rakontur in 2012

2011 was a big year for us. We released two feature docs, Square Grouper in April and Limelight in September (on DVD January 24th), and started work on a handful of new projects.

In 2012 we plan to release at least three titles:

Dawg Fight will premiere in the Spring. Details to follow shortly.

Our new ESPN doc, examining the explosion of money in sports over the past twenty years and the epidemic of pro athletes who have lost it all, is slated to premiere in late summer/early fall.

We'll also release a entirely new, recut version of Cocaine Cowboys this year, probably early summer, that we're calling "Remix." As we told BlackBook:

The first cut of Cocaine Cowboys was four hours, so it came down to flipping coins to see what we would cut and what we would keep…until we had an epiphany: These are two completely different movies. One is about Jon Roberts and Mickey Munday and the smuggling, the other is about the murder and Griselda and the hit men. So with that premise we decided to make one sort of seminal one, Cocaine Cowboys, and if it caught on, we had the material for the sequel, which is what happened. And this remix is the stuff that ended up on the editing room floor because it didn’t quite fit. Not because it wasn’t good, but because we ran out of time. We get emails all the time from die-hard fans of the first two asking for more, so this is for those people. It’s not a director's cut, it’s a remix. There’s hours of new material. We changed picture, audio, packaging. It’s Cocaine Cowboys, the untold stories. 

We're still working on a third installment of the Cocaine Cowboys doc series. We took some time off from it in 2011 to finish Square Grouper and Limelight, but we're trying to get it done this year. 

Michelle Ashford is making progress on the Cocaine Cowboys HBO TV series we're producing with Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer; we expect to have some news on that in the first couple months of the year.

rakontur's Evan Rosenfeld executive produced The Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke, a short film directed by Jillian Mayer and written and produced by Borscht's Lucas Leyva. It premieres at Sundance on January 20th:

@AlfredSpellman

Jon Roberts, smuggler featured in Cocaine Cowboys, passed away yesterday

Jon had been battling cancer for several years. He was 63.

His autobiography, American Desperado, was published in November. He did an interview in October with NPR to promote the book:

"I've talked to my son and I don't know if I'm going to live a month, a week, I don't know what I'm going to live," he says. "But I wanted him to take away from this that he's got to go a different path than I went in life."

The Miami New Times ran an obituary today.

The U: 36 days until air

Late night at Honor Roll Studios on Thursday, recording the opening title track for The U with Uncle Luke. 

Luther called at 8pm and asked us to round up a crew to record the call-and-response chorus.  We organized a Facebook/Twitter flash mob and everyone was well into their third or fourth round once Luke arrived around 11:30.

Billy showed Luke a few segments from the film and, after a few Bacardi Limons, he got on the mic and did what Luke does -- he nailed the new anthem for the Canes.

John and Arunima from ESPN came by, as did Mickey Munday, Peter Richardson, Carlos Miller and an assortment of other rakontur-associated troublemakers. 

Read Fasse and Nick Scapa at Honor Roll are working on the edit and mix of the track now.  We're thinking about cutting a video for the song with clips from the film and having it online around the first of December.

More photos to come...

Uncle Luke and Billy Corben

Billy Corben and Luther CampbellAlfred Spellman and Mickey Munday

in the control room - Luke on the mic

Honor Roll Studios lounge

in the booth with LukeNick Scapa and Luther Campbell