By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Invite the relatives over tomorrow night. Invite your friends from work or church or Little League. Bring the TV out to the garage and tell the neighbors to bring potluck.

At 7 p.m., Hawai'i is going to get a hard look into a very clear mirror, and you're going to want to talk to your people afterward.

Edgy Lee's documentary, "Ice: Hawai'i's Crystal Meth Epidemic" is jarring in its frankness. Not overly sensational or graphic, but honest. The point is made quite strongly that ice affects everyone in Hawai'i, not just the strung-out addicts crouched in downtown doorways.

"You'd better stop just playing your golf game. You'd better stop just watching television. You'd better stop going to your restaurants and thinking everything is hunky dory," Hawai'i County Mayor Harry Kim says in an on-camera interview. "The message is, wake up. The message is, wake up before it hits you in the face like a 2-by-4."

Edgy Lee said the project has cost $400,000 so far. Advertiser library photo

In some ways, even more devastating, are interviews with ice addicts who look like people you know, people you'd never suspect. One is a young woman who describes herself as coming from a "white, middle-class, Republican family in Honolulu." She was able to pull herself out of six years of addiction and turn her life around. Even so, her father sitting next to her in the well-appointed living room bursts into tears as he tries to talk about what he went through. It is a moment so painful because it confirms every parents' worst fear: yes, it could happen in any family.

There are quotes so laden with pain that they resonate long after the credits roll:

A kupuna from Waimea saying, "They selling drugs on the side of the road like they selling poi in a bag."

A veteran critical care nurse choking back tears as she searches for a way to describe what she has seen, coming up only with, "Don't even try it because you won't be able to beat it. That's all."

Part of the gravity of the piece is because of the on-camera narrator, Honolulu private detective Matt Levi. The former investigative reporter and television journalist has stayed away from broadcast projects for 15 years. His powerful return to television speaks to his belief in the project. Levi isn't a face-for-hire. That he would lend the legacy and weight of his name and presence to the project is a huge endorsement, though all he would say about it is, "This is good."

It is good, but it hasn't been easy. Director Lee and co-producer Jeff Mueller say it has been harder to raise money for the project than any other documentary they've produced. Lee says the project has cost $400,000 so far. She and Mueller are looking to raise an additional $200,000 to make a second cut of the documentary aimed at students that will be taken into schools across the state. Mueller said there is a lack of educational materials on the subject available for youths, and the goal is to take this first piece and build on the momentum.

There are things the documentary doesn't do: It doesn't take sides in the treatment vs. incarceration debate; it doesn't mention faith-based prevention and intervention programs; it doesn't hold up a solution to the ice problem. None of this was because of oversight.

Lee's purpose was to present the ice problem in a way that was "apolitical, nonpartisan and nonsecular," she says. And as far as solutions, Mueller says the only thing that makes sense is a multifaceted approach. "It's going to take a collaborative effort. As it is, we're scattered. We're divided. And we're failing."

"Our job is to lay it out there in the most honest, straightforward way we can and hope people pick up on it," Lee says. "This certainly is just scratching the surface."

For those who still think that ice isn't something they need to worry about, this documentary is going to be a painful scratch on that veneer of denial. For those still searching for a quick fix to the problem, the piece gives the sad answer that there is none; but that hope lies in community involvement, education, and action.

Tomorrow's documentary will be combined with interactive town hall meetings across O'ahu.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.