![]() Essential viewing, as long as you aren't completely averse to scenes of people shooting up. As a result, the film seems incomplete, but that may have been the point. Unlike most documentaries of this kind, there's no coda providing us with an update about their progress (can Matt and Tracy really keep that Brooklyn apartment? Will Michelle go back to Bellevue for more detox? And can Sebastian become any more pathetic?). ![]() You'll be pulled into their stories and will wish the film went on for twice as long. Meanwhile widow Michelle (whose hubby died of an OD) earns her daily bread by posing as an NYPD vice cop willing to cut her would-be Johns a deal to avoid prison time, and sad sack companion Sebastian lives off the proceeds. They're also each very different: Matt is a working class boy who clearly revels in his naughtiness, whilst prep school dropout Tracy supports the couple with Western Union money from her moneybags father, who makes a surprisingly sympathetic cameo towards the end of the film. They're in turns petulant, charming, repulsive, astonishingly stupid, and dedicated: to the drugs and to each other. Tracy and Matt, Michelle and Sebastian: these are the two couples whose lives of addiction, crime, and squalor are brilliantly captured in this raw and honest HBO documentary. I told Sebastian - who wasn't interested). Unfortunately, you can't make people learn from your mistakes. I wouldn't change way happened, but, I don't wish anyone would go through this. But, it's over: we're older, and we both want to get on with out lives. ![]() I had a contract (of which I was the only one paid, and even I was screwed). We made our films for different reasons (the makers of Sebatian's flick would give him money to get high - then film it. Suffice it to say, (Sebastian & I) have both been through a lot. How much better they're doing is questionable, and not something I want to comment on. Michelle's son is currently incarcerated. He lives with me, and we're both doing MUCH better than we were at that point in our lives. It's '12, and both of us are not on the street. Both of these featured people from the same group I was in the latter film, my best friend (Sebastian) was in this. It is a difficult watch and it would border on impossible if the filmmakers didn't deftly frame the events in such a compelling and linear way.When this doc was made, another was Add at the same time, here in NYC: UNION SQUARE THE MOVIE. Sebastian and Michelle's perpetual state of existential dread is palpably demoralizing and paints a picture of just how far human beings can bottom out when they get stuck in the heroin hustle lifestyle. If they don't score and produce, they will get severely dope sick and feel like they're near death. ![]() They don't have a lifeline like Stacy and Matt do with her father. Even Michelle's estranged son Anthony has resigned to her doomed fate. These two have an even more difficult go of it because there is no one on the planet who cares if they live or die. Sebastian is a useless partner who latches on to Michelle because she will go to any measure to score their next hit. Her hardscrabble spoken stream-of-consciousness narrative is a visceral gut punch. Whether it's selling herself to men, impersonating a cop in a fake prostitution sting, or returning bogus store merchandise for cash, she has absolutely no limits and even less of a filter. Michelle is the ultimate type-A hustler who will do anything (and I mean anything) to get her next hit. The dysfunction in Sebastian and Michelle's relationship is off-the-wall insane. It is currently free to watch on HBO Max ( or Max? Who knows!) with a subscription which is unusual for a nearly 20-year-old documentary. But the most compelling, raw, and visceral movie about real people doing the most unfortunate is undoubtedly Dope Sick Love in 2005, and it hasn't been matched since. Filmmaker Jon Alpert's sweeping epic was an impressive and sobering watch as well. In 2002, HBO documentary executive director Sheila Nevins and company delivered the first installment of Life of Crime, a documentary that would follow the lives of three down-and-out New Jersey people over the course of 20 years. Taxicab Confessions really got the ball rolling some 30 years ago when they had several hidden cameras in a cab that captured some of the most real and shocking moments we had ever seen on TV. It has delivered more than its fair share of hard-hitting and salacious real-life stories. Have you ever had a documentary outright slap you in the face with such a reality check that you can't stop thinking about it for days afterward? HBO has long been the premier network for original programming and documentaries dating all the way back to the 1990s.
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