t’s so alive, so sensual, so rich.... I love PAYDIRT.... I love that woman who made PAYDIRT,” said Modern Thinking, the Dutch art and culture magazine when PAYDIRT premiered in Holland at the Dutch National Film Theatre. In Hof, Germany, Europe's reigning avant-garde film festival, the critics said, "A morality tale of the finest order!" and "PAYDIRT is ahead of its time!" and "Reminiscent of the best of Eric Rohmer, where the last half hour makes you think differently about everything that went before." In this exciting event for New American Cinema, PAYDIRT delighted the Dutch. Bert Jansma wrote in Het Bin- nenhof, “Funny! . . a touch of the classical western ... PAYDIRT has been made with verve. Penny Allen tells her story in a delightful manner supported by excellent photography.” j^ n d another: “. . . good storytelling with an en- chanting nonchalance. Of particular note is the superb acting. It’s obvious that Allen knows a great deal about the kind of people she has put in her movie. She comes from Oregon, where wine-grape growing is starting to flourish—and also another crop. A very hefty chunk of money comes from growing marijuana.... Particularly remarkable is the striking authenticity of the main character played by Lola Desmond.” (Eric van der Velden writing in Het Vaterland) at in ack on American soil the U.S. Film Festival Utah, PAYDIRT was a finalist and the box-office hit of the festival! AYDIRT is a film full of looming ironies, crisp wit, and poignant humor. It is a film about forces of will in opposition. At base, what’s in question is land ... access to i t ... control of its use ... control of its resources. After all, isn’t that what most wars are all about? All this at a time when the Northwest (where the film was made) and Northern California, have admitted to wide-spread marijuana cultivation problems. It is estimated that marihuana may now have become the pAYDIKp largest cash crop in the area, with illegal sales now exceeding $1 billion. Local politics combines with potent chemistry to make PAYDIRT a domestic hit!” High Times features PAYDIRT in the March Issue: "Hw ow h o c le a n m yo a u r ij f u ilm an a a crop, detailing the harvest, without getting the whole crew busted? Obviously, When the cropis in, the game begins PAYDIRT JL . A Penny Allen Film J L Based on a true story starring LOLA DESMOND,ERIC SILVERSTEIN,& DANIEL ODELL Director of Photography ERIC EDWARDS Associate Producer JACK Music By JONATHAN NEWTON Written, Directed&Produced by PE From PAYDIRT PRODUCTIONS ©1981 you need the cooperation of the growers themselves. And that’s what writer-director Penny Allen had in PAYDIRT— a film centering around a small community of vintners and winegrowers, some of whom grow pot on the side to finance their grape crops. The incidents of the movie are based on fact: on a series of burglaries and ripoffs of small, independent growers in southern Oregon. The backgrounds and many of the details are authentic; part of PAYDIRT was shot in a sinsemilla field, to which the actors and crew had to travel blindfolded. ... The photography, by young Eric Edwards, is especially spectacular, imbuing every scene with a radiant, iridescent clarity and unsentimental romanticism. The story itself is a thriller—more shocking, actually, because all the incidents, up to a point, are taken from real life. High Times: What was the real-life basis for the movie? Allen: Somebody told me a story ... about three or four years ago in which a group of people were raising marijuana as a cash crop and got held up at six A.M.: Knock on the door, one person went downstairs to open up, then everyone was held hostage. They got the kids down on the floor, put their feet on the kids’ heads.... It was really violent and gross. And they took their crops and went away. But there’s more. They came back the next morning at six o’clock and said: ‘Today, you have to get your neighbor’s dope.’ So, it’s like a socialization of the crime: you’re forcing somebody to rip off their neighbor. That’s when the story gets interesting for me: I’m interested in the nature of community. And so they did go over and get their neighbor’s dope—and their kids actually did get on the CB and call one of their neighbors. And a group of people actually did head off these escaping thugs at the pass. And shot them. And they were never heard of again. Their truck was buried, and so were they. Have you heard this exact story? High Times: I’ve heard about three stories like it. Allen: I thought about that story for a couple of years. I began to think it would be really interesting to have the people growing dope because they couldn’t make a living with their wine—because then I could contrast the legal intoxicant with the illegal intoxicant. And as soon as that idea occurred to me, I could hardly control the development, it went so fast. I began to think symbolically: The two crops have to be separated—so I split them up with the train trestle. And then you get to introduce the railroad—which always stands for progress and the push of American capitalism. So, of course, the people ripping them off have to be either Mafia or shadowy tobacco interests. High Times: Why didn’t you have the movie end the way it did in real life: with the robbers getting killed? Allen: I thought that was a story for Sam Peckinpah. It stops at the moment of violence. I am not interested in that. The movie is really about Nancy having her moment ij^, history. Clinton St. Quarterly
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