World Premiere at AFI FEST 2024 By Paul Salfen for AMFM Magazine
There’s a moment in JUNKIE when Rocky Shay’s Stevie—freshly escaped from yet another rehab, barefoot, broke, and vibrating on meth—looks straight into the camera and grins like the world owes her a good time. It’s chaotic, it’s messy, it’s heartbreaking… and it’s one of the most electric performances you’ll see all year.
At the center of William Means’ fearless feature debut is a simple truth: labels lie. “Junkie” doesn’t define a person any more than “closeted Southern kid” ever defined Means himself. What JUNKIE does is rip every label to shreds and hand you the beautiful, bruised human underneath.
I sat down (virtually) with director-screenwriter-producer Will Means and his explosive leading lady Rocky Shay the week before their world premiere at AFI FEST on October 26th—executive produced by Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman, Monster), no less—to talk about turning trauma into triumph, shooting a movie in your own backyard with zero money, and why sometimes the hardest day on set becomes the memory you’ll never let go of.
The posters on the wall hint at a lifetime of dreaming big, but nothing could have prepared William Means for the surreal rush of premiering his debut feature at AFI FEST. What began as a guerrilla passion project shot in backyards across Georgia with a skeleton crew and a single good camera has landed one of the most coveted slots of the year.
Means describes the experience as returning to the kind of filmmaking he did as a kid—borrowing locations, calling in favors from friends, and somehow pulling off ambitious chaos like hardcore fight scenes and a full-on mud-bogging festival in Kentucky with barely six people behind the camera. The stakes felt higher than ever, shot in the middle of the Hollywood strikes when no one else could move, burning through every last dollar just to keep the dream alive.
At the heart of it all is Rocky Shay in a blistering breakout performance as Stevie, a meth-addicted mom on the run from yet another rehab, racing to settle debts and say goodbye to her estranged gay son before disappearing for good. What could have been another grim addiction tale instead explodes with erratic physical comedy, heartbreaking honesty, and moments of pure joy amid the wreckage.
The house-party sequence stands out as a perfect example—two freezing nights of nonstop dancing to Queen Latifah’s “Ladies First,” extras in short shorts turning the cold into pure electricity, side-steps and slaps and a contagious energy that made even the most stressful shoots unforgettable. One minute it felt like the hardest day of the entire production, the next it was the memory everyone wishes they could relive.
The film pulls no punches with its needle-sharp realism, yet the drug paraphernalia itself never triggered—the nausea came from wanting it to look authentic. Harder were the quieter, dialogue-heavy scenes that hit too close to home, moments that required stepping off set just to breathe. But the tiny crew trauma-bonded through mud, dust, and exhaustion, emerging as a family no one else will ever fully understand.
What drives the story is a refusal to let labels define anyone. The head drug dealer isn’t some cartoon villain but a loving, witty queer Black man who feels like everyone’s favorite auntie—because that’s the truth of the world the filmmakers lived. Families aren’t monolithic either; the mother character offers the kind of grounded support many never get, forcing even deeper excavation of what redemption really looks like when the option to run still glimmers on the horizon.
This is a movie built from personal journals, from lived pain and wild highs and lows where joy and shame walk hand-in-hand. It’s therapy wrapped in over-the-top set pieces, catharsis disguised as a Southern fever dream. And it arrives at a moment when scrappy, human storytelling feels endangered—when studios chase only sure bets and sequels, when authentic voices risk being drowned out.
The message to anyone holding a script or a dream is blunt: do it anyway. Burn whatever you have to burn. Tell your truth, even when it scares you, because someone out there needs to see it. Addiction isn’t a choice anyone wakes up and makes; it’s pain looking for relief that ends up multiplying the hurt a thousandfold. The best people can be the ones society writes off fastest. Don’t give up on them.
Audiences walking out of the AFI world premiere on October 26th—and the upcoming East Coast bow at the Maryland Film Festival—will carry more than just the thrill of a wild ride. They’ll carry the force of nature that is Rocky Shay, a performance so electric it demands the world reckon with her, and the reminder that life, at its most chaotic and heartbreaking, can still be unpredictable, hilarious, and worth every messy second when you’re with the right people.
Distribution talks are heating up, but the journey of JUNKIE is only just beginning—and it’s one America desperately needs right now.
