What are actors actually snorting on film? How does it all work? For Goodfellas’ 25th anniversary, we got technical with the prop masters behind The Knickand other productions.
Something about the cocaine monomyth extends deep into the American psyche. Almost every story about it begins by saying “cocaine is bad,” but eventually adds a whisper of, “but it’s expensive and makes you feel assertive, so it’s actually good.” That seductive feeling of getting away with something, or of getting-caught-but-what-a-ride, is as American as is it gets: You can see it in movies like Goodfellas, but also anytime anyone namechecks Bonnie and Clyde, or in every image of PaulNewman ever shot. For better or worse, cocaine’s mythology embodies that feeling perfectly. Which makes it an ideal thing to put in your movie (or TV show). Which, in the grand American tradition of co-opting dangerous things, means it must be faked.
Ken Finn is a prop master who’s been helping filmmakers do just that since his first gig involving fake cocaine, on “one of the early seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” These days, one of his primary jobs is on the television show The Knick, which, to put it bluntly, stars Clive Owen as a turn-of-the-century surgeon who invents powdered cocaine. At this point in his career, however, Ken feels like he’s got his work cut out for him.
“Cocaine is probably one of the two or three easiest [drugs to fabricate],” Finn tells Hopes&Fears. “It’s just a white powder.”
Not just any white powdery substance will do, of course. Says Ken: “You don’t want to use powdered sugar because it gets sticky. You really don’t want to use flour either because if it gets damp at all it just becomes clumpy.” Instead, it’s almost always inositol, a B-vitamin compound. “In fact,” says Ken, “if you ever snort it, you might get this familiar feeling. A certain memory, like, ‘Hey, I’ve tasted this in the back of my throat before.’ What I’ve learned since then is that actual cocaine is oftentimes cut with this stuff. If you ever do shitty [cocaine], You might actually be ingesting this stuff without even knowing it.”
Natalie Kearns, a veteran stage prop master, seconds the use of inositol: “It absorbs easily into the sinuses and doesn’t affect vocal chords, so it’s a good choice for musicals and has been reliably used by some big names on Broadway for extended runs.”
In addition to any and all drugs, prop masters are in charge of almost everything in a production that isn’t a person. “Imagine you’re moving,” says Kearns. “Everything you pack up in your moving truck would be a prop. That includes your giant dragon puppet, machine gun, iron lung, breakaway bar stool, and parchment scrolls, of course!”
According to Ken, part of a prop master’s job involves translating the often-giddy demands of directors into actualities, even when the director is as seasoned as Martin Scorsese. A couple of Ken’s friends have been helping Scorsese on his new television show Vinyl, and Ken relays their cocaine experience thusly (his Scorsese impression is impeccable):
“Marty’s like, ‘I want a bunch of cocaine. I want a ball. A ball of cocaine.’ My friends are like, ‘What the fuck you talking about? Ball?’ Thinking he meant an eight-ball which, of course, is not a ball at all. Steve was like, ‘You mean you want a rock?’ Martin’s like, ‘Ha ha! Yes. A rock. I want a rock of cocaine.'”
When it comes time for an actor to shoot a realistic scene involving, say, a “rock” of cocaine, the logistics of ingesting—or appearing to ingest—the stuff can get a little complicated. Kyle Salvatore, Ken’s friend and colleague, mentions that when he’s setting up a rig for doing prop cocaine, he, “obviously want[s] to find something unobtrusive because the [performer] could have had some problem or another. When they’re doing [prop cocaine], it could instigate some kind of physical trigger.” He adds that he initially assumed “people blew out instead of blowing in.”
In fact, it can be far more complicated than that. It was here that Ken interjected to describe his friend Joel Weaver’s “cocaine rig,” a sort of Rube Goldberg machine to give the appearance of an actor doing as much cocaine as necessary. “[Joel] took a 3-gallon glass jar and hooked it up to a brake fluid extractor, which is basically a bike pump in reverse—for, like, siphoning shit—and then to [a length of] surgical tube. You run the tube up the guy’s shirt or pants [and] down his sleeve. You pump out all the air out of the glass jar. It can literally be 100 feet away. You just hit the valve.”
Not every performer requires something as elaborate as the Joel Weaver Cocaine Rig. Says Ken: “A term was recently coined in the industry. No names involved. We call it ‘going hot.’ If there’s a long week, and it’s toward the end of the day, and and there’s a snorting scene, the actor might request that you ‘go hot,’ or you switch the fake stuff for the real stuff. It happens more frequently than you might think.”
Among prop masters, working through the varying levels of comfort, health, and experience different performers might be bringing to the table is a primary concern. (The consideration is especially real when one or more of the performers is a current or recovering addict.) “I was in one situation where it was pretty clear who in the room had experience with it and who didn’t,” says Natalie. “I’ve had to demonstrate it myself in an effort to convince the actors it was a safe and convincing method. It’s pretty funny to pass around a rolled up dollar bill and take turns getting a good snort of lactose powder!”
In August, Netflix debuted its original series Narcos, based on the rise and fall of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and the infamous Medellín Cartel.
Natalie was also quick to point out that the most common way cocaine is used unrealistically onstage is often a result of simple ignorance: “The average person doesn’t have a very extensive knowledge of how much cocaine a certain amount of money can buy, or how much you need to snort to get a decent high. I’ve seen shows where the bag of cocaine carried by a poor character is probably worth $1,000, and they’re just dosing out lines that would be $100 worth of powder. It’s way too much volume.”
Given this common stage discrepancy and higher degree of visual detail allowed in film and television, it might make sense for Ken and Kyle to aim for a certain level of exaggerated surreality in their cocaine effects. A flashier-than-normal level of whiteness, for example, or the way a certain setup might move when it’s being chopped up. They agreed that, by and large, simplicity is king. “These days there have been enough films and TV shows where coke is everywhere,” says Ken.
“From fucking Miami Vice in the eighties through every fucking drug movie. It’s all about drugs and cash, you know?”
In an impressive display of humility, Kyle dramatically downplayed the role props play in a scene: “If we’re talking about cocaine, you [can’t give] too much credit to the actual prop. It’s actually the actor’s job to look convincing. He can really br sucking it up. He can be blowing it out. He can actually not even be doing it. It’s up to the actor to sell it.”
Passing off fake cocaine as real cocaine—or, in the case of “going hot,” passing off real cocaine as fake cocaine as real cocaine—can be nearly as elaborate and convoluted an exercise as trafficking in the real thing the old-fashioned way. Supplies are run back and forth throughout a massive and highly sophisticated infrastructure. Infinitesimally unlikely contingencies must be accounted for. The stakes are high, but everyone involved is constantly improvising. Large amounts of money are on the line. Things are gotten away with. Whether it’s the real thing or not, there’s something alluring about that.
via Prop masters explain the movie magic of fake cocaine — Hopes&Fears — flow “Film”.
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