Hollywood

Good journalism is a lot like good police work. It takes a lot of digging and talking and research to learn all sides of a story on your way to the truth. Sometimes it turns out both sides in a battle are kind of slimy. Much less often you wrap up your investigation with a clear cut view of good and evil, right and wrong.

This is what brings me to write again about the movie “American Gangster.” I’m sorry, I just can’t let go.

At the end of the film there is a legend card proclaiming that because notorious Harlem based heroin dealer Frank Lucas flipped and cooperated with authorities his testimony, “Led to the convictions of three quarters of New York City’s Drug Enforcement Agency.” That is a lie – a dishonorable lie. Not one officer was ever charged with, let alone convicted, of any crime in connection with the lengthy Lucas investigation. [click to continue...]

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon has now tossed out the $55 million class action suit filed recently by about 400 DEA agents against NBC-Universal studios. For my full column on their complaints about the movie, “American Gangster” click here.

This means next week NBC-Universal can proceed with release of the DVD version of the film even though the judge took a major slap at the studio for what she called the false information perpetuated in this “based-on-a-true-story” film. [click to continue...]

Did NBC-Universal Use Dateline To Protect a Movie’s Bottom Line?

How many times have you gone to a movie that promotes itself as being “Based on a true story.” Somewhere in your brain it likely registers that you are about to see a movie about something that really happened. Oh, maybe a name is changed or a location or some minor few facts are a bit out of whack – but you figure the storyline is basically true. Right?

Wrong. It’s really an insipid motto: “Based on a true story”. What filmmakers are really telling you is that the story is false. They use the ‘true story’ hook line to get you into the theater seats and to remove any possible liability from their backs.

In the case of the movie ‘American Gangster’ Universal Studios appears to have taken this to an extreme. They bill it as, “The true juggernaut success story of a cult figure from the streets.” Not only were major truths withheld from the story line but if what I’m hearing behind the scenes from the very law enforcement officers depicted in the film, the directors and producers may have deliberately decided to twist the truth to show the bad guy was good and the good guys were really corrupt. And, these sources contend the deception may not have stopped at the studio doors – it may have involved a major television news department as well. [click to continue...]