David Magee’s memoir is inspired by the last conversation he had with his late son.
“The last thing my son William had told me, like literally the last words, were, ‘Dad, you know, I hope you’ll tell our story one day,’” he recalled. “I didn’t really understand what that meant, and then I never saw him again.”
“Dear William,” a bestselling book, is about their family’s intergenerational struggles with addiction and mental illness. Now a feature film based on the book is being shot in Mississippi with help from an $800,000 grant from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Opioid Settlement Fund.
Magee is an author, speaker and Mississippi native. His oldest son and the book’s inspiration, William, died from an overdose. David Magee and his younger son Hudson are both in recovery from addiction, and his daughter struggled with an eating disorder. Magee and his wife live in Oxford.
Magee explained that the grant money will go toward research and the film’s production. The rest of the film’s funding comes from in-kind donations from Magee and The Magee Foundation and from private investors. Donations and grants will cover the screenings.
Oxford’s David Magee, author of “Dear William,” speaks at Boys State about addiction. Credit: Courtesy photo
“The film is a tool to (reach) the hearts and minds and students and families of Mississippi, and then beyond,” he said.
Principal photography began in Greenwood, MS on Sept. 8. Greenwood was previously a filming location for “The Help,” “Mississippi Masala,” and the miniseries “Women of the Movement,” among others.
Additional filming will take place at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. Magee said filming should wrap within seven to nine months, and that talks with distributors have been promising.
He previously told the Clarion-Ledger newspaper that the Delta region would be a pilot community for the educational component of the project. He previously worked there as an editor.
Last year, Mississippi Today investigated how the state had spent less than 1% of the tens of millions of dollars it received from the opioid settlement lawsuits on directly addressing addiction and overdose deaths.
Most of that money – 85% – is now managed by the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council and the Mississippi Legislature. The council reviews applications for projects that address Mississippi’s opioid crisis and makes recommendations to the Legislature on which ones to fund.
Last year, the Legislature passed a bill expanding its ability to fund projects outside of the council’s recommendations.
Cover of David Magee’s book about his son’s struggles with addiction.
Magee believes there should be more resources of all kinds for people impacted by addiction, and strongly believes in the power of storytelling to make an impact.
“We’re not standard, and I own that,” he said of settlement funds being used to help produce the film.
“But I think students and families need us, and the AGs and all these people who fought for the opioid settlement, they need somebody and some people to jump out there and try something new and different – also that happens to have a lot of evidence around it supporting that it just might work.”
The plan is to show screenings of the film to K-12 students across Mississippi, followed up by panel discussions and directing people to addiction abatement resources.
There are plans to expand screenings to college students, establish storytelling workshops in the Delta and set up an online hub with prevention resources.
Magee added that the Center for Research Evaluation at the University of Mississippi will also be doing research on the project.
“The opioid funds, if they don’t belong to making this movie, to take to students and taking this education to them, then I don’t know where it belongs,” he said.
