Virginia in the Spotlight

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Roanoke author Beth Macy’s book got Hollywood’s attention.

Virginia's film industry has helped produce hits like Homeland, The Walking Dead, and Wonder Woman 1984. But Hulu’s recent eight-part series Dopesick, based on the book by Roanoke author Beth Macy, hits especially close to home. It has also just been nominated for 14 Emmy Awards.

Starring Michael Keaton, Dopesick has earned critical acclaim for exposing the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, for their role in the opioid crisis. When OxyContin was introduced in 1996, the company targeted physicians in Virginia’s coal mining communities, claiming the powerful prescription narcotic was not addictive.

“It was important for me to have the series filmed in Virginia—Dopesick is a Virginia story; the epidemic began in rural southwestern Virginia, and those communities are still among the hardest hit in the nation,” says Macy, who co-executive produced the series with Warren Littlefield, the hitmaker behind Fargo and The Handmaid’s Tale.

It was Litttlefield who championed the true story by Macy, a former reporter for The Roanoke Times. “We were blown away when Warren Littlefield showed us Beth Macy’s book,” said Bert Salke, president of FOX 21 television studios in a statement.

Filmed in Clifton Forge, Petersburg, Cartersville, Hopewell, and Richmond in 2021, the series employed hundreds of Virginia-based crew members, says Andy Edmunds, director of the Virginia Film Office, including caterers, prop masters, technicians, costume designers, extras, and more.

As in the book, the series shows how patients who were prescribed OxyContin to relieve legitimate pain became addicted. The drug left patients facing intense withdrawal symptoms that created a desperate need for anything—including heroin—to provide relief.

Macy hopes the Hulu series will help those still impacted by OxyContin: “Whatever attention the show can bring to the causes of the crisis— and how much work is yet to be done in places where OxyContin first landed—will help, ultimately, remove barriers to care and stigma.”

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Dopesick

Beth Macey says she does not use stereotypes in her book. That is just not true. All the pictures in her book are very black and white with people looking like the bottom of the black and white heap. While there is a glamour shot of her on the back cover. Her writing is very negative and she does not interview anyone actually a victim of addiction in Lee County. Dr. Van Zee is from Nevada and Beth Davies is from along Island New York. In the filming, all the scenes within the region are shot dark. All the people have greasy hair and second hand Walmart clothes. Even Danny Strong got into the act. He created the women coal miner. If she and her father were working in a contract mines they would each be making six figures. They would have had tricked out trucks, ARVs, much nicer houses. They would certainly been middle class. She would not have been a quilter. There are a lot of filming techniques and language technique to make the mountain folks look and sounds like pitiful others. The story is great but it is not great for the image of Appalachia. Barry Meier wrote about the Lee County problem in his book, Pain Killer. He talked to local folks. He wrote that story before Ms Macey. Why didn’t Ms Macey go to Maine and write her own story instead of stepping off the back of another author in obviously othering, negative tone? Everyone says to me, but it’s such an important story to get out there. I agree the story is important but not at the expense of a people and culture that is Central Appalachia. When is the stereotyping going to stop and the othering stop?

Sue Kobak 250 days ago

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