Hollywood’s lies

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.

The real story is simple. Countless agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, from the New York Police Department and from the Newark Police Department worked various aspects of the Lucas investigation over a long period of time. Together, they ultimately brought down the entire multi-million dollar heroin ring. None of them, as the movie depicts, conducted a raid on Lucas’ house during which they assaulted his wife. Nor did they steal a case full of money confiscated from the house; they did not shoot the Lucas dog. All of that was made up by screenwriters looking to embellish the truth to make the criminal seem as though he prevailed over even bigger odds.

If you didn’t read my original column on the shamefully distorted script of this “based on a true story” film check it out. But I can summarize it in a sentence: The filmmakers deliberately misled the public into thinking the cops in the movie were the bad guys and the drug dealing criminals were the guys to admire. It was a disgraceful distortion of the truth – a truth easily discovered with a few minutes at a computer. I’m amazed that high powered movie stars like Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe would agree to play “true life” roles without doing a little research on their own.

So what, you ask? So what if the “American Gangster” portrayals weren’t exactly the truth, what’s the difference?

Well, I’ve discovered three more people to whom it makes a world of difference. Detectives Benny Abruzzo, Eddie Jones and Alvin Spearman worked for the Newark Police Department during the time the movie’s central character, Frank Lucas, was running a massive east coast based criminal enterprise. They were central to bringing him and his operatives to justice.

These detectives called themselves the “Z-Team” and they dedicated themselves to nearly two years of dangerous undercover work to help bring down the Lucas crime family. Internally, they called it “The Country Boys” case, a reference to how the Lucas family referred to themselves and their North Carolina origins. The intelligence and evidence the Z-Team gathered resulted in the indictment of 33 people, including Frank Lucas’ parents and his four brothers. Frank Lucas was already in prison at the time the rest of his family was indicted.

Thanks to the Z-Team’s efforts by November 1976 the entire Lucas operation had been crushed. The story was widely reported and Detectives Abruzzo, Jones and Spearman were highly praised and decorated for their heroic actions.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided not to focus on the complicated, compelling and extremely dangerous police operation that finally brought an end to the Lucas dynasty. They chose not to focus on the trial or the criminal system’s success in bringing Lucas after Lucas to justice and shutting down their poisonous pipeline. Instead, with Denzel Washington agreeing to play the lead role, they focused on the saga of how an African American kid could rise from rural poverty to riches and become one of the nation’s most successful criminals in the country. They promoted the movie as, “The true juggernaut success story of a cult figure from the streets.” Forget about the generation of young people the Lucas’ destroyed peddling their poison.

The truth is the script is full of inaccuracies including how Lucas smuggled the heroin into America (it did not come inside the coffins of dead US soldiers) and the true personalities and motivations of those in law enforcement. Russell Crowe depicts Ritchie Roberts as the catalyst behind the entire investigation. The real-life Roberts, who was a paid consultant on the film, told me in a telephone conversation that it was the fine police work of his entire Bureau of Narcotics team – specifically, Abruzzo, Jones and Spearman– that brought down the “Country Boys.”

“It was excellent police work,” he said, “It was like Camelot … we had a squad of super cops at that time.” Back in 1976 Roberts even wrote letters of commendation for the three Z-Team members.

Roberts indicated he was disappointed about some of the characterizations in the final film. The former prosecutor also told me he begged the filmmakers to include Abruzzo, Jones and Spearman characters in the cast, only to be told that’s not the way Hollywood worked. Too many major characters take away from the movie stars, they explained, and no body likes that. But, Roberts says he was able to get the scriptwriters to, at least, use the trio’s names.

However, their names pop up during a made-up scene in bar. Detective Ed Jones (who is still on the job in Naples, Florida) describes the scene this way:

“Spearman is sitting in a bar at a table with Ritchie Roberts (Russell Crowe) when Spearman points out Jones by name (Jones is dancing with a white girl) and says something to the affect that, “Jones only likes skinny white broads.” Then he points to Abruzzo and calls him by name and says something to the affect that, “He only likes black women.”

Detectives Spearman and Abruzzo are also seen guzzling booze straight from the bottle, something none of the health conscious body-building trio ever would have engaged in. And in a later scene all three detectives appear in a group of cops inside a station house briefing room. The Ritchie Roberts character is asked if the story is true that he once turned in a million dollars in unmarked money. He says its true and when he asks, “Does anyone have a problem with that?” all three detectives raise their hands, as if to say they would have kept the money.

The Z-Team today says they risked their lives for nearly two years to bring about the story which has now brought multi-millions to NBC-Universal, director Ridley Scott and his twist-‘em-in-a-knot screenwriters and actors. And they bristle that this is how their names will be remembered to the masses. Imagine how they feel being portrayed as cheating, boozing womanizers who would steal evidence money if given half a chance. And those erroneous portrayals live on forever on the big screen and now in a special two disc DVD set!

Detectives Jones and Abruzzo told me they’ve had a hard time trying to explain how the movie got it so wrong. It’s embarrassing – humiliating – to think people might believe that was the way they conducted themselves on duty. Ed Jones wife, Blantina, told me, “After viewing the movie not only did my husband and I come away stunned by how the truth had been so vilely corrupted … but we found ourselves having to explain to our family, friends, neighbors and more painfully to our own children, … how the true life story and events did not go down the way the film had portrayed them.”

Even the most sophisticated in Hollywood believe what they saw was absolutely true. Several of the actors have promoted the film as a “true story”. At the premiere of the movie in Los Angeles Academy Award winning director Brian Grazer emerged to tell a reporter, “I love gangster movies … I appreciate (this one). It’s a true story! As a theme it deals with the pervasive nature of corruption in our society and how it works.”

At the same event Russell Crowe said it was an important story to be told, “For many reasons. Some of the information in this movie is probably going to be shocking to people.” Which part, Mr. Crowe, the parts the writers made up out of whole cloth?

What would be shocking is if Hollywood finally recognized the value of law enforcement officers who selflessly suit up every morning and go out to keep the rest of us safe.

In the meantime, a U.S. District Judge in New York has just dismissed a class action suit by a group of DEA agents who recently tried to sue NBC-Universal for the way they were depicted in “American Gangster.” She ruled that since no actor was clearly identified as a DEA agent they had no case.

Now, Detectives Abruzzo, Jones and Spearman are wondering if they have any redress. Their names were openly mentioned in the film, they were depicted in ways they never would have behaved and, like those who filed the original lawsuit, they are furious at being labeled part of a group that was “three quarters convicted” of fictitious crimes.

As Detective Abruzzo asked me recently, “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”