This week felt different from the previous movies we watched and explored another path of the music film. Our last two movies were energetic and fun, using the humor and sarcasm of youth to portray the spirit of rock n’ roll. Sid and Nancy, however, didn’t follow the same outline as Dazed and Confused and Detroit Rock City. Sid and Nancy is a biopic directed by Alex Cox and was released 1986, it retells the story of the relationship between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen and how it affected the punk band the Sex Pistols. The biopic is a device used to give a theatrical retelling of events that happened to someone who has accumulated a sort of following or has been deemed significant. The biopic has become popular among famous musicians, you can find a biopic for basically any famous musician from Mozart to Elton John, and they are usually tragic in nature. The musician is faced with some kind of personal or outside source of distress and they either overcome it or it leads to their demise. I enjoy biopics; they can boost the stardom of the still living or act as a tribute to the dead. But I don’t think Sid and Nancy did either of those things, or at least it wasn’t trying to; I wouldn’t call it a warning but maybe an example. It showed the physical and mental toll that hard drugs take on the body, an unglamorized depiction of addiction. It’s sad, it’s depressing, and it’s hard to watch. You see the transition from a young and energetic Sid to lethargy and haze as their co-dependence on heroin escalates. The film was beautiful to watch, I like its punk-edge and youthful humor, but these also contribute to its’ devastating end. I have a hard time watching films like this, where substance abuse and addiction are kept raw; no spoonful of sugar, no Hollywood dazzle. I tend to stay away from them because, to be blunt: they scare me. One movie that I thought about while watching this, and was mentioned in the reading, was Trainspotting, a movie that disturbed me for a while after I watched it. Maybe it was because I went into both of these movies not realizing the depth of heroin addiction they would explore, but I’ll blame that on the appeal of the posters. I can acknowledge a good film, but don’t expect me to watch it again.

Onto a lighter topic (and lighter drugs). This week’s reading, “Cult Cinema and Drugs” did a great job of discussing how drugs and cult cinema have crossed paths. My favorite part of the reading was the discussion of the “Head” film, referring to drugs that are more psychoactive and hallucinogenic in nature (i.e. marijuana, LSD, etc.) which could be A. a movie specifically about the experience of the drug or B. a movie that could be enhanced through the use of such drugs. It seems quite obvious why head films are successful, movies are already fun to watch but after seeing a movie for the fifth time it can start to get old. So, if you were to use a ‘mind-altering’ substance, perhaps weed, there’s a potential for a mundane movie to become exciting again. But, hey, what about a movie that was designed to work with your altered state of mind to create an even more transcendent experience? your Friday night just got even more exciting. And to top it off, what if all your friends or other like-minded individuals gathered together for a movie sesh?

Using the idea of drugs to enhance the experience of a film through depictions of unusual/trippy visuals, depictions of drug use, or actually doing drugs relates directly to a lot of the elements on the cult film check list: transgression and politics in a culture that is still not completely comfortable with recreational drug-use, the community aspect of the drug sub-culture, and the opportunity for active celebration (although not as openly as with midnight movies/grindhouses). What’s also interesting to me about the Mathjis reading is that it doesn’t portray drug-use in a bad light; it instead differentiates between what drugs are deemed more acceptable in use and viewing experience. Not everyone enjoys using marijuana, but generally head films or stoner flicks are light-hearted in nature and could still be enjoyed in a sober state. But the existence of Head films doesn’t mean all drugs will enhance your movie viewing experience, “there do not seem to be any film cycles aimed at the viewer under the influence of heroin or amphetamines. These drugs tend to aid conscious states that are either below or above the threshold suited to watching films.” After watching Sid and Nancy I don’t think I need to explain why these types of drugs don’t mix well with movies (or life).

Man, that still feels really heavy.

I’ve been seeing a lot of advertisements lately for movie & wine pairings. Because these past few weeks have discussed drug-use in and around movies and as our culture becomes more open to the use of recreational marijuana, I humored myself by seeing if there were any strain & movie pairings. Here is some more comedic relief for those still recovering from this week’s screening.

I also enjoyed the presentations this week, Fight Club is a classic and when I first watched it I was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t a bunch of guys beating the shit out of each other for 2 1/2 hours. I had never heard of La Haine but now I definitely want to watch it.