All language subtitles for All.the.Beauty.and.the.Bloodshed.2022.1080p.WEBRip.10Bit.DDP5.1.x265-Asiimov

- Do you need bottles?
- I have bottles.

[street noise]

Does anyone need...
You need bottles?

What time? 4:15?

The timekeepers are going
to give a signal.

Okay.

Everyone has bottles?
Okay.

- You ready to go in?
- Let's go.

There's a guard walking around
looking puzzled.

I think he's trying to count
the number of people.

I'm really nervous, man.

- Let's start.
- Let's go, let's do it, go.

- Mic check.
- Mic check!

- Mic check.
- Mic check!

- 100,000 dead.
- 100,000 dead!

100,000 dead!

- 100,000 dead!
- Don't do anything.

You can't do anything as far as...

- Temple of death.
- Temple of death!

- Temple of money.
- Temple of money!

- Temple of greed.
- Temple of greed!

- Temple of Oxy.
- Temple of Oxy!

- Sacklers lie.
- Sacklers lie!

- Thousands die.
- Thousands die!

- The Sacklers knew...
- The Sacklers knew...

- Their pills would kill.
- Their pills would kill!

They built this wing!

- They killed this wing...
- Take this outside...

Excuse me. No, excuse me...

[screams, cheers]

[applause]

- Sacklers lie!
- People die!

- Sacklers lie!
- People die!

- Sacklers lie!
- People die!

[chanting continues]

[♪]

[♪]

It's easy to make
your life into stories.

But it's harder to...
sustain real memories.

What do you mean?

Well, the difference between
the story and the real memory.

The real experience has
a smell and is dirty,

and is not wrapped up
in simple endings.

[♪]

The real memories
are what affects me now.

[sound of slide projector]

Things can appear
that you didn't want to see,

where you're not safe.

And even if you don't actually
unleash the memories,

the effect is there.
It's in your body.

[wind gusting]

All right.

[♪]

[♪]

It was a claustrophobic suburb.
"Don't let the neighbors know."

My mother used to say that all the time.
It wasn't just an attitude.

Actually, the neighbors did know,
we found out years later

'cause there was so much
screaming in the house.

Tell me about your sister.

My mother insisted that Barbara speak
in full sentences at the age of one.

And so she stopped talking
for at least a year and a half.

Yeah, that was the first
act of rebellion by my sister.

She would just
wash my hair or hold me,

or these kind of things that you need
when you're a kid.

And she knew how to do that,
even though

she hadn't been mothered
in that way.

She made me aware
at a very young age

about the banality and
deadening grip of suburbia.

She had a wildness to her.

She played the piano constantly.

Chopin...
Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky...

And you could tell how she was
feeling by how she was playing.

[♪]

The parakeets would sit
on her shoulders while she played.

She trusted me
with all her secrets.

She went on Saturday nights
to the movies to make out with boys.

That was when she stood up
for herself and yelled back.

And she talked to me about
feelings for other girls.

It was a period of sexual repression,
and she was made to fear her sexuality.

And a lot of it was
her need to be held.

She had a saying:
"Lean cat, savage cat."

I felt very close to her,

but she was in and out of institutions
for most of my childhood.

Once they started sending her away,
they kept sending her away.

My parents took away
her credibility and...

silenced her
by calling her "mentally ill."

The police came into the house.

My father started wailing
on the front lawn, wailing.

They were talking to my mother,
saying that

"We found your daughter,
and she committed suicide."

And I heard my mother say,
"Tell the children it was an accident."

My interpretation from that minute was... denial.

She didn't want us to know the truth.

That's when it clicked.

[busy street noise]

[workers talking quietly]

Okay, let's try it towards the left.

- Yeah.
- Or like in the middle?

I don't know.
Can you move over to the right?

Keep going, okay,

I can't really see because your body...
Thank you.

Wow.

Do you like it?

Okay, I just want to see one more thing.
Can you switch these two?

Okay, and one more idea.
A couple more ideas.

I could do this all night.
[chuckles] Watch out.

Yeah...

[gallery noise]

I was thinking about this
last night that...

People talk about all kinds
of relationships, with their partner,

their children,
their parents and...

The relationships
that have mattered most to me,

probably my whole life,
are my friends.

I only escaped
because of my friends.

Right.

Yeah, that's better.
That's perfect.

[♪]

"I survived the opioid crisis.

"I narrowly escaped.

"My relationship to OxyContin
began several years ago in Berlin.

"It was originally prescribed
for surgery.

"Though I took it as directed,
I got addicted overnight.

"In the beginning,
40 milligrams was too strong.

"But as my habit grew,
there was never enough.

"I went from 3 pills a day,
as prescribed, to 18.

"The drug, like all drugs,
lost its effect.

"So I picked up the straw.

"My life revolved entirely
around getting and using Oxy,

"counting and recounting, crushing
and snorting was my full-time job.

[♪]

"When I got out of treatment,
I learned that the Sackler family,

"whose name I knew
from museums and galleries,

"were responsible
for the epidemic.

"The Sackler family and their
private company, Purdue Pharma,

"advertised and distributed
their medication, knowing all the dangers.

"I've started a group, P.A.I.N.,
to hold them accountable.

"To get their ear,
we will target their philanthropy.

"They have washed
their blood money through the halls

"of museums and universities
around the world."

[♪]

I had no idea that it was going
to actually have the traction that it did.

It's definitely among the,
if not the most,

proud moments of my tenure
as editor of the magazine.

She knew how to use her power.

She's a figure that these museums
also wanted to work with.

They want in their collections.
She's a major name in the art world.

When she published the portfolio

it was the fact that she was
doing it that mattered.

I knew this would put her on the line
in a real serious way and...

I was concerned for her safety.
I was concerned for...

whether she would be
drummed out of the art world.

I think that...

She was taking on a very powerful family,
one of the most powerful families.

I mean, if anyone belongs in jail,
it's these people.

And as long as there's a jail,
they should be in it...

until the whole prison
system is dismantled.

They should be
the last to leave.

- Last one, lights out.
- Last one.

After I met Nan and
we connected on levels of...

having experience with addiction
and stuff like that...

She said, "Why don't you come
to one of our P.A.I.N. meetings?"

Most members of P.A.I.N. have
a direct experience with addiction,

or loss of a loved one.

We have members
who lost their children...

to overdose, that have family members
who are struggling,

or that they themselves
have struggled.

Yeah, but death is
the bottom line of this,

and that should be reminded,
we should do a die-in of some sort.

Do we want to marshal numbers?

- But each of us will be then responsible...
- Trusted friends...

The focus on the family,

I would say there was a little
bit of fear in the group about

going straight for them, although
we felt that we should.

Yeah, this is the decisive one.

Nan actually said,
"Do you think my career will implode?"

And I said, "Probably."

I said, "Yes, these are very scary,
powerful people.

"But then again,
what else can you do?"

And she said, "I think we
should take these people down."

And I said,
"Well, I'm with you."

And then we started meeting
and we would sit in Nan's house

and dream up of things
we wanted to do.

He's really sweet.

He's sweet on Alex, man.

Go on.

Let's see where it all starts here.

I mean, there's literally so many of these
that it's hard for me to find...

Yeah, this is September 2019...
I get this legal hold notice.

"Dear Mr. Keefe, I write
on behalf of my clients,

"members of the
Raymond Sackler family.

"You are hereby directed to preserve
and not to destroy, conceal or alter

"any and all documents and communications
in your possession

"that relate in any way to any members
of the Sackler family,

"the article, Purdue Pharma,
and/or OxyContin..."

And on and on and on.

One of the things that's so strange
about the Sackler family is that

we talk about them
in monolithic terms,

but really it's three families and...

they spring from these three original
brothers, Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond.

His name is Arthur Sackler.

For 40 years, he has brought energy,
goodwill and intelligence to art.

He owns thousands of works,

presently displayed not only
at the Metropolitan Museum,

but in university collections as well.

[applause]

Knowing that the goal of peace
is engraved in your hearts,

Mrs. Sackler and I present
to you this verse...

Arthur died before
the introduction of OxyContin.

And yet so much of what's happened is,
in part, a function of Arthur's legacy.

His contemporaries knew him as this great
art collector and this philanthropist.

And the dirty secret was that

he had come to this position
of prominence and great wealth

through the marketing of this drug,
which also happened to be quite addictive.

He creates a whole means of selling Valium
in which you're targeting doctors.

He devised
a compensation scheme in which

he would get paid
a series of escalating bonuses

based on how much
Valium they sold.

Well, Valium becomes
the best-selling drug

in the history
of the pharmaceutical industry.

From his personal collection,

Sackler gave the Smithsonian carte blanche
to select a thousand pieces,

the best from a lifetime of collecting.

The whole Sackler enterprise
has been about marketing,

the marketing of OxyContin,
but also the marketing of the family name.

There's the family of the art world
and the museum world and philanthropy.

And then there's the kind
of grubby, unpleasant story of...

big pharma marketing
and addiction and death.

Don't be afraid to take
what they give you.

Often it will be
an opioid medication.

Some patients may be
afraid of taking opioids

because they're perceived
as too strong, or addictive.

But that is far
from actual fact.

The Sacklers owned Purdue, this
company that set out very deliberately

to change the way in which
these strong opioids were prescribed

and to do so, by claiming
that they weren't addictive.

A week or two after
my article came out,

I got this email,
this kind of cryptic email

from the studio of
Nan Goldin that said,

"The photographer Nan Goldin
would like to meet with you."

And I was a little mystified,
didn't know what it was about.

But we set up a meeting.

She had this kind of
"roll up your sleeves,

"We gotta do something!
We gotta organize!

"We gotta get out there!"
And I probably was...

I blush to think, but I probably
was gently patronizing and said,

"Well, good for you, glad to hear it.
You keep me posted on that."

I love working in a material I know.

Blue valium bottles.

My anger at the Sackler family,
it's personal.

I hate these people,
but it's not about my own addiction.

I mean, when you think of
the profit off people's pain.

You can only be
furious about it.

Sacklers lie, people die!
Fund harm reduction now!

Sacklers lie, people die!
Fund harm reduction now!

Sacklers lie, people die!
Fund harm reduction now!

Sacklers lie, people die!
Fund harm reduction now!

[dead silence]

We consciously talked about
Act Up and what Act Up had done.

And how we wanted for these actions
to make an impact.

This idea of a bottle
was the first object we created.

All the museums, institutions
need to stop taking money

from these corrupt, evil bastards.

[cheers, applause]

I got thrown out of every school
and every house that I lived.

I got thrown out of my parents' home.
I got thrown out of my foster family.

I got thrown out of
the communal foster family.

- Seriously?
- Yeah.

There's not one
I can think of that...

Yeah, I made an art of it.

Okay, but why were you
with foster parents?

A psychiatrist told my father
that if I stayed in the house,

the same thing would happen
as what happened with Barbara.

So my parents sent me
to a foster agency.

It was the Jewish adoption
agency on Beacon Hill.

Yeah.
I must have been 14.

The woman of the house
straightened my hair.

She wanted me to be
a WASP basically.

I remember when I first went there,
I projectile vomited all over my room.

I must have been terrified.

I didn't remember that till now.

I landed in a hippie free school
that couldn't throw me out.

[sound of slide projector]

Satya school saved my life.

[sound of slide projector]

I was shy beyond social phobia,
like crippling shyness.

There were like six months
that I didn't speak at all.

I think my sister's suicide
had silenced me.

Until I met David.

He said I was still speaking
in a whisper.

[♪]

I was 15. He was 14.

[♪]

He was a vision to me.

[♪]

We met each other, both stealing steaks.

We were shoplifting.

Both of us converged
in the steak department.

- Are you serious?
- Yes.

Oh, I was a great shoplifter,
pretty much all my life.

I'm not sure how good I am anymore,
but that's how we became friends.

David was a great wit,
very ironic, very precise.

And that was
the coin of the realm.

He taught me to use humor
as a survival mechanism.

He had this elegance
and he was very androgynous,

which was something
I was really attracted to.

And one night,
we hitchhiked to my brother's dorm,

'cause I was between homes,

and he laid down on the bed
and I laid down next to him.

And he got up and
laid down on the floor.

And I said, "Are you gay?"

And a light came on for him.

He always said that it was
the first time somebody recognized him.

[sound of slide projector]

Then he named me Nan.

So I brought him out
and he named me Nan.

So we liberated each other.

David was the eye of my storm.

David and Tommy in a sandpit.
That's one of my first photographs.

We all got cameras from Polaroid.

I attached to it more than
anybody else at the school.

It was the only language
I spoke at the time.

Suddenly I had, you know, a personality,
and it gave me a voice.

Photography was always a way
to walk through fear.

Taking a picture
is kind of protective.

It gave me a reason to be there.

[sound of slide projector]

[♪]

[MUSIC: "Cheree" by Suicide]

David was living with this most beautiful
queen in Cambridge.

Very quickly,
I moved in with them.

♪ Cheree, Cheree ♪

♪ Oh, baby ♪

We went to Goodwill
pretty much every day.

All the rich women were giving
their clothes to Goodwill,

and they were exquisite clothes.

♪ I love you ♪

Like Fortuny gowns.

♪ Cheree, Cheree ♪

And we went to
The Other Side every night.

Right away,
I felt at home there.

I remember being really excited
to take pictures at that time.

It was like a flash of euphoria.
I know when a picture works.

I get a rush.

I would have the film developed in
a pharmacy, and each of them would make

a pile of the pictures of themselves and
compete to see who had the biggest pile.

If they didn't like one of the pictures,
they tore them up,

and that was okay with me.

I've always wanted the people in the
pictures to be proud of being in the work.

People have said, "Oh I didn't know
I was that beautiful."

Which is, you know,
what I want them to feel.

My roommates,
they were running away from America,

and they found each other.

They didn't think, "We're pioneers.
We're rebels." They just were.

It was about living out
what they needed to live out

in spite of the reaction
from the outside world.

[MUSIC: "What Makes A Man A Man"
by Charles Aznavour]

♪ There's always those who spoil our
games by finding fault and calling names ♪

♪ Always accusing ♪

♪ We love each other but it seems ♪

♪ The love lives only in my dreams ♪

♪ It's so one-sided ♪

♪ But in this life, I must confess ♪

♪ The search for love and happiness ♪

♪ Is unrequited ♪

♪ I ask myself what have I got ♪

♪ And what I am and what I'm not ♪

♪ What have I given? ♪

♪ Then answers come
from those who make ♪

♪ The rules that some of us must break ♪

♪ Just to keep living ♪

♪ I know my life is not a crime ♪

♪ I'm just a victim of my time ♪

♪ I stand defenseless ♪

♪ Nobody has the right to be ♪

♪ The judge of what is right for me ♪

♪ Tell me if you can ♪

♪ What makes a man a man ♪

While I was living
with the queens,

I started going to art school
for photography.

Said I wanted the queens
to be on the cover of Vogue.

But in those days, that was so far.

[street noise]

It was a time
that was really scary for them.

You could get arrested
walking down the street in Boston.

My roommates stayed home basically,
and they went out at night.

And...
survival was an art.

[seagulls cawing]

David and I started going
to Provincetown in '75.

It was the gay mecca.

I worked in a Portuguese
hot dog stand.

And then later, I got a job as a bartender
at the Pied Piper, the lesbian bar.

I was living in this separatist
lesbian community.

You know, it was sort of like
flannel shirts and tea.

And I'd come from
taffeta gowns and Quaaludes.

And so I was kind of the oddball

'cause I would wear pearls
and lipstick to the beach.

I fell in love with this beautiful woman.
We were lovers, briefly.

She had lots of other lovers.

I was obsessed with her.

So I photographed her constantly.

I have often used photography
as a sublimation for sex.

It's generally better than sex.

I had a button machine.

You know, you take a picture
and put it on a button.

- You had a button machine?
- Yeah...

That was my way of making a living.

Walking up and down Commercial Street
in my high heels with my button machine,

and Cookie and Sharon
and Divine and John Waters

came by and had buttons made.

I knew Cookie from John Waters' films,
and I already idolized her.

[MUSIC: "Female Trouble" by Divine]

♪ I got a lot of problems ♪

♪ Female trouble ♪

♪ Maybe I'm twisted ♪

I'd like to set fire to this dump.

Just cause we're pretty
everybody's jealous.

It's like a prison here, even at
Christmas it's like a prison.

[♪]

[MUSIC: "Sunday Morning"
by The Velvet Underground]

♪ Sunday morning ♪

♪ Brings the dawning ♪

Cookie was all about finding
what was funny in life.

♪ By my side ♪

Cookie and Sharon
were together for many years.

Sharon was working at a pizza place,
and Cookie came by one night

with her bicycle
and her son, Max.

And he had long hair with gum
and popsicle sticks and leaves in it.

And Cookie had on these little
Springolator pumps,

but they were held together
with safety pins.

And Sharon thought,
"I'm gonna take care of these people."

♪ Sunday morning ♪

And then Cookie said to her,
"I believe in timing."

♪ I've got a feeling ♪

Cookie took Sharon home with her
through a swamp with big pussy willows.

And that was the beginning
of Cookie and Sharon.

It was a time of freedom
and possibility.

That's when I did
my first slideshows.

You ready?
Does everyone have their chant?

That's bullshit, get off it,
they made addicts just for profit.

We were flying last night!

We were ready to do
another New York action

and the Met and the Guggenheim
to us are like

two of the most
important museums.

And we knew that the Guggenheim had
the Sackler Education Center.

So they were like
a big target for us.

An important part of
the museums we choose is

Nan is typically
in the permanent collection.

It's much stronger when the message
is coming from inside the house.

I'm not worried.
What if they recognize me?

By the time we did the Guggenheim,
our name was out there.

Other museums were alerted
that we might be coming.

I'm supposed to wear it
so that no one knows who I am.

- That's not drawing attention.
- Very subtle disguise.

It calls a little attention, doesn't it?
It's kind of horrible.

The attorney general in Massachusetts
had just released internal emails

and documents of the Sacklers, which were
vast, and had really damning quotes.

One of them was the quote
from Richard Sackler, saying that

upon the launch
of OxyContin in 1996,

that OxyContin would cover the country
in a "blizzard of prescriptions."

I was like, "What if we made
a bunch of prescriptions

"and throw that
back in their faces?"

We're trying to align
the banners with

the fountain right
at the bottom of the spiral?

- Yes.
- Okay.

- Okay, "Shame on Sacklers," right?
- Yeah.

The goal is to get the names
off the walls.

As long as the names are there,

they still maintain their hold
on their reputation.

They're still whitewashing
their reputation.

The museums are still
complicit in that.

The energy was definitely right.

The whole museum was already
buzzing when we went in.

It was a packed Saturday night.

- Nan, are you ready?
- No, where is everyone?

We had a Signal thread,
but it was really like,

"Go at this time. If you see
prescriptions falling, it's starting."

- Are we ready?
- Yeah.

[screams, cheers]

[♪]

I was at the bottom looking up,
and I checked out for a minute

because I was looking up
at the prescription slips

and just like in awe of
the visual that it created.

[encouraging shouts]

Say it loud, say it clear,
Sackler name not welcome here!

Say it loud, say it clear,
Sackler name does not come here!

Say it loud, say it clear,
OxyContin got them here!

I was holding
one of the banners.

We looked like we're hundreds
and hundreds of activists.

Right? We were not
hundreds and hundreds.

People are shouting with us.
They're agreeing with us.

- No longer!
- No longer!

- The Sackler family must go!
- The Sackler family must go!

- The Sackler family must pay!
- The Sackler family must pay!

- People die!
- Sacklers lie!

- People die!
- Sacklers lie!

[♪]

Say it loud, say it clear,
Sacklers are not welcome here!

Say it loud, say it clear,
Sacklers are not welcome here!

We have journeyed from
the Guggenheim down to the Met

to send a message,
a message of life and death.

My son was prescribed OxyContin
for a knee surgery in high school.

The doctors told him:
"Take the pills every four hours.

"Take them before the pain starts.
Take them on schedule."

When my son talked of his pain,
I said, "Did you take your pill?"

I became an accomplice
to my son's demise.

- That's not right.
- That ain't right!

My son became addicted to OxyContin.
It progressed to heroin.

It took 11 years.
But it fucking killed him!

It killed him. It took his life.
He died alone in a bathroom.

I don't expect the Sacklers
to care about my son.

We care!

But 400,000 lives, right?
Somebody should care about that!

Yes!

And how did
the Guggenheim respond?

They didn't say anything.

The museums were keeping quiet.

The first year, it's like 25 museums
were supportive of the Sacklers.

Either said nothing
or were supportive.

They know the Sacklers
are a bad look...

- For their PR.
- Right.

But they're terrified of what
will be found out about them.

The rich people are scared
that we're going to dig into

the evil way they made money.

[MUSIC: "The Hunter Gets Captured
By The Game" by The Marvelettes]

♪ Hoping you might fall into it ♪

♪ Love hit me like a sudden slap ♪

♪ One kiss and then I knew it ♪

♪ What's this whole world comin' to ♪

♪ Things just ain't the same ♪

♪ Any time the hunter ♪

♪ Gets captured by the game ♪

I moved to the Bowery in '78.

This place that
should have become a museum.

So many people lived there,
and it was one of the big addresses

in lower New York at the time.

It was a shithole loft
because there was no light.

It didn't have any walls
for a while.

Kind of dysfunctional,
but managed to function.

We used to fuck in the elevator.
There was a lot of drugs.

Always a lot of drugs,
a lot of coke, a lot of speed.

The Bowery was the Ballad.

The Bowery was
the Goldin headquarters.

And that's where I was situated
in the universe, was the Bowery.

When I got to New York, this guy
gave me some names of galleries.

In those days, you went to
galleries with your portfolio.

So I called some galleries,
they weren't interested.

And then I went up
to see Marvin.

I walked in and showed these photos
that no one had ever seen before.

Totally bad prints and torn.

And immediately,
we understood each other.

She showed up one day
with a box of pictures,

showed up in this party dress,
a polka dot party dress

with a lot of crinolines,
and kind of weird makeup and...

walked up the very fancy stairs of this
gallery and... had this box of pictures.

And I opened up this box of pictures
and about 20 of them in it and...

I had never seen pictures
like that in my life.

These portraits and pictures
of people living their lives

that really were unlike anything
anybody else was doing.

He asked me to bring more stuff,
and I brought up a crate.

[laughing]

And I got the cab driver
to bring me up by giving him a blow job.

So that's how I entered
the art world.

[more laughter]

This was 1979.

[♪]

[MUSIC: "You Can't Be Funky"
by Bush Tetras]

The first week we were there,
the Mudd Club opened.

And I met Vivienne Dick.

Vivienne was curious
about everything,

and a lot of stuff that happened,
she took me to.

♪ Talk, talk, talk ♪

♪ Well, the walls are so thin ♪

I mean, there were different worlds
in New York that I was moving between,

and they didn't necessarily
like each other.

The world of Vivienne and this woman
I lived with named Suzanne...

♪ Yours eyes are shallow
and your glance is cold ♪

And Greer...

She was making her dolls all the time,
working constantly.

♪ You can't be funky, you can't be funky ♪

♪ You can't be funky
if you haven't got a soul ♪

And then there was
the world of Bruce.

And David.

♪ Well, I lock you up tighter
every place that you go ♪

And Cookie.

[MUSIC: "Fire" by Lizzy Mercier Descloux]

She was the center of
New York downtown life.

♪ Fire ♪

♪ I bid you to burn ♪

[♪]

♪ Fire ♪

People used to say
we were marginalized.

And we didn't care.

Normal people were
marginalized to us.

♪ You fought hard and you saved ♪

♪ But it's all going to burn ♪

Cookie was in films,
she was in plays.

And then she was writing
art criticism.

Cookie used to say, "I don't know
why people think I'm wild, I'm not wild,

"wildness just appears
on the road in front of me."

You have to hear her voice.
And that tells you everything.

This kind of irony and humor.

"'You should really wait for Charlie
to come back from the store.

"'He's the one to talk to.

"'He's right in there
buying oranges for us.'

"She pointed to the Haight
Street Chinese fruit store,

"but I'd had enough and thanked them
and left looking for more action.

"These girls were Susan Atkins and Squeaky
Fromme and Mary Brunner and others.

"And I missed meeting
Charlie Manson by 5 minutes."

Cookie was working
as a go-go dancer.

I was dancing
in New Jersey because

you didn't have to take
your top off in New Jersey.

New York was topless.
New Jersey wasn't.

[MUSIC: "Boogie Oogie Oogie"
by A Taste of Honey]

So we'd take the bus
out to Paterson,

and go to these low life bars,
and wiggle our asses,

and then get on the bus
and come back to New York.

♪ If you're thinking you're too cool ♪

I was dancing
to have money to buy film.

♪ Boy, oh boy, have I got news for you ♪

Then I started in the whorehouse.

Yeah, that got pretty ugly.

I haven't kept many secrets in my life.

But I never did talk about it before.

But I think at this point in my life,
I should talk about it

because of the incredible
stigma around sex work.

Vivienne got really interested in the fact
that I had worked in a house,

and decided she wanted
to make a film about it.

It's a fiction film.

I'm playing the madam of the house
where I worked... who was a monster.

Hi. How are you?
Have you been with us before?

She would have us
on our backs all day,

and then she'd come home from
Bloomingdales, showing off her lingerie.

I mean sex work isn't negative
in itself, but it's no party.

It's one of the hardest jobs
you could have.

[street noise, honking]

And so that's how
Tin Pan Alley came.

Somebody said,
"You should go meet Maggie."

She was hiring women
who had been sex workers,

and helped people get out of it.

She was an incredible force.
She was a community organizer.

She was a great cook.
She was a radical.

And she was a ballet dancer.

So she hired me pretty quickly.
Like immediately.

The bar was a safe space
for prostitutes and also a way

to work their way out of prostitution
if they wished to do so.

And it was a center
for those on the left,

the squatters movement,
the anarchist movement,

the Black movement,

people who were interested in supporting
political prisoners from the Latin left.

And so it was really
a polyglot place.

It had hustlers, it had artists,
Reuters journalists.

It had people from NBC who were on strike.
And it had the IRS.

When the IRS would come
in the afternoon to get drunk,

they were as hard to handle
as the bikers.

But the bar
was controlled by women.

It was very important to me
that we not have bouncers,

and not depend on male strength
for keeping the peace.

And so when people behind
the bar, including Nan,

decided that it was time for someone
to go, that person would go.

- It's on the house.
- Oh, thanks, Nan.

Tin Pan was very integrated.

The New Wave was not
a very integrated scene at all.

And also it cut across class lines,
which New Wave also didn't do.

I spent a lot of time at Tin Pan
but I can't say...

Talk about repetitive nights, you know?

When I first started, I loved it there.
The first two years...

I listened to people.
Really listened.

And they weren't used to that.

I was sort of the dominatrix
of the bar and I got tips

because people wanted
to impress me, win me back...

And I would work till four in the morning
and then we'd go to The After Hours.

[saxophone music playing]

Tin Pan Alley became
a major kind of staging point

as people were planning
for the Times Square Show.

It was multi-floor.
It was collaborative.

There was graffiti, sculpture,
there were painters, lots of video work.

There was music...

[♪]

[singing]

The first floor is where
most of the performances were.

So Nan invited
everyone in the bar.

So, yes, I was anxious
to see her work and...

I was sitting on the floor and
this music starts and the slides start.

[MUSIC: "I Put A Spell on You"
by Screamin' Jay Hawkins]

[♪]

♪ I put a spell on you ♪

♪ Because you're mine ♪

♪ Stop the things you do ♪

♪ Watch out! ♪

♪ I ain't lyin' ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

♪ I can't stand ♪

♪ Ooh! ♪

♪ No running around ♪

♪ I can't stand ♪

The work was
incredibly political.

It was about power,

and particularly about the power
that men have over women,

and how that power
is translated up in society.

The very first time I saw Nan's slideshow,
it was extremely raucous.

What I remember mostly
is the noise,

not just of the music or
of the equipment,

but of people talking to the screen... Commenting.

At the beginning,
the audience would be made up

exclusively of the people
in the show,

so they would scream at me
if they didn't like something,

and scream if
they loved something.

So I edited according
to that to some extent.

Then I had those pictures of my friend
having sex with her boyfriend

and she demanded
I take them out at some point.

And so that's when I started
photographing myself having sex.

I figured if I was showing her having sex,
I had to show myself having sex.

[MUSIC: "Double Shot Of My Baby's Love"
by Swingin' Medallions]

♪ Double shot of my baby's love ♪

I was doing it
at underground clubs and

my boyfriend at the time
was spinning records.

[♪]

So that's when the music started.

I would start with songs
that I knew and then

people would send me
music, literally.

But I changed them
every single time.

It was fun, it was really fun.
People would be dancing.

You know, it was fabulous.

[MUSIC: "8th Wonder" by The Sugarhill Gang]

♪ Scream it out and say yo, hit it! ♪

♪ Ya don't stop ♪

I was always late for everything.
I didn't sleep.

I mean, I was up
all night editing.

You never saw
the same thing twice.

She changed the music,
she changed the slides,

she changed the order of them.

Sometimes her own changed feelings
changed the meanings of them

because her photographs don't
hold just one meaning.

You know, a lot is going on
in a Nan Goldin photograph.

And I guess that's what made people
think it was so cinematic

because to most people,
they seem like characters,

whereas to the people being photographed,
they seem like themselves.

She photographs from our side.

The mid-80s was when
I was closest to Cookie.

She wasn't doing very well so this friend
of hers told her to spin a globe

and wherever she put her finger,
to go there.

So she went to Italy and
she met Vittorio.

It was the greatest love of her life.

It was a huge wedding.
Everyone in lower New York was there.

Rene Ricard,
Greer, David Armstrong,

Francesco Clemente,
Teri Toye...

Peter Hujar was there.

And we were standing next
to each other taking pictures.

It was a beautiful wedding,

and a wild party.

Yeah.

[MUSIC: "Ballad of Dependency"
by Charlotte Rae]

♪ He charges forth
while others are debatin' ♪

♪ Conniving, cocky knave
with all the trimmin' ♪

♪ I know one thing can trim him down ♪

♪ Women ♪

♪ In women he meets deep authority ♪

♪ On them he feels his old dependency ♪

Once I started sharing the work,
I got a lot of shit.

"There's no such thing as a good woman
artist," was said to me in the mid-80s.

It was really
heavy resistance...

especially from male artists
and gallerists who said,

"This isn't photography.
Nobody photographs their own life."

It was still a kind of outlier act.

It was basically a time of black
and white, vertical photographs.

So it's hard to understand that that
could have ever been radical.

I thought the art world was bullshit
and that Times Square was real life.

That's where I met Brian.

Our first date, we went to see The Clash
right around the corner from the bar.

And then we went up
to Harlem and copped.

And then he just stayed.
And he stayed from '81 to '84.

He was beautiful at the time,
and I fell in love with him.

He was very tender.

You can see it in Brian's eyes.

We had very good sex, and that can keep
people together for a long time.

And then we started
fighting a lot.

And I was good at fighting.

He wanted to break up
and I didn't want him to.

And then we went through that a lot,
trying to break up.

And then when I went to Berlin,
we'd broken up.

And then he came to Berlin and...
And that story.

I did a slideshow at some loft,
and we went to a bar,

and then he realized I'd been
with this girl, and he became jealous.

And that's what set it off.

We were so intertwined,
we didn't know how to break up.

So this was his way
of breaking up.

He punched me in the face repeatedly,
like boom, boom, boom.

And he went after my eyes.

I was bleeding and
there was this girl, Sylvie, from Paris.

Sylvie came in and dragged me out.
She saved my life.

He trashed the room and he wrote
in lipstick all over the room:

"Bitch," "Cunt"...

He burned my diaries.

The greatest luck of my life
is that I left the slideshow

at the loft where I'd shown it because...

- He would have destroyed it.
- He would have destroyed it.

Yeah.

All the bones in the orbital
floor of my eye were broken.

- And...
- To go for your eyes.

Maggie said he wanted
to blind me.

My pictures of myself battered
were what kept me from going back.

Women who've been battered
have come to me and told me

that they were able to talk about it
because of those pictures.

The struggle between
autonomy and dependency is

the core of "The Ballad
of Sexual Dependency."

My father tried to get it
stopped from being published.

The pictures were one thing,
but they were so afraid of the text...

'cause he said that I was trying to prove
that they killed my sister.

That's how he put it.

Brian was trying to get it stopped.

It makes it even more radical:
all these men trying to stop it.

When I got back to New York,
I went to Tin Pan.

I was terrified because
there were all those men,

and I couldn't be
in a crowd with men.

Maggie thought I was shooting dope
and I wasn't, but I was snorting it.

And I remembered
when I quit Tin Pan, I thought,

"Oh, now I'm going to get really strung
out because there's nothing to stop me."

And I did.

It's a little scary around here.

A New York Post reporter called me cold
without being introduced.

He called me on my cell phone.
He said he got it on the internet.

We have to really have the facts

if we're going to go up
against this family.

They could sue us, right?

After a few of our actions, Purdue Pharma
started taking out full page ads

in The New York Times, saying, "Of course
we care about the opioid crisis.

"We're in the market of opioids."

People are still accepting
Sackler donations.

What's happening with
the National Portrait Gallery?

I don't know what's going on with my work
being in the show or not.

What do people think?

It would be a serious blow if Nan Goldin
refuses to show her work there

- because of Sackler money.
- So...

Nan was set to have
a retrospective

at the National
Portrait Gallery in the UK,

but they're in the middle of accepting
a $1.3 million grant from the Sacklers.

So Nan told them that she would not
do her retrospective with them

if they were to accept it.

Unbelievable!

Oh man, it's working, right?
It's working.

I can't believe it!

When the National Portrait Gallery refused
the donation from the Sacklers,

I thought this is
a watershed moment.

This is an incredible rush
to think that

people are actually beginning
to rethink how we do things.

Let's go over
what happened in one week.

I think it doesn't happen
to activist groups very often.

On Tuesday, the National Portrait Gallery
was the first to refuse money.

Yeah!

On Thursday, the Tate crumbled.

On Friday, surprisingly, the Guggenheim.

- Yeah...
- And that was shocking.

[applause]

Okay, and then those dirty deep
bottom feeders, the hedge fund,

refusing to take the Sackler money,
which is unprecedented.

[celebrating shouts]

The domino effect was huge.

The fact that this is happening
by all these major museums

and also Nan has her hand
in every single one,

including the Tate, is major,
and then the Met followed.

But it was not good enough for us.

We had a very clear demand:
no longer accept Sackler money.

Then the next part obviously
is take down the name.

Subsequently, we then saw
this WhatsApp log

that came out from the
Mortimer Sackler family members,

and you actually see them
start to talk about Nan Goldin.

They talk about it solely as
a matter of public relations management.

You don't have a single person who says,
"Well, wait a second,

"maybe there's some substance
to this critique.

"We should look hard at what we've done.
Is there some way we can make amends?

"Are there questions
we should be asking?"

Instead, it's just entirely,
"How do we manage this PR problem?"

[sound of passing subway]

When did you know
you were being followed?

I was leaving Nan's by myself
on a Friday night.

And...

I noticed a car.

I noticed that the person sitting in it
is obscuring his face.

And the second I'm directly across
from him, he kind of looks at me.

The next week, as I'm crossing
my direct street,

up to the stop sign,
pulls this car.

And I looked at him.

And I just kept walking.

I walked for like 15 feet or so,
and when I looked back,

he was just taking
my photo from his car.

And like I'm just having a memory
of that moment because it's like...

There is no...

I don't think I've experienced
a greater fear than that moment

'cause I don't know
who the fuck this guy is.

But I know it's the same guy
from the week before.

So I think I even yelled at him,
but I don't even know if he knew.

He peeled out,
and I was terrified.

And then,
imagine my shock

when the next week,
exactly a week later,

this guy is outside of Nan's.

We just walked out of Nan's house.

The same car is
in front of the house again.

And the guy is...

right there...
watching me film him right now.

He's pulling out right now.

I went out with my wife and two children.
I have two small boys.

We walked out one day to run an errand,
and we're getting into the car,

and a neighbor came over
and she said,

"Hey, I don't want to freak you out,
but just up there,

"there's a guy who's parked
across the street from my house

"in an SUV,
and he's been there all day,

"and I think he's watching
your house."

So the first thing
I thought, of course,

was that I knew that
Nan had had this experience

and Megan had had
this experience.

And so it felt of a piece
in terms of the M.O.

When I was fact-checking my book, I asked
Purdue if they knew anything about

these people who've been following
Nan, and Megan and me and...

Purdue came back and said,

"Absolutely not. Of course,
we would never do such a thing.

"That's outrageous."
Really strenuously denying it and...

in my queries to the Sacklers,
I asked the same thing and...

There were some of the things I asked
about that they came back and denied.

And this was not one of them.

[street noise]

Bob is one of
our board members.

- Hi, how are you?
- Now, admittedly...

It's a little crazy here.

So has anybody had a Narcan kit before
or have been through a Narcan training?

Yeah, I got a kit
a couple of weeks ago.

I have a kit in my house,
but I haven't been trained.

So I'm just going to go over
a couple of the essentials,

signs and symptoms of an opiate overdose,
and how to use Narcan

to reverse an opiate overdose, okay?

So if you see somebody who you think
could be experiencing an opiate overdose,

you say, "Are you okay?"
They don't respond.

You do the sternal rub,
they still don't respond.

You may shake them.

If they still don't respond, that's
when you're gonna give Narcan.

So you're going to give Narcan
and call 911.

You can do whichever you want
to do first, but do both.

Open it up, hold it.
Spray it up their nose, okay?

If it's not an overdose, it's not going
to hurt them and it won't work.

But if it is an overdose,
it's gonna save their life.

Okay?

Focusing on harm reduction is what's going
to bring people out of this crisis.

Safe consumption sites, reducing
stigma and helping drug users

is the long goal, so...

[sound of train passing above]

Okay, we're going to start the hearing.
Good morning.

I'd like to welcome you
to today's hearing

on the adequacy of funding for
substance use disorder services.

Our next witness is Nan Goldin,

founder of Prescription
Addiction Intervention Now.

I'm gonna speak, by and large,
from the personal experience.

That maybe will help inform you
of what it means,

some of these bills
that you're trying to pass,

what it actually impacts
on a human being.

I wouldn't have gotten off Oxy
without buprenorphine.

On a small dose of buprenorphine,
cravings for opioids are reduced.

At larger doses, you can't even feel
the effects of opioids if you try.

I was one of the lucky ones who was able
to access MAT immediately

and afford good treatment.

Doctors need to pay to train
and receive a waiver

to prescribe buprenorphine,

when no such certificate is required
to prescribe OxyContin.

Again, this is a policy that increases
the stigma in the medical community

about treating people
addicted to drugs.

People need to be kept alive.

Addiction is not a moral issue.
It is not a criminal issue.

Harm reduction means not only

recovering the harm caused
by the disease of addiction,

but also the harm caused
by the social and moral assault

on people with
substance use disorder.

Thank you very much.

It's important to hear from people
who take Medication-Assisted Treatment.

- But I'm not ashamed of it.
- No.

And it's not
my road to recovery.

- It is my recovery.
- That's important to share.

People think you have to be off everything
in order to be in recovery,

and that's certainly not true.

- Yeah, the stigma is terrible.
- Okay. Thank you so much.

Lock arms?

We joined with Housing Works
and Vocal New York,

who really wanted
to do an action...

- We are here...
- We are here...

- to draw attention to...
- to draw attention to...

- Overdose Awareness Day!
- Overdose Awareness Day!

- No stigma!
- No shame!

- No stigma!
- No shame!

- No stigma!
- No shame!

- No stigma!
- No shame!

In order to do
the harm reduction,

the safe consumption sites
invite people in and say,

"Look... whatever you're dependent on
is not what we question right now.

"We just want you to be able
to do it in a safe way.

"Not put anybody at risk."

"Here's how to shoot up
in a clean way."

"You don't know what you bought,
we'll test it for you."

- Hey Cuomo, what do you say?
- How many people died today?

[chanting continues]

No more deaths! No more deaths!
No more deaths!

[shouts and cheering]

[sound of slide projector]

I went to rehab
for the first time in 1988.

I had been kind of
isolated from my friends.

I thought I was going back
to my community...

And then I realized most of the
people were dead or dying.

We'll never be
silent again, Act Up!

We'll never be
silent again, Act Up!

[protesters continue shouting]

Act Up! Fight Back!
Fight AIDS!

Act Up! Fight Back!
Fight AIDS!

[screaming, cheering in street]

It was like World War II.

We watched everybody get wiped out,
and there was nothing we could do.

I got a call from Artists Space,
and they asked me to curate a show.

I wanted the subject of it
to be AIDS.

And I was told there hadn't been
any shows about AIDS.

I asked all my friends
to contribute something

because I wanted it to be
a community.

It was the first show I curated.

Mortality no longer feels like
some abstraction

that I could push away
to the age of 80 or 90 or...

There's no longer a luxury of
pushing the idea of mortality away.

David Wojnarowicz was my spiritual guide.
He was my political guide.

"If you want to stop AIDS,
shoot the queers,"

says the governor of Texas
on the radio.

And his press secretary later claims
the governor was only joking,

and didn't know
the microphone was turned on.

And besides, he didn't think it would hurt
his chances for re-election anyways.

And I wake up every morning.

I wake up every morning in this
killing machine called America,

and I'm carrying this rage
like a blood-filled egg.

And there's a thin line, a thin line
between the inside and outside,

a thin line between thought
and action.

And that line is simply made up
of blood and muscle and bone.

I've been looking all my life
at the signs surrounding us,

in the media,
or on people's lips,

the religious types
outside St Patrick's Cathedral,

shouting to the men and women
in the gay parade:

"You won't be here next year.
You'll get AIDS and die! Ha ha!"

Nan Goldin curated this show
with the idea of

choosing the work of people that she knew
who were affected by AIDS,

who were living with AIDS.

She wanted to dispel
the notion of AIDS victim.

Now, I'm hardly a victim
if I can resist.

What I see is institutionalized
ignorance about this epidemic.

She also wanted to deal
with issues of sexuality

in the midst of this epidemic.

That there was sexuality,
there was safe sexuality,

and that this was going
to continue to occur,

despite the silencing of that information
by a church or government.

There is really
important work in the show.

Like David's.
Like Peter Hujar's.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia.

Mark Morrisroe.

Greer Lankton.

Darrel Ellis.

People both really well-known
and people unknown.

It was about
the loss of a community.

And trying to keep
people's legacy alive.

I called David and asked him
to write for my catalogue.

I sent him pictures of
some of the work that was in it,

and I said, "You can
write whatever you want.

"I'll support
whatever you write."

I was asked to write
a catalogue essay

pertaining to a show dealing with AIDS
and a community of people.

So I started talking about what I was
experiencing right there in my life and

dealing with image and representation
and everything seen through the framework

of having a taboo disease
in this society.

I love that this tiny, little,
skinny catalogue

with thumbnail reproductions
in black and white

could cause a major
political shake-up.

At the Artists Space Gallery
in Tribeca,

preparations are still underway
for next week's exhibit,

but the National Endowment of
the Arts has canceled its grant.

The National Endowment for
the Arts refuses to sponsor

an art show
here in New York City

because it deals with
AIDS and homosexuality

and also offends
some political sensibilities.

One thing I want to point out is
that it's artist-organized.

It's organized by a photographer
named Nan Goldin...

Susan Wyatt, the director,
got nervous about David's writing,

and so she took it to the NEA.

The catalogue reportedly
criticizes Senator Jesse Helms

for his position
on homosexuality and art,

and calls New York Cardinal O'Connor
"a fat cannibal in a black skirt."

- You think the phone is gonna ring again?
- Any minute.

About what? What do you
think it's gonna be?

It's probably Cardinal O'Connor,

expressing his direct support
of my statements.

And admitting that since he does feast on
the body of Christ, that he is a cannibal,

and that, yes, he does have a penchant
for black skirts.

He is fat, translucent and immoral.

After the news first broke,
David called, really upset,

and told me that they were
trying to make him take out

"fat fucking cannibal in black skirts."

I think it's very dangerous
and very scary.

I see an outbreak of McCarthyism
and a blacklisting of artists...

if this is continued
to allow to happen.

What happened is that the artistic focus
of the show really was lost.

And what turned out to be
the show in its present form,

was not and is not sound artistically.

Composer Leonard Bernstein managed
to become embroiled in the controversy.

This after declining
the National Medal of Arts

because of the NEA action
taking away the grant.

And the thing that makes me laugh is,
if at this point in time,

images and words that can be made
by an individual have such power

to create this storm of controversy...
Isn't that great?

It means that the control of information
has a crack in its wall.

[phone rings]

Hello. Yeah.

Hi...

Well, it's just been a zoo.

Senator Alfonse D'Amato tore up
an art catalogue on the Senate floor...

How can they ignore
the political aspect of AIDS?

Is the fact that I may be dying of AIDS
in 1989, is that not political?

Is the fact that I don't
have health insurance

and I don't have access
to adequate health care?

Is that not political?

[♪]

Vittorio was given three months to live
and he started drawing cartoons.

He was still alive
a year and a half later.

That's the wake of Vittorio.

Cookie had already lost her voice.

She was constantly writing so people
could see what she needed and wanted.

Then Sharon came back
to take care of Cookie.

The picture of Sharon nursing Cookie...

To me, this is the meaning of love.

I was raging.

"Call this doctor. Call that doctor.
Someone's gonna be able to help her.

"There's got to be something.
There's a treatment out there somewhere."

And then to realize
there was no doctor to call.

It was just... I didn't get it.

We had Cookie's memorial
at St Mark's Church,

and the next day,
"Witnesses" opened.

My name is David Wojnarowicz.

I'd like to read this
in memory of Peter Hujar,

Keith Davis, Bebe Smith,
Cookie Mueller, Vittorio.

One of the first steps in making
the private grief public

is the ritual of memorials,

and I've attended a number of memorials
in the last five years,

and at the last one I attended,

I suddenly found myself experiencing
something akin to rage.

What made me angry,

what made me angry was realizing
that the memorial had little reverberation

outside the room it was held in,

and at the same time,
worry that friends

will solely become
professional pallbearers,

waiting for each death of their lovers,
friends and neighbors,

and polishing
their funereal speeches,

perfecting their rituals of death rather
than a relatively simple ritual of life,

such as screaming
in the streets.

Not the church! Not the state!
We decide what art is great!

[protesters chanting]

Step on the sidewalk,
can't stay in the street.

And I imagine what it would be like
if friends had a demonstration

each time a lover or a friend
or a stranger died of AIDS.

And I imagine
what it would be like,

each time a lover or friend
or stranger died of AIDS,

or of this disease,

their friends, lovers or neighbors
would take their dead body

and drive with it in a car
100 mph to Washington, D.C.,

and blast through the gates
of the White House

and come to a screeching halt
before the entrance,

and then dump their lifeless
forms on the front steps.

But bottom line,
even a tiny charcoal scratch

done as a gesture to mark
a person's response to this epidemic,

means whole worlds to me,
if it's hung in public.

And bottom line, we have to find our own
forms of gesture and communication.

You can never depend
on the mass media to reflect us

or our needs
or our states of mind.

[chanting]

NEA, stop your tricks!
Art is sex and politics!

Mark Morrisroe died
soon after it opened.

[♪]

David Wojnarowicz died in 1992.

People don't really understand
the anger, and frustration,

and pain of those years.

They don't understand
what we went through.

It's still killing people.

It never went away.

David Armstrong died in 2014.

You know, we spent
a lot of our life together.

Decades of friendship.

[protestors chant in French]

[chanting in French continues]

Many people have started to refuse
donations from the Sacklers,

including the Guggenheim Museum,
the Met Museum, the Tate,

and the National Portrait Gallery,
as well as medical institutions worldwide.

We need to demand that
the Louvre stand by and hear us,

and be the first
to take down their name.

[drumming solemnly]

- Can I ask you a question?
- What?

- When you overdosed, were you alone?
- Yeah.

Totally.

I thought it was dope,
so I snorted it and it was fentanyl.

And a lot of people want fentanyl,
but I was not prepared for fentanyl.

And I just went out like that.
I just went out.

And then I came back.
And then I went out again.

Nobody brought me back.
I just came back.

I'm so lucky
that I came back by myself.

I mean, all the judgment of people
who are addicted to drugs

are stigmatized
without understanding

what the experience of
not having these drugs is.

To have to go
through withdrawal.

Your brain is stripped of
its opioid receptors,

so you have no protection
from any kind of pain.

It's not just the physical part.

It's like... the darkest...

you can go.
It's a darkness of the soul.

It's unbearable.

[♪]

[phone ringing]

Okay. I am here.

You can come by
whenever you want.

- Hello
- Hi.

- What did you say?
- I'm here at the restaurant.

You can come here
whenever you want.

- Great. How many did you get?
- All that you wanted.

[phone hangs up]

[♪]

[phone ringing]

- Yeah.
- Hi.

- Who is it?
- You still in the bed?

Oh, no, I never went to sleep.

You know what really hit me as peculiar?

And I've been thinking about it
all morning.

Misery does not love company.
Misery loves attention... in this case.

[♪]

[sound of windshield wipers]

The supply has become very dirty.
Basically lethal.

Fentanyl is in everything now.

Isn't this fentanyl here?

So fentanyl has like one big peak,
coke has two peaks right here.

And they're at
slightly different numbers.

- Okay.
- Here you can see this deviates.

You want to show them
the bloody ones you did?

No, but it's good 'cause
then it will be obvious it's not real.

- What is our messaging?
- Our messaging is...

"Purdue is bankrupt,
but the Sacklers aren't.

"Their personal wealth has
all been made from OxyContin

"and it needs to be
taken from them."

I think the messaging is the Sacklers
are getting away with murder.

We want their money
and where we want to spend it.

The company ends up
declaring bankruptcy.

That's this kind of amazing
escape hatch because

what happens is that Purdue,
the company, says,

"Listen, we realize
there's all these lawsuits,

"but we don't have the resources
to fight or settle them all,

"and so instead we're gonna
declare bankruptcy

"because our coffers
are almost empty."

But the reason that the coffers
are almost empty, we now know,

is that behind the scenes for a decade
leading up to this bankruptcy plea,

the Sacklers have been quietly
siphoning money out of the company.

So they took more than $10 billion out of
the company before it declares bankruptcy.

- Whose money?
- Our money!

- Whose blood?
- Our blood!

[protesters chanting]

- You think they could get away with this?
- Of course. Yes.

I never expected that
they'd be held accountable.

I don't think that much money can be
taken away from a billionaire family.

[cracking egg]

The fact that a bankruptcy court is
deciding a public crisis issue is crazy.

That's the problem.

So I've been involved
since the beginning basically.

At some point,
a lightbulb went on and I was like:

"Let's bring the activism
into the courtroom,"

and ever since then,
we've been fighting in the court.

And we weren't exactly welcome
the first time.

You know, we're like little assassins,
we go in and get out.

I told the lawyer for Purdue
that I'm doing it pro-bono.

He was like, "What?"

He was like,
"What? Wait, what?"

You know, because they spend
$30 million a month

on legal fees and
professional fees in this case.

There's like 80-something attorneys
and people on this call.

That's a lot.

Good morning, this is Judge Drain.
This is a completely telephonic hearing.

We're here today in re:
Purdue Pharma L.P.

Your Honor, we think
there's a huge mistake here.

We think the process that
the DOJ went through was wrong.

We think that the results,
which are completely vague and baffling

to me and my clients, is wrong.

The DOJ neither invited input
from Purdue's victims,

nor the public, nor apparently
any members of the House and Senate.

The negotiation between these two parties,
the DOJ and Purdue/The Sacklers alone,

is not sufficient to make
this kind of policy decision.

My clients are like
the Ghost of Christmas Past,

they're here to tell you in 2007,

they saw there was a problem,
the problem got worse,

and this is our moment,
their moment, to tell you

we gotta make sure
that the future is safer.

Okay, well...
All right, thank you.

Good morning, Your Honor, and good morning
to everyone who is on the line.

Your Honor, Mr. Quinn
many times used the phrase

"Purdue/The Sacklers,"

the kind of suggestion that Purdue
and the Sacklers are in this together

is really not helpful.

And it's just, it's not fair.

This is so depressing.

Thank you so much, Mike, thank you
so much for going out there and battling.

I feel proud to be doing it,
and, whatever, we're in it.

The fact that our group
is in the bankruptcy,

at the front of the bankruptcy, fighting
every single thing, tooth and nail,

- is pretty amazing.
- Yeah, it's pretty funny.

It's fucking crazy.

Is there any chance
of criminal charges?

No.

The way the plan's structured,
if the DOJ filed

criminal charges
against the Sacklers now,

it would blow up
the whole bankruptcy.

So effectively, they just dodged
criminal liability.

We followed these people
into bankruptcy court

and we're watching them completely
manipulate the justice system.

There's no justice for us,
only for billionaires.

So all we can hope is that the money
in the settlement

that goes to the states,
goes to the right places,

that it goes to harm reduction,
and not policing.

[cheering, applause]

That it goes to groups like you
that are saving lives.

This is a proceeding in federal court.

It is being held remotely,

but the rules and decorum
of a federal court apply.

Yeah.

So let me confirm,
I see David Sackler on the screen,

and I see Theresa Sackler.

Richard Sackler is on the phone

and will stay on the phone
throughout this proceeding.

Dr. Sackler, can you confirm
that for me?

Yes, Your Honor, I am here
on the phone and I'm listening.

Before we start, there's one clarification
I wanted to make:

I believe Richard said
that he is listening.

I believe that he's also supposed
to say that he is watching,

he's supposed to be watching
the video but not seen.

Can he confirm that?

I can confirm that, I saw...
I've seen everything.

Okay, that's important, and thank you
for raising that, Mr. Price.

All right, the first person who will speak
today is Tiffinee Scott.

[deep breath]

Richard. David. Theresa.

We have never met,

but I feel like I already have a
relationship with you due to OxyContin.

Have you ever provided
Narcan to one of your children?

Have you revived one of
your children from an overdose?

I have.

There are no words
to describe my pain.

In May of 2020, she was found
unresponsive, lifeless...

lifeless in bed by me,
her mother.

The deceit and horror you all caused,
shame on you.

I remember the day Trent told me
he was addicted to OxyContin.

He called me from the campus
of the University of Alabama.

I could tell in his voice,
there was great fear.

I drove the three hours, he met me
in tears, we wept together.

"Dad, I can't stop taking Oxy.
Dad, I'm afraid I'm going to die."

- And he did.
- This is so hard.

I encountered opioids for the first time
shortly after you launched OxyContin.

And I am one of the living survivors
of your monumental greed.

I hope that every face,

every single victim's face
haunts your every waking moment...

- It won't.
- ...and your sleeping ones, too.

Thank you.

The next person to speak
is Nan Goldin.

It's nice to finally see
the Sacklers, face-to-face.

The Sacklers' so-called apology,
which was mandated by this settlement,

is insulting to all of us
who have been damaged by them.

One family is largely responsible
for the onset of this crisis

that has led to the deaths
of over half a million Americans,

and caused irreparable damage
for generations to come.

Yet their settlement grants them immunity,
not just for themselves,

but for generations
of Sacklers to come.

Purdue has been found guilty
of federal crimes,

but its private owners
have never been prosecuted.

We hope the Justice Department
will pursue criminal charges.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

[woman screaming, panicked]

They're already on the way,
they've already been dispatched.

Has he taken anything?

I just don't know.
He has in the past.

[woman screaming]

Oh, my God.

- You said he's 20 years old?
- Yes.

- What's his name?
- Pardon me?

- What's his name?
- Bryan...

- We're on the way, okay?
- Thank you, sir.

4,804 days.

Richard, if you're still listening,

that's how many days
since I made that horrifying call.

I have lived with
the pain and heartache

as a result of the loss of my only child,
a pain you will never understand.

I can only echo
the pain and suffering

that Kristy feels and that all of us
that are here today feel.

I want to point out to the Sacklers that
by the time this two-hour hearing is over,

you can add 16 more people
to your death list.

I asked my father for records
from the hospitals she'd been in.

And he gave them to me
without reading them himself.

So this box came...

"The Box," I think of it as,
with the primary documents.

[♪]

There was the history of Barbara for me
to read and I was terrified.

I wanted to know,
but I didn't want to know.

[♪]

I didn't understand that the first place
she was sent was actually an orphanage.

And then she burned down
the curtains and ran away.

She's described as a
"rebellious adolescent."

It says in the interviews
that the psychiatrist thought that

Mrs. Goldin should be in the hospital,
not Miss Goldin.

And that's actually written
in the hospital record.

[♪]

My mother had been sexually abused
for years by a family member.

And when my sister hit puberty,
my mother couldn't cope with it.

My sister didn't have any outlet.
She didn't have any context.

It was not mental illness.

I just knew how hard it was
for her to be alive.

She wanted a home so badly.

If she had found people,
if she'd been loved,

she would have survived.

[♪]

[sound of locomotive
approaching]

[locomotive speeding by]

Persons in the area told police
they had seen Miss Goldin

a short time before

when she asked when
the next train was due to pass.

Shortly before 5:30 p.m., persons said,
Miss Goldin put her pocketbook

on the ground next to the tracks,
then lay down across the tracks

as the Capitol Limited approached.

The train's engineer told police
they saw her and nailed the brakes,

but were unable to stop the train.

Pathological examiner
ruled her death as a suicide.

Other significant conditions contributing
to death: severe mental depression.

I mean, that's the problem,
you grow up being told,

"That didn't happen.
You didn't see that.

"You didn't hear that."
And what do you do?

How do you believe yourself?
How do you trust yourself?

How do you continue
to trust yourself?

And then how do you
show the world

that you did experience that,
that you did hear that?

So that's the reason
I take pictures.

- Nan, what are you...?
- Beautiful, you look beautiful.

- Nan, does that have sound?
- Yeah.

Oh, my dear!

Let's go, honey.

My mom's a dance fanatic.

[♪]

And she's gonna teach
her old husband how to move it.

I like to do this...

- Go, Mom!
- Go for it.

[♪]

My father and mother
were not equipped to be parents.

They had children
because it was expected,

more than it was about
nurturing other human beings.

That looks good!

- Yeah, but hold it up more.
- Is that high enough?

- Yeah, that's beautiful.
- You can see it?

Barbara loved Nan very much.
They were very, very close.

When she died, she had in her pocketbook
a very beautiful, small book of Psalms.

And she had this
wonderful quotation from...

- Conrad...
- The Heart of Darkness.

Joseph Conrad. She was also,
like Nan, a very wide reader.

And I have the quotation upstairs,
but it had in it something about...

- Can you stop?
- Yeah...

- You should get the quotation.
- Stop.

- Something about regrets.
- Yeah. Infinite regrets.

Is it on now?

Quotation from
Heart of Darkness...

And it was just written
on a piece of paper?

"It's a droll thing life is,
that mysterious arrangement

"of merciless logic
for a futile purpose.

"The most you can hope for
is some knowledge of yourself...

"that comes too late...

"A crop of unextinguishable regrets."

I think this story is an important story,
not just for me, but for society...

About conformity and denial.

And also about stigma.

The wrong things are kept secret
and that destroys people.

My sister was a victim of all that,
but she knew how to fight back.

Her rebellion was
the starting point for my own.

She showed me the way.

- Let's turn off for a minute.
- Yeah.

[mic turns off]

[♪]

Oh, wow.

[laughing]

Wow.

We did it, baby.

Four years of work.
Congress didn't do anything.

Justice Department
hasn't done anything.

Bankruptcy court, you know,
completely left them better than ever.

You know, they're completely
vindicated by bankruptcy court.

And so this is the only place they're
being held accountable, the only place.

And we did it.

Wow...

Oh, my goodness.
What a feeling.

- Incredible.
- It's amazing.

- The Sacklers are now "private sources."
- Here, stay there.

It doesn't say
what private sources.

Beautiful!

- Oh, man!
- It's so good!

It's hard to believe.

[♪]

[MUSIC: "Unsuffer Me"
by Lucinda Williams]

[♪]

♪ Unlock my love ♪

♪ And set me free ♪

♪ Come fill me up ♪

♪ With ecstasy ♪

♪ Surround my heartbeat
with your fingertips ♪

♪ Unbound my feet,
untie my wrists ♪

♪ Come in to my world
of loneliness ♪

♪ And wickedness ♪

♪ And bitterness ♪

♪ Unlock my love ♪

♪ Unsuffer me ♪

♪ Take away the pain ♪

♪ Unbruise, unbloody ♪

♪ Wash away the stain ♪

♪ Anoint my head ♪

♪ With your sweet kiss ♪

♪ My joy is dead ♪

♪ I long for bliss ♪

♪ I long for knowledge ♪

♪ Whisper in my ear ♪

♪ Undo my logic, undo my fear ♪

♪ Unsuffer me ♪