Best Drug Movies

For the adventurous and the broken, sometimes reality just isn’t enough. Over the years, bohemian filmmakers and others enamored vicariously with the lifestyle of raffish and desperate drifters have committed stories of the highs and lows of illicit drug use. Often, drugs serve as a backdrop to a character, perhaps to inform the audience that this person is aberrant, or simply weak willed. Other times, drugs help to give a character mystique or some sense of mystical power. 

Drug movies run the gamut of perspective from stories of the devastating powers of addiction and helplessness, like Trainspotting, or Requiem downloadfor a Dream, to absurdity and horror, or just plain hilarity. Reefer Madness, an anti-marijuana propaganda film from the 1950s is ironically celebrated by “stoner audiences” as a cult classic. Terry Gilliam’s  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the story of alternative cultural icon, Hunter S. Thompson covering drag races in Nevada for Sports Illustrated, uses drug use as a narrative excuse to create surrealist imagery and vaguely satirical commentary on society and its norms.  Of course more often than not, drug use facilitates comic relief and ridiculous escapades such as in Pineapple Express, or Half Baked. 

These are some of the most noteworthy drug films in no particular order

(2008) Pineapple Express

(1998) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

(1996) Trainspotting

(2000) Requiem For A Dream

(1994) Clerks

(1998) The Big Lebowski

(1983) Scarface

(1969) Easy Rider

(2013) The Wolf of Wall Street

(2010) Enter The Void

(2001) Blow

Requiem for a Dream

Director:Darren Aronofsky
Written by:Hubert Selby Jr. (Screenplay), Darren Aronofsky (Screenplay), Hubert Selby Jr. (Novel)


Inspirational Film Scripts

An inspirational film is not something easily made. Writing a script that is attractive without being sappy is something that takes a lot of practice, experience and revision. When dialogue is able to bring an audience to tears, it shows a deep understanding of the emotional triggers of other human beings.

These film scripts are like solid gold. With just a pen and paper (or sometimes a computer), these writers have been able to change the lives of other people. Their scripts were enough to encourage people to be kind, to live life to the fullest, or to be brave in a time of danger.

There is not much that can be said about technique. Each person’s strategy is unique and should not be emulated by others, lest the technique might lose its power. However, these scripts show how a person’s life experiences, education and determination can wrap together a story into a coherent and touching film.

The only advice that they give to future film makers, writers and actors is to find something that they believe in and work to express that to the best of their ability. This may take years and years of practice and revision but in the end, everything will hopefully tie together and create something that not only the individual believes in, but that the world believes in as well.

Good luck.

  1. (1995) Braveheart Script
  2. (1996) Independence Day Script
  3. (1997) Titanic Script
  4. (2000) Dancer in the Dark [Transcript]
  5. (2000) Requiem for a Dream Script
  6. (2001) Amelie Transcript
  7. (2004) Crash Script
  8. (2007) Love in the Time of Cholera [Transcript]