So we’re here in Telluride, Colorado.
Otherwise known as Heaven on Earth.
Grace has a spectacular house on the Mesa (where The Sound of Music was filmed). It’s crazy beautiful and, yes, the hills are alive.
She also has her own lake.
A movie is in the works but we wanted to give you something in the interim.
Load up on the treats ’cause we’ll be home soon and needing a little sustenance. (Not much out here in the wild, doncha know.)
The heroin crisis. It’s out of control.
Up until about 20 years ago, heroin and opiate overdoses were almost unheard of—relegated to a small circle of artists and celebrities who turned to self-medication to silence their inner demons.
Now overdoses are happening every minute of every day, and someone dies in this country about every 10 minutes.
Today, drug overdose deaths exceed gun homicides, car accidents and suicide. In fact, it’s the leading cause of death among Americans under 50.
How did we get here? And how can we stop it?
That’s exactly what Chasing Hope explores.
Chasing Hope: Solving the Opioid Crisis is a documentary series that I wrote, produced and directed. The first in the series is a 40-minute educational film for middle and high school students. You can watch it here and learn more on the Chasing Hope website. There’s even a discussion guide you can download to talk about the film with your students, kids, friends and family.
You can also learn more about the project on the Facebook Page.
After writing, producing and directing Chasing Hope: Solving the Opioid Crisis, and then a short documentary for Toledo, Ohio’s Drug Abuse Response Team called DART: Community Policing at its Best, I helped produce this powerful, new feature documentary called One.
One premiered at the Maui Film Festival in June 2019 where it won the Heal the World Award.
Its West Coast premiere was in September at the Burbank Film Festival where it won the Awareness Award.
It traveled to Ohio for the Film Festival of Columbus.
In October, it screened in Los Angeles again at the Regal at LA Live for the Awareness Film Festival.
You can rent or buy the movie on Amazon.
Here’s the trailer.
Here’s the synopsis.
Addiction… incarceration… family trauma. We’ve become a culture that enshrines pain while, at the same time, offering it as entertainment. But how can we go beyond the seductive reality-show narrative of shattered lives? How can we find the missing pieces that will allow us to heal and transcend? ONE is a powerful, visually arresting film that explores the elusive bridge between the broken and the unbreakable. Using the words of the great Zen scholar Alan Watts, the filmmakers link hardcore devastation to a powerful awareness of our deeper humanity.