Cocaine Bear Is About America's Failed War On Drugs, Says Director Elizabeth Banks
Back in the 1980s, America was in the middle of its so-called "war" on drugs. It didn't work very well. Then-First Lady Nancy Reagan had a campaign called "Just Say No," which was immediately turned into a joke at schools (it certainly did at mine). The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, shortened to D.A.R.E., suffered the same fate. There are entire books written about why the war on drugs failed, from stupid slogans like "crack is wack" to exactly who was penalized and how for drug offenses. And now, it has spawned the upcoming film "Cocaine Bear" from director Elizabeth Banks.
As I try to make my brain process the sentence I just wrote, here is the real story that inspired the upcoming dark comedy. Back in 1985, a man named Andrew C. Thornton II and a partner were acting as drug runners. They flew a small plane from Columbia to the U.S. and dropped a whole lot of cocaine in bags near Blairsville, Georgia. Thornton, who made a habit of parachuting out of each plane and letting them crash, got caught up in his chute and died from the fall in Knoxville, Tennessee. The plane crashed in Hayesville, North Carolina. Later, a black bear was found dead after consuming a duffle bag full of cocaine. It's a sad story, but in this version, the coked-up bear is getting his revenge.
/Film's own Valerie Ettenhofer attended a trailer reveal and Q&A with Banks, where the director said the film is about America's failed war on drugs. Well, that and a very, very high bear who is extremely angry.
' ... the ridiculousness of a bear high on cocaine'
Banks was asked about finding a balance between comedy and social commentary in the film. She said:
"We comment on it pretty directly in the movie, actually. Brooklyn Prince plays a 12-year-old girl in 1985 in this movie, and I was a 12-year-old girl in 1985 in real life, and I remember D.A.R.E., Just Say No, 'crack is wack,' all the reactions to the whole drug epidemic that we were going through, you know. And I look back now, and it all seems insane."
As a person who remembers it all, it really was insane. There was no attempt to relate to kids at all with those programs like there was later with the "this is your brain on drugs" commercial series. Banks had more to say, though, about the silliness of the movie paralleling the attempt to fight illegal substances. She says:
"It's in the fabric of the movie, the ridiculousness of a bear high on cocaine because of the war on drugs forcing somebody to drop drugs out of an airplane. It's f****** nuts. And as I said at the beginning, this felt a little bit like the bear's revenge story because the bear became collateral damage in that failed war."
That poor bear! I wonder — if this story had gotten out more back in 1985, would the ursine coke binge leading to death have been more effective than some old lady at the White House shaking her finger at kids? "Cocaine: It Kills Teddy Bears" or something?
"Cocaine Bear" stars Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Brooklyn Prince, Christian Convery-Jennings, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra, Aaron Holliday, Margo Martindale, and the late Ray Liotta. It hits theaters on February 24, 2022.