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Originally Posted by demonrail666
I have a perverse fascination with that whole 80s Miami thing. I read as much about it as I can (including the book the doc was based on) and can say that as far as the truth goes it's about as close as you'll get. The problem is everyone involved has a massive agenda, either to stay out of jail, to boost their ego or to simply stay alive. And you really can't gloss over the Colombian thing. Not to say people like Jon Robrts weren't violent but once the cartels started to get properly involved the violence did simply go off the scale. Shootings in shopping malls, etc. You should read the book it's based on. The author questions the validity of a lot of the stories he's told but even he eventually can't deny that it was horrible, but also utterly glamorous. It's hard not to turn Miami in the 80s into gun porn. The police would never talk about it because they were knee deep in it all themselves and from what I've read about Griselda, the doc actually under-plays a lot of it.
This is the book you want to read. It's what the doc was based on but more focused on Roberts (it's basically his memoir). It gets repetitive towards the end as it does just become a paranoid sequence of killing and fucking but I do believe that for people like Roberts, that was what it was like. And the first third, which talks about him in Vietnam and which barely makes the doc at all is I guarantee one of the most flat out crazy things you'll ever read - even if you don't end up believing a word of it. |
Thanks for the book recommend - that looks really interesting, will see if I can order that online tonight (EDIT - just ordered it from Amazon UK)
Agree with you on what you say on the Miami/Colomiba drug wars thing - "Cocaine Cowboys" could have really gone into that into great detail, but for whatever reason, chose to skim the surface and not dig any deeper. Griselda is a fascinating/gruesome figure, for sure, and you'd think that spending so much time on her, the doc would have provided some real info there - but again, the doc skims the surface and treats her like some sort of "mystery" figure.
(EDIT - missed the bit where you said you've already seen the doc - whoops! Sorry about that)