In 1999, Dan Schneider was a small-town pharmacist in Louisiana. But after his son was killed in a drug-related shooting, he becomes obsessed with getting justice. In the Pharmacist, Dan investigates his son's murder, a local pill mill, and the drug crisis sweeping through his community. Host Rebecca Lavoie (Crime Writers On...) speaks with directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason (Time: The Kalief Browder Story and Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story).
In 1999, Dan Schneider was a small-town pharmacist in Louisiana. But after his son was killed in a drug-related shooting, he becomes obsessed with getting justice. In the Pharmacist, Dan investigates his son's murder, a local pill mill, and the drug crisis sweeping through his community. Host Rebecca Lavoie (Crime Writers On...) speaks with directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason (Time: The Kalief Browder Story and Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story)
Rebecca Welcome to You Can't Make This Up. A companion podcast from Netflix.
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Rebecca I'm Rebecca Lavoie and I'll be hosting this week's episode. Here on You Can't Make This Up, we go behind the scenes of Netflix original true crime stories with special guests. This month, we're talking about The Pharmacist. In 1999, Dan Schneider was a small town pharmacist in Louisiana. But after his son is killed in a drug related shooting, he becomes obsessed with getting justice against the odds. He finds his son's murderer. But a few months later, he also recognizes the symptoms of a growing epidemic. I'll be speaking with directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason. In the past, they've worked on documentaries like Time: The Kalief Browder Story and Rest in Power: the Trayvon Martin Story. In The Pharmacist they turn their lense to Dan Schneider. Purdue Pharma and the opioid epidemic. Now we will be discussing spoilers so make sure you've seen all four episodes of The Pharmacist. Now here's my conversation with Jenner and Julia.
Clip I’m Dan Schneider and I'm a pharmacist. I can almost remember every piece of my life. I have hundreds of hours from wiretapping phone conversations about what happened to me. My son was murdered buying crack. The police have the attitude that these kids maybe got what they deserved. But I was determined to get the killer off the street and the police wasn't going to do it, I was gonna do it.
Rebecca And I'm so excited to talk to the dynamic duo behind The Pharmacist, Jenner Furst.
Jenner Yeah, great to be here.
Rebecca And Julia Willoughby Nasonn, nice to talk to you as well.
Julia Thank you so much. Excited to be here.
Rebecca So this story in The Pharmacist has a lot of layers, but there are primarily two stories that are framed in the documentary. The first being the murder of Dan Schneider's son, Danny Junior, and the second being this other, arguably larger in terms of the national landscape story, about the rising opioids crisis. I'm curious about how you guys decided to tell this story. You broke in…. There were definitely two solid chapters here. Why did you decide to break it up in that way?
Jenner Well, it's a great question. I think, for us, we were lucky to have this story be presented to us from a partner of ours, Jed Lipinski, who had written a longform article for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans about Dan Schneider. And, you know, the way he presented this story was just like you said. And I think that's what's so fascinating to us. It starts out as one thing and it becomes something completely different. Yet it's still the same story. You know, this is really about what happens to an everyday citizen when something tragic happens and they make a decision to face it.
Rebecca I was really stunned by Dan Schneider's true skill as an investigator in both looking into his own son's murder and then later as he sort of confronts this growing problem that he sees. He also has a odd habit of taping so many aspects of his life, not just phone calls, but also his own reflections and conversations he has with people. Why does he do that? And were you also surprised to sort of get these details and find out, like, he could have been a cop, right? He's that good.
Julia Yeah. I mean, he was that good. He's like he goes he likes to go to the root of everything and he doesn't stop. He's relentless. So in that sense, he does have that talent of stamina and investigation. I think the reason why potentially he taped himself so much was because losing his son drew him into a world of insanity. And the grief around that loss makes everything in your life questionable. So I think the little audiotape that he had and that video camera were his godsend of solace and peace for himself. And it did merge into a form of obsession, which I think is interesting as well, but very emblematic for someone who is dealing with grief.
Rebecca There's actually audio of he and his wife together in a very intimate moment right after their son dies talking about it. I mean, it's truly stunning. And I'm wondering if you as filmmakers had to make decisions about the intimacy that we get from these tapes, what to include, what not to include. Was that a conversation you were having as you were making this film?
Julia Yes. There were so many tapes and so much archival to look through the tape that we used, which was of any crying almost uncontrollably about the loss of her son, was something we chose to use to show, you know, just the raw, guttural, feral depth of the pain.
Annie Schneider (clip) Why they'd have to take him so soon? Why they'd have to take him so soon? He could have waited.
Dan (clip) I can’t answer to that, babe. I don’t think he took him. I think it just happened
Julia And I think that another reason why, you know, Dan would choose to record such a painful moment of his wife is because with grief you feel in complete isolation. You feel like you've lost everything. You feel like you've lost yourself. So by recording even the most painful things, it's a way of healing and affirming that there's still unity and connection even in the suffering.
Rebecca Now, the film does make you think as a viewer that Dan was changed by this experience of investigating his son's murder. You know, part of me wonders like how much of this was already in him, like how justice minded, how how much of a truth seeker he was. He goes back to work shortly afterwards at the pharmacy Bradley's. He seems now to really have justice on him at the forefront of his mind. And it strikes me that it takes a very specific kind of person, either a changed person or a different kind of person to call out something that is wrong, as he sees it, all of these young people coming in with all of these very strong opioid prescriptions, at great personal risk. I mean, his career was at risk. He was putting his boss's business at risk. And I'm curious what you guys think, you know, about that. What kind of person he was, the sort of grit he had. Plus, is it really the resolution of this case that that did change Dan, and make him think this way afterwards?
Jenner You know, for us, it kind of brings up like the allegory of "The Cave". And, you know, you live your life looking at shadows on a wall and you turn around and you realize that it's there's actually these real objects and this brilliant sunlight. And I think for Dan losing Danny Junior, it just completely shattered that, you know, National Lampoon's Clark Griswold life that he was living. And also just his, as he admits, sort of ignorance about addiction and about the way that people are actually living. I mean, he went into the Ninth Ward looking for a killer, but he had to ultimately open his heart in order to find justice. He couldn't just go with brute force and find the killer. He had to actually appeal to the heart and soul of a woman who was scared to death of testifying. And it was through that experience, that really kind of transformed him.
So when he sees those young kids and young adults, both male and female, come into the pharmacy, they look like his son to him. He looks in their eyes and and and he sees people at a crossroads of life that, if only he could have caught his son at that moment. And so all of these different points of identification are happening for him in ways that they never happened before. And then he's got that adrenaline, you know, and we try to parallel the addiction of adrenaline and the addiction of high stakes and the mania of it all, because that's what's happening in the second episode, is that he needs that level of intensity in his life.
Rebecca How did you get Shane, you know, the witness in the case and Jeffrey, Danny's murderer, to do interviews on camera about this case? And what was, you know, probably one of the worst events of both of their lives. How did you get them to do these interviews for this film? To me, that was one of the most stunning things that kind of set up this whole story.
Jenner Well, I mean, I think it's a testament to the work that Julia and I do with our partners. I think that in sitting down with Jeffrey, when we were able to locate him and in sitting down with Shane when when we got in touch with her, I think it was very simple what we intended to do. And the same applied for Dr. Cleggett. It you know, when we're able to speak with her and and describe what we were trying to do and in and essentially explain to these individuals how important it was for history that they be a part of this story, that we would be getting it wrong if we didn't speak to them. And that's usually the way we approach it, is that they are important for the accuracy and legitimacy of the story. And it's not what we think we know about them, but what they can reveal to us about what their experience was truly like, what they can tell us about their childhood, what they can tell us about the things that were important to them.
And we never do 30 minute or 20 minute interviews, we never go in hot with a series of 10 questions that we need answers on. Our interviews sometimes span 6, 8 hours. And a lot of it doesn't make the series. But it becomes a cathartic event for the subjects in which they get to really talk about their life. And that's what really interests Julie and I. That's the type of stories that we're after, is these humanistic tales that weave together touch points of people's lives, you know, and then intersect in these dynamic ways but are truly human.
Rebecca Mm hmm. I mean, I think that the compassion that you show to your subjects is what makes this film so strong, because, you know, we have Robbie, we have, of course, Dr. Cleggett, who, my jaw is dropped at the end of the episode when I was like, holy shit, they got Dr. Cleggettet on camera after basically having all of these like long shot surveillance pieces of footage of her back when she was prescribing. But you know, somebody that would be an easy target to villainize. You really do take the time to learn more about their motivation, to let their voice on camera to to speak for themselves. And I want to talk about that interview that you did with Dr. Cleggett. I believe it was April 2019 that you conducted that interview. Anybody who has seen this film probably has some strong feelings about the things that she said, but also the way she appeared in the film and her affect and her description of her own life as a through line through this story. I'm curious as filmmakers what it was like doing that interview for you.
Julia We are very fortunate to have her sit down and do an interview with us. It wasn't easy for her. She has been in a lot of car accidents and is very physically impaired. So doing the interview took a lot of care emotionally and physically. She talked a lot about her early upbringing and how she was the best in her class and how it took her 15 to 20 years working the top of her class to become a doctor. And she rose above, you know, all the odds. She was a beautiful, you know, young, talented woman. And I think she was compelled by pain management, which was a phenomena at the time, and really wasn't understood in terms of the damage and the recklessness of the addiction quality. So she slipped into that and really got caught in it herself. It was... we tip the hand a little bit, but you could see maybe from her and just her affect that she may have addiction issues herself. So we just did the best we could to hear her truth as she sees it. So that's what we... that's personally what I took from her interview was, it was, very for me, very emotional and felt very, you know, just seeing someone's dreams disappear.
Rebecca She's an incredibly tragic character. I mean, she just is. I mean, yes. What really struck me. Jenner, did you want to talk about that?
Jenner Yeah, I want to build off what Julia was saying. And just, you know, I think that if Dr. Cleggett, was able to be honest, more honest with her own story of addiction, she may have had a chance at more salvation as a person and as a doctor who spent her entire life working as hard as she could to overcome the odds of misogyny, of racism, of the Deep South, to become one of the only female African-American doctors of her class in that town in New Orleans doing what she was doing at the level she was doing. You know, unfortunately, she had an Achilles heel. She lives a shell of a life that is hard to see. And we just wish that she, I mean, I can't wish something for her that she's not ready for. But when she was asked the question, do you suffer from addiction? She was very defiant in saying no. And that, you know, spoke volumes. And I think, frankly, that was the most tragic part of the interview.
Jenner (clip) So you were never self medicating? You didn't suffer from addiction?
Dr. Cleggett (clip) No, I was never addicted
Rebecca So, I live on the East Coast. I remember Hurricane Katrina watching it unfold through the lens of a natural disaster that spoiled the infrastructure of New Orleans, displaced a lot of people, really rattled that whole part of the country to its core. The thing I never thought about before watching your documentary was how Hurricane Katrina played in to the rise of the opioids crisis in that part of the country as well. I know that it's told through the lens of Dan, but it's almost like the page has turned and there's other good things happening. And then this disaster is just a whole new huge setback.
Julia Yeah, I think that Sheriff Stephens describes it really well when he says that people where were given sympathy prescriptions from the tragedy of losing everything in their life through Hurricane Katrina. And that's a huge link to how opioids spread after, you know, this natural disaster. Another, quote unquote, natural disaster of pills exploded.
Jenner So much of the story that Julia and I are telling here is a bigger story about pain, about sickness, about addiction. And there was so much pain in New Orleans after Katrina. Everything that everyone ever loved and ever had and ever possessed was gone, washed away, caked in filth. And not only were they in emotional pain around that, but they were also in physical pain from working around the clock to rebuild their homes or salvage their belongings. And that that's just a deadly cocktail for abuse. And there were doctors in place at the time that that... you know, Cleggett was closed, but there were a lot of doctors who popped up to fill her shoes. I mean, you know, she was just the tip of the iceberg. And with all that pain and all that suffering, you know what better than, you know, a a nice little pill bottle that has some extremely strong medication, narcotic medication that will allow you to forget even just for a second how horrible life is and and the hardships that you're facing. And that's, again, a story of America. And so when you look at the other areas that the opioid epidemic hit and in so many ways why this epidemic has been so widespread. And also why it's been given so much attention.
Jenner You know, we don't talk about the crack epidemic with the same level of empathy that we talk about the opioid epidemic. And it's no coincidence because the opioid epidemic affects a bunch of middle class, working class white Americans. The crack epidemic affects, quote unquote, others, you know, mostly African-American and people of color. And by no means am I comparing the crack epidemic and saying, OK, the opioid epidemic is nothing not as bad as a crime..Both things are horrible. Right. It's important that we look at the racial lens, not only in all of the space Dan Schneider was given to solve the crime and to then solve another crime, but also in the widespread effects of addiction in this country.
Rebecca Now, it's hard to be a person in America today and not know a lot about the opioids crisis and the harm that it's done to communities across the country. You have in this film a pharmaceutical sales representative who worked for Purdue Pharma, who talks very openly about the insidious and aggressive tactics they were encouraged to use pedaling these drugs to doctors. Even with everything that we know now. Did it surprise you to hear these stories, to hear how much money was involved, to really hear about how the system worked at the beginning, you know, 20 years ago? To me, I found it in incredible and surprising. Even though I already thought I knew a lot about what had happened.
Jenner For us, you know, so much of what we do and as filmmakers, as a team is, you know, tell stories that are really driven by characters. And Chris is a truly amazing character and was ready at this point in his life to talk about what it meant to be a sales rep for Purdue Pharma in the late 90s. And no one wants to go on the record about that. But Chris himself had had, you know, sort of his own spiritual awakening in life. And he had kind of gone through his own personal journey to realize that not only was it important for him to speak about what it meant to be a sales rep for Purdue Pharma in the late 90s, it was important for the world. And he knew of Dan Schneider and he knew of Dr. Cleggett it and he knew of all these things. And so, you know, the happenstance of being able to find him. It was just incredible. And I think at this point in his life, he realized that he made a deal with the devil and he was ready to look back and talk about it.
Chris Davis (clip) I certainly didn't want to be connected to any illicit activities that could be going on. Right? I wanted to be free and clear that. And then, you know, you'd get a 35, 40 thousand dollar bonus check in a quarter. Right? And you say man, you know, maybe I'll keep doing this for a little while. Maybe it'll get better.
Jenner And that takes an incredible amount of bravery. The same way that it took an incredible amount of bravery for Jeffrey to talk about what happened with him, to talk about a moment in his life that he's regretted every single second since it's happened. And likewise, we wanted to give Chris the ability to share his current awareness and to step out of the shadows and to really make right on decades of wrong.
Rebecca I'm curious as to how you would have treated and seen Richard Sackler if you'd been able to get him in your interview chair. You know, he's very much the apex predator of this whole story, right? I mean, the opioids crisis story and that company’s role in it. And his to this day, you know, public testimony about not believing that this drug was problematic in any way.
Jenner That's a great question. And I think that ultimately the same theme would be at play and that if we could sit with Richard Sackler, we would do the same thing we do with all of our characters, which is start at the beginning. Not at the beginning of the crisis. Not at the beginning of the time at your company. Start at the beginning of your childhood and tell us what life was like for you. And I think what ultimately would have been revealed through an interview with Richard Sackler is the same thing that was revealed through an interview with Dr. Cleggett. It the same thing that was revealed with an interview with Jeffrey, the same thing that's going to be revealed with an interview with anyone who's human on this planet. That there is a certain degree of frailty and that there's a certain degree of confusion and there's a certain degree of addiction under everything we do in this world. And it's harder for us to see addiction to money or addiction to power or addiction to things. But they are an addiction nonetheless. In the Sackle families were suffering from a fatal addiction with power and money. And I think that that would have been the human story we were able to tell with Richard Sackler, if he was so brave to tell it. And I think it could be really eye opening if someone of that caliber would finally get honest about their powerlessness to money and power itself and how corrupting and insidious and insane it is to live a life like that.
Rebecca Julia, what do you hope viewers will take away from watching The Pharmacist?
Julia I hope that people will see the humanity in each family member that's on screen and see it the, you know, the struggle that people go through when they lose somebody and how it unfolds into insanity through every aspect of everyone's, you know, body and being and how going very minute into a very tightly nuclear family can blast us into the Zeitgeist of American culture.
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Rebecca And that's it for this week's episode. Special thanks to Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason. You can find this show on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review this show. That way you won't miss our next episode about The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. You Can't Make This Up is a production of Pineapple Street Studios and Netflix? Our music is by Hansdale Hsu. I'm Rebecca Lavoie. And if you want to hear my review of The Pharmacist, check out my other podcast, Crime Writers On...