The Chumscrubber

The Chumscrubber (German: Glück in kleinen Dosen) is a 2005 comedy-drama film, directed by Arie Posin, starring an ensemble cast led by Jamie Bell. The plot, written by Posin and Zac Stanford, focuses on the chain of events that follow the suicide of a teenage drug dealer in an idealistic but superficial town. Some of the themes addressed in the film are the lack of communication between teenagers and their parents and the inauthenticity of suburbia. The titular Chumscrubber is a character in a fictional video game that represents the town and its inhabitants. Posin and Stanford had originally planned to shoot the film using their own funds, but they sent the script to producers Lawrence Bender and Bonnie Curtis who agreed to produce the film and help to raise the budget. Bell was cast in the lead role after an extensive auditioning process, and the film was shot in various California locations over 30 days in April 2004. The Chumscrubber premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2005 and was released theatrically on August 26, 2005. An accompanying soundtrack, composed mostly by James Horner, was released on October 18, 2005. The film was both a critical and commercial failure, receiving mostly negative reviews and earning back only US$350,000 of its $10 million budget. Plot Troy Johnson, the supplier of prescription drugs to fellow high school students in the fictional southern California town of Hillside, commits suicide. Troy's best friend Dean finds his dead body but does not show any emotion about the loss of his friend. Dean is prescribed antidepressants by his psychiatrist father Bill to help "even him out". When Dean returns to school, he is antagonized by drug dealers Billy and Lee, who were supplied by Troy. Their friend, Crystal Falls flirts with Dean, but he soon realizes that her true intentions are for Dean to retrieve the remaining drugs in Troy's home, and he refuses to cooperate. To force Dean to procure the drugs, Billy and Lee plan to kidnap Dean's younger brother, Charlie as ransom, but instead they mistakenly kidnap another boy, Charlie Bratley.