Stuff You Gotta Watch: Small Town Ecstasy
How far would you go to be the cool parent in a custody battle? In Small Town Ecstasy, a cautionary, bleak brick from 2002, 40-year-old Scott finds emotional rebirth post-divorce by going to raves and taking Ecstasy with his 18-year-old son Craig. But his midlife crisis deepens at a house party, where Scott is joined by his 15-year-old daughter Heather and 13-year-old son Sam, and gives them money to buy and do Ecstasy all together. On camera. The documentary revolves around the fallout of Scott’s decision, leering at raves as sites of sin while tracking Scott’s commitment to this new lifestyle.
Scott claims to have never even drunk alcohol until a few months before the film crew found him, but he's thrown himself full-bore into partying. The rave scenes are a runway of turn-of-the-millenium fashion, with a surplus of neon visors and frosted tips, and Scott works the blurry crowds with frantic intent, like he's making up for lost time. A moment of levity comes from one of Scott's moderately hilarious critiques: “Trance is too mellow and jungle’s a little too much—fuckin’ house is the thing. House rocks, baby!"
The film contrasts Scott's obvious love for his kids with an unrelenting sequence of awful decisions. His ex-wife Sheri intercepts a letter from her daughter describing the house party, cannon fodder for a court case for which Scott is woefully underprepared. "I'm more excited about going raving tonight than I am concerned about this," he says walking into one date, only to be arrested for drug possession when he comes home. After getting released and considering suicide, then homicide, he decides to call his son and still go raving, buying more pills in the process.
Scott insists he's in the right, at least compared to his ex-wife: "I'm not the one that's fucked up." His hands-off demeanor contrasts with Sheri's fears—she sends Craig articles with headlines like “Nazi Crank Craze Sweeps America” and recalls his missionary work. There's eventually something like a family therapy session, shot with awkward intimacy, where his daughter Heather asks whether Scott would rather “do E or see us,” a binary Scott wholeheartedly rejects.
The son of a pastor, Scott claims he's never spoken to his own dad about anything deep, and so chooses to be as transparent with his kids as possible. Scott speaks often of this inherited pain, willing to psychoanalyze his emotional roadmap while ignoring his present actions. He justifies his behavior as based on a perception of what God is or isn’t, at one point asserting that Jesus would have definitely gone raving, and mentions crying when he listens to the Harry Chapin song “Cat’s in the Cradle.” “I never wanted to be like that with my kids," he says. Later, the song comes on the radio as he’s folding socks with Craig, and Scott cries again. This time, his son cries too.
Review by Aaron Gonsher. Check out the full archive of the Stuff You Gotta Watch column.