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I was waiting to see anything remotely like Tarantino come out for a long time, and it's still far from common. By that I mean showing people into drugs are not all evil, and certainly not all the time. I'd just suggest that drug dealers not be turned into cartoons, nor the people who use drugs into victims or idiots or both, if you want to give a feeling of welcome verisimilitude. Tarantino showed you can do that even when hyping the action and absurdity way up. It can feel real even when it's very unlikely to be, if you do it right. The after-school portrayal of everything druggy has long been bankrupt and an instant ticket to irrelevance. I guess I'm saying, these stories are so much more interesting and true to life when they aren't cheap and full of paint-by-numbers predictable attitudes and events. Leave your characters the room to live and breathe in your script rather than talking down to the audience, and your flick will be so much better.

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This is exactly what the goal is. This person was probably the hardest partier in the 20th century. Younger people likely have a caricature-view of him. However, the people who really knew him describe an entirely different person. He did do a few very bad things which he paid for but nothing he did eclipses the intellect, spirituality and genius that he possessed.

Most drug-related films have a message and it's usually crafted poorly. There's probably more people who do drugs (or have) that are normal rather than evil, stupid or victims.

With this person his drug use was beyond excessive but the story isn't about a moral message. It's about the real person behind the legend. Something a normal person could relate to -- universal human ideals. It's certainly going to have a lot of wild grandiose scenes but there's more to him than just the drugs and ego.