American Gangster


Thanks to Darrin

The film is based on a New York Magazine article by Mark Jacobson, which depicted the true story of Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas (Washington), who smuggled heroin in the caskets of soldiers killed in Vietnam. He was eventually caught by New York detective Richie Roberts (Crowe), who got Lucas to turn his talents toward catching the crooked cops and drug dealers who profited from his scheme.

Updated: October 21, 2007


... Mr. Crowe said he saw the film in simple terms. “In a slightly ironic way, black businessman with $250 million in the bank who sells heroin” and sleeps with Miss Puerto Rico, “that’s great cinema,” he said. “There’s a responsibility that goes with that as well, to bring that guy to justice. We’ll see how we do with that.”


8/24/07 -- Thanks to flakeroo, the new (and excellent) trailer for American Gangster at Empire on line

American Gangster trailer is now on line (Quick Time) - Thanks, Flakeroo at MR

My set report

My Premiere Report

Starring

Russell Crowe

Denzel Washington

WITH:

Cuba Gooding Jr - Nicky Barnes
RZA
Adrian Washington
T.I.
John Ortiz
Carla Gugino
John Hawkes
Common
Flashy Freddy
Josh Brolin - Trupo
Chiwetel Ejiofor

Directed by
Ridley Scott

Written by:
Steve Zaillian

Produced by Brian Grazer

Info on:

Richie Roberts

Frank Lucas

American Gangster Page at Ion Cinema

And at the IMdb

Harlem Information and small mentions in the press

Media images from the set

American Gangster.net

Opens November 7, 2007

Richie Roberts

Up to date NEWS is here

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American Gangster" is back.

Ridley Scott is in talks to direct Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington in the Brian Grazer-produced drama that had its plug pulled in late 2004 by Universal. The hope is to shoot this summer.

U brass will decide this week whether to finance or co-finance the revamped '70s crime drama, or possibly let it go.

Two other studios are circling the project if U backs down.

The drama has a checkered past. In late 2004, Antoine Fuqua was a month from starting production in Harlem with Washington and Benicio Del Toro when U Pictures chairman Stacey Snider canceled the film over fear the budget would cross $100 million. Pay-or-play deals with Washington and Del Toro got settled, and the studio wrote off more than $20 million.

Imagine's Grazer, who developed the drama from a New York magazine article by Mark Jacobson, kept trying. "Hotel Rwanda" writer-director Terry George was brought on to rework Steve Zaillian's script and rein in the budget. Scott is working with Zaillian's draft.

Story revolves around a Harlem heroin kingpin who figured out a way to smuggle heroin in the coffins of American soldiers returning from the Vietnam War.

Crowe, who would play a cop, appears to have the most challenging schedule. He's booked to star with Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann's untitled period epic.

Crowe and Scott just completed "A Good Year" and previously made "Gladiator" together. Grazer made "A Beautiful Mind" and "Cinderella Story" with Crowe. Crowe and Washington previously played adversaries in "Virtuosity," before Crowe became a star in "L.A. Confidential."

Richie Roberts

Unlikely friendship piques Hollywood interest -- copyright 2003, The Times-Picayune. All rights reserved.

Bits of news.com:

Based on a New York Magazine article by Mark Jacobson, the movie "American Gangster" is set in the United States in the early 1970s, and the story revolves around the life of the drug-kingpin turned-informant, Frank Lucas, who grew up in segregated North Carolina where he witnessed the brutality of the Ku-Klux-Klan first hand.

He eventually makes his way to Harlem where he becomes a heroin kingpin by travelling to Asia's Golden Triangle to make connections, shipping heroin back to the US in the coffins of soldiers killed in Vietnam. Lucas is shadowed by the lawman, Richie Roberts, who finally helps bring the kingpin to justice and manages to turn Lucas into a police informant ending up working together with Roberts in exposing the crooked cops and drug dealers involved in the scheme.

Universal Studios are expected to decide this week whether they are to financing or co-financing the 1970s gangster drama. If they decide to opt out, two other studios are circling the project, and if the financing goes well, filming is set to begin this summer in New York.

Frank Lucas

Bookslut:

Jacobson has a great story about Frank Lucas, who was once the biggest drug dealer in Harlem, thanks in part to an ingeniously offensive scheme that involved transporting heroin from Vietnam back to the United States in the caskets of American servicemen. Jacobson should hardly get credit for writing the piece. He just lets Lucas talk: "We put [the dope] out there at four in the afternoon, when the cops changed shifts. That gave you a couple of hours to work, before those lazy bastards got down there. My buyers, though, you could set your watch by them. Those junkies crawling out… They had to reroute the bus coming down Eighth Avenue to 116th, it couldn’t get through. Call the Transit Authority to see if it’s not so… By nine o’clock, everything is sold and I got myself a million dollars."

The NY Times: U.S. jury convicts heroin informant - Published: August 25, 1984:

A 53-year-old man who had long-term prison sentences for heroin-trafficking reduced after he became a witness against other drug dealers was convicted in Brooklyn yesterday of conspiring to distribute heroin. A jury in Federal District Court returned the verdict after a three-day trial of the defendant, Frank Lucas. He faces not only up to 30 years in prison for that conviction, but also up to life in prison for violating the terms of his parole from the earlier sentences. In 1976 Mr. Lucas was convicted in a Federal trial in Manhattan and a state trial in New Jersey of charges stemming from his leadership of a major heroin-distribution ring. He received a total of 70 years in prison. The next year he began giving evidence that led to the convictions of more than 100 narcotics violators, and in 1981 his 40-year Federal term and 30-year state term were reduced to time served plus lifetime parole. In the new case, Mr. Lucas was charged with having conspired with an undercover agent to set up a drug sale.

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Frank Lucas was arrested 28 January 1975, when an NYPD/DEA strike force, acting on a tip from two Pleasant Avenue guys, staged a surprise raid on his house in New Jersey. In the ensuing panic, Julie Lucas, screaming "Take it all, take it all," tossed several suitcases out the window. The cases were found to contain $584,000 in rumpled bills. Also found were keys to Lucas's Cayman Islands safe-deposit boxes, property deeds, and a ticket to a United Nations ball, compliments of the ambassador of Honduras. In 1975 Lucas got a sentence of 70 years thanks to a member of his gang who was later killed.

Lawyer Gino Gallina and Frank Lucas

Frank Lucas reckons he must have spent "millions" on high-priced criminal lawyers through the early eighties. Gino Gallina, however, was the only lawyer Lucas ever physically assaulted, the incident occurring in the visiting room of the Rikers Island prison. Lucas had reputedly given Gallina a large payoff to fix a case, $200,000 of which became "lost." Upon hearing this, Lucas, said the Daily News, "leaped across the table in the visitors' pen and began punching Gallina savagely." Acknowledging that he told Gallina "if I didn't get my money in 24 hours he was a dead man" and asserting that the lawyer "did not deserve to live".

The Return of Super Fly - New York Magazine, April 14 2000 issue - Mark Jacobson

Amazon: Teenage Hipster in the Modern World: From the Birth of Punk to the Land of Bush: Thirty Years of Apocalyptic Journalism (Paperback) - Jacobson