Steroids: The 'Bigger' Picture

Chris Bell always dreamed of directing an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Just not the one he ended up making.

The Austrian-born bodybuilder-turned-movie-star-turned-politician does make a minor appearance in Bell's debut feature, "Bigger, Stronger, Faster*," but it isn't as the kind of action hero the filmmaker says he grew up worshiping as a "fat, pale kid from Poughkeepsie." Rather, the California governor is cited as just one of a litany of fallen heroes, including Hulk Hogan and Sylvester Stallone, in Bell's surprisingly complex documentary examining anabolic steroid use and American culture. (The asterisk in the title refers to the subtitle, "The Side Effects of Being American," and to the notation used to denote questionable athletic records.)

But there are two other heroes in Bell's film you have never heard of. The director's steroid-using brothers: Mike (known as "Mad Dog") and Mark (known as "Smelly") are featured far more prominently than any fallen-from-grace celebrities. That gives what even Bell admits is an overexposed subject a more personal slant, injecting a refreshing dose of candor into a headline-grabbing sports controversy in which many better-known participants have taken the Fifth.

"I wanted to explore why people are doing steroids," Bell says during an interview in Washington. "Why, in America, have we come to be a culture that relies on a drug or quick fix to do anything?"

From the beginning, his brothers were part of that larger conversation. "A lot of time was spent talking about my brothers. We started out, 'Okay, we're going to make a film about steroids and the bigger picture.' But once I said to [co-writers] Alex [Buono] and Tamsin [Rawady], 'Look, I know my brothers are on steroids right now, and they'll talk to me,' . . . it's like, 'Bingo!' That's the story there, the hook of the movie. Get the family involved, and talk to the family, and get them out in the open. Because we know that the people that are being brought before Congress are often not the most honest."

Not that Bell's film is a parade of shady steroid users on one side and crusading, anti-steroid activists on the other. In an interview with Henry A. Waxman, who not long ago presided over congressional hearings on steroid use in professional baseball, the California representative comes across as embarrassingly ill-informed.

"I thought it was a fluff interview," says Bell, who insists he was surprised by Waxman's slippery grasp of the facts. "I was asking him simple questions. He totally buried himself, and I didn't mean for that to happen. I didn't walk in going, 'You know what? I really have an agenda.' "

Interviewees on both sides of the issue opened up to him, Bell says, in part because of his regular-dude demeanor. "I definitely think it's the gym-rat guy thing" that put people at ease, says the 35-year-old workout junkie, who routinely appears on camera in baggy shorts, T-shirt and a ball cap and who shows up for this interview in ripped jeans.

But more important than his unassuming appearance, Bell says, was his willingness to keep an open mind on the subject. Although he says he doesn't use steroids and other performance-enhancing supplements in his exercise regimen and doesn't condone their use by children, he doesn't cast judgment on adults who do.

"I was willing to hear what every single person has to say, because I was just generally interested in the subject matter," he says.

Bell's favorite film remains "Rocky," despite recent headlines linking its star to steroids. For him, the ability to see shades of gray in what many would call a black and white world makes for a far more interesting movie than the heroes-and-villains fare he grew up on. "I'm actually really glad that I'm making more intelligent films with a perspective on the world, rather than just blowing something up," he says. "Because that doesn't get anybody anywhere, really."