'WASTED'

MTV Movie Tells Tragic Story of a Trio of High Schoolers Who Are Struggling
with Heroin Addiction

For the inhabitants of America's vast suburban sprawl, it would be
comforting to think that all heroin addicts live in inner cities, driven to
drugs by poverty and crime.

It would be comforting - but it would be wrong.

In March 1998, MTV News correspondent Serena Altschul hosted and
co-produced "Fatal Dose," a "True Life" documentary about the resurgence of
heroin use among young people. It focused on the affluent Dallas suburb of
Plano, Texas, where more than a dozen young people had died of a heroin
overdose in the previous two years.

At 9 p.m. Sunday, MTV takes a fictionalized look at the problem with the TV
movie "Wasted," which premieres commercial-free. Directed by Stephen Kay
("The Last Time I Committed Suicide"), it follows three best friends -
Samantha, Chris and Owen (Summer Phoenix, Nick Stahl, Aaron Paul) - through
their senior year of high school in a typical suburban town.

As a couple, Sam and Owen experiment with snorting heroin, which leads to
addiction, as Chris, a good student and athlete, looks on. A brush with
death sends Sam to Narcotics Anonymous, which she attends with Chris'
support. Sam's withdrawal from the drug lifestyle alienates Owen, who finds
her to be less "fun," and she gradually moves into a romance with Chris.
But, tormented by Sam and Owen's shared experience with heroin, Chris
decides to try it himself, which starts a downward spiral that ends in
unexpected tragedy.

While the clean-cut teens of "Wasted" may not look like stereotypical drug
addicts, Kay knows from personal experience that appearances can be
deceiving. "I came from an upper-middle-class background," he says, "and
went to an Ivy League school, and didn't start using until I got to the Ivy
League school. Some kids, it's boredom; some kids, it's fascination,
intrigue; some kids, literally it's "I don't want to be average,' which is
really sad.

"At one point, Sam, in her voiceover, says, "This is the thing about
addiction, whether it's a guy or booze or drugs or whatever. The reality
is, none of it fills you.' The hope was not just to make a movie about
heroin, it was to make a movie about people trying to fill themselves with
other stuff."

"Drug abuse is not prejudiced against anything," says Phoenix (sister of
Joaquin and the late River), "against social status or race or sex. It just
feeds on fear and loneliness.

"The kids, they don't know what to do. Everybody is in this state of lack
of knowledge and just ignorance and needing guidance, including the parents."

Speaking of parents, Kay showed "Wasted" to his own. "My folks were
visiting, they watched it and had a lot of difficulty getting through it.
Part of it is, they're looking at me, but it's a hard thing to talk about,
which is why MTV is pretty cool to even try it."

Kay portrays his teens as ordinary kids, which he thinks heightens the
drama. "They're normal kids, not a cinematic stereotype. I just saw a movie
the other night that hasn't come out yet, but it's about cokeheads. They're
not rich. This is about the underbelly, and they're covered with tattoos.
There's something that makes you immediately go, "Of course that guy's
going to die, because that's not me.'

"But if you see a guy in khakis and a button-down Oxford, you don't have
the easy out of saying, "Well, yeah, they're junkies, of course.' They're
high-school kids first."

Asked how she saw her character, Phoenix says, "I started looking at her
immediately just as a kid, a girl that was trying to become a woman and
trying to figure out where she lived in this world, who she was, what she
was going to do, where she came from, just like we all do as we grow up.

"It's weird. I feel like a lot of the reasons why I related to her are that
she wasn't sure of her ideals and her morals and her principles and who she
was yet. I think I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm preparing myself
for the lifelong journey of this. It's a difficult road to travel."

"It's not even morality," Kay says, "it's ethics, and to me, that stuff is
so gray. Every now and then (the characters) dip into it and just have
conversations about growing up and how they're not kids anymore, that
they've got to start taking care of stuff. But they don't talk about the
reality of, "You stole stuff from your mom, that's creepy.'

"The reality is, when you're in the belly like that, I don't think you're
thinking like that. It's a sad reality. These kids are spoiled to some
extent, but it's more about fixing themselves than it is about even
entertaining notions about right and wrong."

As to what she hopes teens will take away from "Wasted," Phoenix says,
"Samantha was lucky. She was strong, too, and she did the work. That's so
important, to see that you can accomplish things if you work toward them.

"And she was lucky. I hope that comes across, that, "Look, this girl was
lucky. Don't think that you can go through this and come out the way she
did, because you can see what happened to her friends.' "

"Summer's character realizes the true randomness," Kay says, "the crapshoot
of this thing, that it's killing people. It's not making them better.

"I have a few friends who died from it and left families and friends and
stuff behind, and that will also shake you up enough. It's a hard battle,
but it's an internal battle, and it's a personal battle."