Vice city: Film festival showcases documentary about the inspiration behind 'Miami Vice'

Rewind/Fast Forward Film & Video Festival showcases 'Cocaine Cowboys', a documentary about the real-life inspiration behind 'Miami Vice'
BY BRETT O'BOURKE
7/28/2006
 
Local filmmakers Alfred Spellman and Billy Corben -- whose documentary Cocaine Cowboys was a flat-out hit at the Tribeca Film Festival this past spring -- are both in their late 20s, talk way too fast and often complete each other's sentences.

The two will show clips from the film -- which The New York Post called the ''definitive documentary about how Miami became the drug capital of the United States'' and recently got picked up for theatrical distribution by Mark Cuban's Magnolia Films -- and discuss the production process during this weekend's Rewind/Fast Forward Film & Video Festival.

But right now, it's lunchtime on a Thursday at Balans on Lincoln Road and Spellman and Corben are in the middle of tag-teaming a rant on how the Internet has changed the film industry.

''It used to be that if you wanted to make films, you had to be in New York or L.A.,'' Spellman says. ``The Internet changed all that. Now we're not tied to having to be anywhere.''

He and Corben then launched into a somewhat meandering but completely spitfire explanation of how

the Internet has made going to the movie theater obsolete, how video aggregates like YouTube have changed the marketplace and how anyone who says that seeing films in a theater is the only way to go is completely full of you-know-what.

''I dread the notion of a night at the movies,'' Corben says. ``I've had fights, bomb threats, fire alarms go off -- who needs the stress?''

All of this came from a simple question: Do they plan on staying in Miami? In case you're not sure, the short answer is yes.

The two met in a television production class at Highland Oaks Middle School in North Miami Beach, attended film school at the University of Miami so they could keep the team together (Spellman produces, Corben directs), and took a leave of absence their junior year to make Raw Deal -- a documentary about an alleged rape at the University of Florida -- which showed at Sundance. Then came graduation in 2002 (well, for Corben, anyway) the formation of their production company Rakontur and Cocaine Cowboys.

The film investigates how drugs, money and murder in the 1980s helped shape the Miami of today.

''We'd always been fascinated by the era,'' Spellman says.

The guys say they had heard the stories, like about the Dadeland shoot-out during which two men with machine guns opened fire on their target inside a Crown Liquor store, or how the big drug smugglers, cops and lawyers would all party at the old Mutiny in Coconut Grove. And, of course, they had seen Scarface.

''It's amazing how accurate that movie is,'' Corben says, ``like when they show the drug dealers schlepping bags full of money into banks or when Tony buys the Michelle Pfeiffer character a tiger for her birthday. There really was a drug dealer that had cougars wandering on his property . . . that's what we wanted to do, show the real story, the behind-the-scenes stuff.''

They started work in the summer of 2003, focusing on the economic impact of the drug trade (''all that money had to go somewhere,'' says Corben) and how the sleepy town known as ''God's waiting room'' transformed itself into the real-life setting for Miami Vice (''art imitating life, imitating art,'' Corben says).

Cowboys benefits from two big scores: the wealth of archival news footage from the Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archive (''those guys had done the most extensive research I've ever seen,'' says curator Baron Sherer) -- which makes up 40 of the 44 minutes worth of historical footage used -- and a jailhouse interview with Jorge ''Rivi'' Ayala, a convicted hit man for Colombian drug dealer Griselda Blanco, and the man who set up the Dadeland hit.

''He was the most prolific hit man of the era,'' Corben says. ``He got immunity for testifying against his bosses. There is a lot he's not allowed to talk about, but there are 12 murders he can talk about and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of all of it.''

Completed in March, Spellman and Corben feel the film is the definitive work on the South Florida drug trade. All five screenings at Tribeca sold out and they say Magnolia is planning a ''strong'' 15-city theatrical release on Oct. 27.

They won't say how much money they landed from the distribution deal, only that they can afford ''to pay for offices on Lincoln Road,'' according to Spellman.

They're currently working on a documentary project -- financed by 42 Below vodka -- called Clubland, a business-side examination of Miami's most high-profile vice.

But before we can get into that in detail, the two are off and running again, talking about how much sense it makes for brands to finance projects like Clubland (''we're talking to their audience . . . the 30 second spot doesn't work anymore,'' Spellman says), how TiVo killed the commercial, how product placement in movies is déclassé, distribution models are malleable and content is king. Then Corben's phone rings and he is up and out the door.