How Patty Mooney and Mark Schulze Earned the Trust of a Global Cannabis Movement and Filmed the World While It Changed
The true origin of the film NECTARBALL: The Story of Cannabis reaches back decades before a single frame was shot. It begins with the reputations Patty Mooney and Mark Schulze built through a lifetime of ethical filmmaking. They pioneered the production of extreme sports, social justice, science, health, and adventure VHS videos beginning in the mid 1980s via their company, New & Unique Videos. At the same time, Mark grew a few cannabis plants here and there over the years, beginning in the 1970s, dubbing his buds “Nectarball” based on the honey-like resin on mature flowers. The couple’s O.G. status combined with their filmmaking capabilities became the passport that opened doors others had knocked on for years without success.
Trust First, Cameras Second
In the cannabis world, shaped for generations by secrecy, risk, and stigma, trust is rare. Yet again, pioneers, scientists, patients, and healers agreed to speak with Patty and Mark for one simple reason: They TRUSTED them. People who had never granted interviews before said yes because they sensed something unique and different. There was no judgment. No exploitation. No preloaded agenda. Just two documentarians with an extraordinary provenance ( The Nectarball Collection )in the cannabis world willing to listen deeply and portray people as they truly are. Over time, introductions spread by word of mouth: “If Patty and Mark are filming, tell them everything.” This trust transformed the project from a documentary into a seven-year odyssey that crossed continents.
Why Certain Voices Matter: The Case of Nurse Elisabeth Mack
Nurse Elisabeth Mack, founder of Holistic Caring & The Green Nurse and CEO of Bloom Hemp CBD, exemplified this trust. Her visionary advocacy and unique perspective were indispensable to the film. Patty and Mark sought her out for her exceptional blend of medical training, clinical experience, and strategic insight. She offered not hype or anecdotal claims, but grounded, evidence-based understanding of cannabis’s interaction with real patients in diverse healthcare environments.
Nurse Elisabeth Mack Won Cannabis Nurse Educator of the Year 2023 for The American Cannabis Nurses Association.
Her story carried even more weight because of her own experience. After a serious bicycle accident in 2014 she needed reconstructive surgery on her shoulder. While she was out on leave Elisabeth was introduced to CBD topical massage at her chiropractor’s office which changed her life. When conventional medicine failed her, she turned to cannabis and it changed everything. Her entire body relaxed for the first time in months. She started using CBD oils internally and soon noticed she needed far less ibuprofen and muscle relaxants to manage her pain. Within a week, she was at the library devouring every book she could find on cannabis science and PubMed research on cannabinoids. That discovery changed her life and the lives of others as she emerged determined to bring medical integrity to cannabis care by blending science, empathy, and guidance for patients who had nowhere else to turn.
She met a cannabis physician, obtained her medical cannabis card, and she interned at h is practice to learn how to support patients. But when she visited dispensaries, she realized a critical gap: People were making cannabis medicines. People were selling cannabis medicines. But no one could explain how to use cannabis as medicine. At that moment, she knew her next calling was to become a Cannabis Nurse. The training manual she originally created for her fellow nurse colleagues evolved into her first book, “Cannabis for Health: Become a Coach.” This book, in turn, inspired her to develop the Cannabis Nurse Health Coach Certificate Program, designed to train the top Cannabis Nurses in America.
Elisabeth Mack’s interview became one of the film’s anchor points. She embodied the reason NECTARBALL needed voices from inside the medical system, voices brave enough to challenge outdated norms, and voices willing to share vulnerable truths with filmmakers they trusted. Check out one of Elisabeth’s Key Keynote Speeches at the 2019 Cannabis Nurses Network Conference on “The Cost Benefit Analysis of Cannabinoids”
Chasing Stories Across Continents
That trust followed Patty and Mark across the world. They filmed in South Africa where ancient traditions meet modern necessity. They captured the transformation of Uruguay, the first country to fully legalize cannabis. They documented the lived wisdom of growers in the Netherlands where tolerance created its own culture.
They listened to Argentinian families fighting for medical access to save their children.
They traveled across the United States to speak with scientists, veterans, cultivators, cancer patients, and entrepreneurs.
In every place, people did more than share facts. They shared lived truths and struggles that had shaped their entire lives. The interviews reflected the full diversity of the movement: physicians, botanists, chemists, activists, economists, geneticists, cancer survivors, policy shapers, and everyday people whose stories had never been recorded before.
A Tapestry of Voices Created Through Credibility
As the interviews accumulated, Patty and Mark’s reputation grew into its own form of currency. Producers and journalists can request interviews, but authentic stories only emerge when people feel safe enough to reveal themselves. That is why NECTARBALL contains dozens of intimate and candid conversations that go far beneath the headlines and myths. Each contributor added another facet to the story, and all of them trusted Patty and Mark with their truth.
Seven Years of Filming and the Mountain of Editing
As the footage grew, so did the realization that they were not simply making a film. They were building an archive of a global turning point. Editing took years instead of months. Patty shaped the material with precision and sensitivity, creating space for every important voice. Mark watched the footage again and again, searching for the threads that tied continents together and the deeper story that united every interview. They witnessed prohibition unraveling, science emerging, industry booming, stigma dissolving, and governments rewriting their own policies. The world was changing in real time, and Patty and Mark kept the cameras rolling. Seven years was not a delay. It was the natural amount of time required for the movement to unfold.
What NECTARBALL Ultimately Became
It became a documentary but also a historical record.
It became a map of how cannabis traveled from the shadows into the global spotlight.
It became a chorus of pioneers, including people like Nurse Elisabeth Mack whose experience and clarity helped guide viewers through the complex medical landscape surrounding the plant. Most of all, it became a story told by people who had never been given the dignity of being heard until they trusted Patty and Mark to carry their truth.
In the End, Trust Was the Real Passport
The filming was global. The movement was massive.
But the heart of the story is simple. People opened their doors because Patty and Mark had spent a lifetime proving they were worthy of trust. That trust allowed NECTARBALL to capture an unprecedented moment in history, a moment when the world began to see cannabis not as contraband but as medicine, heritage, and opportunity. A story seven years in the making.
A story only Patty Mooney and Mark Schulze could have told.
You can watch the documentary “Nectarball: The Story of Cannabis” now on Prime, NextEnt TV, LifeVista TV, Future Today, and Red Coral Universe. To support the filmmakers, you can also rent it from the official Nectarball site on Vimeo.
Byline: Patty Mooney is a San Diego filmmaker, writer, and editor whose four-decade career includes award-winning documentaries on extreme sports, cannabis culture, social justice, and global adventure. She is VP of Crystal Pyramid Productions and New & Unique Videos and continues to create new films, songs, and stories grounded in lived experience. Find more of her work on Substack.
Come meet the filmmakers of “Nectarball: The Story of Cannabis” on The Green Nurse Podcast as they share their story of filmmaking the story of cannabis in this documentary.
