Film Weekly blog

podcast link (Billy's interview begins at 18:06)

Finally, a tale of Miami vice from a Miami film maker. Billy Corben's Cocaine Cowboys is a brash documentary about the coke trade and how its unfettered billions built the city first into a cesspit of crime and then into a gleaming, successful metropolis. With clips of Miami Vice (the TV series) and Scarface, the film tells of the real people of the era, interviewing unrepentant gangsters, thieves and smugglers (check my lyrics?) as well as a rather scary hit man. Billy certainly sounds very perky when I catch him early morning in Florida as he recalls what it was like to grow up in a city built on white lines.