Addict with a Pen: A personal look at A Star is Born (guest column)

By guest contributor, Amy Pearson

I went to see “A Star is Born” the day it opened. When I walked out, I think I had the only dry eyes in the place. Not because I wasn’t emotionally moved. I felt like I had walked out of a visual summary of my last year. Minus the money, the fame and the talent. The film showed such an accurate view of how addiction impacts so many people aside from the addict themselves. I don’t leave the movie theater very often with an overwhelming sense that I want to write about what I have just seen, but before I made it back to my car I felt overwhelmingly compelled. I know many people enjoy movies as escape, and for that to work then the film must have elements that could only happen in a movie. This film is not exempt from that, but I think it has some great messages about the stigma that surrounds addiction, as well as some misconceptions.

I also felt very personally connected to the story, my husband has struggled with his sobriety over the last year. It has really taken a toll on our marriage, our family and earlier this year attempted to take his life, to save us from the pain he was causing the people he loved. To make the film even more personal, I’m an addict, an adult child of an addict, etc. So the roles the characters played were so familiar and so raw and true.

I’ve heard and seen multiple posts about why Ally never left Jack. There are two lines in the movie that point to Ally being an Adult child of an alcoholic. When Jack is relentlessly pursuing Ally to come to his show she is listing all the reasons why not to go to her father - the last one being that Jack is an alcoholic. “You know all about drunks”, she says to him. When I heard this the first time I assumed that she was referring to the revolving door of her father’s employees and possibly her father himself. Yet when I watched the film the second time Ally states on her wedding day “I don’t know where my mother is.” When I heard this it just clicked for me. Addiction is a family disease and those that come from alcoholic homes take different paths, the difference being, if not Ally and Jack then Jack and his brother. This is a theory that adds to the more obvious one of unconditional love. Some will say co-dependency, but she knew she could stand on her own and that she was not what would save Jack.

There is a line that is repeated multiple times, “you have something to say that people want to hear”. When Jack says this throughout the movie it is twofold. I believe he says this to Ally because he feels it’s something he has lost and wants her to never forget-the precious gift it is. When her manager says it, it serves a very different purpose.

Another thing that is repeated in the film is the song “Maybe It’s Time.” It’s almost the background theme for Jack’s attempts at abstinence -as Jack’s hearing is deteriorating and Ally’s rise to fame is ascending. He also feels he is losing her but more importantly SHE IS LOSING HER TRUE SELF. The pinnacle moment is obviously Ally’s SNL performance, in addition to seeing his brother and asking him to come back to work for him followed by his brother’s reply that he would be lying if he said it wasn’t easier without Jack. Jack begins drinking immediately. When he is drunk and confronts Ally in the bathtub, many will say it was abusive, and it was. Yet when I see him like that I am reminded how addicts don’t mature emotionally while in active addiction. It was also displayed with his brother after he found out his brother sold the land in Arizona. That one scene with Sam Elliott summed up such a rich display of the brothers’ resentments against each other, while also informing the audience of so much of the history between them.

Leading up to the Grammys Ally has been doing a photo shoot, and when her manager arrives, she is remarking how her pictures don’t even look like her. Her manager informs her of her Grammy nominations and follows it up with Jack’s words “you have something to say that people want to hear”. This not only plays on her emotions as something she is trying to maintain but also to her early insecurities of being able to make it on her voice alone.

Watching Jack’s performance at the Grammy’s followed by Ally’s win and Jack’s all out humiliation, I found the most intense and moving scene to be when Ally is in her Grammy dress in the shower with Jack. As this is followed with scenes of Jack in treatment, blowing off the rules and yet makes a story of his suicide attempt at age 12 almost into a joke, it reveals he is still so detached from his childhood traumas and unable to get to the root of what caused the void he has been trying to fill with substances. When Ally visits him in treatment she is the only one of them talking about his addiction as a disease. This reveals Jack hasn’t really gained any insight of the disease and, I believe it played a big part in his demise.

After Ally’s ultimatum to her manager about Jack coming on tour, her manager goes straight to Jack. His side of the conversation starts with - I am not your friend – acting as a voice from Ally for all the things Ally will never say to Jack. He insists that Jack will relapse and ruin Ally’s life. To many this might sound harsh, to others maybe they see it as a truth. To me it sounds familiar. Not because people I know say these things to me but because my disease itself speaks to me this way. It spoke to me before being in recovery and continues to after. It’s merciless. It speaks to other addicts this way as well and I know far too many that took the same out that Jack did. Some survived, and some did not. Lucky for me my husband was a survivor.

After all that has just transpired it’s easy to forget that Jack wrote the final song for Ally before he went to treatment. Yes, back when he was being verbally abusive in his active addiction. He could still write what he had to say that people wanted to hear.