Filmmaker R.J. Cutler on Big Vape and Juul’s Rush to Market: ‘Nobody Would Take a Cancer Drug and Put It Out That Way’
By Addie Morfoot
October 11, 2023
If you expect the Netflix docuseries “Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul” to be the ultimate takedown of controversial e-cigarettes, think again.
The four-part series, directed by R.J. Cutler and based on Time reporter Jamie Ducharme’s book “Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul,” examines all the mistakes Juul executives made, including marketing the e-cigarette to millennials. The series also suggests that the product might very well be a better option than conventional cigarettes.
Stanford graduate students and Juul founders Adam Bowen and James Monsee, who did not participate in the series, were on a smoke break when they had an “a-ha” moment. Could they create a nicotine product that was less harmful than cigarettes? Bowen and Monsee wanted to “erase combustible cigarettes from the face of the earth.” The result was Juul, an electronic cigarette startup meant to save lives that came under federal scrutiny for its own health risks. Juul became a multibillion-dollar company whose reputation eventually came crumbling down due in part to tobacco control groups and the FDA, which banned Juul products last year.
The docuseries doesn’t deny that Juul made a series of bad decisions that led to its downfall. One of those mistakes includes marketing Juul to millennials, which left many young smokers suffering from critical lung damage. The series also points out some of those cases were likely caused by vitamin C acetate – found in the black market.
Cutler makes sure to tell both sides of the Juul story by featuring a wide array of talking heads, including David Pierce, a former tech reporter for Wire; Allen Gladstone, a former talent recruiter for Juul; tobacco historian Robert Proctor; Meredith Berkman of Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes (PAVE); Ralph Eschenbach, an early investor in the company; NYU tobacco expert Cheryl Healton, and Greg Conley, president of the American Vaping Assn.
In the words of one Juul employee featured in the series, the story of Juul isn’t “black and white. The reality is, it’s gray.”
Variety spoke to Culter ahead of the docuseries debut Oct. 11 on Netlflix.
What appealed to you about making a docuseries about Juul?
Jamie’s Book and at the essence of her reporting for Time magazine is what attracted me to the story. It’s complexity and it’s very nuance is what compelled me. To me, the central narrative of our moment is unintended consequences of big tech. A nerdy kid at Harvard gets dumped by his girlfriend and decides to go out and and create something that’s going prove how cool he is to the world and the rest of us have to deal with the potential demise of democracy. It’s the unintended consequences of big tech and Juul is another one of those stories that really touches on all the complex issues that we as citizens have to deal with now in the tech world that we live in. We see it around us all the time. We have to confront it. We have to understand it, and we have to deal with it. Big Vape gives us the opportunity to explore all of that.
What surprised you the most about this story?
That the technology, the design, the engineering might lead us to achieve what Adam and James initially set out to achieve in terms of what the Juul could mean for people who were addicted to combustible cigarettes. The twist is that the thing worked.
Did it also surprise you that the company, which was hoping to help people stop smoking cigarettes, based their initial advertising campaign on past cigarette campaigns?
They say it wasn’t, but they were tapping into certainly the same mythic tropes that had succeeded for the tobacco industry. So, was that surprising? Sure. But we interviewed the creators of that campaign, and they say they didn’t have time to think about it. But certainly their initial launch campaign, which is the most significant aspect of any advertising campaign, was very attractive to young people.
The series goes into the founders’ decision to go to market too soon with Juul. The phrase used is “Fuck it. Ship it.” In that regard, “Big Vape” reminded me of con artist docus like “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” Alex Gibney’s doc about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes as well as Chris Smith’s “FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” about Billy McFarland, who co-founded the ill-fated Fyre Festival. What does this let’s get rich mentality say about our current culture?
It says a lot. There are a lot of questions raised about whether venture capital driven, big tech, startup companies should be the ones who are confronting public health issues. It says a lot about our society. It says a lot about late stage capitalism. But let’s be clear, we also live in a time where in our society, extraordinary advances are being made in public health in areas, for instance, cancer research.
After watching this series I came away thinking that perhaps vaping is better for people than smoking. What do you think?
There is great complexity here and this should not be something that teenagers are using. It should be a harm reduction device for those who would otherwise be smoking combustible cigarettes. This is Juul’s stated objective, but it’s not consistent with the company’s behavior. The company’s behavior was not consistent with the stated objectives of the creators.
So, there’s a complexity that we need to understand as citizens living in a big tech world. It appears from the various things that people have seen that there are advantages (to vaping versus smoking) but there has been no time. Studies must be done. Nobody would take a cancer drug and put it out in the way that (Juul) put it out. We need time to learn about these things, so there can be guidance, and the government needs to help with that.
See clip below:
