The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

"The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia" is a documentary about a family of self proclaimed hillbillies in Boone County, West Virginia. This family has not left Boone County, ever. The father, was shot in the face as he was starting to become famous for tap dancing. The mother raised at least 23 of her own children, natural and adopted, but the number of kids may be more around 34. Many of the children have died over the years including an accidental suicide, two shootings and a car wreck.

Bertie Mae, the mother, is 84 years old and at the start of the film the family gathers to celebrate. The documentary focuses on four of the children and their children. All this family does is drugs, have babies, and get arrested. The only ones that don't do drugs are Bertie Mae and the ones who are too young. They do anything and everything they can; pain killers, anxiety pills, cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana. 

The documentary crew follows the Whites around for a year and just see what happen. I personally thought the movie was a sad example of a family of criminals. None of them work, they all do drugs and steal and sell drugs and bad things happen to them. The only one of them who works is the one who didn't stay in Boone County and he is still a pot head. It makes me wonder about drugs and the theory about addictiveness in personality. There are two explanations for this, one they grew up around drugs and thought the behavior was normal and just followed suit or that doing drugs is just inherent in some people. The film was disturbing because I couldn't believe people like this actually existed. It was like something out of a Rob Zombie movie. It just made me never want to visit West Virginia. :)