TAP038 Written Off with Director Molly Hermann

Challenging Pathos

Matt Edwards grew up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, where the winters are long, they call the mosquito the state bird, and his hometown was so small that it didn't have a single store. His first high came from pills prescribed by a doctor for a botched toe surgery.
For ten years he sweat out shift after shift in restaurant kitchens, working twice as many hours as anyone else so he could pay rent and feed his addiction.
Matt was driven by a desperate need to get a fix – more often to avoid withdrawal than to get “high” in a recreational sense. To get what he needed he spun a web of fiction. He was a magnificent liar - smart, creative, persuasive - his lies fed his addiction as much as the actual drugs.
But Matt told the truth to himself in two spiral bound journals. He chronicled his daily drug use - sort of like the Bridget Jones of addiction but in cc's, milligrams and dollars instead of pounds, drinks and cigarettes. His journals also tell the story of his countless attempts to quit.
Everyday there is another front page tragedy detailing another spectacular fall from grace. What is missing is real understanding of the complicated personal experience within addiction. How does a smart, loving, promising kid move from acting in the high school play to putting a needle in his arm? WRITTEN OFF reveals that journey, in Matt's own words. Behind the addiction, there is a person - all at once lovable and despicable, funny and pathetic, young and old, destructive and aware of his failings.
Molly Hermann is a producer, director and writer whose documentary work spans genres, continents and centuries. Over the past 20 years, Molly has produced award-winning work for PBS, National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, Smithsonian Network, Animal Planet, Discovery Science and BBC America. Her work has taken her from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to a Casablanca mosque, from red rock Utah canyons to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and searching for birds of paradise in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Molly received the CINE Awards Special Jury Prize for the Smithsonian Channel program “9/11: Stories in Fragments” and an Emmy nomination for "Jefferson's Secret Bible," both produced in collaboration with the National Museum of American History. Molly is a founding partner of the Falls Church, Virginia-based company, The Biscuit Factory, which has been producing factual programming for the past 9 years.
http://www.written-off.com/