A lot of us who are a little more established are concerned about the heroin use that we see in our own industry. One can only assume that it's more pervasive in all of American society right now than people are willing to admit. Woods hopes that what sets Paradise apart is its brutal honesty. A lot of these movies like Trainspotting and Leaving Las Vegas, as brilliant as they are, seem to only want to show the horrors' of addiction. And that's what the fun and exuberance of this movie is about-I mean somebody must be enjoying dope or they wouldn't be doing it.
Many critics feel drug movies romanticize the high life, despite their high-minded ideals.
Woods is emphatic in his defense of Clark's gutsy verit approach. Kids can smell bullshit a mile away. We hope to reach kids on their own level of reality, through truth. Truth was all over Clark's directorial debut KIDS, a stark portrait of a group of nihilist New York adolescents assuaging their alienation through promiscuity, alcohol and violence. Paradise is no holiday either.