‘Citizen Marc’ documentary examines the politics of Prince of Pot Marc Emery
By Laura Kane, The Canadian PressOctober 15, 2014
“Citizen Marc,” a documentary about Canadian pot activist Marc Emery, is screening in select cities across Canada in October. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Touchwood PR
TORONTO – Marc Emery is often hailed as the Prince of Pot, a beloved champion of marijuana legalization and Canadian sovereignty.
But in “Citizen Marc,” the famed activist is portrayed as an ambiguous figure, driven as much by a quest for celebrity and libertarian politics as he is by principle.
“There’s no question that Emery loves getting attention, yet there’s also the question that he’s politically effective as an activist,” said director Roger Evan Larry, who co-wrote the film with Sandra Tomc. “We leave it to the viewer to parse that out.”
The often comedic and surprising documentary is screening in select cities across Canada in October. Larry and Tomc will be joining audiences for some showings, including an event Thursday in Toronto.
“Citizen Marc” tells the story of Emery’s life up until his incarceration in a U.S. federal penitentiary in 2010 for selling cannabis seeds. He was released and returned to Vancouver earlier this year.
“He sacrificed incredibly. Love him or hate him, he’s put his ass on the line for the cause and he’s taken a hit. Five years in a U.S. penitentiary, it was no cakewalk,” said Larry in a phone interview.
Tomc and Larry — who also collaborated on the 2007 drama “Crossing” and 1996’s Gemini-nominated “Tested” — initially took an interest in Emery because they wanted a complex subject they could follow for years. The duo filmed him on a regular basis beginning in 2006.
It came as a surprise to the filmmakers that Emery, often associated with left-wing politics, actually holds libertarian views that skew conservative. As a child growing up in London, Ont., he became enamoured with capitalism and launched his own stamp-trading business that often saw him making more money than his father.
When he was a teenager, he opened a bookstore called City Lights Bookshop. He eventually discovered the writings of Ayn Rand and applied her philosophy to his life. He would later run for the Libertarian Party of Canada in the 1980 federal election.
“That was really interesting,” said Tomc, also speaking by phone. “When we realized the underlying structure of the political landscape that he was promoting, certainly for me, that was a place where I was like, ‘Whoa. This is a story to tell.'”
Emery initially devoted his energies to several different causes. While in London, he waged a number of battles against the government — defying Ontario’s Sunday shopping laws and selling banned records in his store.
It was only after a brief and ill-fated move to India that he relocated to Vancouver and found a new cause: marijuana legalization. As he says in the documentary, he was looking for “a revolution that pays for itself,” one where he could make money to be poured back into activism.
His Vancouver store and seed business turned out to be the perfect fit. He devoted most of the proceeds to legalization efforts, said Tomc.
“It’s a kind of paradoxical situation where a person’s narcissism or ego is being fed by his generosity towards others,” she said with a laugh.
Emery also reveals in the film that he believes his future was foretold by a prophecy delivered by a woman who slipped outside his bookstore when he was 19. She told him that while she was in a coma in hospital, she saw three symbols that would define his life — a dollar sign, a brain and a leaf.
“Citizen Marc” strikes a delicate balance between portraying Emery as a celebrity-seeker but also questioning whether his performance has generated meaningful political change. Larry said he personally believes Emery’s arrest was political.
“Many people were selling seeds from Canada who never were hassled by the Americans, but none of them were taking all the profits and using it to take on the U.S. government,” he said.
While Emery was imprisoned, marijuana was legalized in Washington and Colorado. Larry also credits Emery with changing the landscape in Canada, where marijuana is not decriminalized but police attitudes toward pot-smoking have seemingly relaxed.
“We wanted to unlock the mystery of his effectiveness, of why he was an effective activist. We live in an age where the status quo seems both untenable yet unchangeable,” said Larry. “We felt an obligation to try to understand why he had been so successful.”
“Citizen Marc” is screening in Calgary, Edmonton, Kamloops, Kelowna and Nanaimo in B.C., Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, London and Whitby in Ontario, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Victoria throughout October. Check local listings for dates and times.
Movie review: Citizen Marc examines the ‘Prince of Pot’ Marc Emery
BY KATHERINE MONK, POSTMEDIA NEWSOCTOBER 16, 2014
Citizen Marc 3.5 stars out of 5 Starring: Marc Emery Directed by: Roger Evan Larry and Sandra Tomc Running time: 92 minutes
Marc Emery wants to be seen as a modern day David slaying the government Goliath. He wants to be seen as the king of the underdogs, the indefatigable force of justice, and a guy who is so honest and straightforward, it’s impossible not to like him.
But the plain truth of the matter is it’s very easy to dislike the so-called Prince of Pot. Arrogant, entitled, entirely self-absorbed and kind of irritating, he exhibits the uglier traits associated with clinical narcissism, but thankfully, filmmakers Roger Evan Larry and Sandra Tomc address all those dimensions in their new movie, Citizen Marc.
A feature-length documentary that opens with Emery’s claim to national fame as the de facto spokesperson for marijuana legalization, Citizen Marc shows us scenes of Emery standing defiant as he is sentenced to five years in a U.S. prison. He gives every media outlet a little nugget about the importance of personal freedom and civil disobedience. He compares himself to Gandhi and Martin Luther King. He tearfully says goodbye to his friends and family in a flashy blitz of media attention.
And just when the hagiography feels complete, the filmmakers take us back in time, before Emery’s pot advocacy began to bud, when he was just a political geek in London, Ontario working for Ed Broadbent’s NDP. That’s right: He’s not even from British Columbia, which kind of explains a lot, because as this documentary makes abundantly clear, Emery isn’t the chill hero who would grow naturally from a grassroots pot movement. He seems to be more of an opportunist who saw pot as the perfect platform to launch his own political career.
It’s a good toothy edge that makes Citizen Marc an interesting film because it chips away at the concept of personal identity versus the unrelenting demands of a dollar store ego. The more we see Emery try to aggrandize himself as a man with purpose and integrity, the more sleazy and opportunistic he begins to look. One minute the filmmakers show us archival footage of Emery singing Canada’s praises, and the very next, we get period footage of Emery angrily stomping South to the United States, where people are free to shop on Sundays.
You see, before Emery fired up the boilers on the pot parade, he pushed for other causes under a Libertarian banner, including the “unfair” law that once made Sunday shopping illegal in Ontario. He espoused every right of centre cause that favoured greater personal wealth and freedom, but still imagined himself a friend to the little guy.
So how did a money-centric wannabe politician end up becoming the Prince of Pot? Easy: he saw green in all that green.
The nice thing is Emery admits to just about every glaring flaw for the cameras. He shares his love of money with us in the same breath as his soliloquies about selflessness, which makes Citizen Marc a very honest portrait — and a very confusing one as well.
Emery is a man whose ego is in a constant state of renovation, tearing structural walls, slapping on new paint, all to make a good impression on the neighbours. The man may be arrogant, but his insecurities are the elephant in the room. The filmmakers make us feel their presence, but they never actually point them out, ensuring the great confrontation between ego and reality never happens.
Things go by in an entertaining blur without defining moments, leaving one underwhelmed by the subject, but hungrier for truth — and deep-fried snacks — by the final frame.
Citizen Marc is no pot puff piece.Citizen Marc is no pot puff piece.The documentary on marijuana activist Marc Emery, written and produced by Canadian filmmaking couple Roger Evan Larry and Sandra Tomc, is being released Friday in 13 Canadian cities, including London at Landmark Cinemas.While Emery is known for his public crusade to legalize marijuana, don’t write this documentary off as a made-for-stoners special.The well-researched film traces Emery’s activism roots back to his days operating City Lights Bookshop on Richmond St. in London.It was there Emery frequently clashed with authorities over everything from refusing to close on Sundays to selling a raunchy rap album that was banned in Canada.He was fined, jailed and spent thousands of dollars in legal battles defending his beliefs.“The extent and depth and commitment of his activism before he even begins on the marijuana fight is astonishing,” Tomc said.
Larry and Tomc, who live in Vancouver, had been searching for the perfect long-form documentary subject, someone who would face challenges over the years and generate a debate.
“In Marc we found our ideal subject,” Larry said. “We always knew that we had something that wouldn’t be boring in five years.”
Filming for Citizen Marc started in 2006, one year after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency requested Emery’s extradition for selling marijuana seeds to Americans from his Vancouver-based head shop.
After a lengthy and highly-publicized legal battle, Emery would ultimately serve a 4 1/2-year prison sentence in the U.S. before returning to Canada on Aug. 12.
“We have to remember that the reason Marc became a target for the Americans was not because he was selling seeds to the Americans . . . It’s that he was using the profits from those sales and reinvesting in the legalization efforts in America,” Larry said.
The 93-minute film doesn’t pull any punches.
It delves into Emery’s messiah complex (he has compared himself to both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.) and explores how Emery used his celebrity status to bed a slew of young women drawn to his cause, including his wife, Jodie, who is more than 25 years his junior.
“It’s a critical biography, it’s not a sort of puff piece or a celebration of him for his own sake or anything like that,” Tomc said.
Emery, now 56, was an active participant in the documentary, which debuted at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2013.
Larry will be at Landmark Cinemas Saturday to host a question-and-answer segment following the film.
Citizen Marc: A vexingly fascinating look at the life of pot activist Marc Emery
GEOFF PEVERE
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published
Directed by Roger Evan Larry
Written by Roger Evan Larry and Sandra Tomc
Classification 14A
Genre documentary
Year 2014
Country USA
Language English
re-eminent among the questions raised byCitizen Marc, Roger Larry’s vexingly fascinating non-fiction biopic about jailed pot activist Marc Emery, is whether the importance of a cause can transcend its crusaders, especially when those crusaders are difficult to like .
It’s also a question Larry’s documentary not only raises but actively pursues, opting for a movie that is as much about the London, Ont.-raised libertarian stunt activist’s life and high times as it is Emery’s signature cause (decriminalizing marijuana) and effect (being extradited to the U.S. on charges of drug trafficking). The result is a movie that manages to both spark one’s righteous indignation at the man’s status as Canadian state-delivered prisoner in a Mississippi prison while confronting you with possibly the most narcissistically self-loving camera subject this side of Donald Rumsfeld in Errol Morris’s The Unknown Known.
Arguably the most important figure in the marijuana law reform to date – some credit Emery’s practice of shipping seeds to the States as instrumental in decriminalizing the substance in some states – Emery is also a guy with a history of self-interested hucksterism that goes all the way back to dubious childhood practices in the schoolyard trade of comic books and stamps. In a kind of right-wing suburban Southern Ontario mutation of left-wing 1960s activist performance art political principles, Emery’s lightning-rod moment came when he first read the uber-individualistic mysticism of Ayn Rand and finally saw the universe clearly. And darned if he wasn’t at the centre of it.
Cutting a swath of displaced street-scrappy Reaganism through London in the 1980s, a politically chastened Emery eventually retreated to Asia for a spiritual recharge and saw – in Vancouver – a wide-open frontier of opportunity in the burgeoning local growth industry. He’d return to Canada and fight the state on the pot platform, funnelling everything he’d learned about activism not only through the long necks of bongs and filters of freshly-rolled fatties, but the vast distortion chamber of his own ego, effectively hijacking the legalization cause in service of promoting the personal Marc Emery brand.
But is that really fair or true, and – as Larry’s movie smartly and slyly comes to ask – does it even matter? The fact is, whatever his motivations, Emery managed to expose the limitations and contradictions of the so-called “drug war” with more stark effectiveness than just about anyone else in the movement, and his status as prisoner of a foreign state, courtesy of his own, has only intensified his currency as international martyr for the cause and certified his credibility as even greater anti-authoritarian, pain-in-the-ass in the future.
On a scale of geopolitical issues to get riled about, marijuana law reform might strike many as a minor distraction but, as Noam Chomsky pops byCitizen Marc to point out, the thousands of people currently behind bars on pot charges in the U.S. are also disproportionately representative of an economically surplussed (and largely non-white) underclass, which puts the war on drugs into a whole other context. And if what’s really going on here is a covert war on the inconvenient powerless, few people have done more to expose that war than Emery. Even if he is a jerk.
Told with wryly detached humour and an unflinching attention to its subject’s least attractive qualities – watching Emery on the make with the ladies is almost as frightening as hearing him describe his first high as an oral sex enhancer – Citizen Marc compels you to consider its case while recoiling from its defendant.