That dream ended when a few days after the interview , Tracy was busted for possession of heroin and sent to jail to serve an 8-month sentence. But everyone's preoccupied with the street. Most of the people on the street have an addiction, and if you don't, well. . . Tracy's involuntary withdrawal from that community presents a logistical problem for Okazaki, one that has come up repeatedly during filming. You just have no control.
People leave town.
Kids go from overdosing, to detox, to suicide, to jail in a single day. But it's a process. And the trick is putting some of that process into the film. Still debating whether or not to use narration or interior dialogue in the film, Okazaki weighs both the freedoms and dangers of putting oneself in the story. Maybe the way to show it is to have some of that conversation, maybe that would work.