FILM ON DRUGS TRACES LINE BETWEEN FUN AND DISASTER

Ted Demme's 'Blow' Shows What's Happening In Shift From Pot To Coke

Ted Demme is in town to promote his new film, Blow. More specifically, he's
here pitching the film to college press with a screening at Southern
Methodist University and interviews to follow.

And if you think it's amoral to sell a college audience on a non-judgmental
film about drugs, you probably haven't been to college in a while. "It's
got a real kind of 'sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll' feel to it that I'm
hoping college kids will enjoy," says Mr. Demme, nephew of the
Oscar-winning Jonathan. "Plus, it's got a ton of music and Johnny Depp and
those kinds of things." Those kinds of things certainly help in marketing a
movie these days. But Blow also strikes a difficult balance between
glorification and condemnation of drugs, which helps the film keep an even
tone through its hero's highs and lows. Mr. Depp plays George Jung, a '70s
pot dealer who rises up and comes crashing down when he shifts his narcotic
interests from marijuana to cocaine. As Pablo Escobar's man in America,
George enjoyed the lush life -- mansion, beautiful wife (played by Penelope
Cruz), fleet of fancy cars -- before feeling the stinger at the other end
of the rainbow.

He's still in prison and hasn't seen his now-adult daughter since he went
inside.

Mr. Demme had no interest in making an anti-drug movie, but he did want to
show what happened to George when his life spiraled out of control.

Mission accomplished. "I wanted the movie to be fun in the beginning,
because I knew how it would end," he says. "I was confident that it
wouldn't be a glorification of drugs." Still, those early scenes, when
George arrives on the sunny beaches of Southern California from his colder
native New England in the late '60s, have an allure that's hard to miss.
George gets caught up in the revelry immediately, as many did then -- and
many do now. "There are a lot of people out there who think drugs are fun,"
says Mr. Demme. "There are a lot of people out there who function day to
day with drugs and alcohol in their lives.

There's a reason why people are out partying on Thursday night.

People love to party." And as Blow makes clear, the difference between fun
and disaster is often a matter of degree.

George is at the heart of the country's cultural shift from weed to coke,
two drastically different drugs that often circulate in vastly different
circles. Mr. Demme strove to bring those differences to both the look and
the mood of his film. "I wanted to have a definitive change in the movie,
showing what happened in the country when people went from pot to coke," he
explains. "Everything was kind of mellow and good and fun during the pot
time. Then when coke came into play, everything got a little brighter and
everything got [messed] up. I wanted to show that definitive change in the
film. The lighting gets brighter and harsher, and the colors change a
little bit." Part of that shift, of course, ties into the transition from
flower power to the "Me Decade," when all that social consciousness started
weighing heavy on folks who just wanted to cut loose and look out for No.
1. "When kids were growing up in the early '70s, they were ready to have
some fun," says Mr. Demme, who started high school in 1981 on Long Island
and didn't see cocaine until after college. "The '60s were kind of a heavy
decade, and in the '70s people wanted to recover from the '60s by
partying." Perhaps this kind of social history lesson will be lost on
today's college generation, many of whom know those two tumultuous decades
strictly via pop cultural artifacts.

Oh, well. There are always the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.