Dopesick: Danny Strong on Purdue Pharma, opioid crisis, Michael Keaton, Sackler, Berry Levinson

you guys like the crown is it really popular here yeah and just does the monarchy ever comment on the crown no they haven't commented on anything now at all apart from weather well that's pretty powerful all right yeah you good okay um so hello everyone uh welcome thanks for coming down um my name is rowan woods i'm the festival series programmer um as you know this is our first year having our first full series program we were really thrilled to have the uk european premiere of dopesick playing as part of that on wednesday and um danny strong is the series creator and the exec producer and we're going to just have a chat about the show um so danny uh thanks for being here again um do you want to tell us a little bit about sort of where the show originated where the idea came from why this felt like a topic you wanted to tackle sure so where should i talk to should i talk to you to the crowd that there's all these cameras i just want to do whatever is right what's right for you guys should i just address the audience okay because you're the ones here um uh well hey everybody oh wait i already did that when i walked in um so this show so in 2017 there was a new yorker article uh by patrick rayden keith my boyfriend your boyfriend uh who uh and in this article he laid out that the opioid crisis all stemmed from one company that was micromanaged by one family and and it was this really brutal expose on the sacchari family and how that they were basically responsible for the opioid crisis and and how they did it and it was a pretty shocking story because there was um uh the lies deception the criminal behavior was was laid out and that blew the sacklers up into a major news story that's when the nan golden started doing protests bring their names off of the museums uh i think there was a major one of those protests here that she did and um so a producer came to me john goldwyn a really wonderful producer and he said um do you want to write and direct a movie on the sackward family and this was a few months later and i'd read the article but hadn't thought about it as as for you know as a story and i thought well that's really interesting why don't i kind of start diving into this and there have been two books written about um about you know the opioid crisis purdue pharma the sackor family it was really laid out and the more i read about it the more i was stunned shocked could not believe the level of deception lies dishonesty criminal behavior uh it was like the whole thing was a long con um that was meticulously manipulated by this company that was micromanaged by this family and you know for years the family said oh we're just on the board we're passive members uh we're not even really involved in the company and then in i don't know 2016-17 uh all their emails came out in discovery from all these lawsuits against them and oh my god so shocking they were lying through their teeth they were micromanaging this company this was their company the people that went down for an earlier uh settlement uh were like the second class citizens of the company you know it was not it was the whole thing was a lie and then you start to realize oh everything about this company and this product uh how they marketed the product it's all a lie and it's shocking it's just truly shocking so then i thought i got to do something with this i don't know what i don't know what you know and then i thought about the movie traffic and i thought oh maybe there's a version of traffic of the opioid crisis where you could do different stories that they'd intertwined so because i thought just the sacklers i don't know lying rich people you know that are just a bunch of [ __ ] i don't know why i don't know a movie maybe but i i just seemed it didn't seem like there was enough story there so uh so then i realized there was this court case um sorry is this a super long answer all right well there was a court case where they um where a u.s attorney and his prosecutors went after purdue pharma and they built a great case against them and the case settled in 2007 and i thought oh a case prosecutors that means there's an investigation oh that maybe that's the spine of this p that's when i started to see it as a work of art if that doesn't sound pretentious if it does i apologize but as a drama as a scripted story and then i kept researching and then there was this dea investigation in 2000 2001. oh my gosh another investigation well then i thought okay there's these exciting layers to this story that could expose their criminal behavior and i thought well maybe we could be with them as we're watching them come up with these dishonest campaigns so there's another interesting story and then lastly it was well you can't do this without doing the victims uh and then the victims became this composite town i created called finch creek uh that that that i you know had these characters that were composite characters that i saw as the archetypal uh victims of the crimes of purdue pharma so that was how that was where it all began and sort of how the construction of it came and where at what stage did beth macy's book come to you is it when you were doing all of that research yeah so it was this is sort of one of those unusual hollywood stories but not really that unusual i had done i don't know a year's worth of research had come up with the entire show which is the show that you see dopesick pitched it to the studio 20th which is part of the disney family they bought it we were in the process of booking meetings to go pitch it around town and then fox 21 another studio under the same banner under disney didn't know about that i was doing that and they went and bought the book dopesick in a bidding war um and i read about it on deadline hollywood so well that's interesting that my my own studio is a rival project against me like so what are we gonna do here um and so i uh they they they were screwed because it can take six months to two years to find a writer to adapt a book it's very you know i'm a producer as well and i hire writers to do to do exactly that and i've had projects where it's literally taken two years to find the right writer so and i was ready to go so they asked if i would team up i read the book dopesick i loved the book dopesick and it was it did something different than the other books because at this point now there's been four books that have come out and it did something different which was that it covered the victims it covered the people on the ground uh that were struggling um with opiate use disorder and and all from the lies of purdue right so uh and then i loved her even more beth and she wanted to be in the writers room and i thought oh well there wasn't going to be a writer's room but you know she's she's uh would be great to do this with an expert and maybe i'll hire one or two other writers and and and that's we're off to the races so beth has been a wonderful part of the team um but yeah it is sort of strange that you know so why how did you adapt dope set well i didn't really um and part of why one of the things that made me want to team up with them besides beth and thinking wow this would be great to have her on board was the title dopesick i thought what a great title um and then a little bit later down the road i got a call from someone saying hey they've tested the title and they don't like it or would you change it and i said that's the whole point of me teaming up with them it's just a great title like enough of the testing this is a great title and they were they were awesome they were like okay fine you know they were like they're like no worries no worries just wanted to let you know that we tested it uh so that was uh that's how that came to be and on a more sort of granular level i mean there is as you just outlined there is so much material and you've got so many you've got various different storylines various different timelines uh different characters different perspectives how did you actually approach trying to put that all of that into a sort of eight-part structure yeah it was it was a very complicated piece i had um before i had sold the show i had outlined the whole season not beat by beat but i had these broad stroke outlines because i wanted to know in my own head that i could pull it off and that that i thought this could work before i even sold it to anyone um so so i had kind of kind of sketched it out and had sort of the season sketched out um and then uh i i was it was originally at fx instead of hulu and they made me do a 10-page document on what the season would be so there was so much work that had gone into it that by the time i started episode two i had a strong sense of how it would work now that doesn't mean i didn't know it would work uh because it's a complicated narrative device um of having intertwining stories like this you know you could say it's complicated although you know in any tv show there's intertwining stories but normally they're all connected in some way they're part of the same family or the same office right where this is these different stories but then to make things even harder i they took place in three different time periods so now why did i do that well the investigations 2002 to 2007 the produced storyline i had to do the origin story of the launch of oxycontin that's 1996. i have to show the victims that's 1996. the dea investigation's 2000 right so if i just did it linear then that means the first six episodes would just be purdue farm and the victims then then episode five the de agent comes in then episode seven uh episode seven the prosecutors come in uh that would have been a very bad television show it would have worked it literally when it worked i mean part of the this kind of uh part of what makes the show so intense is is that the investigation's happening the investigations are having simultaneously as they're committing the crimes and as we're watching the victims so it really was the only way uh that i believed the story could work and i thought it could be pretty cool and i'll be honest with you any uh i've been the last two days it's aired in the u.s and i've had several writers reach out to me friends and colleagues that have seen it and they're all like how the [ __ ] did you do that at the time it's unbelievable you know it's like the thing that writers are kind of most impressed with because i there is a bit of a there's some craftsmanship there you know like it was not easy to do so uh so that's been that's been lovely i imagine lots of different colored note cards in a very big wall but there was a thing called a worldwide pandemic so we had no writer's room so we had to do it virtually so there was no we had bought all of the different cards we bought all the boards and then week two of the room bam shut down so it was all virtual and it was really interesting doing the room virtually i there was no board which is fine by me because i was a screenwriter for a decade before i ever started writing television so it's not like i need the board or i can't do this you know there's no board and then i would get confused if i if i found that i would get confused if i wasn't taking the notes so i ended up being the showrunner and the writer's assistant because i was taking all the notes and it was very confusing to people they're they're like why are you taking the notes and and i'm like this isn't because i'm trying to be humble i'm just doing it because it's just to keep all this straight in my head because it's very confusing um and everyone in the room said yeah we know you're trying to be humble that we get that we get um but it was uh it was it was just you know you just go with what you got and of course some of this stuff is it is still live and and ongoing how did you navigate that in your in your process um how did i navigate it was well the show is basically 1996-2007 so i wasn't worried about everything that was happening now the only thing i was worried about was how am i going to end the show what piece of information because i knew that there would be some sort of catch up for the audience to end the season in some way whether it's the chirons you see or something else and i decided i didn't want to do the chirons because i wanted to do something that felt maybe a little more creative but i'm not going to tell you because it hasn't aired yet and but but so and by the way it's not this most genius thing i did but it was just something that was a little more interesting i thought to do that but it was so where is that going to end uh and the ending came three weeks ago with the with the bankruptcy ruling um so that's how that's how the season ends with that with that piece of information which in many ways might be the end of the story i hope not i do hope there's a criminal investigation into the sackwer family um uh because it's it's uh i can't believe that richard sackler hasn't been charged for crimes um and it's so funny you say the sackler family and it's more like six people that that really did this and three of them are no longer with us um and uh so there's maybe three people that are living that are that that are really responsible for this but richard sackler was the godfather of oxycontin he's he's he's he's really the main person but one of the things i love about the show is of course you focus on the sacklers but it's not a case of just a few bad apples cause this thing like there are these are deep systemic problems as well and i love the way that the show really you mean with the us government yeah yeah yeah so well and also uh in in in our show it ends with the 2007 settlement these of this the case that these prosecutors that we follow put together and um they were um they put an incredible case together and they showed their criminal behavior and and they wanted to charge key executives with felonies and then that didn't happen and that not happening is kind of how purdue pharma got away with it in this phase right like the law was on to them you know and they started a case and then and then it slipped away and how it slipped away is completely fascinating and it ties into the bigger story that you just mentioned which is uh money to influence at the highest levels of the us government in some ways it's like it's it's legal bribery you know uh and there's this systemic problem we have in the u.s called the revolving door which is that people in government agencies that regulate private industry they leave the government and they immediately go get a job working for the company that they were just regulating and the problem with that is it creates a conflict of interest that they may not properly regulate them because they are maybe seeking a job so i'm going to give you a spoiler from the first episode but one of the reasons why the entire opioid crisis happened was because the fda granted purdue pharma this very unusual wording on the warning label of oxycontin which said and i'm not going to say verbatim because it's too confused doesn't even make sense to be honest with you um but it basically said that the drug oxycontin was less addictive than other opioids um and and so that wording was the primary sales tool for for sales reps when they met with doctors it was the fda has a warning label that says it's less addictive this is this is a breakthrough in pain management right well it was not less addictive it was just as addictive it's a pure heroine and a pill right in some cases it's more addictive because it's pure oxycodone as opposed to vicodin which is cut with aspirin or tylenol and you know wartap these other drugs they're cut with something else not oxycontin it's pure oxycodone it's pure opium right so the guy that wrote that approved the warning label at the fda he approves the label 18 months later he goes to work for purdue pharma at five times the salary right so it is the most sort of like uh uh you know biggest example of of the revolve the corruption of the revolving door and and the prosecutors opened a case on him i mean the appearance of corruption is so staggering um um with with with what his actions were so that's literally we find that out in episode one um and that's just the beginning of the lies and the corruption and the deceit um but so sorry i kind of ruined the the season one there's plenty more episodes we're getting plenty more episodes um no and of course this isn't the first time that you've focused on real people in your writing you sort of recount game change um how do you as a writer find the balance between sort of telling us what's true and getting it some sort of broader sort of dramatic truth that sort of is more the spirit of what's true yeah well so i i won't pursue a true life story into a scripted movie or limited series unless there's so much great stuff there that the truth will carry the right so it's like if you have to if you have to make up a bunch of stuff in order for the dynamic moments of the story to work just do something else you know or do something that's from 200 years ago that hopefully no one will call you on you know or it doesn't even matter that you're making stuff up right but but uh it it's it's if you have to make up the things that are most important in the story then then i think it's irresponsible and immoral to do that um in the case of the dramatization that occurs well um that dramatization is used as a conduit to get true facts out so the stuff that you're making up is historically insignificant it's not unfair to anyone uh maybe you're tweaking things for for drama to make it compelling and powerful or funny or whatever you're going for but at the end of the day all of that is in service of getting the truth out and if and if getting the truth out isn't good enough then work on something else uh because you know you're you're just you know it's just you're just a liar you know i think i mean i also i have a there's two kind of witness tests i have one which is um that hbo because the first two of these i did were for hbo and the lawyer from hbo in two minutes kind of gave me a principle that guided me if you're showing someone do something negative or that makes them look bad it has to be true if you're showing some someone do something positive or neutral it doesn't necessarily have to be true you know it's it's anything you do in a negative light has to be true and then the other principle is my own principle which is i call uh uh the the ten-year-old danny principle which is if you're ten years old and you find out that this moment is untrue and you're bummed then maybe it doesn't work you know it's like have you ever seen something and you're like that's untrue oh really oh but that was such a big part of the story you know so that's the other kind of thing that guides me or those those two and then a lot of other things too like you know fear of slander and libel yeah but whatever whatever don't worry about that don't worry about that i was going to say there must have been lots of yeah loopholes to jump through um so what's kind of you know you've talked a little bit about um you know why you wanted to make this show but when you when people sort of watch it i know when we spoke the other day at the um at the premiere um you talked about wanting to sort of give the sacklers the um the sort of court case that they've never that they've never had what do you want people to take away from this when they when they watch it yeah there's two main things i want people to take away i wanted to give the sackwar family and purdue pharma the trial that they never got because they haven't had a trial they've had settlements in which they've pled guilty the companies pled guilty to three felonies and nine billion dollars in fines i mean that's a guilty ass company huh you know and the first time they pled guilty it was to lying now in america everyone wise so how badly do you have to lie that you have to plead guilty to a federal charge of wine i mean that's that's pretty profound um so so one is to lay out their crimes for the country so that there is this historical record document of what exactly purdue pharma did so that the victims of purdue that are still alive and the family members of the victims know what happened and then and not only that but what i've seen on twitter in the last two days is they're not they're not just ecstatic that their family members know what happened but it's so that the country knows what happened to them you know i'm seeing like people are gonna know what happened to me now you know i took i took a pill for an injury and i lost six years of my life to addiction because you can become addicted oxycontin was so powerful you could become addicted to it in three days three days your brain chemistry is altered and you uh will do anything in your power to get your next fix because if you don't get it you think you're gonna die you're in so much pain that condition is called being dope sick and so that's and that's in literally and it can take two years for your brain chemistry to be rewired back to normal and that's after you stop taking the drug right so that's why people are not able to stop because it actually takes two years to be able to to to fully recover if your frontal lobe has been damaged enough and i think that amount of damage can happen in you know months uh uh just a few months but so so that's one the other thing is that there are actually really effective treatments for opioid use disorder uh buprenorphine uh which is known as suboxone um it's a it's a prescription that you take daily um and it kills the the withdrawals and the symptoms now it's it is a narcotic but it's a much tamer tamer doctor prescribed narcotic that enables you to essentially have a normal life now some people can't get off suboxone and they have to take it for the rest of their lives which i think is better than being a heroin addict uh you know living under a bridge trying not to get dope sick right although some people can get off suboxone either way um it's incredibly effective but it's highly stigmatized because there are people in the in the recovery community that say oh you're just replacing one drug for another um and only 12 of the people that need suboxone actually take it so it's like saying uh 12 of people that need insulin for their diabetes are actually getting insulin well that's terrifying right and and this uh so i'm hoping and this is a major thing of what beth macy's goal of the show was was to destigmatize suboxone because it's such an effective treatment um and one of the only treatments look if you can if you can stop taking oxycontin or or fentanyl or heroin without suboxone fantastic you know if you can control your diabetes through diet and exercise and not take insulin every day great do that you know but if you can't um then then this is uh an incredible solution and if we could double the amount of people that are getting it um from the show that's that's incredible but if we could get that number from 12 to 70 percent that could turn the tide on the opioid crisis which is still flourishing uh so that that's the other goal and um uh the great barry levinson directs your first two episodes um how did you and uh barry work together to sort of create the look and feel of the show yeah do you all know barry levinson have you guys heard of him a lot of people haven't heard of barry uh um they're younger which is crazy because when i was you know a teenager into my 20s you know i wasn't in film school but i cheated my way into film school as i was in the theater school and i would say he was one of the heroes filmmakers of the 80s and the 90s in early odds he's 79 now but he's directed all these iconic classics the natural avalon rain man oscar winner diner wag the dog it's just kind of it's an unbelievable filmography uh and uh in his last in the last 10 years he's been directing these hbo movies that are terrific it's so inspiring you can see directors like barry and mike nichols and and clint eastwood and scorsese and spielberg who are in their 80s and uh and clintus 91 they can still uh they can still do it at the highest level it's it's pretty it's pretty uh inspiring to see that and so um i was so lucky that he wanted to direct the pilot and episode two i spent basically four months uh attached to his waist with the two of us you know doing all this stuff together and it was it was the greatest film school i could have ever asked for i direct the last two episodes of the season so to get to spend four months with barry before i went to direct my two episodes uh was something i'll always be grateful for uh and we just talked everything out together you know as far as the look goes it was every meeting with the production designer and the cinematographer we would do together and uh i would on those issues i would let barry lead and then chime in and and you know it would be a discussion but um the cinematographer this guy checkover essay really talented knew exactly what he was doing our production designer did heat and all spider-man movies i mean it was amazing we got him to do a limited series um one of his first tv jobs so it was a it was a real 18 group of people it's and speaking of um michael keaton uh one of your amazing ensemble cast how did you get him on board that's a huge queue having him doing tv yeah it was it was it was pretty amazing so uh the simple answer is we offered him the part and he said yes you know that i mean that's what happened i didn't um i never thought he would do it uh because he hadn't done tv in 15 years um since he's resurfaced as the sort of leading one of the great dramatic actors um and he also was an ensemble show he's not the lead there is no lead um although he's kind of the main character but it's an ensemble and i thought well michael keaton's gonna first time he's gonna do television he's gonna be in an ensemble um but it was our first we hadn't offered any roles to anyone so when you're making offers to actors you if you've been greenlit and you're making offers to actors you don't want to get too many passes because if you start racking up a lot of passes the people that are financing it they start to get nervous like oh talent doesn't want to do this is there something wrong with this um so so someone like michael keaton i would only make that kind of offer maybe twice and then i'd get scared and then go to a tier of actor that's not as famous and as in demand as him um or unless hulu unless i would talk it out with hulu and say i don't want to get any more passes and they'd say we don't care about that just make one you know that like you would have you can have that conversation right but then i wouldn't fully believe them i'd be like yeah but you get that third pass and are they gonna start freaking out so but it was the first offer so it was like okay let's let's let's just try it and then and then he wanted to meet with me which was amazing for me because he's another childhood hero um i grew up on his comedies when i was a kid uh and he was literally one of my favorite actors was michael keaton and jack nicholson were my two favorite actors when i was eight years old same height as i am now is crazy but um and so it was just uh yeah so it was really uh it was really thrilling hey just to meet with him and then b and then he said yes and he actually has a personal connection to this yeah which i didn't know which is his nephew passed away from a fentanyl overdose so this story was really personal to him so um i'll tell you this because he's already said this publicly but i um i met with him and it went good he didn't say yes in the phone call but he's he's he was clearly interested and then i got a call that he wants um a document of his arc for the rest of the season so i wrote a five-page document of of what happens to the character and um and then i sent it off and then he a week later he said he was in great so then he gets episode four which is a very big turn for the character that wildly affects the rest of the season and he called me and he said what what this is this is crazy i i what and i said michael it's in the document he said well i didn't read it it's like this is going to be a lot of work and uh and i said yeah but it's gonna be great it's gonna be great it's like okay you know yeah so anyways so that's how we got michael keaton so but now at this point right i've got this show it's been green lit i've got barry levinson legends michael keaton legends like now we're good you know all that tension of this is you know then we were off to the races and then everyone wants to be in the show now so you so it's awesome because it doesn't always go that way now it doesn't always go that way um i know you've got um to get off to another another appointment so i'm don't worry about it another hour two hours let's start with my childhood i'm four years old no animals okay one more question um and that's how you know when you're working with amazing actors like uh like michael keaton how does your background as an actor sort of impact the way you the way you write for these people well i've already written it so um my background is actually so funny because when i first my first two movies were these political dramas that i mentioned already and and i got attacked a lot by people that were trying to discredit pieces which were really you know incendiary pieces very truthful and people didn't like the truth being told in a mainstream way so by the way not it was a small group of people but they would attack it and they would always start the attack with the actor from buffy the vampire slayer wrote this movie and then sometimes it would be the actor from gilmore girls you know so it was like it was like the attack line sort of in the early part of my career which by the way never bothered me my favorite was when someone attacked me and said the actor from buffy and the vampire slayers uh i was like i am one of those slayers um but so it was uh so but the truth was is that my background as an actor um which goes a little bit beyond those two shows uh is my secret weapon as a writer director produced it's everything it's literally everything uh and the actors love it you know because i write the scenes to be played because i've spent 30 years playing scenes as an actor so it's it's literally so and if you're not an actor and you're a writer i recommend taking some acting classes a it might be fun and b um uh who knows what you'll learn just from playing scenes you know as far as as far as writing them so so it's literally it's literally my biggest my biggest asset in everything else i do is that my background is that and um so dopesick comes to disney plus in the uk on the 12th of november and what's what's next for you um i'd like a nap i've got a i don't know i've got a full slag a tv company now so i'm producing lots of things that i'm not writing so i want to focus on those for a little bit and try and get some shows made that i'm not writing so that i can be a non-writing ep like my non-writing eps which means someone else does all the work and then you step in a little bit uh and take credit for all their work it's kind of amazing that it's just an amazing collective yeah yeah i've just seen i've seen that happen and i'm like and by the way i like my non-writing producers they've been very helpful but but it's like the difference between that and that as far as just hours and a day is kind of staggering so i'm like well that's a good gig let me try that so i have a number of projects that i'm producing on that front uh i have a couple movies i'm gonna write and then i've got a few tv show ideas and some and some i love limited series i think this is the coolest form as an audience member and as a writer uh to work on i mean it's just it's just to get eight hours to to do it as opposed to two is really great i'd like to do another one of those too i'm gonna push you slightly okay uh i've heard you're you're interested in doing something on trump yeah yeah where'd you hear that i read it online i know i know it's so interesting um sure i mean who wouldn't want to do something on trump uh but uh yeah so me and jay roach the guy who did the first two political films uh who directed them who's maybe the greatest guy ever we've been trying to figure out a trump project for many years and it's just the problem the really challenge of doing a trump project is every day during that presidency and during that campaign every day with him made the previous day irrelevant because it was so chaotic right and it was as if you know i remember there was this book fire and fury that came out that was really entertaining to read and and jay wanted to do that he actually i think he obtained it and and i said you know and so i read it right away and i loved it and i said yeah but it's it was irrelevant the day after it came out because so much crazy [ __ ] happened the day it came out you know that happened every day of the trump administration and i don't want to do something unless unless i could do something that has something i don't know if profound is the word to say but something something to say about the subject matter that is thematic that is much bigger than the events themselves you know if it's just doing the events well that's that's a documentary or that's a news story even not even really a documentary it's more that's more of a news story the events right so my whole thing is is what does this say what what's a theme an idea that is much bigger that you want to say and sometimes you can't go do that right away you need time away from it you need reflection you know um i remember that on the molar investigation for we were following that and we're like we're gonna do the mueller investigation right so then the mueller investigation comes out and it's it's a weird you know he's not really exonerated but they said he is but not on this part but this part too now you know and um and i thought well maybe there's still something here you know that that has something profound to say and then literally the next day he commits impeachable crimes you know i mean it was like it is impeached so who cares about that he's now been impeached you know with ukraine so and that's that's that's the donald trump story right it's it's just how do you keep up with it and that's actually part of his a little bit of his success which isn't intentional is that there's so much insanity it's hard to kind of nail them on something because uh there's it's too much stuff happening yeah i say it with love well watch this space um danny thank you that was really really great um and um i think we're being taught yes that's it bye everyone thanks you can buy your hulu mask for disney punks disney plus mask that's right you guys don't have hulu here no no disney plus 12th of november

Channel: The Upcoming

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Id: 97hWC4pEGvU

Length: 36min 52sec (2212 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 20 2021