Maplewood resident Howard Ellis has had a long and varied career in media.
He’s worked as an anchor, talk show host, and a producer for local cable news. He taught television production courses as an adjunct professor, developed a magazine-style program and internship at a community college, and worked for more than 25 years as a senior editor/producer for USA Network, SyFy Channel, Animal Planet and Universal Kids.
Now after more than 25 years in the business, his film “Bar None: Cannabis Redemption” is a film he worked solo on.
“I decided to one-man band it. The crew is me.” Ellis said. “I love collaborating with other people. This one, I wanted to be mine. If I make mistakes, they’re my mistakes. It’s a labor of love.”
“Bar None: Cannabis Redemption” won Best Director/Feature Film at AltFF (Alternative Film Festival) in Toronto and was nominated for Best Documentary (North America) at the same festival.
“It feels good,” said Ellis. “It tells a good story.”
Ellis was going to various conventions, exploring peoples’ passions. Whether it was an exotic reptile show or a tattoo convention or a train convention, it wasn’t cutting it. “It just wasn’t happening,” he said.
Then he went to a cannabis convention and met Randy Lanier and Kyle Page, the most prominent people in the documentary. Page was first arrested at age 18 for a non-violent cannabis offense and served two prison terms.
And, Lanier, a former racing champion, served 27 years of a life sentence for a non-violent cannabis offense. Of all those Ellis interviewed for the film, Lanier’s story touched him the most.
“Randy Lanier is an amazing story,” Ellis said. “The enormous amount of time he lost—27 years. He had children and he comes out and they’re approaching middle age. He has a book on his life that’s fascinating. There’s a good HBO documentary about his smuggling years. He was an upcoming race car driver breaking records. Just a natural, broke all kinds of records. Looked like he was going to be the next big thing, beating all the big names in racing. He wanted to control his own team. He did that by becoming what he did since he was a teenager—selling cannabis. He became, maybe, the biggest smuggler in American history. He was making a lot of money, living the 1980s Miami Vice kind of lifestyle.”
Continuing, he said, “There’s a history of racing and smuggling going back to prohibition days. You got a fast car, you got the perfect vehicle to smuggle.”
Ellis said that Lanier was busted in 1986 during the Reagan administration. Lanier had smuggled 650,000 pounds of cannabis, which Ellis said was considered the same thing as smuggling heroin—life without parole.
In addition to Lanier and Page, the film highlights other formerly incarcerated people achieving redemption in the legal cannabis industry and advocating for reform while exposing the stark contradictions in state and federal policies.
With dispensaries everywhere, and legalization or semi-legalization in 38 states, about 40,000 people remain in jail, still serving long sentences for cannabis related crimes. And many more face challenges due to criminal records. Ellis saw inequality that needs to be addressed.
“I got caught up in the injustice of it all,” he said.
The biggest outdated cannabis law that has impacted those who faced incarceration according to Ellis is that cannabis is a Schedule 1 drug, put in the same category as LSD and heroin.
In “Bar None: Cannabis Redemption,” Ellis interviewed 13 people who spent time in jail and are now out.
“Cannabis ruined their lives,” he said. Nevertheless, they come out of incarceration just as enthusiastic as when they came in.
In addition to those who spent time incarcerated, Ellis talked to lawyers who were experts in cannabis law, medical folks, and top scientists in the world, who explore what cannabis can do.
To learn more about the film “Bar None: Cannabis Redemption” visit: https://howard-ellis.com/
