Coming out stories have long been the hallmark of queer cinema, but that’s quickly changing as a wave of creators turn their attention to other aspects of the LGBTQ experience. For some, that means focusing in on issues particularly pressing for queer audiences — like addiction and its connection to childhood trauma and loss.
The forthcoming series, “How Not to Be a Junkie,” from creative duo Andrea Metz and Michelle Peerali, centers on a young woman, Lex (Ally Ioannides), and her struggles to get sober. Based on Metz’s own, almost decadelong battle with addiction, the series shifts between its central character’s childhood in Dubuque, Iowa, and her early twenties in San Diego, at the height of her heroin use.
Metz started her career as a sketch comic and went on to work as a television producer and showrunner for numerous popular reality shows, from "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" to "Paris in Love" on Peacock. Behind the scenes, she spent years writing pieces of what would become the script for "How Not to Be a Junkie." Starting when she was a teenager, she filled notebooks with childhood memories and scenes from her life, even as she was using heroin.
“Before I moved to San Diego, I would go to this all-night diner, Denny’s, and I would order a Moons Over My Hammy, no ham. And I would just write, because I couldn’t sleep. It would get me through,” Metz told TODAY.
It was when Metz met Peerali on the set of the 2018 comedic short film “Candis for President” that the idea for a series, based on the notebooks, began to take shape. Like Metz, Peerali had spent years working in unscripted television, music videos and brand films as a producer and director — but harbored a passion for narrative storytelling. So the two, who are also life partners, decided to start their own company, Hi Mom Productions, and make “How Not to Be a Junkie” their first major project.
“I knew that I had to have someone to direct it who was close to me and was going to add to it, make it even better than I imagined. So that’s why I wanted Michelle. I trusted her with it,” Metz said.
As director, Peerali’s mission was to bring to life the series’ two starkly different timelines — 1980s Iowa, along the Mississippi river, and gritty, late-‘90s Southern California — beginning in the pilot with 22-year-old Lex’s hospitalization in San Diego.
“I wanted to build these colors of childhood — with the yellows and the greens of Iowa and suburbia — and to juxtapose that time being stuck in a hospital,” Peerali told TODAY. “It was almost like she was submerged underwater: She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t leave.”
During these claustrophobic early scenes, Lex meets a nurse, Deb (June Carryl), who quickly becomes a pivotal figure in her life. At the same time, the audience finds out that Lex’s mother (Metz) is deceased, which adds new weight to the flashbacks of her as a young girl (Nora Yates) yearning over a barbie-looking camp counselor and roller skating in her signature bug costume.
“I really wanted, when writing this, to dive into those moments that you feel like are so inconsequential. And they really leave marks on your soul, even if they’re small things, like things that happened to my sister and me at camp,” Metz said.
“We wanted the world of Iowa (in the) 1980s to be its own story. It so impacted her, and it impacted me. All of these moments, they just replay in my head,” she continued.
In translating these moments on screen, Metz said her aim was to bring out the humanity, even the humor, of her story, rather than create something that was difficult to watch.
“I really didn’t want to tell a depressing story about addiction. I have this big, full life, and I was a junkie,” she said. “Somebody told me that 1 in every 20 heroin addicts ever recover, and I put that on my refrigerator when I was 20-something. I don’t think that has to be your story.”
'A story that you haven’t seen told quite that way before'
Alongside buzzy films, like Billy Porter’s “Anything’s Possible,” and beloved queer classics, like Todd Haynes’ “Far from Heaven,” the pilot episode of “How Not to Be a Junkie” will screen at this year’s Outfest.
“In the short film and the episodic spaces, it’s a lot of artists who are just starting out. Maybe they don’t have as many expensive resources as some of the bigger films, but they have something — a unique voice, a way of looking at the world, a story that you haven’t seen told quite that way before — that is captivating,” Mike Dougherty, the current director of programming for the LGBTQ Los Angeles film festival, told TODAY.
“Something like ‘How Not to Be a Junkie’ is exactly that. It centers a queer character, but it tells a story that we haven’t often seen,” he added. “It creates a totally unique world, populated by some interesting characters, and so beautifully moves between time periods.”
The fact that “How Not to Be a Junkie” isn’t your typical episodic, as Dougherty points out, is what made it well-suited to the festival. Since coming on as director, Dougherty has pushed to expand the kind of offerings that have lived in the festival’s Platinum section, which has been dedicated to experimental, avant garde and boundary-pushing cinema, for over a decade.
This year that means the addition of a film like “Please Baby Please,” starring Demi Moore and Henry Melling — which Doughtery describes as an “unholy melding of ‘The Wild Ones’ and ‘West Side Story’” — in the narrative features section. There, it will join more mainstream fare like Porter’s directorial debut and “They/Them,” both of which star trans and nonbinary actors.
Since this year marks the 40th anniversary of the festival, there’s also a nod to the past decades of queer cinema. In addition to the spotlight on Haynes’ masterpiece, the festival is showcasing the work of Clive Barker — the writer behind “Hellraiser” and “Candyman” — with a trailblazer award and screening of the director’s cut of his film “Nightbreed.”
Although those outside of LA might not be able to take advantage of awards events and other in-person programming, like drag performances, this year they’ll be able to tune in to a selection of screenings virtually, including the premiere of “Queer Riot,” a new comedy special headlined by Margaret Cho.
“This year, and many years previous, Outfest’s intention is to highlight the large diversity within the LGBTQIA community and tell as many stories from as many perspectives as possible,” Dougherty said. “What we’re seeing lately is that more filmmakers are getting opportunities to tell stories that focus on the trans community, the nonbinary community, the gender-diverse community. They’re getting more resources to tell those stories.”
For Peerali and Metz, getting those resources was a community effort, with the pair launching a Kickstarter in 2020. 160 backers pledged $30,779 to help bring "How Not to Be a Junkie" to fruition, and the duo hope — after Outfest — there's more life for their project.
“Hopefully, people see it as a message of course correction and hope,” Peerali said, explaining that exploring addiction’s effects on queer people is a core aim of their storytelling.
“This is obviously a personal project about Andrea’s life, but also our love letter to TV, to the LGBTQIA community."