Bay Area Reporter - June 5, 2008
David Lamble

"I walk into a club, and the hottest girl could be there with her boyfriend, and her boyfriend will see me and mush her in the face just to get close to me."

"You're getting attention from the guys, not the girls."

"I don't give a shit, it's attention. I can't explain it to you, it's like a mindset."

It's the origins of this mindset that Bell, a former power-lifter turned USC film student, is really after in Bigger, Stronger, Faster (written with Alex Buono and Tamsin Rawady). He begins with a comic, YouTube-style deconstruction of his Poughkeepsie, NY childhood - the middle child in a family prone to weight gain, young Chris found himself, as his mom puts it, squeezed between his older and younger brothers like the cr me filling in an Oreo cookie. When his older brother, nicknamed "Mad Dog" for his propensity to beat up kids on the school bus, succumbed to steroid use while trying to make his college football squad, younger brother, "Smelly," started hitting the "juice" to become a weightlifting champ. Bigger, Stronger, Faster starts off as Chris Bell's debate with himself as to why he finds steroids immoral.

Taking a page from Michael Moore's playbook in Roger and Me, Bell sets out to quiz his #1 ex-hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former 19-year-old prodigy bodybuilder, about the dark side of addiction to the juice. Tipped off that he's doing an expos on a subject that Governor Arnold has now put behind him, Schwarzenegger's handlers prevent a chat. But Bell does maneuver his way into a silly mock-wrestling pose with Arnold that lands on the front page of the LA Times .

The film bounces jauntily between a send-up of boyhood action-hero fads - Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Seagal, with their bizarre mix of patriotism, narcissism and avarice - and a PBS-worthy debate between advocates for a complete ban on steroids, whom Bell mocks with clips from the pot-demonizing film Reefer Madness, and experts pointing out that the science doesn't support complete prohibition. Bell provides a revealing look at the hijacking of the congressional oversight process as a committee headed by LA Congressman Henry Waxman makes a circus out of pro baseball's juice-fueled home runs. Bell captures a priceless moment when Waxman appears to have not a clue about the complexities of the steroid issue, and constantly has to ask for help from an unseen aide.

The film's unsettling high point comes in Bell's visit with a father who believes his athlete son's suicide was steroid-induced, while evidence points to the kid's having an equally problematic addiction to anti-depressants.

In my conversation with Chris Bell, we began with a discussion of the overlooked life-saving properties of anabolic steroids.

David Lamble: You talk to a longterm AIDS survivor who credits steroids with keeping him alive.

Chris Bell: I met Jeff Taylor through Michael Mooney, who [with Nelson Vergel] wrote a book called Built to Survive: A Comprehensive Guide to the Medical Use of Anabolic Steroids, Nutrition and Exercise for HIV(+) Men and Women. I talked with Jeff in Palm Springs. He looks superhealthy, he's had HIV for 25 years. He had full-blown AIDS 20 years ago, and he got into a clinical trial for Anabar, which is a bodybuilding steroid. He got a high dosage, and he gained 30 lbs. and 300 T-cells. Steroids were the reason he turned it all around.

All three brothers had ambitions around pro wrestling and weightlifting. Your story is very funny and a good introduction to the contradictions surrounding this perplexing drug.

My older brother went to the University of Cincinnati, it was probably the worst football team in the country at the time. A week into practice, he started taking steroids because he couldn't compete against these [bigger, stronger] guys. He called my dad for money, and my dad said, "If you want to buy drugs, go get a job." My brother eventually got the steroids from my uncle, who got us into weightlifting in the first place. My younger brother and I were always against steroids, so when my older brother started taking them, there was obviously a conflict.

I was moved by your interview with Donald Hooton, the father who's convinced that steroids drove his athlete son to kill himself. I like the way you led the discussion with the father into the possible role anti-depressant drugs may have played in his son's suicide.

When you look at the case of Taylor Hooton, his father is convinced that steroids killed his son when he was also taking Lexapro, a powerful anti-depressant. He just refuses to believe that had anything to do with it. Lexapro has a black-box label on it that says it could cause suicidal thoughts in teenagers. Anabolic steroids don't carry any sort of black-box warning. As far as we know, the FDA puts a black-box warning on the more dangerous drugs that have serious side effects. I didn't want to challenge Donald Hooton about what happened to his son, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't leaving without asking him the right questions.

Taylor Hooton's story underlines why many people feel scandalized about the use of steroids in baseball.

I'm not for athletes using steroids in sports, the problem is the testing is so bad that a lot of people find it easy to get around tests. I think the use of super-growth hormone and anabolic steroids needs to be more understood among the general public, because it could have some really positive health effects, yet the anti-aging industry and the people who are prescribing this stuff are borderline quacks. So it's really tough to take a stand, because both sides are really lying, and the truth is really in-between somewhere.

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