist, whose
last name isn't used in the movie but is well known to law
enforcement officers.

They say the man is Scott Meyers, who grew up in the West Point area
of the county and now lives in Mokelumne Hill. Narcotics officers
have been after him for nearly two years, and have only a misdemeanor
possession conviction to show for it.

Meyers was reportedly out of town and could not be reached for
comment Thursday. His ex-wife could not be reached, either.

Officers knew about the making of the HBO program, which was filmed
about two years ago, and tried to get pre-publication footage,
including outtakes. HBO turned them down, and Downum said the county
gave up on trying to force the issue.

"But Monday morning," Downum said, "We will have people here from
Child Protective Services, the DA's office, everybody with any
expertise in any drug use, to view the entire tape and see what we
can do with it."

District Attorney Jeff Tuttle said that even if he sees criminal
activity or hears admissions, prosecution would require an
independent investigation. Limitation statutes could become an issue.
Witnesses would have to be found.

"We can't just go to court with an HBO movie," Tuttle said.

Even if they could, supervising producer Allison Grodner said they
would not see what they want most to see -- the father providing the
drug to a 15-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son.

The closest the documentary comes to that, Grodner said, is during a
party where Meyers talks to an older son, who is 18, about wanting
the younger kids "to experience what he's experienced."

They don't settle their argument, and there is no footage of the
younger ones taking the drug, but it becomes evident later that they
have taken it and that Meyers knows it.

Grodner said the film crew set out two years ago to make a
documentary about ecstasy, and found their ideal focus group at a
Labor Day rave dance at the fairgrounds in Angels Camp. There they
met Meyers and his 18-year-old son, who had introduced his father to
the drug.

"Then it became a much bigger story," Grodner said. "They were part
of a bigger family, with younger children, and we get the father's
story of not having done anything until he was 40 -- not even
alcohol. All of a sudden he is enamored with a lifestyle of things he
had never tried before."

Even Sheriff Downum acknowledged that Meyers was a perfect citizen
and apparently a doting and responsible husband and father "up until
about two years ago when he kind of hit the midlife crisis or
whatever, dyed his hair blond and went nuts. It's got to be killing
his mom and dad."

Meyers' father is a well-known retired minister in the county.

"I've known him and his wife since I was born," Downum said. "He
married my wife and me, and I think he either married or buried
everybody in my family."

The minister's wife said she didn't want to comment about the HBO
documentary or about her son except to say that "he has taken a
harrowing spiral downward, and we are praying something happens to
turn him around."