Paul Perrier's Cracked Not Broken is a compelling look at addiction and how it can affect even the girl next door. When you meet Lisa, the real-life "star" of this documentary, it's hard to believe this smart, attractive woman actually prostitutes herself to feed her crack addiction. But it's true, and Cracked Not Broken is a glimpse into an average day-in-the-life of a crack addict, from answering calls from men looking for "dates" to getting high.

Hulu: This film was part of a series about addiction on HBO. How did that come to be?

Paul: It was part of the Addiction series. The series picked up four independent films to run alongside the Addiction series, which was sort of a documentary in itself. They picked four independent films dealing with addiction issues, and they selected “Cracked” to be one of those four.

And this story has an appeal to a general audience — Lisa could be any one of us, really.

Yeah, I think there’s sort of a stereotype of what a crackhead is, and she doesn’t fit that. She could be, like you said, any one of us. There are lots of addicts out there. You don’t know who is and who isn’t an addict, I think. It just gives you a different view on what an addict looks like or goes through.

At the end, we discover that Lisa plays an active part in helping promote the film, using it as a platform to help educate and reach out to others. Is this something that she volunteered to do herself? How did that come about?

To begin with, the film, which is sort of one scene — it’s what happens when I walk into her hotel room until I leave, and it wasn’t planned; it just happened. As I sort of explain at the beginning, she had seen something that I had been working on. At that point, she was clean and when she left our house, she said “If I ever go back into it, I’ll call you.” I didn’t even know what that meant. Six months later, I get this call from Lisa, and I go to her hotel room, not knowing — I didn’t even know what I was walking into. So I shot, and I remember looking at the rough footage because it was a very surreal experience, obviously. And I said, “Wow, there’s a film right here.” It’s got everything a film has, you know? It’s got a beginning, a middle, and there needs to be more of an end. So when I approached Lisa, it was sort of my thought, you know, I wonder if maybe a film could help its character to sobriety. I said to her, “Why don’t you come to screenings?” We started screening it in schools. Well, after the first screening, which she volunteered to come to and answer questions, I knew that it was going to take on its life of its own. And it did. It continues to, actually. It is a film, but this is also a very close, personal friend whose life was on the line. It was a very weird combination of things going on.

Do you think this would have been possible if she wasn’t so close to you and your wife, Nicole?

I don’t know. It’s a truly unique situation. The fact that I was a filmmaker and the coincidences leading up to how that afternoon came about… So is it possible? There are other shows on now — I don’t think they’re the same, but it’s been compared to that show Intervention — but this wasn’t an intervention. This was just something that happened and my camera was there. I don’t believe in intervention. I believe that a person has to change their mind somehow, whether their mind is mentally ill or ... It always comes down to whether that person will do what it takes to change the addiction. I think! [Laughs] But I’m no expert, which people began to think. It was very weird for me, too, because I’m not an addiction expert. I have a couple of friends who have had bad experiences with drugs and, for some reason, it’s a theme that keeps coming back in my work. When we were showing it at schools and stuff, parents were asking me these questions, like “How do I do this?” And well, I don’t have those answers. What I think this film is good for, it gets people talking about addiction and drugs and the dangers and whatever.

How is Lisa doing now?

She is over a year and a half clean now.

That’s incredible!

Yeah, it’s truly incredible. 

I don’t mean to sound so surprised, it’s just that, at the end, you see her progress, and it’s full of ups and downs. She keeps trying, but it never seems to last for very long. I am so happy for her.
It’s truly incredible. It’s sort of what I believed the film could do. That’s the crazy part of it, but to get to that point, it was three years of chaos. When we were showing this film at schools, she was showing up high. I documented all that. It got very weird, and then it sort of hit this plateau where we got on to Oprah. That was nine months almost to the day after we screened it for the first time. And then you’re reaching this audience of millions and millions, while nine months ago, you were showing it in the local theater. It was crazy.

In the documentary, there’s some discussion about whether addiction is an illness. What are your thoughts on the subject?

I think it’s a lot of things. It can be many things, and what I’ve learned through all this — because I’ve been exposed to people, this film has screened at a lot of drug-themed festivals, which I wasn’t even aware they had, but they do. For instance, in Toronto, there’s the Reel Madness film festival, and it’s put on by the Institute for Mental Illness, and the films all feature subjects that have to do with mental illness. Cracked Not Broken has shown at that, and has been at a few other festivals. It just showed in India at the first drug-themed film festival.

So it continues to have this life, almost like the film has a life of its own. It got to the point where ... the film cost me about $45 to make 90 percent of it. It was one hour, it was one tape, down the street from me. When I looked at it, I went “Whoa.” We decided to put a bit at the beginning with Nicole sort of setting up their relationship and friendship and who Lisa was, and myself going down there, and then at the end of it, the concept was to start showing it and see how that would work.

One of things I’ve learned is that many things can cause you to become an addict, from genetics to the environment to your friends to all that, but one guy who I found very interesting talking about the film just said that whatever the addiction is, it’s just to mask the bigger problem. So whether it’s drugs, or shopping, or work, or running, or whatever you do to excess, you’re running from something else, you’re hiding from something else. You’ve got to get to what the real problem is. I don’t really have a solid answer, it’s just a combination of a lot of things.

You put a few techniques to use during the film. For instance, when Lisa is sober, it’s shot in black and white, and when she gets high, you switch to color. Can you talk about your decision to do that?

When I started to edit it, I wanted to keep it pretty close to what the real-time thing was, but I thought there were certain things I thought I could accentuate. One of those things was the cell phone ringing, that jarring sound that went off repeatedly. The amount of calls she got in that one hour was crazy. When I was on my way down there, I was shooting it in black and white, and I don’t know why that was. Then I got into her room and saw that it was this pastel pink color. When I think about the film, when you get through that scene where she’s trying to get high, which is one of the most — I’ve watched people watch or not watch that scene; I’ve seen people walk out of the theater at that time; people have passed out during that scene. People have a real problem watching it. It’s three or four minutes of her injecting different parts of her body. But when she finally gets high, her personality changes. You see her change right away. Then she’s on this… this second part of the film, she becomes very animated. It’s a trip. It reminded me a bit of the Wizard of Oz scene where it’s all black and white, and then she lands and opens the door to Oz and it’s color. She’s on this trip. To me it made sense. It was that first part, which was a bit drab, a bit slow but interesting and building up to something, and then it just made sense to me, a bit of technique I guess, something to get the audience to think. And it did, because people question that quite a bit. I thought it worked for what was happening in the story.

How did Lisa react to the film the first time she saw it. When she was still using, you filmed her watching it, and it was interesting — she’s fascinated by the rates she charged at the time of filming.

When Lisa first saw that film, I filmed her looking at herself. She was high that time, too, watching herself. After she saw that film was when she stopped prostituting. Just seeing that footage I think changed her life. It’s a real harsh mirror. Because, to me, the drugs weren’t the dangerous part in all honesty. There are a lot of functioning drug addicts, and Lisa even talks in the film about how to use safely, what to do and not to do. It was what she was doing to get the drugs that was going to kill her. To me, when she stopped prostituting, I already thought “Well, OK, this film is a success. It’s managed to do that.” What shocked me was what she was doing to get her drugs.

And she was so casual about it in so many ways, too.

And alone. There was no man, no service. It was her, a woman out on the big city streets. It’s a big business.

Lisa’s so smart about her plan and “the game” as she calls it. She’s well educated; she had a professional career at one point. Do you think the way she approached using and selling herself was a result of her background, or was she just street smart?

I think Lisa’s a very, like you say, she’s a very well educated person and did work many jobs. I think she looked at this as a business. I remember screening this film here in Toronto at the Schulich business school. Another part of the film that I found interesting that most people didn’t have to talk about were her clients. These were all Bay Street bankers and lawyers and fathers. I’m just going, this is a February afternoon and it’s nonstop calls from our “great businessmen.” No wonder we have a financial crisis right now. Something tells me it wasn’t all business. She’s a businessperson. She ran it like a business. Like she said, she preferred having long-term clients. Lisa’s got such an amazing personality that you understand why people who were looking for that would like her.

How did you feel when she started shooting up on camera? I mean, this is someone who was your wife’s childhood friend.

Again, I’ve seen this film about 300 times since I shot it, so I relive it quite a bit. I don’t even remember. There were so many thoughts going on through my mind. Just going down there to do it was a bit of a… I called Nicole and said “What do you think? Do you think I should do this?” And she said, “Well, if you’re interested. I know Lisa, and she won’t call you again.” So I decided, well, I’ll go. And then as it all plays out, I gotta remember that scene. What’s going on here? Why am I shooting this? Even though I wasn’t making a film, I had these moral questions going on, like this shouldn’t be public, I shouldn’t be taking this. Yet it turned into a film that reached one of the biggest audiences. I believe the film happened for a reason. I can’t explain it; it’s that strange to me. When I looked at the footage the first time, I thought “This doesn’t just happen.” Everything that happened in that time period makes it a film. If a few of those things hadn’t happened, it wouldn’t have been a film. It’s strange. It’s something that continues to affect my life and how my career went, and where my career is going, and my relationship with Lisa. It affects so many things. It’s bizarre. So it was hard to shoot.

Lisa says one reason she did this with you was in hopes that, even though her addiction wasn’t good, at least it could make some good happen for others. It sounds like she has gotten something good from this film, though.
Have you learned of any examples where good things have happened as a result of this?

When I started screening this and we started going to schools, Lisa would come to every one. There’d be a screening, and then she and I would answer questions. She’d talk about her addiction, I’d talk about the filming, my part in it. After every screening, there would be this dialogue about addiction and how almost everyone in the audience was affected by it in one way or another. We have a website (www.crackednotbroken.com) and people would write in, asking Lisa for advice. Lisa would help them out. I know her story helped a lot of people on both sides, both addicts and families of addicts, about just understanding the addiction at the very least. I know it affected many people, they would write their horror stories, and they’re worse than Lisa’s. I think it will continue, hopefully the way it’s going now, going onto Hulu and those types of things. People write in on those websites, writing in their reactions to it and how it helped them live another day and stuff. I remember when we were on Oprah. The show was not what I’d hoped it would be, but still people were just blown away by Lisa and her story. It was very empowering for a lot of people.

It’s been three years since this film was released. What are you working on now?>

In all honestly, I haven’t done a film since. I did document what happened after we started screening it because I believed it would have this life of its own. It did, and it ultimately led to helping her get to where she is today, but she is not comfortable yet with the idea of putting that footage out, so my hands are a bit tied there. I don’t want to endanger her progress and she’s a personal friend. I’m hoping there’s a time to make that film.

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