Monday, June 13, 2005
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JANE ANN MORRISON: CineVegas movie relates one man's triumph over addiction

Addicted to drugs and alcohol, cursed with a violent temper and distraught over the death of his father when he was just 14, Monty Lapica had the potential to become another lost soul like Beau Maestas.

Maybe it was his drugs of choice: Lapica didn't go the meth route like Maestas. But Lapica managed to stop using drugs when he was 18. Lapica said he didn't do cocaine or crystal meth but did use marijuana, mushrooms, Ecstasy, LSD and plenty of alcohol.

Lapica's drug use began after his father, Las Vegas surgeon Andy Lapica, died at age 48 of a heart attack. Lapica went from a straight-A student-athlete to a smart-aleck rebel.

Even at 14, getting drugs wasn't a problem for the boy born and reared in Las Vegas. "The amount of illicit activity that takes place in a high school setting here is scary, and I can't imagine raising children here," said Lapica, now 27, who was expelled from Bishop Gorman High School and finished at Bonanza High.

"The fact my friends and I survived surprised me." Not all his friends did. He lost one friend from a drug overdose, another from suicide, and he knows three others who died of overdoses.

Lapica battled his demons and made a movie about them, "Self Medicated," which was accepted at the 2005 CineVegas Film Festival, where Lapica hopes to catch the eye of distributors. You can write, direct and even act in the leading role of a movie as Lapica did, but if it's not distributed, it's not seen.

Because his first movie made the cut for the festival, Lapica will be surrounded by friends, family, movie fans and those oh-so-desirable distributors when his movie shows at the Palms Brenden Theatres on Friday at 4 p.m. and again on Saturday at 3:30 p.m.

The movie is a fictionalized version of how, when he was 17, his mom, Sally Lapica, authorized his abduction to force him into a militaristic drug treatment operation for teenagers called Brightway in St. George, Utah, a stopping point before he would be transported to Western Samoa.

Lapica wrote the screenplay, found family friends willing to finance the $1 million movie, directed, and acted the role of a 17-year-old, because, as he said, nobody would know the character any better.

During our interview, I kept returning to the hardest question of all: How did you stop doing drugs?

The program his mother sent him to didn't work, as his movie demonstrates.

He credited "my faith in God" and his strong-willed personality, along with the efforts of his mom, a widow battling her own addictions to prescription drugs while foundering with a rebellious son.

"Mom and I, we both made a conscious effort to try to better our relationship. By doing that, it only helped things for the both of us. We were able to get strength and encouragement from each other," he said.

But the pivotal event that made him drop drugs occurred while he was a freshman at Arizona State University.

"I was majoring in business. I was very unhappy. I was still partying hard, you could say. We took a trip to Sedona, which is known as a spiritual place, and I felt an energy there and closeness to my father I hadn't felt since he had passed away."

He decided that filmmaking was the only thing he was interested enough in pursuing as a career, so he left ASU and went to film school in California.

Through willpower alone, he said, he stopped smoking cigarettes and using drugs and put his energy into learning how to make movies. He got into the movie business with entry-level jobs, quitting those to start pre-production of "Self Medicated" in 2002.

Lapica is no longer the violent person depicted in his movie.

"I'm lucky to be alive," he said, remembering times when he drove drunk and fought with strangers. "I was in numerous situations where I could have been killed."

Two good-looking youths, both battling drugs and alcohol, both with violent streaks.

Beau Maestas becomes a killer, while Lapica becomes a filmmaker.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.