Movie screens are about to be awash in black crime lords from the 1970s, what with the imminent release of Ridley Scott's American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas, and Mark Levin's documentary Mr. Untouchable, about Leroy "Nicky" Barnes. Lucas and Barnes were high-rollers and business competitors thirty years ago; now both are retired and living in the witness protection program, having turned for the government when their backs were against the wall. In Barnes's case, he can boast of having been broken under direct orders from the president of the United States; Jimmy Carter reportedly turned the dogs on him after reading a 1977 New York Times Magazine article on the drug kingpin's "untouchable" status and deciding, that ain't right.
This week in the Los Angeles Times, Robert W. Welkos catches up with with the seventy-four-year-old Barnes and finds that he's interested in maintaining his legacy; he's upset about the high-profile movie starring Denzel Washington as his old rival. "Hollywood is so full of baloney," he told Mark Levin. "They got it all upside down. [Lucas] and his 'countryboys,' they didn't run New York, I did." Levin was able to use that to convince Barnes to cooperate and be interviewed for his movie. But Levin says that when Barnes and Levin hooked up recently to discuss the good old days, "Their conversation, if I could characterize it a little, was like a reunion of fraternity brothers." (They also bonded over presidential politics. Rudy Giuliani will be delighted to hear that both men are ready to give him their endorsement.) Less eager to let bygones be bygones and shoot the shit are the old cronies whom Barnes ratted out as part of his deal with the Feds. Many of these guys had already filmed interviews with Levin before he managed to rack down Barnes; how did they react to the news that he would be sharing the screen with them? "There were some heated discussions," is how Levin describes it. — Phil Nugent