DRUG WAR COWBOYS

FIX: THE STORY OF AN ADDICTED CITY Directed by Nettie Wild. (14A) 93 min.
Oct 16 at 7:30pm at the Varsity; Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell will
attend. Opens Oct 17 at the Carlton.

Vancouver has a drug problem like the Vatican has a Pope problem. The main
port supply of Asian heroin in North America, Vancouver has suffered over
2,000 drug-overdose deaths in the past decade. Of the 3,000 addicts who
currently haunt the Downtown Eastside, 30 per cent are said to be
HIV-positive, while 85 to 90 per cent have hepatitis C.

Things are beginning to change, however, and this September the city opened
its first safe-injection site. The struggle to get that site built
represents just one narrative strand of Nettie Wild's terrific documentary,
Fix: The Story of an Addicted City. Forget the unwieldy title and worthy
subject matter, this is a breathless piece of reportage, like a vintage New
Yorker feature put to film: expansive, comic, digressive and ever so
slightly demented.

Fix is structured like a classic three-act play, with action and character
propelling the narrative. "It's like this incredibly complicated political
drama," says Wild, a Vancouver native, in a recent interview in Toronto.
"So you need a clear narrative with a beginning, middle and end. Otherwise
the audience is lost."

The films opens on Dean Wilson, an articulate heroin user with Dee Dee
Ramone's looks and Nick Nolte's screen presence. Wilson used to be an IBM
salesman until his co-workers saw the tattoos and track marks on his arms.
A perpetual quitter, at one point Wild films Wilson shooting smack just to
get through his methadone withdrawal -- a classic example of addict logic.

Then there's Ann Livingston, the president of the Vancouver Area Network of
Drug Users. She's an avid church-goer, a non-user and confrontational as
hell. She also might just be involved with Wilson, a fact Fix never makes
explicit. (In fact, the two have had a kid together since filming ended).

Livingston is introduced while driving a truck full of addicts dressed as
skeletons to a city council meeting, which is where we meet the film's
other protagonist, (now ex-) Vancouver mayor Philip Owen. Unlike Livingston
and Wilson, the grey-haired Owen is a total straight-edge: we initially see
him showing off his expensive Mercedes, then dancing the funky chicken at a
black-tie function, a picture of the world's most embarassing dad.

In the end though, the film is as much about Livingston's attempt to open a
safe-injection site, and Wilson's attempt to kick the habit, as it is the
story of the deeply conservative Owen's own rebellion. Suprisingly, this
starchy mayor turns out to be Livingston's biggest supporter.

"The first time I met Philip, I thought he was kind of square," Wild says.
"But then I got really surprised. First [time] we filmed him, he said we
should go to the Downtown Eastside. He knew the street prices of heroin and
crack, he knew the users in the alleys. They were all yelling, 'Hey Phil!'
We discovered this complicated human being.

"In fact, I was really lucky with all the main characters, Livingston and
Wilson too. They're all very intense, bigger than life. You couldn't make
them up."

Eventually, Owen was kicked out of his own political party for supporting
injection sites and drug reforms. In a generous move (and ironic fuck-you
to his old colleagues), he used the $140,000 in funds raised at his
farewell bash to pay for Fix's 35mm blow-up and cross-country tour.

Owen, Wilson and Livingston have even trekked the length of Canada with
Wild to talk in special post-screening forums. "We're like the weirdest
travelling roadshow ever," she says. "It's strange. Philip's wife always
thought he was nuts for letting us near him."