I’ve read my fair share of drug books over the years (”Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas,” “The Basketball Diaries,” “Dead Babies,” “Naked Lunch,” etc.). Most of these classics derive much of their uniqueness from the fact that they describe a sensation that most people haven’t or will never experience. Often these drug-oriented books breathe a strange stream-of-consciousness language that, for obvious reasons, just sounds differently than most other fiction. If anything is certain, it is that drugs, even when used recreationally, can and do generally change people. They provide a frame of reference, often impossible to achieve, without the drug-induced effect. In the end, it is either the long-term mental repercussions or the resulting addiction that really causes the transformation.

Addiction is usually conveyed, in books, movies and real life as this pathetic, debilitating evil that strips away humanity leaving only bones and disease in its wake. But in the “The Story of Junk,” the page turning, modern-epic about becoming a junkie in New York City 1982-6, Linda Yablonsky manages to tell about the experience of being and becoming a junkie by using a narrator who, through it all, still seems to understand the physical and emotional ramifications of her lifestyle.

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Label: Dreamworks

In the old days Elliott Smith was the stringy haired reclusive singer for Portland’s short-lived melodic punkers - Heatmiser. As his punk became mellower and increasingly introspective, he began releasing quiet acoustic albums, sounding more like the angel of Nick Drake than the vocalist for a straight-ahead Northwest guitar band. His first two solo efforts, “Roman Candle” and “Elliott Smith,” are powerfully fragile lo-fi masterpieces recorded in bedrooms and 4 tracks in and around Portland.

In a stroke of good or bad luck, depending on how you slice it, Portland auteur Gus Van Zant asked Smith to score his film “Good Will Hunting” propelling him indirectly into the arms of Celene Dion and the gazillion people that were watching the Academy awards from sofas all over the world. He had already signed to Dreamworks and almost overnight the still stringy haired Smith had a whole world of expectations resting on his shoulders.

Director : Nick Gomez
With : Lili Taylor, Michael Rapaport, Kevin Corrigan, Adam Trese

“Illtown” is a surreal trip through the oddly cool Miami drug scene. The film is captured through the lenses of indie impresario Nick Gomez, whose attention to a drug-slowed opiate energy creates a stylistic haze that becomes a unique reality. Gomez, whose prior films include the gritty low-budget street film “Laws of Gravity,” and the studio backed Newark car-theft film “New Jersey Drive,” has created a dream world where is becomes difficult to discern what is and isn’t real. The film glides effortlessly through the deliberately ambiguous and colorfully stylized landscapes where everything looks like it might through a heroin glaze. In the film, Cisco (Kevin Corrigan), Dante (Michael Rapaport) and Micki (Lili Taylor) run a lucrative small time heroin ring selling drugs through teenaged boys to the yuppies at the sheeshy Miami nightclubs.

Told in a series of non-linear flashbacks and flash-forwards, the story begins when Gabriel (Adam Trese) is released from prison after allegedly being framed by the others. Looking prison buffed and screaming for vengeance, Gabriel sets out to destroy his former partners. He begins by trying to convince the Miami’s heroin kingpin, a bizarrely erudite character played by a very effeminate Tony Danza dressed in a smoking and jacket playing croquet, to cut off Cisco and Dante. He then sets out to turn the dealers and couriers against them, recruiting a brutal gang of delinquent kids to helping see to the demise of the empire.

In the end we are left with a few dead bodies, lifeless under the multi-colored Miami skies, and an outpouring of pain and greed. This is a 90’s gangster film for GenX art film lovers- and that’s a very good thing.