TV Junkie (2006)

Friends, this is the end of my addiction film series. This documentary is put together from thousands of hours of video footage shot by a guy whose name I am struggling to forget. He documented more or less his entire life, including a career on TV, marriage, two children, and a crack addiction. Does one of those elements sound like a bad idea? It's hard to overstate how bad an idea it was. I was doing ok until, toward the end, we watch a fight (not the first, to say the least) between him and his wife, carried out in front of their weeping three-year-old, who is asking questions like, "why did you hit mommy, daddy?" To which the reply, "don't worry about it, she's probably gonna shoot me now." If you like pain you're going to love the child's eyes as he cries, "Why? I don't want to!" I finally got smart enough to fast-forward. The thing is, this is a man who really, truly, loves his family, which makes not the smallest difference as he puts them through hell. He ends up clean, lecturing high school students on the dangers of addiction...as if that too, is likely to make even the smallest difference.