Last night I had the chance to catch the upcoming release American Gangster starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe and hitting theaters on November 2nd. Of course embargoes don’t allow me to review the film in an official capacity, but I will tell you I loved the film I saw last night and after reading the fantastic August 2000 interview with the real Frank Lucas from “New York Magazine” on which the film is based I just had to pass it on, because after reading this there is no way you are going to skip this flick.
First off, pretend you are a journalist and your assignment is to interview a man known to kill at will and in the process of smuggling heroin from Southeast Asia to Harlem during the Vietnam War and used the coffins of dead soldiers to get his dope into the country. “Who the hell is gonna look in a dead soldier’s coffin? Ha ha ha,” he said to NY Mag’s Mark Jacobson. Before the interview started Jacobson was given a short list of things not to write, “Don’t cross me on this, because I am a busy man and have no time, no time whatsoever, to go to your funeral,” Lucas warns him. Probably best to avoid the problem areas I would say.
Written by Steve Zaillan and directed by Ridley Scott American Gangster captures everything this article touches upon. A few details are changed here and there, but for the better. However, at the core of it is still a man named Frank Lucas that owned 116th Street in Harlem and even told Jacobson “you’d see junkies, nodding, sucking their own dicks . . . heads down in the crotch. People saw that, they knew that shit was good.”
The shit he is referring to is Blue Magic, Lucas’ own 97% pure heroin of which he obtained his first shipment himself by visiting the jungles of Southeast Asia and meeting an English-speaking, Rolls-Royce-driving Chinese gentleman whom he called 007. “I called him 007 because he was a fucking Chinese James Bond,” Lucas said. Lucas even admits that he once smuggled a shipment of heroin on 1973 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Henry Kissinger’s plane.
Big names are thrown all around the “NY Mag” interview giving you some insight as to just how big this gangster from the ’70s really was. Names like Ray Robinson, Wilt Chamberlain, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, members of the Temptations, James Brown, Berry Gordy and Diana Ross are dropped. Lucas even recalls a moment that Howard Hughes and Ava Gardner patron his Harlem nightclub saying, “Howard Hughes, the original ghost — that impressed me.”
It isn’t all celebs and cash for Lucas though, even though he lays claim to bringing in $1 million a day selling dope on 116th Street. While he says the one thing that has kept him alive and got him out of jail is the fact that “people like [him].” However, I guess it is hard not to like someone especially after reading him recall a moment with a man called Tango between the Canaan Baptist Church and the New Africa House of Fish.
In what boils down to a deal gone bad, Lucas says:
Then, like I knew he would, he started getting hot, going into one of his gorilla acts. He was one of them silverback gorillas, you know, you seen them in the jungle. A silverback gorilla, that’s what he was.
“He started cursing, saying he was going to make me his bitch and he’d do the same to my mama too. Well, as of now, he’s dead. No question, a dead man. But I let him talk. A dead man got a right to say what he wants. Now the whole block is there, to see if I’m going to pussy out. He was still yelling. So I said to him, ‘When you get through, let me know.’ ”
“Then the motherfucker broke for me. But he was too late. I shot him. Four times, right through here: bam, bam, bam, bam…”
Jacobson even admits his wife, after hearing the tapes of his interview, says, “Oh, you’re doing a story on Satan . . .” But is Frank Lucas going to hell?
The subject of heaven and hell is even brought up by Lucas as he asks Jacobson where he thinks Frank is going, “You gonna make me out to be the devil, or what? Am I going to Heaven or hell?”
Jacobson never gives a straight-up answer to the question, but he admits the guy is extremely likable and his story is a whole season of the black “Sopranos”, but when you can simply be scared by a man’s “chilling laugh” you have to assume what his answer would have been.
To check out the full five page interview (and you should) click here, it is well worth your time and whether you read it before or after seeing the film it doesn’t matter, it will enlighten you no matter what.
American Gangster hits theaters on November 2nd, you can click here for more information.
