A Day in the Death of Donny B.

What. A. Beautiful. Short. Film. Everything about this movie is great: the montage the music nice and jazzy the editing the cinematography the documentary acting everything about this is grapes. clothes everything this mute this is everything this movie is just so perfect it's like you've been taking drugs right there and then and you know and because of this you should just see this movie this is really a great movie.

I was surprised to see that this particular film was produced by the Health Department of the US federal government. Governments from local to federal had been pumping out drug and auto crash flicks since Reefer Madness in the 1930s, and reached its peak in the 60s-70s. This film portrays in a Scorsese-like manner one day, as the title implies, of Donny B. As he stumbles his way around Harlem looking for a fix. With close-ups, sharp camera angles, and a grainy black and white, we observed a junkie attempting to live from needle to needle. You never see him eat, sleep in a bed, or engage in any social life other than wandering the streets and shooting up with other junkies. One cannot help but feel a visceral sense of helplessness, but at the same time, cast some judgment that his life is of his own making, as the narrator comments. Overall, it's a beautiful film from a director and cinematographer's perspective but sad to watch.

With its droning musical score, over-saturated sound track and hideous visuals, this anti-drug Public Service short emphasizes the ugliness of narcotics addiction in a cinematically telling manner that was, alas, probably wasted on its intended audience.

Cameraman Harold Grier hasn't had much of a career in the movies. He seems to have been a successful wedding photographer, judging by what I can find on the Internet. However, he has a very telling way of shooting zoomed long shots that shows his subject -- the eponymous Donny B -- in tight focus; however, the framing of image is deliberately off, reducing Donny B to to an ugly participant in an ugly world.

Having had my own heroin experience (6+ yrs clean now, but 30 years gone), this film is as close as it gets to telling the truth: opiate addiction is death. This should be mandatory viewing for every high school. On a lighter note, how do I get a copy of the soundtrack?