A legendary “lost film” of the 1970s, Dusty and Sweets McGee was released by Warner Bros. in 1971 but quickly withdrawn by a studio fearful of its too-lyrical take on drug addiction. On the sun-kissed streets of Los Angeles, several “everyday dope fiends”-nearly all played by nonprofessional actors who were, in reality, very professional dope fiends-go about their daily chores: scoring, hustling, tying up, and slipping down. An eye-opening, surprisingly easy-natured mixture of cinema verité, Hollywood scenery, seventies pop radio, and heroin, Dusty and Sweets McGee was about thirty ahead of its time; the films it most resembles now, shockingly, in its connection with place and people, are Pedro Costa's recent Fountainhas trilogy. “Movies about junkies and drug dealers have gotten a lot flashier in the years since, but they haven't been able to capture Dusty's lyricism, its sense of wonder, or its humor,” wrote Thom Andersen for Film Comment. “It's the film everyone has been trying to make since: free, fragmentary, bursting with life.”