High Expectations Documentary

Stacey Mulvey: Creator of Marijuasana

At the beginning of 2017, I was teaching marijuana-friendly yoga and painting classes out of the Purple Mansion owned by Rob Kampia, the Executive Director of the Marijuana Policy Project. (Yes, it's really called the Purple Mansion. I did not make that up).

Some documentary film students from The George Washington University saw my Facebook event for cannabis yoga in DC, and so they contacted me to see if I'd let them film my class. I was thrilled to get the chance to showcase my baby. We met, and I told them about me and what I was doing. They filmed my Marijuasana class, and painting class in late February. 

We scheduled my interview portion for the next weekend. My life was in Colorado, but I was working a lot in DC. My personal life was at a particularly traumatic stage so being in Denver was painful, and Washington D.C. felt like safe harbor. While I was back in Denver for a span of 4 days, my relationship came to an end, and my entire life shifted.

Back in DC the next weekend, I was getting ready for the students to come over to film the interview. I was trying to put the turbulence of what had recently been taking place in my life out of heart and mind; and focus on what was about to be at hand. I was standing in the bathroom putting on my makeup and talking to myself in the mirror, when the dog sitter called. He informed me that Blue, my beautiful pit-bull, had just died of a heart attack.

Aside from my pug Trixie, Blue was my only source of affection in the circumstances I was in at the time. She was both my champion,  and my little baby. I transferred so much emotion to that dog, and she took all of it and carried it for me. She meant the world to me. I was gutted. I bawled my fucking eyes out until the film crew arrived to start the interview about 5 minutes after the call.

So that's the explanation for why I look like a cardboard cut-out version of myself during the interview. I'd just gotten the wind knocked out of me, and there was a huge black hole where my heart had been. I had just found out that my sweet doggo had died. All I wanted to do was lay down and sob.

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The first part of the documentary, where the UBER driver is talking to me about her mother takes place about 6 weeks later. I'd just moved by myself to Washington DC, and I was feeling very optimistic about putting space between everything back Denver and starting over in life. 

You see a wide range of my emotions in this, though it may not be obvious. This little film school doc captured more than those students realized.