Original subtitles

- Hello. - Hi, I'm Louis.

I'm Louis. Oh, I can't shake your hand.

[laughter]

Louis narrates: For 25 years, I've been making programmes

about life in all its strangeness...

Stand by, information to follow.

-..mystery...

- Who are you? - I'm Louis.

Who's Louis?

-..and angst.

You OK, Nikki?

Louis narrates: Trying to make connections with people,

who are in different ways, on the edge.

Not all of us wanna be like this.

Louis narrates: Recently, I decided to take a pause,

and trawl through my old shows,

looking again at some stories that stayed with me.

- Yeah, this has stuff in it.

Louis narrates: And to reach out to those I'd featured.

- Look at you, Mr Beard-and-Moustache.

I know, don't I look distinguished?

Louis narrates: To see how their lives have changed.

- You've been married six times,

Henry VIII was married six times,

so it's not unprecedented.

[laughter]

- Hey, how you doing? - Good, how are you?

- Good.

Louis narrates: From all the hours of programmes,

I've teased out a handful of themes.

- This is gonna be the start of the second American Civil War!

White Revolution!

Louis: Why did you run?

- Because they shoot anybody, and they don't care who it is,

point blank range they'll pull a gun out and shoot you.

Louis narrates: All of which in different ways

go to the heart of what it means to be human.

What connection is there between a birth mum and a child?

[crying]

- Let me tell you something.

If you came from the ghetto,

your main focus should be making it out,

taking your parents out,

and being something with yourself,

you can't understand that, then you ain't real.

Louis narrates: Trying to figure out

what I've learnt about life...

[moaning]

..and about myself.

- There's nothing I could say

that would persuade you not to do that?

- I'm gonna be like this until I can try

to overpower my addiction.

Louis narrates: I know I come across as British,

I was raised in Britain,

but I'm in fact half American,

my Dad is American and every summer,

we would go to America,

and I would see my American family.

And I've always had a fascination

with American consumer culture.

It's perfected the art of creating

a kind of theatre of capitalism.

A vast and tantalising spectacle

where even your strangest and most forbidden desires

are commodified and turned into a saleable product.

Louis: So, it's not on these, not there,

we'll try...

[sighs]

Director: What is it you're looking for?

The porn folder.

OK so this is porn-related.

When we made the porn episode of 'Weird Weekends',

which was the second episode we ever shot,

it was mainly due to me having read a piece in the New Yorker,

about male performers and how difficult they find it

getting an erection for scenes,

and the pressure that that entails and the way

in which that takes a toll on the performers.

Louis narrates: The San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles,

the acknowledged world capital of pornographic films...

It's an industry that revolves around images of women,

my mission, to immerse myself in the less well known

subculture of the male performers.

Louis: So listen, I may be interested in actually,

you know, trying it out as a lifestyle.

- You want to get in a movie?

- Yeah, maybe get in a movie, something like that.

Could I do that, do you think?

- Now, I mean how far do you want to go with this?

- How far could I go, hypothetically?

- You can go, if you can do it, you can go all the way.

Louis narrates: At that time,

if you wanted to make it as a porn performer,

there was one agent who you had to go and see,

and his name was Jim South.

If I wanted to break in, how would I start?

Is it people come in here and that's how it moves forward?

Yeah, they come in here, they fill out an application,

not a contract,

we take a couple of just standing nude polaroids,

we give him a magazine,

tell him he needs to excite himself,

we leave the room while he's doing it,

he usually hollers "Jim!"

and we hurriedly go back and take the pictures.

You're interested in magazine work and movie work?

- Yes. - OK.

Now, first of all, for movie work,

it does mean actual sex, actual penetration,

you don't come, you don't get paid.

- Is that right?

You don't come, you don't get paid.

- The bottom line is,

you're supposed to be getting $250 for one sex scene,

if you do the hard core and you don't do the pop shot,

then they hire somebody which is called the stunt cock,

which is a guy that comes in and just pops,

you can be the greatest stud in the world in the bedroom,

bottom line is when you're on a set,

and the lights go on, it's a different story.

In the world of porn,

clearly there's a lot of opportunities

for colourful participation,

and I think we even had a chat like,

would it be appropriate for me to actually perform,

like have sex on camera, and quite evidently,

that's really uncomfortable and weird,

so then the next step down was, well, but I could get naked.

- So, Steve. - Mmm?

- Do I have to have wood for the picture?

- If you can, great. - OK.

If you can't, it's not a big deal,

- don't worry about it. - OK, we'll do our best then.

Louis: Hey, you know the polaroid of me

naked from the porn episode, do you know where it is?

Steve, I'm ready.

- Put your arms like this.

- OK, just tell me how you want me posed?

- Pose like this, hands together,

smile, very nice.

- Say sexy things.

- Don't move like that because I'll get the wrong idea.

Smile, get dressed cowboy.

- 21 after 2.

- OK, this is how we're gonna do the scene.

Miss Thing, walk off.

- I'm supposed to give his dick a lick

and say, and then say, "Do you wanna go out with me",

why can't I just go, "You wanna go out with me?"

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Huh?

'Cause this is the power, you know.

[moaning]

Louis: Going into the world, I was embarrassed

because I thought maybe I will think it's quite sexy.

And it's sort of a relief when you're there and you realise,

oh no, it isn't sexy at all, it's sort of,

mechanical and perfunctory and it's like watching someone

on a weights machine, do you know what I mean?

Going up and down.

The one thing that I've noticed about guys,

is that they've come in very sweet, very open,

very tentative, um, and almost tender at times,

and then as you see them film after film after film,

you kind of see that glazed look go over,

and it's the look, it's the change,

and you suddenly realise that

you too could be a piece of meat,

a hole in the wall, or whatever fantasy is inside their head,

it's a degree of the, of the utmost impersonal.

As fun as you'd think it would be,

or might be, that's part of the con, it's not really.

- Walk off. - You guys go off this way.

Louis narrates: The male performers in straight porn

were by definition less valuable,

and they were paid less and it was harder to make a living,

but one of the few who did make a living

worked under the name John Doe.

- I understand from talking to Susan a little bit

that one of the biggest challenges

is keeping what they call wood, is that right?

A lot of guys don't have what it takes, man,

because, you know, you're supposed to make love,

make beautiful love,

and that's not what you're doing here.

- Do you get a lot of people coming up to you saying,

"Hey man, I want to do your job," that type of thing?

Yeah, you know, some of them are happy,

some of them are standoffish, they look at you

but they don't want to approach you, some of them...

Some of them get cocky, you know,

"I can do that. Oh yeah, you gotta go to work,

"ha-ha, oh yeah right, you got to go to work, sure."

- That must get kind of irritating in a way

when people regard you, take your work seriously,

they don't, they say, "Ah you just have sex."

- No, it doesn't irritate me, I just stay home more.

Louis: I'm gonna buy one of these

with my first pay check as a porno guy.

Well, you know what, with your first pay check...

- Yeah?

-..for the month, you actually could buy one of these.

- Really? - Sure.

- Do you think I could make it? - Yeah.

- No. - Absolutely, man.

- Why?

I've seen a lot of guys come and go, man,

but you're, you can do this.

The main thing was to try and identify

a male performer who was new to the business.

And it was critical that that was the right person

because the whole attempt was to see the industry,

and the travails of the male performers hinged on

the audience, kind of, identifying

with the male performer that we followed.

- You must be JJ? I'm Louis. - How you doing?

- How's it going? - Oh, alright.

- Can we come up? - Oh yes, come on.

Jim South told me that you're the man to talk to

about understanding the porno business

because you're a successful young up-and-coming porno actor.

- I guess. - Is that right?

- Sounds good to me.

- So can I hang out with you for a few days,

- would that be alright? - Oh, please do.

Louis narrates: He was two weeks into the business,

he'd signed with Jim South,

and he just seemed like a nice guy.

A kind of can-do attitude,

he had a work ethic and he was focused,

and he seemed sort of vulnerable.

So, in a way, it became JJ's story.

So I went with JJ to the set of his next movie,

which was the biggest one he'd done, up until that point.

- JJ standing by, you ready?

- Alright, we're ready to shoot.

- Let's roll sound first to get up to speed.

- How you feeling? Pretty good?

- Yeah. - You got wood yet?

- No. - When do you do that?

- When I'm gonna have sex.

[LAUGHTER]

Director: let's go, places.

- Hey, break a leg.

- Sound speed marker, please. - 11 after take six, marker.

- And action.

- Pull out. - That's a cut.

- I don't think we are gonna be able to do this.

- No? Alright, fine.

- We got to check on Mr wood?

Louis: What's happening?

JJ right now is having wood problems.

- Really? - Yeah.

- Why?

- With all these people around, could you do it?

- No. - I couldn't either.

- OK there, JJ? - Let's go, JJ.

- Are we there guys?

Louis: You delivered in the end, right?

Oh, yeah.

- But what about, as far as...

..the man goes, you know,

pretty solid? Wood?

The end, near the end, yeah. Beginning, no.

- Really? - Yeah.

it's just, so many people, there's a lot of people,

nervous kind of in front of Shanahan

because he's a big director, as soon as you get nervous

it's hard to work but, yeah, near the end he went fine.

So in addition to the challenge of getting wood,

there's also the worry about contracting an STD,

and in fact while we were there, there was an HIV scare.

We've had two positives in less than a week.

- In what? - In HIV.

I mean, now it's like, forget this,

I'm not risking my life any more, you know,

to make this much money,

I can make this much more money, you know, doing other things.

- What do you reckon, JJ, are you worried about these tests?

No, I have a death wish so it doesn't really matter.

[laughter]

Louis narrates: The porn world felt like maybe

the music industry would be like, with,

kind of, glamour and young people,

attractive young people and excitement and creativity,

but then another part of it seemed to be bound up

with a certain quality of self destructiveness,

or dysfunction with people who were trying

to figure something out about themselves.

Or maybe who had been damaged in some way,

or were trying to process something

that they'd grown up with.

I suppose, the open question was,

to what extent that was helpful to them

and to what extent they were being exploited

or allowing themselves to be used, you know.

Was it actually gonna end up being positive for them?

In 2006, nine years after we made the documentary,

John Doe took his own life.

JJ and I stayed in touch and became friends.

He left the porn industry,

and became an IT consultant, and ended up moving to Ukraine.

[Skype dial tone]

There he is!

- Hello.

[laughter]

- What was it that was appealing to you

about the idea of working in porn?

- Part of it was, 25 years ago Monday

is when my son died, and after that point,

I pretty much spiralled downward,

basically standing at the bottom of that bottomless pit,

and looking up and seeing there was no light

at the end of the tunnel,

You know, I was truly broken

and that makes you do strange things,

and one of the things I appreciate

about the documentary is I think

that's a very good capsule in time

of where I was emotionally and mentally,

exactly during that period.

- John doe went on to kill himself.

Did you know him at all?

Yeah I mean, we weren't friends,

but I've met him several times on different sets.

Do you have a sense of what was behind it?

The male performers I was friends with,

there was always an underlying issue of depression,

and when a man chooses to commit suicide,

it's usually because of depression.

Working in the adult industry is similar to a drug,

you get that adrenaline rush,

so I think it naturally attracts people

that have some underlying craziness as it were,

and that's not necessarily a bad thing,

it's what makes us who we are.

[baby crying]

I heard a baby, which means maybe

it's a good time to mention

that you're not only now happily married,

but you also have a young daughter.

Congratulations. You've been married six times.

Which, you know, Henry VIII was married six times,

so it's not unprecedented...

[laughter]

..but he was a little older.

- It took a lot of failed relationships

for me to truly understand who I am,

who I need to look for and how to truly build

a loving intimate relationship

that's not just based on just carnal physicality.

Louis: Tapes. Young people know about tapes.

DJ Indo Smoke, Bay Area Rappers.

I've been a fan of hip hop since the late '80s

and I remember my friend Joe, Joe Cornish,

made me a compilation tape,

and it had on it a track

called 'Paid in Full' by Eric B & Rakim.

I fell in love with it.

you felt like you were plugging into bulletins

from dissident America, that it was telling you

something important about the state

of the disenfranchised youth of America,

about racism in America, about structures of inequality.

♪ You are now about to witness

♪ The strength of street knowledge... ♪

Louis narrates: Then a year or two after that,

NWA appeared, the first big gangsta rap group.

♪ Straight Outta Compton

♪ Crazy mother fucker named Ice Cube ♪

♪ From that gang called Niggas With Attitude ♪

♪ When I'm called off

♪ I got a sawed off...

Louis narrates: It was intimidating,

occasionally offensive, frequently misogynistic,

but also, captivating.

So I was curious about that tension

between what was real and what wasn't,

and whether the lyrics and the personas

reflected their real lives,

and how much of it was putting on an act.

We filmed the episode in the South,

which was then emerging in the new force in rap.

There was a rapper, and impresario and mogul

called Master P, who was making an absolute tonne of money

by controlling the whole process of making the music,

but also distributing the music,

bypassing the major labels and had created an empire

in the South, specifically Louisiana.

I ended up going back to his house,

he then lived in Baton Rouge, in a gated community.

Do you want to shoot some hoops?

Yeah, I'm not very good,

I don't even know why I suggested to do this.

- Oh yeah, you horrible.

It all started right here with this tank right here,

you got to be a soldier,

and being a soldier you got to be able to keep it real.

- What does that mean, 'keeping it real'?

- Keeping it real, being yourself.

- Being yourself? - Being yourself, I mean...

some people take keep it real

where they got to be the baddest person in the world,

the hardest person in the world...

- Yeah, like a gangster. - That ain't keeping it real.

- Are the neighbours friendly?

I knocked on all of them doors and told them

that I'm here and I'm not going nowhere.

- Did you seriously? - Yeah.

And, yeah that doesn't sound reassuring,

that sounds almost slightly threatening.

Take it how you want to.

Louis narrates: He'd been raised in one of New Orleans'

most dangerous housing projects,

and was now among the highest paid entertainers in America.

His annual income was estimated to be $60 million a year.

How much would you say you owe to, you know, the rap game?

I owe all of it to the rap game.

Who is this on this one, Master P?

- That's me, these portraits are all of me.

- This is my home recording studio.

I look at this $800,000 chandelier and say,

"Wow, I made it."

Louis: These are your vehicles.

do you ever worry that you'll be perceived

as losing your credibility on the streets

because you are so comfortable now?

Let me tell you something.

That's what I'm telling you

about being a soldier and keeping it real.

If you came from the ghetto,

your main focus should be making it out,

taking your parents out and being something with yourself.

You can't understand that, then you ain't real.

Louis: The back bone of the episode

really turned out to be a character called Mello-T,

who'd been a successful rapper,

and unlike many of the people in Jackson,

had enjoyed success in New York.

They referred to him in Jackson as 'The Godfather.'

Louis narrates: And what made him unusual as well

was along side his rapping, he also claimed to be a pimp.

- How you doing? - How you doing?

- You must be Mello-T. - No doubt.

- I'm Louis, Louis Theroux. - I heard a lot about you.

- Good. - A lot about you.

- Yeah, you're looking very, very smart.

- This is just Mello's style, this is like,

worldwide international Godfather gangster pimp style.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That's how I'm bringing it, you know.

You know I'm in the music business

but the scripple business, the prostitution business,

that's been my business for the last three, four years.

- That's stuff you do? Now? - Right, yeah.

Right but it's the money, it's the money behind my music,

it's the money that finances the studios

that finances the music business.

- Because in Britain,

to be a pimp would be considered definitely...

- Illegal, just like being a drug dealer.

- Illegal and maybe immoral, well immoral, yes.

- Same thing here. - Yeah.

It's the same thing here,

and you can go to the penitentiary for doing it,

and you can get killed for doing it.

Louis: Mello was a perplexing figure.

Obviously the fact that he'd said

he was a pimp was troubling, but at the time,

in my naivete, I continued to think

he might just be playing a role.

Is this for, what's it called?

[Mello starts rapping]

♪ This goes out to all the young folks ♪

♪ You know what I'm saying

♪ Young kids thinking you want to get into this game ♪

♪ Pimping

♪ True testimony

♪ It's where I want to be man for real ♪

♪ You came from London just to hear my story ♪

♪ I'm in the hood witness be the glory ♪

♪ Now I'm a pimp and I gots to break a hoe man ♪

♪ Ain't getting no educated

♪ But that's the way I make my dough man ♪

♪ Now Louis

♪ I'm in this shit trying to be good ♪

♪ I'm on my way they say to Hollywood ♪

♪ I be pimping all night long trying to make my paper ♪

♪ If my bitch come in short I have to break her ♪

♪ This game was real man I ain't no lie ♪

♪ This from the top of my head man ♪

♪ Every night I could die damn

♪ Now I always be a G

♪ But I can't let these streets get the best of me ♪

♪ I feel you, Louis.

Louis narrates: With Mello-T, he was in a way

the personification of that whole idea of well,

are you rapping about something as a reporter, right,

describing it, if you say you did something

in a rap is that because you're describing a lifestyle

and bringing the news about it to an audience?

Or are you actually just boasting

about doing terrible things, that you actually did do?

As I spent more time with him,

I realised he really was a pimp,

and the line between the fiction and the reality

was at best blurred, and maybe even non-existent.

- Hi, how you doing? - This is Sunshine.

- Nice to meet you. - Are you sunshine? I'm Louis.

- Number one, this Fantasy. - Hi, Fantasy.

- This is a couple of my girls.

- How you doing?

And, so are you having a rehearsal,

I mean what is happening, this is odd, isn't it?

[gunshots]

Ooh, be careful with that,

I don't think you should put it down there.

- It's where I keep it. - Yeah.

- I've been doing that since... - It could go off, though.

- No it ain't gonna go,

I've been doing it since 11 years old.

- Yeah, you could shoot your testicles off, basically.

- Baby, no man, there's where I keep it,

that's where I keep it, I believe in coercive power,

that's fear, and sometimes, man, that's the best understanding

in the world, like when a woman got a pistol to her head,

seems like she's gonna listen better.

That's quite shocking.

- Not really, not to me,

everybody fascinated with the bad guy,

everybody want to know, man, how it is to be a pimp,

how it is to be a gangster, you know what I'm saying?

But couldn't you just go ahead

and rap about being a pimp and not actually be a pimp?

- No, no it wouldn't work for me,

you understand what I'm saying?

- Why?

I mean, it's just like me

rapping about building computers,

you feel what I'm saying, it ain't what I do,

you know, but I break a hoe.

- It's just, I thought it was like,

you know, wrestling where, OK, they are quite strong

but you're basically pretending to fight,

- you're portraying a character. - not me, not me.

- Do you know what I mean? - Not me.

The character is real, you understand me?

And this character who I am, might get me killed for real,

straight up, and that's what's so real about my life.

- That's got to be a bad thing? - No, it ain't no bad thing.

Ain't nothing bad about dying, man,

you understand, especially for the cause, you feel me?

Straight up, I'm gonna be a hero, man,

we'll be like the rest of them like Jessie James,

and Billy the Kid and all of them, you understand me?

[gunshots]

Louis narrates: As shocking as gangster rap can be,

in terms of the lifestyle it seems to promote,

you've also got to remember that's the world

that many rappers have grown up in,

that's what they've seen all around them in the projects,

but at the same time it is also true that,

in putting so much emphasis on authenticity,

there's a real danger that the music ends up,

kind of making being a gangster a hallmark of realness,

that that's something you almost have to aspire to be.

You know and I still listen to it,

I still like it, and I feel that you can't extract

all the darkness, that's part of

what makes it powerful and special.

You know, I guess, some things in life,

you don't arrive at a neat position on.

Time went by, and I continued to be intrigued by Mello,

I guess I was curious about whether

he would change his life.

Four years after filming,

I went back and saw him again for a book I was working on.

[Mello rapping]

Louis narrates: He was still writing music,

still pimping, and still saying he wanted to give it up.

This saying that, you know,

your past can be full of spots but your future is spotless.

My future is spotless,

now my past is maybe full of spots.

Louis narrates: I remember saying to him,

I'm confused, like,

do you hate the game or not, which is it?

And he said, "I hate the game, but I love to do it."

Which is kind of deep.

The world is set up in such a way

that there are past times and pursuits

that may be poisonous and dangerous

and that know we're not supposed to get involved in

by conventional morality, and yet, in spite of ourselves,

we find ourselves drawn to them, and we can't resist.

Like many people, I've always been fascinated by Las Vegas.

A city dedicated to catering to our most secret

and forbidden impulses, our lust,

our gluttony, our greed.

Obviously, there's gambling all over the world,

but Vegas really does represent something

very primal and fundamental to the American psyche

or to American culture generally.

I'm a fan of kind of altered states of consciousness,

and worlds that feel different.

I genuinely find it seductive and beguiling,

like that world of the casino,

like I understand some people might feel

that it's really unappealing, kind of crass and garish,

I like all of that, in certain doses.

- Are you winning?

- Oh no, ha-ha, not at all, negative 20 for the trip.

-$20? - No, $20,000.

- Whoa.

- You winning?

[LAUGHTER]

- Are you winning? - Yeah.

- Are you? - Yes.

Louis narrates: Really, the back bone of the film

was a businessman called Allan,

who had a mattress company, based somewhere in Canada.

Now what can you tell me about this guy that's coming in?

This guy that's coming in,

is one of my closest friends from Toronto, Canada,

he's, we used to say he's the Mattress King,

because he has the largest manufacturing plant

for mattresses in all of Canada.

This guys, like, he's a friend of yours?

- Yes. - So, you don't...

- He's a friend of mine, he's a high roller,

one of the biggest high rollers.

- Is he?

And he's also godfather to my little girl, too,

so it's a whole thing.

- What's up, buddy. How you doing, you alright?

Alright, you doing OK?

Say hi to Louis.

- How are you, Louis. - Nice to meet you.

- Louis' from the BBC in the UK. - I've heard so much about you.

Louis narrates: Once in a while he liked to cut loose,

come down to Vegas for a wild weekend,

get treated like a king.

- This is home for three days.

What do you think guys? This OK?

- Seems quite nice.

- It's about 15,000 square feet, this suite.

Louis: 15,000 square feet?

And this is all part of the deal?

- This is it.

- This is provided free?

- This is the largest suite in North America.

- Wow. - OK, that I know of.

- And Allan gets it for as long as he's here

and everything's comped in here.

- It's all comped, complimentary.

Allan: It's all about gambling, isn't it?

- Is there any technique to where you're putting them?

Are you basing that on a hunch, or?

- Just picking what you feel.

He's just got to cooperate.

- He's not cooperating.

- Sheesh.

- That's bad. - Yeah, it is bad.

- Ah, it's just warm up.

Louis: At least we're having a good time.

- Well you know, we don't like to lose money either.

Right now, this is more money than some people make in a year.

It's a lot of money.

And do you know what they say,

if you can't afford it, don't do it.

It's 17, we got it.

- How about that, now you're into some serious money.

- Now you're up 50 grand.

- Why not stop now, and then you're 50,000 up?

Did I fly six hours to play for 20 minutes?

If you stop now, would they kick you out of your suite?

- No.

No, they never do that because they know I'm a gambler.

Louis narrates: Allan was a family man,

but I think Vegas for him was a chance to step out,

and kind of, sort of, be James Bond for the weekend.

- Big, yeah, oh!

Louis narrates: It was a case of spending, you know,

the days with him, filming with him,

but also trying to figure out, like,

how much is he enjoying this?

And there were definitely moments when I thought,

this feels actually not that fun.

Allan: Vacuum cleaners,

these are vacuum cleaners at the Hilton.

What is the appeal?

If it's just random, you're just pushing a button,

it's like working in a factory.

- You're not really, we're just hoping

that you're the one, to come to Vegas

and have the opportunity of winning

- Want me to put more money in?

- It's quitting time, I have a meeting,

so I'm gonna love you and leave you.

I'll spin one more time, see I would have won there,

but why you didn't win is because you changed,

you were getting rid of your credits.

[slot machine sounds]

- Didn't you just say it was quitting time?

- Yeah, we're just gonna spin one or two more times,

just to make sure the machine is finished with me.

You never know.

That's a gamblers problem,

when to quit.

In the end, what I found myself thinking about

was Allan's relationship with Richard, the casino host,

and this tension between being his friend,

but also Richard basically needing Allan

to gamble as much as possible.

- Hey, what's happening buddy? - How you doing?

- We're doing OK.

- I've been hearing rumours about you.

- Well, are they good or bad?

- 250 in the hole.

- Ah, listen, I'd be happy with that, I think.

- Really? Why, what happened?

- It was a little nasty in there.

- What happened?

- Cards change. - 300,000?

- Oh, I don't know. - 300,000?

- Pesos?

How did he make out, Richard?

How did who make out, Allan? You got to ask him.

He's going home with a heavy loss.

What would you have liked to see,

this isn't the ideal outcome for you, or is it?

What would be the best outcome for you?

- Well, just the fact that he comes in

is the best outcome for me.

Whether he wins or loses, it doesn't go into my pocket,

I'm just here as a marketing guy to bring him in the building,

and keep him at the tables as long as I can.

Keep him at the tables as long as you can up to a point,

so not so he hurts himself, or is...

- No, I keep him at the tables for as long as I can,

and that's whether he wins or loses,

so it doesn't matter.

My job is to bring certain players in

and keep them at the tables,

and keep them gambling on the property, that's all.

with him and with a few others, my friends,

they're friends of mine,

they're more friends than they are players,

it just happens I work here,

and that's where they come to visit.

Look at that smile, that's a million dollar smile,

he can never lose.

Slightly less than a million now.

Listen, you know what makes a good person a good gambler,

somebody that can, whether win or lose,

they're still gonna smile.

So fast forward a few years, one day,

while browsing the internet,

I come across a picture of an Uber receipt,

and it says, thank you, your driver was Allan,

and there's a picture of him.

So naturally, I assume maybe he's lost his fortune,

and maybe he's gambled it away.

Then I checked with someone who knew Allan,

and they said, oh no, he's still got all his money.

He's just, he just liked to get out and give people Uber rides,

as a way of meeting people.

You know, I think there's a safety in Vegas

being in the desert, right?

It insulated from the rest of the country.

I sort of regard it as a place that's fun to visit,

but somewhere that you wouldn't want to be the, sort of,

representative of what the broader society

should aspire to be.

That part of America that is catered to providing

for your most basic impulses...

..and that there's a risk that goes along with that.

You know, the risk is that you lose control...

..you get swept up in addiction.

Louis narrates: After the Vegas show,

I made more programmes that dealt with

the extremity of American consumer culture,

and just the vast array of opportunities

to change yourself physically beyond recognition.

And what is it about the work that you enjoy?

You could not like your nose, have a big nose,

and you can go and spend three years

on a psychiatrist couch, and you'd come out

maybe liking your nose better.

I can do that in one hour,

and you'll like your nose better,

so that's the magic of plastic surgery.

Pectoral implants, bicep implants.

Louis: Yeah, and has all the work been done

by Doctor Chugay?

Except for a couple of my very, very early surgeries,

back in 1987.

May I ask your age, Steve?

I am, I never talk about my age,

but I am approaching a half a century old.

- Quite remarkable.

Louis narrates: And you also have the opportunity

to remake your own mental landscape.

I tend to see the American culture

of psychiatric medication at its edges

as a kind of surgery for the soul,

a chance to remake your own personality,

or your own sense of well-being.

- Come on Hugh, don't worry.

Have a seat, have a seat.

- How do you do? I'm Louis, nice to meet you Hugh.

- He takes extended-release Adderall.

Adderall is an amphetamine that controls ADHD,

which allows him to fidget less, and kind of focus more?

- Exactly. And then the Tenex,

which the doctor at the time had said might help control

some of the impulses,

and he takes for the bipolar disorder Seroquel,

200 milligrammes of Seroquel in the morning.

- Which is an antipsychotic? - Exactly.

- Atypical.

Louis narrates: All of it seemed to speak

to this idea of America as a world

in which every imaginable product was on offer,

and every problem had a consumer solution,

but always with the risk of going too far.

Opioids are now the biggest drug epidemic in American history.

I'd known about the opioid crisis for years and years.

Newsreader: We spent some time in one city

to get a sense of just how wide and deep this crisis is,

and how opioids have changed the very fabric of life there.

OxyContin, this prescription painkiller

that has some opiates in it,

it used to be referred to as 'hillbilly heroin',

that was in the late '90s.

Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids

because they're perceived as too strong or addictive,

but that is far from actual fact.

I got my life back now,

now I can enjoy every day that I live,

I can really enjoy myself,

and before, even a good day was hell,

I mean I couldn't enjoy nothing, but now I can enjoy myself.

Louis narrates: They used cheesy customer testimonials

to proclaim the drug was safe, and of course, it was a myth.

Big Pharma ended up being

the biggest drug pushers in America.

The area we were in, West Virginia,

is particularly hard hit.

First of all, you have jobs

that take a lot out of you physically,

welding and steel work,

so you're already looking at quite a lot of people

looking for pain killers and getting them.

And then when the laws were tightened

and OxyContin became harder to get,

then people turned to heroin.

- May I come in? - For sure, man.

- Should I take my shoes off?

- No, no, no, you're more than welcome man, for sure.

You know, a lot of people migrate from

dabbling with pain pills, right?

That's what happened to me.

I mean, it happens to everybody, that's what happens to...

- Go on, how did it work in your case?

- I got hit by a car and that almost killed me.

- How old were you?

It happened September 26 of 2010.

- So this is seven years ago, you were about 26?

- Uh, yeah, exactly.

Louis narrates: The situation in Huntington was so bad,

it seemed to be more or less the full-time job

of the fire service to go around reviving people

who were overdosing.

[sirens blaring]

- ..breathe for you, so you can do other things.

[mumbling]

- Hey Melanie, what did you take, honey?

Melanie: Nothing.

- No, that doesn't work, we gave you some medicine

that only works if you took something,

so did you do heroin?

- I guess so, yeah. - Yeah.

- Did you snort it? - Mmm.

- Did you shoot it? - Mmm.

I've done stories before where you arrive

and you sort of have to work to get to the story,

and maybe it's less than advertised,

or not quite the same as advertised,

but Huntington really was, well,

it was as bad as people said it was.

[dog barking]

Louis: Hi there.

Louis narrates: One of the people we focused on

was a 25 year old woman called Katillia,

who lived with her boyfriend Alvin.

- You OK, Katillia? - Yeah, I'm fine.

- I just needed to go to the restroom real quick.

Louis narrates: I don't think she'd originally

been prescribed OxyContin or a prescription drug,

but I think one of her friends had,

she dipped into his or her bag, recreationally,

liked it and then carried on.

Louis: I don't want to sound paranoid,

but she's not, is she shooting up in there?

- You OK? - Yeah, I'm fine.

- Did you ask if I was shooting? - Yeah, she's shooting.

- Are you doing it now? - Yeah.

It's not, it's not, it's just like a rinse,

I've already done my morning shot.

It's something that kind of has

a little bit of something in it that will kind of relax me.

How many times do you shoot up a day then?

I mean, it's at least six, seven.

- How old were you when you first got involved

- in a serious way with opiates? - Serious way?

- When I was about 17.

Was there anything going on in your life?

Were you just partying in a normal way

or was there something else going on?

- Well growing up,

my family does a lot of manual labour work,

a lot of people would take medicine here and there,

that would kind of keep them, keep them...

- Functioning? - Yeah.

Underneath it, she was so intelligent and charming,

and seemingly capable of so much, that it was very sad.

In her background, she'd been placed for adoption by her mum,

raised by her great uncle.

It was obviously really complicated,

and then you add that to a culture

in which these highly addictive prescription drugs

are freely available, and you are being set up to fail.

This could be anyone who could find their life

turned upside down.

It's you, it's me, it's your mum, it's everyone else.

- How old are you, Edwin? - I'm 42.

- 42?

I mean I have a degree and everything.

It's, I mean I had a business up until six months ago.

- What sort of business?

Computer business.

I was doing network auditing and penetration testing.

That's a good living.

- It's a great living.

I made a lot of money at it, I mean...

- Did you? How much?

At one point, I was making at least over 200,000 a year.

- Are you serious? - Yeah.

- Did you hear that Mickey? Edwin's a computer boffin.

It kills movie stars, man,

it doesn't discriminate on who you are.

- Getting off of it,

it's always waiting around the corner for you to stumble.

Absolutely it is.

There's no chemical solution for a God-sized problem, man.

- No, there's not.

I've stolen from my own kids to get high.

I've let guys suck my dick to get high.

I mean it's, you'll do whatever it takes.

[mobile phone ringing]

There's nothing I could say

that would persuade you not to do that?

- Add a lighter to that...

It's not bad, I've had better, it's not bad.

- How long are you good for now, do you think?

Probably with this, maybe a couple hours.

If I had something stronger,

it would last a good six hours at least.

This, just a couple of hours.

- Right now, I'm gonna be like this until,

until I can try to overpower my addiction.

Louis narrates: Since I finished the film about Huntington,

the situation continues to be awful.

More than 100 people die every day in America

from an overdose or opioids.

Increasingly, what's been happening

is local governments and state agencies have sued

the big pharmaceutical companies

for allowing their drugs to be abused,

and for the cost of the public health crisis that's ensued.

What I take from it is the ease

with which people can be swept up in a situation

not of their choosing, robbed of their free will,

and made prisoners, of desires created in them

by some outside entity.

[Skype dial tone]

- Hello! - Hey.

Look at you.

[giggling]

You look different, you look younger.

Is that possible?

Younger, I couldn't. No, not possible with me, no.

- Maybe heroin has life preserving properties.

Ha-ha, probably.

What happened after we left?

- It got really crazy.

- What had you been injecting?

- Pretty much everything.

- Was it meth or heroin?

- Both. And crack.

And so you just went to the dark side?

Yep.

Forgive me if this is an intrusive question,

but are you clean now?

I mean, besides the casual drink here and there...

Yeah, I would count that as clean.

- You OK? - Yeah, I'm OK.

- Are you getting hot? - I'm just...

- No, I'm not getting hot. I need to move positions.

Show me around a bit.

I'd like to see a little bit, stand up and lift it up,

wave it around show me a few things.

Louis narrates: Katillia overdosed massively,

woke up, she'd been beaten up, she was on life support,

and as she explained it to me, she nearly died,

and that seems to have been

the trigger for her to change her life.

- Are we heading out back now?

- Yep. We do have tomato plants.

You do some gardening?

- Yeah, just tomato plants.

- That's nice.

- Got a tomato growing right here.

- There we go.

- That'll be good for at least one BLT in a couple of weeks.

[imitating British accent] 'Tomatoes'.

What I am pleased about is to see

that you are doing well

because I don't know that I knew for sure

which way you were likely to go when I filmed with you,

so I want to say congratulations on how far you've come,

you know, because you are an example of how it can happen.

- Thank you. I want to make sure

that what I've done it gets turned into something positive.

Because I have built back relationships

and I am gonna make sure I hold onto them,

mostly with family, people who are more important

than the people I was around.

To make mistakes and to occasionally self sabotage

or get in your own way,

I think is part of how you learn.

- Take care, Katillia. Thank you.

The idea, oh well,

people should just do everything in moderation, always,

I don't really believe that.

A, it's not realistic, but B, it's not really desirable

because one of the great satisfactions of life

is getting through scrapes,

making mistakes and then doing better.

It's inextricable from what it means to be alive.

Right now, there's nothing you could give me I'd do over this.

- Why? - Because I like this.

Whether it's an act or not,

you feel like they give a damn about you.

- Do you... Looking back, do you have regrets?

I don't feel that's healthy.

I think it's much better to look at,

instead of looking at something as a regret,

look at it as a lesson learned,

and look at it as something that will help build

who you are and help build your character today.

Because otherwise, there's just no point to go,

"Man, I wish I wouldn't have done that,

"I wish I wouldn't have done that,"

because we can't change the past, we can't.

When my son died, inside, I was still in so much pain,

that working in the adult industry is almost

like a therapy, like a type of therapy

that helped me get through that stage of my life,

that I don't know what would have happened,

had that particular part of my life never occurred.

That's fascinating, I didn't expect you to say that.

Director: Take six, marker.

Louis narrates: Pleasure in general,

I think it's simplistic to imagine

there's, you know, exactly the right amount

of indulgence or risk taking, or naughtiness,

however you want to characterise that.

On one end, you're ruining your life.

Well, that's clearly bad, or dying of a drug overdose,

and then over here is leading a blameless life

that is utterly without any pith or grit,

you know, totally boring.

And so in between there, you've got to find your place.

Director: Where are you?

I'm about there.

A lot of martinis.

Captioned by Ai-Media ai-media.tv