rakontur

You wouldn’t know it from the tepid response last summer to Michael Mann’s re-imagining of Miami Vice, or the faded reruns of the original series on cable’s Sleuth channel, but the show once famously synopsized as “MTV cops” was one of the cultural touchstones of the ’80s. Brian De Palma’s Miami-ization of the classic 1932 gangster movie, Scarface, caused a similar sensation in 1983, but, if anything, has only grown in popularity in its video incarnations.

Each of these productions owes a debt of gratitude to the drug traffickers, dealers, hit men and cops whose stories are re-told in the flashy new documentary, Cocaine Cowboys. Directed by native Floridian Billy Corben, the film chronicles the period in Miami’s history when commerce in recreational drugs turned murderous, and the world’s largest open-air retirement took on the air of Prohibition-era Chicago.

And, even though nothing terribly surprisingly or new is revealed during the course of its 116-minute length, Cocaine Cowboys provides a diverting escape to a time when obscene amounts of money, bullets and blow changed the face of a major American city.

“We grew up in Miami and are fascinated by its history,” said Corben, referring to his partner at the Rakontur production company, Alfred Spellman, and longtime collaborator, David Cypkin. “The story and plot of Cocaine Cowboys is like an overreaching history of the city. It is the reason why people around the world recognize Miami.”

Miami had its share of swindlers and scammers before it became an international clearing house for the cocaine and marijuana trade. Neither were these drugs completely unknown before gaining widespread popularity in the ’60s and ’70s. Reefer Madness was released in 1936, after all, and Groucho Marx’s character in Animal Crackers, Captain Spaulding, was named after an army officer arrested in the ’20s for selling cocaine to Hollywood stars.

After the Nixon White House effectively tightened the border with Mexico in the late ’60s — and sprayed Paraquat on South American marijuana fields — many impoverished farmers and distributors found a safer and more economical way to turn plants into money. The same shipping routes used by smugglers of marijuana could be used to transport far more compact loads of cocaine bricks. As federal agents got savvy to the new product line, smugglers were forced to use ports of entry from the Everglades to the Cajun country.

To cut down on time, expenses and Coast Guard inspections, a few daredevil pilots were enlisted to fly product from cartel-controlled airstrips in Colombia or Venezuela to any one of dozens of small airports on the peninsula. From there it would be warehoused for shipment around the United States. The smugglers always seemed to be two steps ahead of the feds, technologically and financially.

In time, northern California and British Columbia would become hubs of the pot trade, and Mexico would provide a conduit for cocaine and heroin. For most of the ’70s and ’80s, though, Miami was the while-hot center of the cocaine business. The marijuana that found its way into Florida was sold at a premium, while the cost of cocaine plummeted.

No longer was the white powder affordable only to jet-setters and highly paid professionals. White-collar yuppies, blue-collar factory workers, college kids and disco divas suddenly could afford the same high as trust-fund babies, and there was no danger of a drought. It was presumed to be a safe drug, unless, of course, one didn’t blow themselves up while free-basing — a la Richard Pryor — or make the mistake of getting busted while being black, Hispanic or poor. Jimmy Buffet rhapsodized about life on the high seas with these modern-day pirates, while Hollywood writers and directors were rewarded for their coke-fueled binges with Oscars.

What differentiated from Miami from other 20th Century boomtowns was its willingness to absorb, exploit and pretend not to notice an underground economy that had insulated it from the recessions that crippled other urban centers. Because dope dealing was a cash-only business, the profiteers found it easier to re-invest their ill-gotten gains in Florida businesses, than attempt to launder mountains of greenbacks off-shore. Meanwhile, the cream of the Chamber of Commerce was only too anxious to lend a hand.

“In the late-’70s, the government’s attention was on heroin, not cocaine,” Corben recalled. “It was perceived to be too expensive a habit for most people to afford, and, in medical terms, no red flags were being waved. Eventually, though, it was being used so habitually, by so many people, that the drug’s effects began taking their toll.”

The benign approach prevailed until the Cocaine Cowboys entered the picture in the waning days of the Carter administration. The cartel bosses had found a comparatively safe haven of Miami, where their money not only bought fine houses and expensive automobiles, but also social status, political clout and access to the best schools for their children. To protect their families and investments, they brought in a peasant army of South American and Cuban thugs.

Proof of their ruthlessness arrived in 1979, in the form of a deadly shootout between rival gang members in a liquor store in the busy Dadeland Mall. The firepower at the disposal of the gunmen startled police officials, while their complete disregard for innocent passers-by terrified the citizenry. Overnight, it seemed, Miami had become a combination Dodge City, Bogota and Beirut, and the bad guys were holding all the cards.

“The bosses had imported a culture of violence and, with it, gunmen who operated with the same brashness as they had back in Colombia, where murder was commonplace,” Corben added. “Retired cops and reporters who covered the murders still get together on a regular basis to swap stories.”

Some of these veterans of the drug wars had told — and, in some cases, sold — the same stories to the Hollywood filmmakers who were pouring into south Florida as the violence escalated. Scarface and Miami Vice borrowed freely from the growing reputations of the perpetrators of such crimes, adding a bit of Armani flair to the famously gaudy tastes of the cocaine elite. Despite the savagery playing out on the city’s palm-lined boulevards, Miami became an unlikely mecca for wanna-bes of all description, from dope peddlers and petty thieves, to fashion models and Euro-trash lay-abouts.

By the time Miami Vice had become a big Friday-night hit for NBC, the feds already were closing in on the key players. Corruption among local police, bankers, Realtors and politicians ultimately had become too obvious to disguise, and computer technology allowed the DEA and FBI to review bank records and real-estate transactions, and tighten the screws on hoodlums in Florida, Colombia and Panama.

“They killed the goose laying the golden eggs,” Corben reminds. “People have said what happens in our movie reminded them of Casino, which, of course, we had seen and loved. We heard they were imploding the high-rise Harbor House residences — where one of the guys’ girlfriends would monitor Coast Guard activities — just as we were going into post-production.

“They quickly built a condominium building in its place. The symbolism echoed the scenes of casinos being imploded at the end of Casino, I suppose.”

In addition to thousands of archival photographs and news accounts, the movie is enhanced by the testimony of veteran journalists, police officers, narcotics agents, coroners, lawyers and district attorneys. Corben was fortunate, as well, to win the trust of key players in the cocaine game, who had nothing left to lose by sharing their memories on camera. Two had already served lengthy sentences and knew the statutes of limitations had run out on their other crimes, while the other was a convicted assassin unlikely to see the light of day outside prison ever again.

Before becoming a major cocaine “wholesaler,” Jon Pernell Roberts served with the Special Forces in Vietnam and managed several mob-backed nightclubs in New York. Pilot, speedboat jockey and self-described redneck, Mickey Munday, took the business airborne, improvising anti-detection and retrieval tactics that kept the feds guessing for years. Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, now serving multiple concurrent life sentences, graduated from stealing cars in Chicago to killing the enemies of Griselda Blanco (”The Black Widow”), perhaps the most ruthless of all Miami-based drug lords and a movie waiting to happen.

Their anecdotes and recollections are consistently fascinating, while their emotional attachment to the people and history helps personalize otherwise dry news accounts, video footage and photographs. Given that not everyone in the audience for Cocaine Cowboys will be unanimous in their condemnation of drug usage in general — and the imbibing of cocaine and pot, in particular — their observations also can be quite amusing.

Then, too, Corben was able to convince Jan Hammer — who composed the soundtrack for the original Miami Vice series — to provide new music for Cocaine Cowboys. The composer had opted out of Mann’s theatrical version.

If Cocaine Cowboys qualifies more as a guilty please than a source for breaking news, an earlier, barely distributed Rackontur documentary is as fresh and immediate as a headline in the morning paper.

Made in 2001, Raw Deal: A Question of Consent endeavors to separate the facts from media and legal conjecture in the case of a rape that allegedly occurred seven years ago at the Delta Chi fraternity on the Gainesville campus of the University.of Florida. The frat brothers, as was their wont, had hired a pair of strippers for an evening of debauchery, and, the morning after the party, one of the ladies filed charges of rape.

If that scenario sounds familiar, it’s because a similar incident allegedly occurred last year at Duke University, during a party for the school’s lacrosse team. Thanks to the media’s insatiable appetite for scandal, especially when it involves the children of rich white people, the case’s notoriety spread well beyond the boundaries of North Carolina. To this day, no one in authority is precisely sure what happened that night, and, specifically, whether consent was given for rough sex between the dancers and the over-served athletes.

“The first time I heard a radio report about what was happening at Duke, I immediately thought they were referring to Raw Deal,” said Corben, who was in his early 20s when he began work on the documentary. “The cases were virtually identical, and I began freaking out. In the Florida incident, video tapes were made during the party … even so, nobody can agree on what happened.”

The state’s Sunshine Law gave Corben access to the tapes, and he also was able to interview several of the participants on camera. Every bit as explicit as some porn movies, Raw Deal became a film festival sensation before finding a permanent home in the vault of Artisan Entertainment. Although it briefly saw the light of day in the U.K. — and was discussed in the Tanya Horeck’s “Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and in Film” (Routledge) — the graphic sex and possible legal ramifications deemed it too hot for Artisan to handle.

The release of Cocaine Cowboys coincides a 60 Minutes report on the Duke furor, the gubernatorial campaign of the Gainesville prosecutor who refused to proceed with the Sigma Chi rape case and the DVD release of Raw Deal. At this point, it’s only available on the Internet (http://store.rakonturstore.com/rawdequofco.html), with commentary by Corben and Cypkin; 35 minutes of additional footage; Q&A sessions from the Sundance Film Festival; and a making-of documentary.

Also from Rakontur, in January, comes the “unscripted” reality show, Clubland. According to producer Spellman, it will focus on “money, egos, catfights and controversies at the most popular nightclubs on Miami Beach,” as local scenester Nicola Siervos launches a new South Beach restaurant. It will be shown on the Internet, as well as on television in Europe.

November 4, 2006

- Gary Dretzka