Smack city

>> Story of a Junkie documents heroin addiction in NYC

by MATTHEW HAYS

Wrenching scenes punctuate Lech Kowalski's 1984 heroin addict opus, Story of a Junkie. It's a film that defies easy description. Though it doesn't follow much of a narrative, it appears to be a docudrama. But while the filmmaker's hand can be felt, the drama unfolds with a spontaneity which suggests cinema verite.

New York-based director Kowalski decided to focus on the underworld of Manhattan's Lower East Side addicts after gaining notoriety with his 1980 doc, D.O.A. A Right of Passage, widely considered the definitive cinematic record of the early punk movement. After a number of junkies pulled out of the film project, Kowalski ended up focusing on one addict in particular, John Spacely.

Widely hated on the scene, Spacely is a fast-talking, charming weasel who acts as the audience's tour guide through the rather seedy characters and dangerous situations facing those in the milieu.

But what really grabbed critics' attention at the time (The New York Times' Vincent Canby called the film "harrowing") was the unblinking scenes of violence and junkies shooting up. Undeniably powerful and clearly the real thing, they lend this pre-heroin-chic-era film an eerie naturalism. "I can't say any of the scenes were reenactments," Kowalski says from his New York editing suite. "I suppose some of the scenes are documentary mixed with reenactment. What I was trying to do was to create situations with people who are part of a scene and then capture where these situations moved to. The locations and people were certainly real."

Real shoot out

Kowalski and his crew were shot at three times during the filming of Junkie, no doubt by dealers who were upset about the prospect of their livelihood getting too much coverage. But oddly enough, to this day Kowalski defends the drug scene which thrived at the time he was filming. "The whole punk scene was coming to life there. Many people ventured to the Lower East Side to buy drugs. Yes, there was occasional violence, but the drugs were a major part of the local economy. Without them I think you would have seen even more violence."

Sadly, the film has a tragic post-script. After cleaning up his act somewhat, Spacely managed to land some film roles, including parts in Sid and Nancy and Martin Scorsese's After Hours. But his years in shooting galleries left him HIV-positive, and Spacely succumbed to AIDS in '92, something Kowalski captured in his latest followup doc, Born to Lose, a film about the late Johnny Thunders, which premiered at the Toronto Film Fest this September.

As well as Spacely's death, Kowalski also laments what's happened to New York under Giuliani. "Anyone who knows anything about New York is nostalgic for those days [as seen in Junkie]," he says. "It's a lot less dangerous now, but the city has been consumed by the people who can afford it. There's a friction that's lacking."

D.O.A. A Right of Passage and Story of a Junkie screen throughout this month at the Cinema du Parc