![]() The criminal's job was to evade them and corrupt them. The criminals held nothing personal against those cops. If you've ever seen The Wire, where one guys drives past the cops and he kind of waves at them, that's what it was like. We know why you're here, you know why we're here, let's not create a scene here. How did the celebrities, musicians, drug lords, informants, and cops all interact at the Mutiny?īetween the cops and the drug lords, it was kind of treated as a free-trade zone. ![]() These guys rubbed shoulders with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Fleetwood Mac, The Cars, and more. A rags to riches Cuban or Venezuelan-who would not get time of day at this exclusive club-got in, because once you're a coke kingpin, once you have that kind of money, all sorts of women would sleep with you, all sorts of celebs would party with you. It was the most democratizing thing-cash. The most ostentatious thing they could do was just order cases and cases of Dom Pérignon and pour it into a hot tub and jump in naked with groupies. They'd pay cash, like $1,200 a bottle, and tip the waiter another $200. Two of the old-school dopers would always order Lafite Rothschild, the very expensive wine from years prior to the Cuban Revolution. They'd have a shit ton of Dom Pérignon and Perrier-Jouët on the table. Dealers would throw a lot of cash around and make it abundantly clear to everybody that money was no object. They were much more businesslike and it was life or death for them. The Colombians, when they did go to the Mutiny, were not flashy people. The flashiness was the Cubans and the gringo hangers-on. What did it mean it to be seen at a place like the Mutiny? But now that Scarface has kind of created a life of its own, been quoted on Sports Center, and been re-released a thousand times, a lot of these guys want to come forward and say, "You know what, I think that was based on me, man." They wanted nothing to do with the film Scarface when it was filmed in 82 and 83 in Miami. You see sides and textures of all these people who you were led to believe were just coke-headed monsters. He can draw on lessons from anthropology, the CIA, sociology, politics, and the economy. But one of the biggest cocaine kingpins in Miami history, who's been smoking freebase for half his life, can play the piano so beautifully. I told Alfred, 'I'm Captain Ahab and this is the whale I'm pursuing,' and he's like tell me how I can help you.įrom the outside, growing up and listening to Nancy Reagan, George Bush, and the drug task force, you'd think that all these cocaine dealers were like Tony Montana. While I was doing my research, I reached out to them. Their film really opened the floodgates to a renaissance of interest in this whole era. I profiled them when I was at Business Week. How did the Cocaine Cowboys documentary help. Many people didn't want to talk.Ĭocaine dealer Nelson Aguilar, who was tight with Rick James and the Miami Dolphins And two, I was discreet and wanted the passion of this story to show up. I just lobbied and lobbied and lobbied… Until they realized that one, the statute of limitation is not a consideration unless you killed somebody. There was a breakthrough when one of the ex-gangsters who got out of prison, and has a restaurant in Miami Beach, was introduced to me. I put the word out in Miami that I was barking up this tree and once you get a very kind of low-level, admittedly small player at the club, they put in a good word. Who did you talk to and how did you gain access to them? Finally, I was at a crossroads where I had to put a book proposal together. I always had a folder or notes and over the years, 23 and counting. In my times of homesickness, I'd think back to the hotel and go research it in the library or make calls. I'm not given to phantasmagoria or the supernatural, but this place and its characters haunted the heck out of me as I went up north to school. And without making myself sound totally ridiculous and flakey, I'll tell you that I was haunted by what I saw. Roben Farzad: It found me just weeks before I left to go off to college in '94. VICE: When did you first find out about the Mutiny Hotel, and why did you decide to write a book about it?
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