CLEVELAND — A movie star, a filmmaker and a chemical dependency counselor are halfway through a multiday road trip around Ohio and things are starting to get a little goofy.
British actor Will Poulter, Ohio-born and Brooklyn-based writer-director Adam Meeks and Annette Deao, the program director of an adult recovery court in west-central Ohio, were close enough before, having made the indie film "Union County" just last year. But nothing is quite so bonding as spending hours upon hours together packed inside a Chevrolet Traverse as they bring their film, a raw but hopeful portrait of addiction and recovery, out nationwide Friday, to independent movie theaters across the state.
A very Ohio road trip
In a lengthy interview with The Associated Press at the Cleveland Cinematheque, it becomes immediately clear that nothing is even remotely “Hollywood” about this tour.
There are no publicists, studio representatives or glam squads. One day, they all showed up to a regional news station wearing essentially the same thing (white T-shirts). Their “driver” is one of the film’s producers. They’ve made stops at family homes, including Deao’s 185-year-old renovated barn, Meeks’ uncle’s garage where he’d been storing various props and costumes from the movie “just in case.” And they're serious about finding Ohio’s best cuisine, counting Hoyo’s Kitchen, a Somali food stall inside Columbus’ North Market, as a particular highlight.
In the car, chosen primarily to accommodate two men who are over 6 feet tall, Deao supplied the snacks, a healthy smorgasbord of mandarin oranges, mangoes and coconut chocolate covered almonds. Meeks helped with the playlist (including Ohio's own Afroman). And Poulter brought the sugar-free energy drinks, which Deao did not approve of.
“Will’s a bad influence,” laughed Meeks.
Seated together, the three seem more like relatives than temporary colleagues — they are light and jovial and excited by the response to the film from their screenings at the Gateway Film Center in Columbus and The Nightlight in Akron. The regional pride, Poulter said, has been palpable, not just for the fact that it was made locally but for how it represents the human element of the opioid crisis.
The real drug court behind ‘Union County’
“When it comes to this subject matter, sometimes there’s a tendency to sort of pair the subject of devastation and tragedy with visuals that match. You look for bleak winters and depressed landscapes,” Poulter said. “This film really celebrates the beauty of both the people in the community and the natural beauty of the place.”
"Union County" was made with the help of the recovery community: Many of the faces you see on screen are not even actors — they're participants in the program, telling authentic stories of progress, setbacks and everything in between in real court sessions (participation was voluntary). Deao and Logan County Common Pleas Judge Kevin P. Braig play versions of themselves too. The main narrative is fictionalized, about foster brothers Cody (Poulter) and Jack ( Noah Centineo ) and their trials through recovery, but it's also based on real stories from people Meeks met through Deao.
Poulter, who played a pharmaceutical sales representative in the acclaimed miniseries "Dopesick" just a few years prior, was interested in exploring the crisis from another vantage point, one in which recovery is achievable. He was moved by this program that, he said, was "characterized by so much humanity and dignity and celebration and positivity and hope and all of these things that cut against the grain of the stigma that still exists."
By emphasizing successful recovery, Poulter said the film offers “something of a counternarrative to how addiction is often made the subject matter in TV shows and films.”
The story of the film began in the summer of 2017, when Meeks had gone back to the place he was born for a stay with his extended family; his family had moved away when he was 6. Upon returning, he was struck by how addiction had touched nearly everyone in some way.
“I was kind of like falling in love with this place while also kind of seeing the sort of circumstances at the time for what they were,” Meeks said.
The counselor turned breakout movie star
In a quest to learn more about regional recovery efforts, his uncle introduced him to a judge at the adult recovery court; Meeks was moved by the session he sat in on, but the story for the short and feature films really opened up after he met and got to know Deao, who has been working with addicts through the drug court program for over 20 years.
“People want to know about what it was like to try to earn the trust of the participants and convince people to be a part of it or something and so much of it was this kind of baseline trust that people had in Annette and the decisions that she made and the space that she created,” Meeks said. “There was a lot of like, ‘If you’re a friend of Annette’s, you’re a friend of ours.’”
Deao was also, it turns out, a good actor.
“At the end of filming on the short, Adam came to me and says, ‘You know, I thought you’d be good, but I really didn’t think you’d be that good,’” Deao said. “And then I said, ‘Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that I studied theater and music.’ He just about fell over.”
At several screenings, it’s been Deao who received the most applause, which was only a surprise to her. It also, Meeks said, makes her turn “bright red” every time.
“Annette is the heart and soul of the community with whom we made this film, but she’s also the heart and the soul of our film,” Poulter said. “It’s amazing to see her get the response that she gets and couldn’t be more deserving … There’s really no overstating what an amazing contribution she makes, not just to our film but daily to the community she works in.”
Mostly, Deao is just happy that they seem to have gotten it right.
“Everyone has been so generous and so kind and so encouraging that we got it right,” she said. “I just haven’t had one feeling at all that we missed something, that it wasn’t presented right.”
And they’re all already getting a little wistful about the end of the road trip.
“I have not laughed this much in years,” Deao said. “This has been so healing for me.”
After a brief stop in the projector booth, the group was off again — not to go back to their hotel rooms to spend time alone before another Q&A — but to have dinner, together, again.