Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterThe first time director Jamie Babbit heard the song “Both Sides Now” on the radio, it immediately felt familiar.She realized she knew the song, not from Joni Mitchell’s expansive library of hits, but because it had been sung at the drug and rehab center her mom ran in Ohio, with different lyrics meant to amplify the perils of addiction.The revamped lyrics went: “I’ve looked at drugs from both sides now.
And still somehow it’s drug delusions. I recall, I really don’t like drugs at all.”“Growing up, I always thought, ‘Wow, that’s a fun song.’ I didn’t think about the lyrics.
But obviously my mom was singing it because it was a drug rehab song,” Babbit recently recalled in an interview with Variety.