Documentary filmmaker Eugene Jarecki on his master class in failed drug policy: ‘The House I live In’
November 8, 2012
Tuesday’s election was not only a big deal for the president. It was also a big day for taking a step away from the long out-dated War on Drugs. According to documentary filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, not only should potheads celebrate the decision by voters to approve the recreational use of marijuana in Washington and Colorado but so should the common citizen, for it marks the first of many steps toward improving the standard of living for everyone.
His new documentary, the House I Live In, which won the jury prize at Sundance this year, explains why this may be the case, as it lays out the many ways the War On Drugs has failed. I spoke to him over the phone ahead of the film’s debut in Miami today for the “Miami New Times”‘ art blog “Cultist.” Read the resulting story here:
We spoke for only 15 minutes and, just like his film, the man is encyclopedic in his knowledge of his subject. It’s not just about facts, but how they are interconnected and what those connections create. But he is also aware this is not an objective film (in reality, there is no such thing, and anyone who claims objectivity should be considered suspect). In regards to his choice of talking heads (which includes the famed creator of “the Wire,” David Simon, among others
), Jarecki told me, “A movie like this is a subjective piece of art, and it’s a piece of art about equal things, and I am therefore a student in our culture of all of the people who weigh in on subjects like this, so when I start to tell the stories of people, I want to try to get stories of people who I’ve heard about, read about or found out through word of mouth on my way through the organic process as an investigator. But I then want to put those stories into context, and the context that I’m putting them into is the intellectual-cultural landscape that I’ve been brought up to understand.”
Listening to his explanations proved mesmerizing, just like his film. The connections and information he covers to answer a single question is impressive. The film never seems to lay out any concrete solutions, but, Jarecki said, he leaves it up to the viewer to get involved, and it starts with the ballot box. He says the time has arrived that voters demand politicians change the laws that have tied up law enforcement, placing them on the Rube Goldberg contraption to nowhere that is the War On Drugs. 
“The public has to learn the drug war and the phrase ‘War on Drugs’ and ‘tough on crime’ are both outmoded phrases that should be laid under the ash heap of history, that both of them failed,” Jarecki said. “The Drug War is one of the most failed public programs in the history of the country and being tough on crime is a recipe for disaster because it ignores that drug use is ultimately a personal problem of personal health, and it ultimately becomes a problem of public health. But it has never been a problem that warrants treatment under criminal law. It has nothing to do with crime. It has nothing to do with morality. We all know people who are addicts in some form or another, and yet some addicts get the book thrown at them and others get to have their obesity treated … so the next time some politician starts pandering to you that they’re gonna get tough on crime, and make you hate your neighbors, so that they can get elected and stay elected, boo them off the stage. Boo and hiss them until they either come back with better behavior or someone replaces them whose gonna talk about how they’ll be smart on crime. Now, that smart on crime requires treatment, it requires a lot of what Portugal did. Portugal has broken the mold on this in the last 10 years, in the world. Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized possession of drugs across the board, left reasonable penalties, and every single leading indicator in Portugal, political, economic and social, has been a giant success ever since. 
Their criminal justice workload is down. Their HIV rates are down, their drug use rates are down, and in every single way they’ve made that many more tax-paying, contributing citizens out of a population that otherwise would have been vilified or incarcerated. That example is how you deal with an addiction. It’s how all of us would want our addiction dealt with and when we have health insurance and we are comfortable people and we happen to have an addiction, we deal with it through treatment.”
One final thought he shared worth noting: Often people think libertarians like Ron Paul are the solution, but, Jarecki noted, it is more Repblican-types like Paul working together with liberal democrats that will lead to something fruitful. “The libertarians are some of the most staunch supporters of ending the drug war,” Jarecki said, “and they have carried the torch for this alone for too long. The left has carried it and the libertarians have carried it, and I think the libertarians and the left would serve themselves greatly to exploit the areas of common ground that they have, which are many, and the drug war is one of them.”
The House I live In is not rated (but it is about drugs, and that’s still adult subject matter) and runs 108 min. It opens exclusively in South Florida at Miami’s O Cinema, Thursday Nov. 8, at 7 p.m. To learn how to get involved, visit the film’s website: thehouseilivein.org.
Last year, Bridesmaids received much hype for featuring women doing funny things in a script written by a woman. Though directed by a man (Paul Feig), the media hyped it as a “look-women-are-funny-too” because Kristen Wiig co-wrote the script (with Annie Mumolo) and performed in the lead role. There was even a serious push for a best picture Oscar®, despite it being base, fluffy sit-com material that goes down as quick and forgettably as fast food. An Oscar® for that? Still, at least the film maintained a focus on female characters that it never compromised.
Celeste and Jesse Forever finally arrives in wide release on a similar wave of hype following its Sundance Film Festival debut earlier this year. Rashida Jones, who is probably best known as a cast member on the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” co-wrote the screenplay with Will McCormack and plays the titular Celeste, with Andy Samberg taking on her other half. Though— like Bridesmaids— directed by a man (Lee Toland Krieger), Celeste and Jesse Forever seems to again been heralded as another entry of this “movement” of woman filmmaker/starring pieces in Hollywood. 
And maybe it could have lived up to such ballyhoo had it not spent so much time compromising the female perspective to tie up every loose end in the plot and concern itself halfheartedly with the man’s view in the couple. The film becomes one squandered opportunity, as indeed Celeste is an interesting female character … when she’s not pausing for someone else to steal the spotlight. She becomes lost in the haze of too many zany characters and sub-plots. What could have been a film of touching quality becomes a din of noise reaching too far for inclusiveness and appeal.
About 70 percent of the film seems devoted to Celeste and 20 percent figures on Jesse, while 10 percent focuses on other characters who are never fleshed out enough to even care about. These people include Celeste and Jesse’s engaged friends, Beth and Tucker (Ari Graynor and Eric Christian Olsen), Celeste’s wannabe queer media company boss (Elijah Wood)
, a pop star (Emma Roberts) whose image Celeste is supposed to boost in her role as a “trend forecaster” and a possible suitor for Celeste (Chris Messina). There’s also a few seconds of time devoted to the couple’s mutual dope-dealing friend (McCormack) … because pot dealers are so darn cute and funny in movies nowadays.
This “hip” couple is established at the film’s beginning driving in their hybrid vehicle, singing with gusto to Lily Allen. He’s a slacker surfer and graphic designer while she’s a pop culture specialist with such disdain for her specialty she authored a book called “Shitegeist.” Though they share jokes, like putting on phony German accents as they peruse a restaurant menu aloud together and simulating handjobs to lip balm as they mutually squeeze the tube, it turns out they have decided to divorce after five years of marriage. Instead of a fight that shows the couple’s dysfunction, these instances of cute, comfortable interactions serve to inform their reasons for divorce. As husband and wife they have only become best friends, not a romantic couple or a team with ambitions for children and careers.
Beth and Tucker sit across from Celeste and Jesse at a restaurant, as Celeste and Jesse put on their German accents. Beth and Tucker make faces of disgust, calling the soon-to-be divorcees creepy. Meanwhile, Celeste and Jesse put on their own faces of disgust as Beth and Tucker smooch at the table. 
Granted, the fiances’ behavior is portrayed as cutesy and over-the-top, but what’s really happening is a revelatory moment that shows Celeste and Jesse acting like elementary school kids too immature to have married in the first place. At the end of the night, Celeste and Jesse get drunk on wine when Jesse comes out of the studio in back of the house they once shared to help Celeste build an Ikea shelf. Neither can figure out the instructions (wink, wink. It’s Ikea!), so Jesse saws and hammers together a robot sculpture, and they have sex. That’s when Celeste realizes she must finally kick Jesse off the property and force him to find a job.
There exists a fine line in comedies of this sort. Where does the script serve to illuminate a character or give characters something witty to do in service of the script’s witty ideas?
The actors seem to serve a script eager to get to the next witty idea of character development, that does nothing to reveal much growth or decline in the characters. They just seem to tread water. Characters in these comedies always seem funnier when they smoke pot, so both Celeste and Jesse separately get a turn at spend time with their dope fiend friend.
Then there are “original” ideas like the simulation of a hand job to the lip balm the two share more than once in the film, like some secret handshake. It becomes distracting in hollow humor from the true problems of these characters: they’re adult children. Instead of exploring why these two do not truly connect as a married couple, the film presents humorous situations that gloss over the characters problems and, in effect, problems in the script.
I had hoped for a more light-hearted take on the dissolution of a marriage than Sarah Polley’s little-seen masterpiece Take This Waltz (starring a couple of capable comedians in dramatic roles: Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman). Instead, all I saw in Celeste and Jesse Forever was an amalgam of precious scenarios too concerned with finding superficial conclusions for every other character that appears in the movie 
(the tidiest and, in effect, most ludicrous of which involves a male model Celeste dates for a moment and Celeste’s way too quick taming of Roberts’ Ke$ha-like pop star, another wasted female character turned into a punchline). Though presented as an indie film, as its distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, the film compromises to the Classical Hollywood form almost slavishly.
When there are moments of dramatic, emotional diversion, out comes the unsteady camera and plaintive, quite few seconds of the character. The director never lingers enough to allow these respites from the din of story-telling and humor to sink in to any significance. These moments just seem out of place. 
The film seems scatter-shot and its over-reaching allows it to ring hollow. Had the film simply focused on Celeste and allowed these other characters to wander through, damn their own fates, this could have been a much more interesting and engaging film. Jones’ character only becomes uninteresting when she has to take a backseat to the other actors’ story lines. That happens way too often to allow her to matter, when it is she, in the end, who must do some growing up. But who wants to see an immature woman grow? Is that too risky a film for Hollywood? Shame on this cop-out that ultimately sells short what could have been an interesting female-led film.
Trailer:
Sony Pictures Classics will be releasing Celeste and Jesse Forever in South Florida this Friday, Aug. 24, at the following theaters:
Gateway 4 – Fort Lauderdale, FL
Cinemark Palace 20 – Boca Raton, FL
Cinemark Paradise 24 – Davie, FL
Shadowood 16 – Boca Raton, FL
Delray Beach 18 – Delray Beach, FL
Regal South Beach – Miami Beach, FL
Cinemark Boynton Beach – Boynton Beach, FL
If you live outside of South Florida, it could very well be playing in your area now, but there are also other playdates planned throughout the month. A full schedule of US dates can be found on the film’s official website, here.
Independent Ethos 