Shooting stars - Harry Shapiro

The most detailed analysis of the colliding worlds of drugs and film ever written.
From Reefer Madness to The Man With The Golden Arm, Easy Rider to Drugstore Cowboy, Traffic to Trainspotting, Shapiro charts the ways in which cinema has both tried to shape the public mood and has been forced to respond to the realities of widespread drug use.
From 1920s marijuana mayhem through the cocaine storm that hit Hollywood in the ?70s, and the heroin chic films of the ?90s, Shooting Stars investigates the drug myths propagated in movies and maps the clear but complex links between censorship, public morals and the Hollywood dream machine. This is the inside story of an industry that not only wanted to have its coke and snort it but reserved the right to moralise about it afterwards.
Shooting Stars tells the unexpurgated story of cinematic drug use ? both in front of and behind the camera. Beginning with the opium movies of the silent days and covering major drugs film to the present, Shapiro provides comprehensive detail about each film and what it portrays. An invaluable and unique work of reference, Shooting Stars also offers a persuasive account of the ways in which the silver screen is both mirror and guide to our ever more drugged up age.