A Camosun College student is seeing his experience with his harm-reduction work—and his hard-partying past—reflected in a new feature film, River Road, which he is the co-producer of.
Second-year Social Work student (and frequent Nexus contributor) Fred Cameron says that his childhood friend Rob Willey, who wrote and directed the movie, aims to tackle themes of drug abuse with the film, which circles back to Cameron’s life.
“I work in harm reduction, offering support to people who are currently in addiction, many of whom are homeless and living a life that’s centred around drug use,” he says.
Cameron—who is currently taking a short break from his Camosun studies but hopes to return and graduate next year—says that his childhood friendship with Willey eventually turned into a life of partying together, which, for Cameron, led into a life of addiction.
“So he had this film in the works for a while,” says Cameron. “He had sent me a script initially, just to review the script, because as somebody who had lived a life of partying I knew a lot about the subject matter of this film, which is largely based on drug use.”
Once Willey had everything lined up for the movie, he brought on Cameron as co-producer.
“Normally he wouldn’t have asked me for money, but he came to me and offered me an opportunity to get in as a producer, which, you know, for a struggling student who’s working part-time, the idea of that was incredibly scary but exciting at the same time,” says Cameron.
Despite it being scary, Cameron says he saw this as an opportunity—Willey already had one feature film, 2016’s Dark Cove, under his belt—so he jumped at it. As far as further details about the movie go, Cameron describes a cautionary tale.
“Basically, it’s a gentleman who had gotten himself into a lot of trouble with drug use, after he had gotten out of the lifestyle giving a recount of how he had gotten himself into that situation,” he says. “You see in the preview—it shows the lead actor telling the story of how he got into drugs and got back out through a sponsor in a 12-step program.”
For Cameron, although the movie is entertainment, the themes are deeply connected with his own life, work, and story.
“I’m going to be honest with you—my life path and now career is one very deeply rooted in addictions, suffering, and then an improvement to quality of life is now my life focus,” he says. “So drug use is essential to my story and there are a lot of ups and downs attached to that. It’s been quite a trip. But at the same time, this, on the other hand, is about drug use, it’s about the culture, and it’s about the trauma associated with it, but there’s a separation between life and art. This is a stylized film that’s really for entertainment. It’s very well done, incredibly good visuals, but it’s separate from what I do in the real world.”
Despite the heavy subject matter, Cameron insists the film itself was made for fun, and says that it’s been a lot of fun to work on.
“The film itself is a stylized piece that’s made for fun,” he says. “It’s very entertaining. It was great to take part in, loved seeing it in the theatre for the first time.”
River Road premiered on October 1 in the US, and is screening on Saturday, October 16 at the Vic Theatre. Details on streaming are yet to be announced.