An independent movie about the origins of the drug ecstasy – or, at least, its first public widespread use in rave culture – is moving ahead in the US.
The untitled project will focus on a subculture in 1980s Texas which began using MDMA, or ecstasy, prior to its categorisation as an illegal substance by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1985, reports Variety. Books about the use of the drug suggest it was freely available in many bars and clubs in cities such as Dallas and Austin at the time, with an organisation called the Texas Group advertising “ecstasy parties” based around a substance they called a “fun drug” and “good to dance to”.
Dori Oskowitz, who directed the short EDM documentary film Blackout for Vice, will take charge of the cameras, working from a screenplay by Richard Stratton of Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner and Cannes Camera D’Or winner Slam. Dallas-based music producer and DJ Wade Randolph Hampton, aka DJ WishFM, is working with the film-makers. Partnered production companies include Meathawk Productions and Prettybird Pictures.
It is thought that the subculture in clubs, fraternity houses and middle-class house parties which once surrounded the use of ecstasy petered out in the mid 1980s, once the drug had been made illegal. The drug reemerged later in the decade on both sides of the Atlantic as an illegal substance which fuelled acid house and rave culture.
“I am excited to bring this remarkable story and piece of cultural anthropology to the screen with my partners at Meathawk and Prettybird,” producer Braxton Pope told Variety. “Dori is a skilled visual storyteller with a narrative sensibility, and with his extensive music background is the perfect choice to explore this world.”
