 I'm Jeff Shaw and this is in the studio produced by Davis Media Access and airing on DCTV.Davismedia.org and local cable channel 15 as well as AT&T Uverse channel 99 Today, I'm joined by Joanne Schuch Joanne Schuch has been a resident of Humboldt County since 1989 where she's worked as a custom woodworker designer and community activist Joanne is a co-producer of Tricky Bidness This DVD I'm holding up right now in film Tricky Bidness is a home is about the is it takes place in the hometown of Arcada, California It's a look at the complexities of marijuana culturally legally and personally From the people who have lived with it in their community for over 40 years So I'd like to roll a trailer for that and then we'll talk with Joanne in a minute There is a lot of money involved in marijuana Twilight I'd see Helicopters flying with these huge loads of marijuana hanging from the helicopters It is interesting that we found out that people next door were Running a grow house because I always wondered why they were so unfriendly I would sit in the backyard with a pair of binoculars and I could watch what they're doing I call the cops like he's got his truck loaded with marijuana Get him. I had an electrician come over to my house and he said, you know You could be making $40,000 a year out of that back room Butcher the baker the candlestick maker. They're all growing a little bit apart your grandmother's growing it So First off Joanne, you said that this is on your website Notice it says you're a first-time documentary maker and I was I've seen the movie the entire film And I was thinking that's pretty impressive for the first time. Thank you. You're airing in Film festivals ten different film festivals mentioned from Aberdeen to Nevada City the wild scene scenic and film festival Are you sure this is your first documentary? Yes, so What kind of did you have production experience before you got into making this or well this all started back in 2009 and actually I've been interested in film ever since college and back in the day Making a movie was so expensive and the cost of film I took one film class back then and and realized I two things were Against me working with film back then one it cost so much and the other is you had to work Cooperatively with people right and I was an art major and I was much happier just going off on my own and doing my own projects And definitely a media person myself. It is a team project team experience. So yeah, it's a team I was you mentioned the catalyst for going into this but before we even talk about that So any what any other production experience you had other than college with the with the new fangled equipment that we have Well, once we got the idea to make the movie. I Actually went and went to our own Humboldt access yes public TV access Humboldt up there Yeah, we all have different names. They're all we take the same words, but then you move it back and forth Yes, and took some classes there and learned a little bit about using the camera very cool And they were using a similar camera what I had which was the hv-30 Canon, okay? And so it was a kind of small inexpensive camera that could film at 24p and it also allowed you to jack in Mike so we could get good quality sound So this is all this is your first documentary right and the catalyst for you So and you you had the idea first and then you went and learned how to use all the equipment Yeah, you know I then you had you had some structural Storytelling experience from college very very little and I think my background as a furniture maker actually played into it more Then anything that happened in college because it's very similar to making furniture is you have you kind of a vision of what you want To make you work with little tiny pieces over a long period of time right and then you eventually get to put them all together So organizationally speaking a big part of making a documentary like this was figuring out Okay, how do we get all these disparate pieces together and also? How do you find talent to help you and we found a great editor? Diana J Brody out of San Francisco. So, you know, she's wonderful professional editor But we we put the movie together in pieces and then we did the rough editing My my film partner and I Lynn canning and then gave it to Diana to say, you know save money We did most of the work on that end of it and then she did the the final finishing work So it took it did take a team as you mentioned But I love that you came to it from a much different angle than a lot of people come to it Which is they want to be filmmakers and you came to it and that you first sort of identified an issue that you Personally experience in Humboldt and why don't you explain you you mentioned it that you're the issue that you was a catalyst is this home Growing operation. So why did you explain a spring some of that? Yeah, well, and it was it was kind of like Living in Humboldt County, I've been up there for 25 30 years and they're you know there had always been marijuana in the area, but mostly it was up in the hills and I happened to be taking care of my mom and dad who were Aged and so I was a home a lot with them. My mom had dementia So I couldn't leave her alone a lot So being around the house a lot in an arcada looking out the window of my cul-de-sac I Slowly realized that three out of the four houses on the cul-de-sac were involved in marijuana Business in some way and we were the fourth house So I'm like this is really different than what has been traditionally. We are marijuana growing area But it had never been in the houses like it was then so this is 2009 and I called up my friend Lynn who had gone to School with me college and we actually had a film class together Film criticism and I said there's a documentary happening here. We've we've got to do something There's something historically different happening and I want to understand it right so that sort of was the catalyst and started your exploration and I We're gonna talk a little bit about the issues of the film and also the film itself because I think as I mentioned to you I think you guys did a great job of sort of weaving The background of the marijuana economy up there with the current issues that are faced with it being such a big economy So Can you tell me I mean how big an economy is the marijuana industry in, California, and how much money is it worth? Well overall You know Humboldt County is part of the emerald triangle which includes Medicino and Trinity counties in Humboldt County. It is it is conservatively estimated that it's about five billion dollars right We had a local banker do a study recently where She kind of tracked as much money as she could and then conservatively said this is what I think is is the amount of money flowing Right, so so there's a lot of motivation for people to To be growing either what I guess a good crop or a lot of crop I mean that you mentioned in your movie also that the price point of $3,000 for a pound of marijuana and that was 2009 now the price point is like for a pound of marijuana It's about $1,200 okay, so the price fluctuates. Yes, and do you like any commodity like corn? So the inspiration for these grow houses being either flourishing or sort of more of them Does that fluctuate with the price also? Do you did you find or was it sort of just all of a sudden there's all these houses that are sort of becoming grow houses or well The history went from the initial grows that were in southern Humboldt back in the early 70s late 60s Back then it was five thousand dollars a pound so I personally knew people who grew maybe five plants and harvested them and That would allow them to build you know an addition on their house sort of buy a new refrigerator Or you know it was it was part of them living on the land and being able to develop the land and live Independently and once people sort of figured out. Wow. This is a really lucrative crop Even in southern Humboldt it started to become you know a difference between people who were growing a little bit to survive To people who said wow we can make a lot of money from this right so back that was you know way back and as As people became more aware of the outdoor grows in southern Humboldt and there became a police presence Yes, we had a thing that is still in operation now called camp Where you know you drive through southern Humboldt and this in during harvest season and there'd be helicopters flying back and forth And there'd be bus and there'd be smoke the other kind of smoke where they'd be growing You know pull out plants and burn them sure and and that sort of forced the growers indoors So so at that point in time They were also doing a thing where if you were caught with any marijuana on your property even if you didn't plant it the government could take away your house okay, so As you know, we have the California laws around marijuana and then the federal law is completely different federally Marijuana is a Schedule one felony drug. So it's the highest penalties the highest enforcement and You know a drug with no municipal no medicinal value is Idea where and that's in conflict direct conflict with what's happening in California So it wasn't necessarily the price that drove the growth of these grow houses or indoor farms Kind of as you as you talk about them in the film It was more the fact that the enforcement became so draconian and sort of militaristic and that people were really were getting their houses Or getting their land seas and everything that's really the impetus as to what drove this people into these into rented homes A lot of cases and you know It's kind of like you know if you have a force of water it wants to go somewhere and the force of water is people's desire to have Marijuana so once they blocked it from you know outdoor grows People started to think well, let's grow it indoors and there was some funny stories in the early days People would bring outdoor plants into houses right and outdoor plants are you know can be 10 feet tall So they found one house in Arcada where the growers had cut the floor out of the plant Out of the out of the house and put the plants down on the subfloor right so that these gigantic plants could grow Yeah, well now let's get into some of the meat of your of your movie tricky business. I'll hold up the DVD one more time The deal with the these grow houses I think I spent quite some time in the movie talking about some of the problems these grow houses Present to your community and to the residential areas and some of the I was surprised At some of the problems that you highlighted in your movie and I made a list of some of them I'm sure you can talk a little bit more about but you know PG knee transformers blowing up Due to overloaded power usage Electric bills of three to four thousand dollars a month. I mean this is just for small little rental areas Major house modifications. So to do these indoor farms you'd have to new duct work and everything to try to sort of Aerate the plants and keep everything from getting too moldy wet floors holes for the new electric work. These are in rental houses break-ins and robberies of grow houses and then sort of spreading to non-grow houses where regular residents So, you know, we're mistakenly broken into fires Firemen on your film mentioned 50% of house fires were associated with grow houses at one time And then of course a major building code violations One of them that I thought you highlighted pretty well was the firemen firewomen Having a situation where they're turning off the breaker in order to go into a burning house And the power is not going out because people are installing these pretty intricate Intricate but still not up to code electrical systems that bypass the power meter bypass the breaker So firemen are going that would be going into burning homes Wires from all the you know crazy electric work that's been done And their lives could be endangered by being electrocuted by exposed wires so You know, it just it was amazing high levels of butane and propane also on site that could explode So, you know real hazard if you're in your neighborhood and your house right next door has got this huge propane tank You know, you're not living in a rural area. This is a residential area. I wanted that thing explodes Well, anyway, all these problems you highlighted were just like wow It's kind it blows people away and I had friends I said I was making this documentary and said well What's the big deal? It's just a little pot. It's like it's way more complicated than that. And I think the film is Current because we've got legislation coming up in the next year about how do we legalize marijuana and You know, I think that issues brought up by the film really Highlight what people should be thinking about when they think about changing the law. Yes And you know the right for instance You've mentioned the only way to prosecute some of the operations is through uh money laundering activities And so the police don't really have Their own tools and I guess we should be kind of careful talking about the problems because The the source of the problems we can go back to sort of the fact that it's at the federal level You know, there's not much guidance. There's local municipalities don't have many tools, but Oh, why is that it's a the police have to go through it as a laundering activity because you had some neighbors in your film Complaining directly to the police saying this is a huge grow operation. These guys are loading up the marijuana now Nothing they can do we've we've always been a very accepting area to marijuana and people do appreciate medical marijuana In the area, you know, I think and you kind of kind of find that Is not unusual that it's like Someone who's even a conservative person will say my wife was helped by being able to Smoke marijuana when she had cancer was the only thing that we got her to eat And so in Humboldt County, it was hard to find a jury pool That would put someone in jail for having a marijuana grow because it's like hey, it's part of the lifestyle up It's part of what people and it and it supports a lot of the businesses and people are keenly aware of that But when people have a lot of guns In a grow or they have a lot of cash where it's obvious that it's gone beyond the level of You know, it's we have we call them greed growers Um, then then people are like, oh, yeah, we don't necessarily want to have that in the neighborhood. Well Um, I'm glad you brought up that that does bring a lot of money to the area. Um, I think that uh You know, you mentioned in the community clinic community center in a redwood garbable area that uh, community center in the early days early days, uh A lot of money that was circulating in this community helped build infrastructure that may not otherwise be built That clearly served a pretty good, uh, civic purpose And that that you know, I mean that even with these Operations that have a criminal element to them, I guess you'd say a good the greed growers There's still a lot of cash moving around to legitimate businesses. You mentioned the bank One third of their money was uh, it was all right. Um So there are legitimate businesses that are I mean if you go to, uh Crescent city or somewhere farther north there They're and maybe worse economic there's less cash Moving through they can't have moving through the local economy in some cases Well, I had a friend come to town and you looked around and said, you know, all your Stores are all painted nice, you know, everything is trimmed. You know, things are looking good here um, and you know the the problem with the Where the money used to be uh, $3,000 a pound when I started filming in 2009 and it's it's gone down People are still want to make as much money as they used to so they've increased the size of their grows Which has changed the relationship But you know back in the day when people were selling at $5,000 a pound They only needed to know one person to distribute the pot. Okay now because they're growing much more amounts It's going to a middleman. It's you know, it's becoming a different kind of business there So even though we have, you know, a level of financial support in the town and and arcada Um is kind of, you know, it's it's the business of the town in a lot of ways Though it's not the only thing we do. I mean arcades got a lot of talent and we're we're a phenomenal area for all kinds of businesses I want to be clear about that. Yeah But you know this You can definitely see the energy a lot of the energy from the town comes from this business Yeah To go on that a little bit, um, you did mention in your film that arcada has one of the largest Source of oysters for arcada bay has a large source of oysters for uh for california or for the nation California and humbled fog cheese and you know, coca-tat was, you know, like a sporting goods and yakima products You know, anybody who's got a rack on their car knows what a yakima is Um, well, so I grew up in nevada city. Actually what you're where you're going to and um One of the things that is current and issue up there. We talked about grow houses in your film in arcada You know, there's a lot of forest service land surrounding nevada city and so some of the grow operations up there End up leaving all kinds, you know get the local streams are polluted by high influx of nitrogen and left over by You know plastic pipes running miles to get to keep the water flowing into some of the grow operations weapons as you mentioned and then people camping out and just leaving all their stuff and so you know the problem The problem is not just grow houses in some communities, uh, you know, we're especially california that um, the the the money flows in the community hands But the community kind of has to deal with some of the problems on on that and you know I think you know the growers who gave money back to the community people appreciated that that was like Okay, we're we're kind of a place that makes it possible for you to grow and you're paying back in So there was more of a feeling like this is all this is good for the community But when people come and you know wreck the place And then just take the money out and go somewhere else or you know with the streams Uh in humboldt county, there's been some streams have been drained dry and some of the rivers have stopped flowing Yeah, and uh diesel spills from the diesel generators And then of course the poison that's used to keep animals from eating the plants has killed off Um, uh some endangered species the fisher was you know is a is a population that's uh Threatened by the poisons. Yeah It's a real problem that I don't think a lot of people are talking about which makes your film so great. Um, Let me get to getting back to your film Uh, I like the in the final part of your film. You sort of focus on some of the solutions to some of these problems and some of the creative ways that arcade has gone about Because Some of the creative ways arcade has gone about to try to solve these problems. One of them was a zoning restriction On the use of over on the use of power sort of uh Trying to limit how much power a resident could possibly use and I thought that was a creative way Maybe because you know if you're in a residential area, the electrical lines are set up for a certain amount of usage And we've seen it when there's like brownouts and stuff. They don't want you to you know run Your dishwashers during that time. Yeah, so a single house That is a grow house with maybe 20,000 watt lights in it is using like 600 of the electricity of a normal house 600 times, you know the electricity and the uh, let alone the environmental footprint. Well, that's yeah And arcades has always been a very green city We had the first green city council that was ever voted in and we're always very conscious of that And so it was such an embarrassment to realize that this huge and PG&E was perfectly happy because you know We were using so much electricity. They're installing new infrastructure. Yeah, they were very happy, you know with it So so a zoning ordinance passed the restricted To try to set a limit on how much power or how did that work? Yeah, if you're using A certain amount passed. I think it's 400 past normal house Then they can tax you on that use So it's sort of red flags a house as being a grow house And and I was concerned because I had a friend who was a potter who worked with an electric kill And I go what's this going to affect my friend it turns out that even running an electric kiln several times a week Is not at any way near what a grow house generates. So it's so she's not even touched by it So the power of consumption is so far beyond the normal use of a residential Well, and you know the houses the ones that have are fully Changed into industrial grows have so much humidity and electricity There's one house in the film where I show, you know that the the clapboard panels outside are actually oozing moisture So you you know now when you walk through arcada because they pass the excessive Electrical use tax Whereas you used to be able to smell pot, you know or cannabis on every street Now it's it's very rare to smell it and And it's actually, you know, the growers have moved out of arcada into other areas Sounds like a part two for your for your film. Yeah trickier business or tricky business too or the return of tricky Son of tricky business. Yeah well, what's interesting to me is that Sort of not by confronting marijuana prohibition at the federal level These localities like arcade are sort of left to not negotiate this train by themselves and You have an attorney mentioned in your film that if marijuana was taken off schedule one control substances, which is the highest level for For controlled substances it would allow for all kinds of regulatory tools to be used To control the negative aspects in which we've kind of been talking about So we have these local ordinances that are kind of viewed to me They seem like kind of workarounds to sort of like deal with the impacts before Other regulatory tools can be used to kind of control and I appreciate sort of the The spirit of arcada, which is like well, you know, not too much regulation But certainly something has to has to be done. So these it kind of seems like You know municipalities are kind of have their hands tied behind their back at some extent Well, and you they also are concerned with having places that are growing marijuana in a clean way You know, if someone is actually using it for medication Then, you know, you don't necessarily want to have Cannabis that's been grown with a lot of chemicals or been sprayed for For gnats that come on there. So arcada was really conscious that this was This a state approved medical use and that people had a right to grow and they did come up with a Regulation now that in your own house. You can be have a five by ten canopy and two lights So for personal use, that's what they consider, you know Adequate personal use, but you can't turn a whole house into a marijuana grow right at this point Yeah, I think the issues that are brought up in your film and brought up in general by this This topic are just sort of on the forefront of I mean in some of it Since it feels like we've been here before and you mentioned this in your film with alcohol prohibition in the 20s And it seems like there is kind of a model for Slowly bringing things into normalcy rather than on the fringes But and another way this actually seems like a pretty new issue because of the medical side of it You know alcohol. I don't think it was ever seen as a medical actually during prohibition In order to drink alcohol you could get a note from your physician and it was called medical alcohol And I come from Chicago and Walgreens, which is a big department drug store there Walgreens started out with a couple of drug stores In prohibition and by the time prohibition was over they had like 50 Because they basically were able to expand their business because they were a drug store that would sell you alcohol Right. So yes, we have been here before Yeah, I guess so And the other thing you mentioned before we went on the air is just how there's some parallels to you know Napa Valley and the wine Community there, of course, it's wine. They came into being much further after prohibition But we might reach a point if marijuana becomes legal that Humboldt becomes, you know, has some sort of micro economy with a specializing in We have amazing growers and you know, there's there's a real Split thinking and arcada because there's a lot of pride with the Quality of what people can produce and how much science goes into it and and how I mean the industry is very clever I mean when when we had the spate of fires The grow house Supply stores actually came out with fire protection Devices so that you know Grow houses, you know fires dropped right away, you know, like they address the problems there. They are hard working people Yeah, and you know, um arcada. What is it willy nelson says he gets his his his cannabis from From arcada. He's the first uh celebrity endorsement. I guess. Yeah, there's actually there's probably many celebrity endorsements And you know the work with uh hybridization So, you know once they started working with different plants and different strains Using it for different things medically and and now it's all trial and error and individuals You know, there's no way to do medical testing Because the federal government actually has put um Restrictions on medical testing, which wasn't in the film. We didn't get to this But but it's one of those things that like they say there's no medical use for this But then they won't let you test it to find out if there is and other places like canada and israel All have come up with, you know, medical Actual patented mess medicines for it. Well, I mean this Topic you can go really deep with it's really deep and I appreciate that you in your film that you I did explore some of the background and I um, I encourage people to check that out if they're interested in this topic I also appreciate the tone you take on this film. Uh, you know, it's the whole The whole atone that people have around marijuana, you know stoners, etc. Etc. And ha ha it's hilarious and everything Uh, I think it's I think it's good to have a sense of humor But I also think it's I appreciate the tone in the story of the series Tony took in this movie Having lived the experience up in arcada And I think that a lot more people are going to be living some of these experiences that arcada does Has been for years. Yeah So we've been joined in the studio this week by Joanne shook. She's co-producer of the film tricky business It's showing this week. Well, not this week if you're watching it's showing the week of january 17th and 18th At the wild scenic film festival in the vat of city However, it'll be at other festivals and you can go to trickybusiness.com to um to find out more information And it will be on your public access. We'll be airing it on dctv channel 15 as well Thanks to Joanne who brought us a copy today so you can look at our schedule online at davismeany.org if you'd like to find out when Uh, thanks Joanne. Thank you. You're welcome and tune in next week for another topic on in the studio