Cocaine Cowboys is a certified classic; But the director's credibility not so well established as the characters in his work; with his public statements calling into question his basic understanding of Miami and reality.
Anybody
stupid enough to say on a national interview platform on a major
podcast that there was no cocaine in Miami in the 1990's is too
uninformed to be taken seriously on the subject.
His Cocaine Cowboys movie is a rare critical, commercial, and lasting film success that came out in 2006, and despite looking like it was shot on VHS, a solid documentary that has been entertaining people for close to two decades.
But it realistically offers a very narrow scope of activity through a few stories from some big players.
And it leaves out plenty of real history in an odd way which recent statements might explain why.
All you gotta do is watch, or listen to Joe Rogan Experience episode number 1706,
Rogan: In the 90s (cocaine) kind of died away?
Billy Corben: Totally. By the 90s, what happens is, yeah,
cocaine kind of fell out of favor.
However In the 1990's, the Cali Cartel was one of the biggest drug organizations in the world, and their product of choice was cocaine and 80% of product in the U.S., according to the Miami Herald in 1995, came from their shipments. And that was only after they rose up in the traffic rankings through their competition with the Medellin Cartel.
Two of the most powerful and often cited organizations in the world dominated the 90s, right under Corben's nose, out of reach of his nostrils.
He is obviously capable of directing the filming of interviews, but he's not a reader, critical thinker, not a writer or journalist. He is a movie director more wholly concerned with entertainment.
Am I a hater? Not really. He made a big fat stupid factual error that lots of people will believe coming from a so-called expert documentarian talking about what he is most well known for.
Later in the episode Corben says, "I'm basically a functioning illiterate. Let's be honest about it."
The Cali Cartel were mentioned thousands of times in Miami newspapers from 1990-1999. Not that he would be able to read all about it. Not that being illiterate is wrong or bad, but it absolutely restricts his basic understanding of established and certified facts; reducing his subjective personal experience to being the reality of the decade just to be agreeable with Joe.
Or maybe hiding what his next movie is, or somebody out there advised him what not to talk about.
Starting with Manuel Noriega's apprehension on January 3 of 1990 all the way through "Fatso" Florez getting busted in 1999, tons and tons and tons and tons of cocaine came through Miami and the war on drugs was in full swing and there were many court cases and paper work and news articles and tv coverage on the local, regional, and national news, in major magazines, and in books.
No matter how many out-of-town people he can convince otherwise, just like everybody else on earth, including myself, he is full of shit.
But the shit that I am full of is different than him. I am full of true shit. And he is full of fake shit.
So either he is afraid of the truth and unafraid to lie about it, somebody told him what not to talk about, he really is that dumb that he didn't know, or some unaccounted for variable led him to make such misleading statements, all the while setting himself up as the arbiter of truth.
I've interviewed him before, a few times, over the phone and on video, as well as shouted him out in the media, and said nice things, and gave him props as a moviemaker just as i did here today and seen him in the streets at different places, and even had some of my work shared by his company online.
But on this one particular episode of Rogan, in a three hour interview of which it's a very small part, Billy Corben tells the world that cocaine in Miami died in the 90s.
Anybody listening to him talk about anything should remember that.
Cocaine sucks it's never been my thing. I have seen it ruin people's lives and even kill them dead. I am no expert on it. My knowledge of its cases in the 90s, when the stories of it were everywhere in the media and in the streets, is because it was so widespread and omnipresent. It did not die off in the 90's. It got more powerful.