I’ve always been curious about what actors put up their noses when they’re doing coke on film. Baking soda? Powdered sugar? Talcum powder?
All sound pretty unhealthy and very painful. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!
Johnny Depp used a powdered baby laxative :eek:
From here: Ted Demme - News - IMDb
Why use baby laxative, though? Surely, plain old baking soda will look right for the shot, and shouldn’t cause you any problems.
As a guest you can’t search, but this question has been addressed a couple of times before. And always asked by guests, it seems.
The longest and best thread is Snorting White Powder.
It seems there are several alternatives. Does this mean the story of the undercover cop becoming addicted is just a fallacy, as he can palm the powder for something less noxious?
What I’d really like to know is, is the weed in movies real? Sometimes it’s just crumbly green plant matter that could be dried herb, but other times you’ll see huge nuggets that couldn’t possibly be anything but the real thing.
Usually they do some fancy camera angles and editing techniques so that smoking weed is heavily implied, but not entirely shown on screen. For instance, you may see them flick a lighter, hear the bubbler going, and see the toker make a gesture as if exhaling, but often you won’t see much (or any) smoke come out. Or in that sentence I just wrote, it’s “obvious” the dude is smoking pot but not once did I mention it. Filmmakers/TV crews get away with it because it’s usually pretty tedious to show the guy breaking up bud, picking out seeds and stems (depending on locality), loading a bowl, showing the torch flame said bowl, the smoke travel up the piece into the mouth into the lungs, and exhaling, while talking about how “this is some dank ass marihuana”. Cocaine and heroin users in media usually follow the same thing --you’ll see the guy break it out and him go down on the rail with a dollar in his mouth, but rarely is he really snorting it up.
Of course, there are times when the product and its use is shown plain as day. Just like the last paragraph, it depends on the studio, whether they’re guys in suits trying to be “edgy” but still keep to a wide audience, or daring low-budget types who are probably, ah, familiar with the subject matter themselves. You’re not likely to get prosecuted if a character in your film smokes real weed on camera, since there’s so many hurdles to go through (like time, as movies take months) before anything can be done.
That isn’t a very great answer and may be not what you’re looking for at all, so apologies on that, but hopefully it’s worth something.
I understand that some narcs would carry their own snorting tubes that prevented the drug from reaching their nostrils. Yet, I would think at some point they would have to use the other people’s paraphernalia as a sign of trust.
Whether true or not, the fictional work The Wet Parade, which dealt with Prohibition agents, indicated that enforcement agents often had to drink the product, mainly to confirm that it was in fact booze.