Above: Mark Levin, Mr. Untouchable director, gets his camera fingers on.
August 2006. Filmmaker Marc Levin, 56, had just finished editing the Damon Dash-produced documentary Mr. Untouchable (Magnolia Pictures), a bare-knuckled look at the bloody rise and spectacular fall of '70s Harlem drug emperor Leroy "Nicky" Barnes. Levin was pleased with the edit, which relied on interviews with lawyers, journalists, lawmen, and Barnes' associates to tell the tale of the heavyweight hustler who, at his peak, was generating more than $100 million a year through his cocaine/heroin cartel, The Council. Only thing missing? Barnes himself.
"The film was green-lit without him, because he wasn't interested in talking to us," says Levin, who directed the award-winning poetry drama Slam (Off Line Entertainment Group, 1998). "[But then] Nicky got a hold of one of the versions of the screenplay for American Gangster - that was enough for him to say maybe we should meet."
Apparently, Barnes, who served 21 years in federal prison after receiving a life sentence for conspiracy in 1977, didn't appreciate his portrayal in the forthcoming film as an out-of-control, press-obsessed playboy playing second string to Washington's Frank Lucas character. So last year, Barnes met Levin at a secret location to set the record straight.
"Nicky asked me, 'What do you think of American Gangster?'" Levin recalls. "Before I could answer, he said, 'It's a piece of Hollywood bullshit.'"
With Barnes' participation, Mr. Untouchable leaps from standard Biography Channel–type fare to an arresting documentary of an obsessive, narcissistic mastermind. Barnes appears onscreen only in silhouette, a testament to the $1 million bounty placed on his head when he entered into a witness protection program in 1998 after agreeing to cooperate with investigators.
"It's as if Frank Lucas [the character Washington portrays in AG] was some kind of gangster visionary, the first black to coexist with the Mafia," says Levin. "But Lucas was looked at as 'country' and didn't come close to that. The man was Nicky Barnes."
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Comments
1.
ABBA YAHBEN YISRAEL says:
WE as a people have been spooked by this fictitious image that we need to see more gangster movies. With all the illing rap purveyors spewing this un-original folklore which was imported from sicily that they have adopted as so-called our story.
I would think that with all the mega-bucks these negro mentality actors have they would collaborate on some spiritual uplifting cinema. This is 2007, the earth is getting ready to blow up and they still enamored with "superfly" Christ is the Answer not American Gangste. ni***rs Really neeed to be Ressurrected and grow up. AS-SHAL OM-ALEIKUM
October 30, 2007 at 6:13 pm