Over the past few years, the opioid crisis has been researched, explained and dissected in different TV shows, movies and documentaries. This time, BAFTA award winner David Yates, the director of the last four Harry Potter movies, and of the Fantastic Beasts franchise, decided to take a different approach on this topic in Netflix’s Pain Hustlers, starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans, which was released October 27th. Yates and screenwriter Wells Tower’s idea for this movie came from a New York Times article, ‘The Pain Hustlers’’ written by journalist Evan Hughes, highlighting the ways a pharmaceutical company called Incys, had bribed doctors through “speaker programs” so that they would prescribe a drug, the Fentanyl. While such practices are well known, Tower really wanted to show the immorality and dangerousness of this practice, where people without any medical training, can have such a strong and impactful influence on people’s lives and health.
In Pain Hustlers, Blunt plays the role of Liza Drake, a single mother who just lost her job, and struggles to raise her daughter in an ideal environment. When she meets Pete Brenner, a pharmaceutical rep portrayed by Chris Evans, he introduces her to a dubious but extremely lucrative new job in a pharmaceutical start-up.
Pain Hustlers is as much a story that highlights the most questionable, problematic and scandalous ways the pharmaceutical industry is still acting in the US, as it is a story about the American dream, and how far people are willing to go in order to make it happen.‘’I think you’ve identified what we’ve zeroed it on, absolutely’’ said David Yates during my interview with him. ‘’It could be about the opioid crisis, or it could be about the banking industry, the housing market or the media industry. We wanted a parabole, something that was universally and emotionally accessible for the audience. That idea of the American dream is so powerful, not just for Americans, for everybody. It’s this shiny path we can all follow, and if we work really really hard, we can achieve great things.’’
At the beginning of Pain Hustlers, Liza has no money and no home of her own. When she learns that her daughter will soon be in need of an urgent surgery -which would cost her the kind of money she doesn’t have-, Liza knows she has no other choice than to make this new job work: ‘’Along the way, it’s a bit of a scrum to get there, you have to push people out of the way’’ continued Yates. ‘’What are the moral dilemmas of that dream ? What are the red lines you have to cross sometimes, to achieve success and the validity that you want? We were fascinated by the idea of the broken American dream. The idea that someone is able to pursue at all costs their ambition, in a system where the rules are broken, to allow more profits: that’s what intrigued us. The opioid crisis is a backdrop, ultimately. It’s broader and bigger than the opioid crisis for us. It’s about the whole system of accountability, and sort of keeping people safe in this particular industry.”
Movies on the business of the pharmaceutical industry like Pain Hustlers, as well as TV shows and documentaries have been made and will continue to be made about the ongoing opioid crisis in the US. Yet, it feels like things haven’t changed at all, and that the pharmaceutical industry will never truly take accountability for the victims who were prescribed the wrong and highly addictive drugs by their own doctors. Pain Hustlers producer Lawrence Grey added:
“I do think this is happening in real time. Educating people about what exactly is happening, at least from our little corner of this world, we think is really important, and to highlight people who have an expectation, when they go to a doctor, and then of course a treatment is being prescribed, the medication is being prescribed: Actually there are so many factors behind the scene, that are going into the corruption of that system, that are affecting these choices. It just feels important to highlight those issues for people so you really know what’s happening behind the scenes. ‘’
Pain Hustlers is a story of accountability and redemption -to a certain extent-. Liza is a character who was created for the movie, however, she is a composite of multiple people Yates and Tower’s encountered in their research, and she embodies the ‘’broken’’ side of American dream the director wanted to show in this movie.
‘’There were various characters in this story, men and women, who all feed into Liza. She’s a composite of many different personalities and also partly our own creation as well. We wanted this woman who was ambitious, and idealistic, and perhaps a little bit naive, and who had not always been recognized for the ability that she had, because of her background, her sort of low income status, her lack of education. So there were lots of things that we created or added to Liza, that we all felt a connection to, in some shape or form, and we also cherry picked a few qualities in some of the characters of the Incys story. But yeah, she is ultimately our creation, Wells’ creation, I should say, at the end of the day. ‘’
Read the full article here