Directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher, Off Label' is a riveting and compelling look at the untold stories of Americans who use, abuse, and misuse prescription drugs.
Making its world debut at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, Off Label is the second feature length documentary from the team of Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher of October Country fame. Currently available on VOD and digital platform, Off Label reveals the toll that prospection drugs take on a wide array of Americans ranging from volunteers for human testing, a war veteran suffering PTSD, a mother who lost her son to clinic drug trials and beyond.
Palmieri and Mosher, in this call to reflect film, make abundantly clear that nearly every American is affected by the pharmaceutical industry in some way. Off Label is not an expos . It offers the chance for real people to share their stories of horror, regret, hope, and loss in the face of Big Pharma. We spoke to the duo about their films, their storytelling process and what they think about new filmmaking tools like Vine and Instagram Video.
Tribeca: Off Label celebrated its world premiere at TFF 2012. What was the road after the Festival like?
Michael Palmieri: After Tribeca, we went with the film to festivals like Hot Docs, LA, Sheffield, and all over place. Interestingly enough, we actually used the festival screenings as a mode of fine-tuning the film. There were a number of things we learned halfway through the festival, such as, having to remove a particular piece of music because we couldn't get the rights to it. We had to switch out the song that we had originally wanted to start the film and that really changed the beginning of our movie.
Because of the Festival circuit, we were able to observe how audiences responded to the film, so we ended up doing a lot of re-chewing and reshuffling scenes around. That process really started with our trying to address the music concern, but along the way, we listened to how audiences were responding and tried to dial the film in a little better. We think we ended up with a much better film.
Tribeca: How did you decide to go with a distributor like Oscilloscope?
MP: We still think there's a kind of brick and mortar approach that works really well because when you put a film out theatrically, you garner the sorts of reviews you need to have the film continue on in its digital space. We certainly understand that the majority of people who are going to see this film will most likely be seeing it in some digital form. With Oscilloscope, the plan was to release the film both theatrically and digitally at the same time to take advantage of the press and insure that the film will have a long life digitally.
Tribeca: You first collaboration, October Country, focused on Donal's family and their story. What made you choose the subject of off-label medical test subjects and the repercussions of these tests?
MP: Our Off Label producers, Anish Savjani and Vincent Savio of Film Science, initially approached us right after a rough cut rooftop screening of October Country. They asked us if we were interested in making a film about human guinea pigs. We thought we were certainly interested, so we did some research, got back to them and decided to give it a shot.
We started filming with the express intention of focusing on guinea pigs in the medical industry, but the further we got into the subject; we felt we needed to broaden the scope. The subject naturally extended into the way some of these drugs are marketed after they're tested and ratified. We also followed the process to the end usage of the drugs by people in the culture. However, our focus always remained on the people on the margins of society. It's those people who actually do the drug testing because often times they don't have the means to get any other job. It's a well-paying occupation, although it obviously has its dangers.
It's like Vine and Instagram Video are bringing filmmaking back to the era of super 8 and 8mm filmmaking.
Tribeca: Were you at all daunted by the subject?
MP: The whole thing is daunting. The subject is so enormous that we felt that the best we could do was to leave the viewer asking more questions. This is a very complicated subject to which there is no clear specific answer.
Tribeca: How did you settle on the people that you interviewed?
Donal Mosher: Consistent with our work in general, we tried to focus on people who are a little outside mainstream society. That was definitely one of our criteria for choosing the characters who made it into Off Label. We also didn't want experts or people who were sitting back and thinking about the problem. We wanted people who, in some way, have made marketing or consuming pharmaceuticals an active part of their lives.
Tribeca: What does Off Label say about America and its citizens and Big Pharma? Are you using this documentary as a wakeup call for public?
DM: As filmmakers, we're more interested in life inside the issue than the way the issues play out in a broader wake up call sort of manner. I think a hardcore fact-based film about the pharmaceutical industry should be made and needs to be made, but I think what we hope to do with Off Label is show that there are other implications. There are facts and figures and medical analysis, but we wanted to show the emotional toll.
MP: In one way, we wanted to look at the human dimension of the problem as opposed to examining a specific data set that sets out the problem on a piece of paper.
I actually like to watch films that work in that expos manner, but it is very hard for me to consider making a film like that because when you enter into subject matter as big as pharmaceutical medicine is in this country, you come up against a lot of contradictory information. The topic quickly becomes very gray, much
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Directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher, Off Label' is a riveting and compelling look at the untold stories of Americans who use, abuse, and misuse prescription drugs. 
