John Holowach's HIGH: The True Tale of American Marijuana begins with a history of pot prohibition and then steers into the heavier waters of addiction, treatment and the DEA's harassment of doctors who prescribe pain medication.

CelebStoner interviewed Holowach about HIGH, which was released last November by Terra Enterrtainment.

What inspired you to make this film?
I was in high school in a debate class, and the topic one week was the legalization of marijuana. I took the affirmative position because I like a challenge. I figured it would be difficult to prove that such a supposedly dangerous substance should somehow be legalized (after all, it's just a bunch of loser stoner who use it, right?), but it really wasn't. Science was with me, public policy experiments were with me, and just basic logic was with me. I started to examine everything I thought I knew, and as the walls began to crumble, I started knocking them down for my family and friends. Eventually I decided that person-to-person wasn't fast enough. I needed a broader public version of my talks to tell others. Thus, HIGH was born, and I've been moving forward with it ever since. Oh, and I won the debate.

How long did it take to put together?
Altogether, from conception to release, it's been about five years, 12 edits/reedits, and a lot of persistence and heartache.

How did you decide to become a filmmaker?
I've known I've wanted to be a filmmaker since I first saw Jurassic Park when I was a kid. I wanted to be the one to bring dinosaurs to life like Steven Spielberg did. Though I eventually moved away from extinct animals, filmmaking has been my path for years and years. And though this is my first nationally distributed film, I've been working on films for over a decade now, including a television pilot (which, for a variety of reasons, never went anywhere).

Are you involved with the marijuana-reform community?
I felt it was important that I try not to align myself with any specific group, because donating money or membership time to them would associate myself with all of their views, which I may not necessarily share. Though I applaud the spirit of the marijuana reform community, I wanted to remain as pristine - from an outsider's perspective - as I possibly could. I made a great effort to keep myself free from any potential impropriety or bias. I am, of course, biased by my years of research and the stories I've found, but in no way by money or groupthink. I wanted my position to be all within the film and nowhere else.

Are you a pot smoker?
I am not, actually, which tends to surprise people. I have done it a few times in the past, but ultimately it just wasn't for me. It gave me a headache, didn't really like the experience, so I decided against it. My drug of choice is a good Riesling.

HIGH seems to be part Grass and part American Drug War - sort of two different documentaries. Why did you choose to go in this direction?
I wanted people to realize that marijuana is the backbone of the War on Drugs, and it can hurt all these other people. You can't give a pass to marijuana and forget about the War on Drugs, which affects so many others besides marijuana users (both recreational and medicinal). The story of Dr. Paul Heberle and his pain patients is horrible, reeking of government corruption and headline-whoring prosecution, and is just the tip of the iceberg. The one thing I've realized above all else while working on this is that people are, for the most part, ignorant of the issue. Not their fault, they have jobs and families and lives to lead, and can't be afforded the time to get angry. But they should, because this so-called war could be knocking on – or knocking down – their door someday. It's all a matter of degrees, but in the War on Drugs, what looks like a single brick is really a wall, except you can't see it until you're plowing into it.

The prison footage in HIGH is particularly graphic. How does that figure into the story of American marijuana?
Marijuana is what runs the War on Drugs, taking half the money from the government anti-drug budget to battle it, and it was the plant that started the whole thing off. Furthermore, it's a reflection of the kind of system we currently have. That videotape was meant to show police how to search people - whether in prison or otherwise - who they suspected of possessing drugs. That such abuse is even a conceivable way to behave as officers is ludicrous, let alone that it would be acceptable to treat human beings that way.

What are you working on next?
I'm done with documentaries, unless another issue grabs me in such a strong, visceral way as the drug war. The project I'm tackling next is a post-apocalyptic thriller called Sanctum. I don't want to say much about it, other than I'm eager to move forward on it, while continuing the good fight against the War on Drugs.

Also see:

HIGH trailer

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