Films
A number of films have depicted or referred to the use of solvent inhalants. In the 1980 comedy film Airplane!, the character of McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) refers to his inhalant use when he states, "I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue." In the 1996 film Citizen Ruth, the character Ruth (Laura Dern), a homeless drifter, is depicted inhaling patio sealant from a paper bag in an alleyway. In the tragicomedy Love Liza, the main character, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, plays a man who takes up building remote-controlled airplanes as a hobby to give him an excuse to sniff the fuel in the wake of his wife's suicide. Harmony Korine's 1997 film Gummo depicts adolescent boys inhaling contact cement for a high. Edet Belzberg's 2001 documentary Children Underground chronicles the lives of Romanian street children addicted to inhaling paint. Yet another film that depicts the drug use is The Basketball Diaries, in which a group of boys are huffing carbona cleaning liquid at 3 minutes and 27 seconds into the movie, and, further into the movie, a boy is reading a diary describing the experience of sniffing the cleaning liquid.
In the David Lynch film Blue Velvet, the bizarre and manipulative character played by Dennis Hopper uses a mask to inhale amyl nitrite. In Little Shop of Horrors, Steve Martin's character dies from nitrous oxide inhalation. The 1999 independent film Boys Don't Cry depicts two young low-income women inhaling aerosol computer cleaner (Compressed gas) for a buzz. In The Cider House Rules, Michael Caine's character is addicted to inhaling ether vapors. In Thirteen, the main character, a teen, uses a can of aerosol computer cleaner to get high. In the action movie Shooter, an ex-serviceman on the run from the law (Mark Wahlberg) inhales nitrous oxide gas from a number of Whip-It! whipped cream canisters until he becomes unconscious. The film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas describes how the two main characters inhale diethyl ether and amyl nitrite. The South African film The Wooden Camera also depicts the use of inhalants by one of the main characters, a homeless teen, and their use in terms of socio-economic stratification. The titular characters in Samson and Delilah sniff petrol; in Samson's case, possibly causing brain damage.
In the 2004 film Taxi, Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon are trapped in a room with a burst tank containing nitrous oxide. Queen Latifah's character curses at Fallon while they both laugh hysterically. Fallon's character asks if it is possible to die from nitrous oxide, to which Queen Latifah's character responds with "It's laughing gas, stupid!" Neither of them suffered any side effects other than their voices becoming much deeper while in the room.
In the French horror film Them, (2006) a French couple living in Romania are pursued by a gang of street children who break into their home at night. Olivia Bonamy's character is later tortured and forced to inhale aurolac from a silver-colored bag.
During a flashback scene in the 2001 film Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter gets Mason Verger high on amyl nitrate poppers, then convinces Verger to cut off his own face and feed it to his dogs.
Read more about this topic: Dusting (inhalent Abuse), In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word films:
“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930)
“Does art reflect life? In movies, yes. Because more than any other art form, films have been a mirror held up to society’s porous face.”
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“Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.”
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